Premodern Korea Research Articles

Responses to Climate Change and Natural Disasters in Pre-Modern Korea: Missional Implications for the Korean Church

The relationship between natural cycles and human actions in causing climate change and its impacts on society have been a subject of debate. This paper explores the responses of pre-modern Koreans to climate change and natural disasters. The focus of this paper is on the societal reactions to these natural calamities and disasters during the Koryŏ dynasty (936–1392 A.D.) and their influence on Korea afterwards. This paper investigates the reasons behind the retention of primal religious worldviews in the face of ecological crises while other major imported religions were abandoned. The research method involved in this paper is archival research, and the literature sources include ancient records and other ecotheological resources. Through an analysis of the archival research and ecotheological resources, this study sheds light on the interpretation of climatic events in pre-modern Korea. Furthermore, based on the research findings, it presents missional implications for the Korean church in the post-pandemic era. This study underscores the importance of the church’s responses to environmental awareness, collective responsibility, and spiritual support in addressing the challenges of climate change and provides missional implications for the Korean Church in response to the post-COVID-19 era based on the results of the research.

전근대 한국의 전란(戰亂) 귀화인(歸化人)에 대한문학적 형상화

전근대 한국의 전란(戰亂) 귀화인(歸化人)에 대한문학적 형상화

Marriage as a Network Strategy for Enhancing Social Status in pre-modern Korea

Marriage as a Network Strategy for Enhancing Social Status in pre-modern Korea

Inscriptional Repertoires and the Problem of Intra- versus Interlingual Translation in Traditional Korea

This article brings together a series of examples demonstrating the wide range of inscriptional practices in premodern Korea and the ways in which they force us to reconsider modern and Eurocentric notions of translation. The premodern inscriptional spectrum in Chosŏn Korea was not a simple binary of cosmopolitan orthodox Literary Sinitic versus vernacular Korean in the form of ŏnhae exegeses but was a range of inscriptional styles that included idu and kugyŏl. The ways in which texts were inscribed, reinscribed, and transliterated between these different inscriptional styles, as well as the ways in which Chosŏn literati themselves understood the notion of yŏk (譯, “translation”) challenge modern-day notions of translation, on the one hand, but also invite an understanding of them as rather more intralingual than interlingual. They also force us to ask whether LS was conceived as a “foreign” language for literate Koreans in Chosŏn. The premodern Korean cases forces us to add script and inscriptional repertoire (including notions of orthography, notational system, munch'e 文體, etc.) to the list of the main factors that influence intralingual translation.

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea. By Maya K. H. Stiller

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea. By Maya K. H. Stiller

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea

Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday

Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday

Climate Change, Inequality, and Vulnerabilities in Pre-Modern Korea: Implications for Mission After COVID-19

Korea's late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Chosŏn Dynasty is marked by evidence of climate change. A distinctive feature of this period was the frequent outbreak of plagues such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid, especially among the less privileged. There was, consequently, a large-scale discontentment among the poor. In this milieu, some local Confucian scholars, dismayed by the prevailing corruption in the central government, withdrew themselves from government business, focused on studying imported Catholic texts from China, and converted to Catholicism. The emergence of indigenous religious movements also reflected this social reality. This paper explores the correlation among climate anomalies, decline in agricultural productivity, competition for limited common resources, heightened social inequality, and frequent plagues, and how Catholicism, an indigenous religious movement, and Protestant Christianity impacted and were impacted by these processes in Korea's late Chosŏn Dynasty. It also suggests missional implications of this in the post-Covid-19 era.

The Odae chinŏn (Five Great Mantras) and Dhāraṇī Collections in Premodern Korea

The Five Great Mantras (Odae chinŏn) is one of the most widely circulated collections of Buddhist dhāraṇīs in premodern Korea, having been published or existing in several variant editions during the Chosŏn period (1392–1910). The title refers to the following dhāraṇīs: (1) “The Forty-Two Mantras of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” (2) Nīlakaṇṭha-dhāraṇī, (3) Mahāpratisarā-dhāraṇī, (4) Buddhoṣṇīṣa-dhāraṇī, and (5) Uṣṇīṣavijaya-dhāraṇī. Another spell, “The Basic Dhāraṇī of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” was also added, so there are a total of six dhāraṇīs contained in the book. Although most scholarship has hitherto understood the Five Great Mantras to date from the late fifteenth century, when editions with transcriptions of the dhāraṇīs in the Korean script appeared in trilingual format along with Siddhaṃ and Sinitic transliterations, due to the patronage of Queen Insu (1437–1508) and the linguistic ability of the monk Hakcho (fl. 1464–1520), some evidence has come to light suggesting that the Five Great Mantras was initially published as early as the mid-fourteenth century in the late Koryŏ period (918–1392). This essay provides a detailed analysis of the components that appear in the Five Great Mantras by analyzing six variant editions of the text dating from the Chosŏn period, including Brief Transcriptions of Efficacious Resonance (Yŏnghŏm yakch’o) in Sinitic and Korean vernacular translation. The Five Great Mantras demonstrates the significance of non-canonical materials in the Korean Buddhist tradition and suggests a fruitful avenue for study of similar woodblock prints and manuscripts in the Sinitic Buddhist tradition.

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea by Maya K. H. Stiller

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea by Maya K. H. Stiller

Understanding South Korean Middle Power Diplomacy Discourses Through the Concept ofSadae(Serving the Great)

This study aims to examine South Korean middle power diplomacy discourses using premodern Korea’s diplomatic thinking-cum-practice of sadae (serving the great) as a heuristic device. It is argued that current discourses of South Korea as a middle power resonate with sadae because they strive to secure the existing liberal international order led by the West and the United States. It also argues that it is both necessary and healthy for South Korean middle power diplomacy studies to denaturalize its self-evident faith in the existing liberal international order—a not universal but particular order among several possible others in history—with South Korea celebrating and appropriating liberal values. This would prepare South Korean middle power diplomacy research to tackle uncertainty, difference, and pluralism in global politics while producing more responsible and responsive scholarship in international relations.

Text, Materiality, and Enshrinement Practices: Visual Culture of a BuddhistDhāraṇīin Late Medieval Korea

AbstractThis article examines woodblock prints of the Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī of the Precious Casket Seal of the Concealed Complete-Body Relics of the Essence of All Tathāgatas, a short text that came to serve as a backbone for the textual relic cult and, starting in the early Koryŏ, became an important part of consecratory deposits of Buddhist icons. This article focuses on how material embodiments of dhāraṇīs were enshrined in the Korean context and how such enshrinement defined their function and meaning. Through an analysis of the Dhāraṇī of the Precious Casket Seal in diverse forms, visual designs, and ritual contexts from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the article demonstrates that the materiality of this important dhāraṇī was key to its performativity as a sacred object that could consecrate otherwise manmade architectural or iconic entities. By so doing, this study reveals key aspects of the Buddhist visual culture that have long remained obscure, while contributing to the growing scholarship on textual materiality in premodern Korea.

Building an Archival Database for Visualizing Historical Networks. A Case for Pre-Modern Korea

In this paper, we share the experience of collecting and organizing pre-modern Korean historical materials into a searchable digital archive. The Ajou Interdisciplinary Research Group (AIRG) has continuously collected historical data of pre-modern Korea for the past 10 years to assist the study of family history, historical demographics, and social mobility. This paper describes the rich data sources for historical studies of Korea, such as household registers, genealogies, and state examination registers, and we summarize contributions to the study of historical demography and related fields.

The marriage market for immigrant families in Chosŏn Korea after the Imjin War: women, integration, and cultural capital

AbstractChallenging the myth of premodern Korea as ethnically homogenous, this study focuses on immigrant marriages in Chosŏn Korea following Japanese invasions (Imjin War, 1592–1598). By examining household registers and genealogies, I investigate the status of women who married into the families of Japanese and Ming Chinese immigrants and the social consequences of such marriages. The results unexpectedly indicate that immigrant families rarely intermarried, preferring integration with local families. As a means of acquiring social and cultural capital, Korean brides from elite families were vital to the success of immigrant families in forming social networks and in producing candidates for the civil service examinations, with failure to obtain such a bride proving a potential long-term obstacle to social advancement. There is a noticeable difference between families of Chinese and Japanese origin in this context due to the preference shown by Korean families for the descendants of Ming generals over Japanese defectors. Contributing to a growing number of studies that question whether the Korean family was fully “Confucianized” in the seventeenth century with a consequent decline in the status of women, this study argues that women possessed social and cultural capital and held particular value for immigrant families.

The Foresight of Dark Knowing: Chŏnggamnok and Insurrectionary Prognostication in Pre-modern Korea by John Jorgensen

The Foresight of Dark Knowing: Chŏnggamnok and Insurrectionary Prognostication in Pre-modern Korea by John Jorgensen

Note from the Editor

Note from the Editor Sem Vermeersch, Editor-in-chief This issue includes six research articles, four on the history of pre-modern Korea, one on post-liberation south Korea, and one on transnational Korea. There is also one article that translates and contextualizes a source text, and three book notes. The first article, by King Kwong Wong, attempts to propose a solution to a problem that has long plagued scholars of the Mongol period in Korean history: What exactly was the status of the Goryeo kingdom within the Mongol Empire? The author focuses on the operation of the Branch Secretariat for the Eastern Campaign to show how the issue of sovereignty was fluid and contested: Though nominally an instrument of Mongol control over Goryeo, the Branch Secretariat also provided an avenue for Goryeo officials to enter the Yuan civil service administration. This gave Goryeo officials a voice at the Yuan court, and they could and did use this platform to defend Goryeo’s autonomy. The next article, by Michael C. E. Finch, takes us to the Imjin War. Thanks to the Swaemirok, a diary kept by O Huimun, we can discover how an ordinary scholar managed to keep his family together during this period of turmoil. The article focuses on O’s recourse to divination and his interactions with a divination official. This reveals O Huimun’s anxieties over family matters, notably the health of his daughter. It also sheds light on an elite scholar’s layered attitude towards divination and diviners. The third article also deals with the Joseon period. In it, Hyun Soon Park seeks to answer the question why the so-called state celebration examination (gyeonggwa) became so popular in late Joseon Korea. Besides the regular triennial examination, additional examinations were sometimes held to mark special occasions; usually they were tied to important court celebrations and rituals, the legitimacy of which was enhanced by the presence of many scholars. Examinations held after these ritual celebrations were an incentive to secure the scholars’ goodwill towards the court. Given their focus on literary composition, an interesting bifurcation developed, in which provincial scholars preferred the [End Page v] triennial celebration (which focused on rote memorization), while capital scholars predominantly participated in the state celebration examinations. In the third and final article on Joseon history, Kyusik Sim looks at a type of source that has received almost no exposure in Korean Studies: stone monuments that commemorate the construction of bridges. One of the reasons for their neglect is that they do not fit into any of the traditional categories of literary composition. However, as the author shows, this also gave the authors of such inscriptions leeway for experimentation. The author has unearthed a fascinating text by the exiled scholar Sim Yeolji for a bridge in Gijang County, near Busan. Although the text was never carved on stone, the author shows how it still left its mark on the community, and thus allows us to gauge how exiles contributed to and interacted with the local community. In “The ‘Bunce Plan’ and the Aborted Land Reform of 1946” Il-Young Jung presents his findings on an important precursor to land reform in post-liberation South Korea. Although the Bunce Plan, named after the State Department official Arthur C. Bunce who was dispatched to Korea in 1946, was never implemented, it nevertheless constituted an important blueprint for the reforms eventually implemented in 1948. The article reveals that it was not only opposition by Koreans that doomed the plan, but also opposition on the part of the USAMGIK military who were governing the southern part of the peninsula until 1948. In the final research article of this issue, Wonjung Min investigates how Chilean K-pop fans perceive their idols. Specifically, her research ascertains what ideal of masculinity the fans identify with. In contrast to the hegemonic ideal of masculinity dominant in mainstream Chilean culture, K-pop offers flexible, hybrid models of masculinity that fans like to identify with. Besides the regular articles this issue also contains a section on “materials in translation.” Hui Zou and Myengsoo Seo introduce and translate Seo Yugu’s Jangchwiwon, an essay about an imaginary garden. Famous as the author of...

The Fantasy Garden in East Asian Tradition: A Case Study of a Garden Record in Seo Yugu’s Treatises on Rural Living

This paper presents an annotated translation and hermeneutic interpretation of a garden record in Seo Yugu’s nineteenth-century Korean encyclopedia Treatises on Rural Living (Imwon gyeongje ji 林園經濟志). This particular garden record is about a fantasy garden called To-Become Garden (Jangchwiwon 將就園). The translation, historical annotations, and hermeneutic interpretation presented in this paper help define the concept of a fantasy garden in East Asian architecture and uncover the Taoist hermitage in the humanistic, social, and environmental context of premodern Korea, at a time when Korea was experiencing a philosophical shift from traditional Neo-Confucianism to the emerging social movement of “practical learning” (Sirhak). This paper demonstrates that Seo’s encyclopedic composition of garden theories mixes his cultural perception of Korean mountain landscapes, his life experience of a practical hermitage, and his fantasy of a Taoist paradise. A comparison is drawn between Seo’s philosophy of life and Western critical philosophy at the dawn of modernity.

한국 전근대 과학기술사 연구의 현황과 과제

The Korean History of Science Society (KHSS), founded in 1960, celebrates the 60th anniversary in 2020. During the past 60 years, the history of science in premodern Korea has achieved great success in various fields. Now it is the time to ponder on the future of the field on the basis of the previous accomplishments. This paper discusses the problems and issues that should be considered in the future study of the history of science in premodern Korea. First task is to establish a system of disciplines in the history of science of Premodern Korea. To achieve this, each scholar in the fields, such as the history of astronomy and calendrical science, the history of mathematics, the history of geography, and the history of medicine, are required to consider the ways of diachronic organization consistent to one’s own thesis. Secondly, regarding the “China Problem,” it is urgent to analyze the recent trends and works in the history of science in China. A close academic review is especially necessary for A History of Science and Technology in China, which was directed and compiled by the Institute for the History of Natural Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Thirdly, the environmental aspects of human living, including natural disasters and diseases, need more attention for expanding the areas of research. The study of environmental history has grown quantitatively since the late 1990s. The interactions between human history and the environments and people’s thoughts and actions on environments should be incorporated into the research of the history of science. The fourth issue is related to survey of the cultural heritages related to science and technology. The KHSS has carried out some projects since the early 1980s and seen remarkable achievements: enhancement of public understanding of the cultural heritages of science and increase in research and restoration works. Now the KHSS needs to pursue critical reevaluations of the previous achievements, as well as the further application of scientific heritage for research and education. Lastly, the systematic assessments of the primary sources of the history of science in premodern Korea is essential. It is required to collect, organize, and annotate, as well as to question the problems of translation of, the bibliographic sources such as historical books, the books on science, and Han-yi-xi-xue-shu(漢譯西學書, the different kinds of books which were written in Chinese characters about western books of Catholicism, science and technology).

‘다이글로시아’라는 용어의 문제점: 전근대 한국의 말하기와 글쓰기의 생태계에 대하여

‘다이글로시아’라는 용어의 문제점: 전근대 한국의 말하기와 글쓰기의 생태계에 대하여

From Hanok to Hanbok: Traditional iconography in Korean hip hop music videos

Popular culture texts not only entertain us, they shape our understanding of the world and our place in it. This article explores the contradictions and effects of the use of imagined and real Korean settings and traditional iconography in recent videos from Korean hip hop artists with a particularly close reading of the rapper Beenzino’s mid-2016 offering ‘January’, additionally informed by Drunken Tiger’s ‘Mantra’, MC Mong’s ‘Fame’ and Agust D’s ‘Daechwita’. The videos each utilize settings that signify Koreanness and feature significant symbols of Korea. I investigate what symbols and icons are used to take a foreign genre and imbue it with Koreanness within the music video frame. I find that these videos circulate and re-circulate a limited number of icons of Korea, because the images are meant not to portray pre-modern Korea in its complexity, but traditional Korea both as a symbol of national pride and as a (domestic and international) tourist destination wherein the palace is a backdrop and you wear a hanbok to create a visually striking Instagram post. Operating as the king of the music video’s world, the hip hop artist maintains his artistic independence through challenging tradition with juxtaposed elements of the present day.