『서유견문』 1~2편의 전거와 유길준의 세계지리 인식

Abstract

Despite habitual descriptions such as the first ever Korean student in the United States, Yu Kilchun’s thought reflected in Seoyu gyeonmun (Observations of a journey to the West) has oftentimes been considered as an understanding of Modern knowledge with a ‘Japanese filter,’. In other words, his comments in Seoyu gyeonmun are usually considered as a result of learning about the West not in its original form but with ‘Japanese-translated’ works. A major portion of Seoyu gyeonmun does show translations of Japanese writings, while traces of his own consulting of English-language sources are rather scarce. That led to scholars to consider the possibility of his study in U.S. having any sort of real bearing or influence on his thinking as ‘minimal’ or ‘probably’ at best.BR Yet an extensive examination of all the sources of Yu’s references made in the first and second chapters of Seoyu gyeonmun reveals that Yu Kilchun did consult U.S. High School Geography textbooks at least in his writing on World Geography. Six out of nine parts of Seoyu gyeonmu n’s first two chapters were translation of David Warren’s An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography. Yu Kilchun studied modern geography using the same textbook alongside U.S. students at Dummer Academy, and apparently integrated the results of his study into the first two chapters of Seoyu gyeonmun. In other words, contents of these two chapters were not a rehash of a Japanese interpretation of the same source. It was a result of Yu’s own seeing, hearing and studying of U.S. contents during his stay in the country. The fact that he translated a textbook at Dummer shows us that his stay in the U.S. not only provided him with an opportunity to hone his English or superficially experience the Western culture, but also prompted him to embrace modern knowledge rather directly, and not using any Japanese proxy or media.