Abstract

This paper analyzed the activities that Yeonahngsa(Envoy) had collected information on Ching(淸) in 18th century. At this times, Joseon had maintained the relationship with Ching. Joseon government tried to collect information oversea, had had much concern continuously, according to the increase the necessity of that they had to strengthen their military power with reducing their anxiety of frontier issues because of crisis of relationship with Ching, and the activation of cultural exchange with Ching. Therefore, to encourage to collect the information all the way of going to Ching, Joseon government made to use the reward system, on the other they expanded to take action to the who was to report the documents. Their activities was at the Hoydongkwan(會同館) of Beijing, was done by the official interpreters who were good at foreign langage. The role of interpreters was stipulated to do with doing as a diplomat, sometime it was stipulated as a special job too. Collecting the information of Yeonhangsa was made by investigating and gathering documents. The subjects were not Chinese officerst, but were limited to the desendent of Joseon or interperters. Sometime it resulted in arousing the criticism to reliability of information collected by Yeonhangsa. So, to overcome these limitation, they collected bibliographic data through the official report by Chinese government, including the government’s document, bulletin board, book, etc. The information collected was reported to Joseon government, was reported to as a oral report when being received in audience by the king after homecoming. Report was collected as Sasinbeoldan(使臣別單) at the 『Dongmunhuygo(同文彙考)』. According to this book, a group of these diploma had focused on grasping the situation of Chinese imperial family and government. The death of imperial, the accession of new imperial, the diverse conflicts and feuds around the succession of imperial, and the situation of vassal that were gained favor by the imperial were recorded. Countries which they had colledted the information were the East-south Asian countries and the Western countries like Holland, England. And they had collected the information which were calendar, music, wagan system, the military architecture. With the activities of information by Yeonhangsa, there were coming lots of information to the Joseon government, but there were also coming out the limitations. First of all, the activities focused on Yeonhangsa had to depend on the irregular envoys. Also they had to compliment the diverse method of collecting information like collecting the documents because of low reliability of investing information. Although the situation of the imperial family and their inner circle had been done in detail, the range of collecting information did not expand until to the other countires like the east-south Asia. Moreover, there were difficult to find to concern of the western culture and countries which tried to contact with Estern countries newly, and also it was little concern of practical information like wagon system, military architecture.

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