Reviewed by: Han'guk kaehwa sasang yŏn'gu Vipan Chandra Han'guk kaehwa sasang yŏn'gu [Studies on the ideas of the Korean enlightenment]. By Lee Kwang-rin [Yi Kuang-nin]. Seoul: Ilchogak, 1979. ix, 298 pp. Vipan Chandra Wheaton College Footnotes 1. The other two are: Han'guk kaehwa-sa yŏn'gu [Studies on the history of the Korean enlightenment] (Seoul: Illchogak, 1969); Han'guk kaehwa-dang yŏn'gu [Studies on the enlightenment group of Korea] (Seoul: Ilchogak, 1973). 2. Specific phases or episodes have of course been studied by others before. Shin Yong Ha [Sin Yong-ha] , for example, published his massive narrative on the Independence Club under the title Tongnip hyŏphoe yŏn'gu (Seoul: Ilchogak, 1976). Chŏn Pong-dŏk has written often in Korean history journals on themes related to politics and law in late nineteenth-century Korea. My own dissertation "Nationalism and Reform in Late 19th-century Korea: The Contribution of the Independence Club 1896-1898" (Harvard University, 1977) also covers the subject in detail. Many other scattered studies exist but few display the same rigorous standards of research as Lee's. 3. Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and The West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 1. 4. On Pak Yŏng-hyo's ideas see Chŏn Pong-dŏk, Pak Yŏng-hyo wa kŭ ŭi sangsŏ yŏn'gu sŏron [An introduction to the study of Pak Yŏng-hyo and his memorial] in Tongyang-hak, no. 8, special supplement (Seoul: Tanguk University, 1978). On Yun Ch'i-ho, see his six-volume diary published under the title Yun Ch'i-ho ilgi (Seoul: National History Compilation Committee, 1973-76). 5. On this theme see Hartz's introduction to Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power. 6. Shin Yong Ha, in his Tongnip hyophoe yongu, pp. 200-214, gives fuller details on this question than Lee. 7. See William T. DeBary, ed. Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2 vols. (New York: Colombia University Press, 1958), 2: 159-64. 8. Ibid., pp. 178-82. 9. On this question see Chon Pong-dŏk, Sŏ-yu kyŏnmun kwa Yu Kil-chun ŭi Pŏmnyul sasang [Observations on a stay in the west and the legal though of Yu Kil-chun] in Haksulwŏn nonmunch'ong [Anthology of research papers], no. 15, (Seoul: the Korean Academy, 1976), and my dissertation, chap. 7. Likewise, Lee's articles on the attitude of Sŏ Chae-p'il and other progressives toward Protestant Christianity demonstrate that their favorable view of it had little to do with theological questions and a lot to do with their perception of its role in making the West "strong, wealthy, civilized and enlightened." 10. Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, pp. 246-47. 11. Quoted from Tongnip Sinmun, April 12, 1898. 12. Yun acknowledged once, but only privately, the urgent need in Korea for a radical, all-out transformation. See his Ilgi, 5: 193, 208. 13. It is a measure of the spirit of the 1870s in Japan that the editor of Azuma, a Tokyo newspaper, could voice such heresy as this (though not with impunity; he was imprisoned and fined): "The Emperor, the Prime Minister, and Ministers are employed, after all, for the protection of the people. That is to say, we recognize that they are public servants of the people." See Nobutaka Ike, The Beginnings of Political Democracy in Japan (reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), p. 90. In Korea, Sŏ Chae-p'il did write editorials calling bureaucrats public servants but there never was any reference in them to the monarch in such terms. Even in late 1898, the voices of conservatism in Korea were infinitely more powerful than those of the progressives. An unfounded rumor charging that someone was planning to install a republican regime or was plotting against the throne could result in his arrest and imprisonment, even murder, unless the person had the good sense to decamp to Japan. Thus in 1900, An Kyŏng-su, a former president of the Independence Club, and one of his friends were secretly strangled...