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 Japanese invasions of Korea, purchased by Carletti, and eventually arrived in Italy around 1600.

In the 20th century, his story drew significant attention in South Korea. Concurrently, a number of theories proliferated about Corea that are not known to be supported by evidence. Since 1932, it has been theorized that Corea has living descendents in the Italian village of Albi, Calabria, although recent genetic tests and surname analyses suggest this is unlikely. Since 1934, it has been theorized that Corea is the subject of a famous c. 1617 sketch by Peter Paul Rubens informally dubbed Man in Korean Costume; if true, the sketch would be the first known depiction of a Korean by a Westerner. But in 2016, historians Weststeijn and Gesterkamp identified a very similar drawing that they believe Ruben based his sketch on, and the theorized original has a written note that identifies the subject as a Chinese man named Yppong.