António Corea

António Corea (fl. late 16th and 17th centuries) or António Korea was a Korean slave who was taken to Italy. He is possibly the first Korean to have set foot in Europe. Little is known about Corea's life; he is attested to only briefly in a travelogue by his Italian master Francesco Carletti. Corea was enslaved during the 1592–1598 Imjin War and taken to Nagasaki, Japan. There, he was purchased by Carletti around 1597. They left Japan and arrived in the Netherlands around 7 July 1602. Later, Carletti wrote that Corea had settled in Rome.

In the 20th century, Corea's story drew significant attention in South Korea, where popular media such as books and plays have been produced about him. Concurrently, a number of theories proliferated about Corea that are not known to be supported by evidence. It has been theorized that Corea has living descendents in the Italian village of Albi, Calabria. Recent genetic tests and surname analyses suggest this is unlikely but still possible. It has been theorized that Corea is the subject of a famous c. 1617 sketch by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens dubbed Man in Korean Costume. But in 2016, two historians published a paper expressing doubt on this theory.