Sylvan Anxieties and the Making of Landscapes in Early Modern Korea

Abstract

Abstract Using sources and contexts from early modern Korea, this article analyses how sylvan landscapes produced - and were produced by - the anxieties of forest administrators and rustic literati. First, through an examination of government records from the fifteenth century, this article argues that perceived threats to pine forests were critical to administrative expansion and the making of Korean landscapes. Recurrent anxieties about deforestation became embodied in the conservation of a single conifer, in turn producing the pine-dominant landscapes that are the lasting legacy of Chosŏn state forestry. Second, this article examines treatises of literati from the seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries to uncover how elite anxieties became embodied in the local management of sylvan landscapes. The East Asian practice of geomancy became a crucial tool of environmental modification for local elites facing socio-political change and diminishing power.