소현세자 서사의 탄생과 역사 속의 소현세자

Abstract

This article is about Crown-prince So’hyeon, who is oftentimes regarded by the Koreans as a very tragic figure. After the conclusion of the Byeongja-year war[丙子胡亂] with Qing, Crown-prince So’hyeon was held captive in the Shim’yang(Shěnyáng, 瀋陽) region for 8 years, and witnessed the fall of Ming(明) and rise of Qing(淸). He also stayed briefly in Beijing as a result of such regime change, and that stay led to his encounter with the Jesuit priest Adam Schall. His such experience did not attract much attention at the time, but later served as vital elements in a would-be narrative that was devised with the intention to view So’hyeon from a fairly different angle.BR This kind of endeavor, coupled with the public’s aspiration for the society to reach a level of modernization, eventually gave birth to a new historic image of Crown-prince So’hyeon. He was newly deemed as a pioneer who wished to embrace advanced Western culture, a pragmatist who wanted to awake the stagnated Joseon people, a liberator of enslaved Joseon prisoners of war, and even an enterpreneur who was quite successful in running an agricultural plantation. It was indeed a new narrative for Crown-prince So’hyeon.BR Unfortunately, however, this ever-expanding and reproducing narrative really requires some scrutiny. With that in mind, this study first tried to trace how such perception of Crown-prince So’hyeon was formed in the first place and shared throughout the society, even going back to the early years of So’hyeon studies that originated with the work of Japanese scholar Yamaguchi Masayuki. Examined next was how this figure came to garner so much public attention. And lastly, I tried to trace his actions in history and recreate a reasonable extrapolation of his existence, in order to determine how much the depiction of So’hyeon in the narrative is different from such extrapolation. I believe such endeavor would be the ultimate way of ‘rescuing’ him, from a narrative that has literally demanded him for decades to remain as an epitome of Joseon modernization.