Home » Archives » KoreanStudies » Choson period official dress
| Choson period official dress [message #8396] |
Wed, 15 March 2006 17:28  |
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michael Robinson[1]
Messages: 53
Registered: July 2004
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Member |
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Dear List:
It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be more up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong. I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are dealing with half a millennium here.
Mike Robinson
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| Re: Choson period official dress [message #8399 is a reply to message #8396] |
Wed, 15 March 2006 23:55  |
Gari Keith Ledyard
Messages: 124
Registered: September 1999
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Senior Member |
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If Henny says so I guess I must've said something about this once,
but it's easier to repeat it than look up what I said. Yes, ChosOn
dynasty court dress was identical with the court dress of the Ming
dynasty, with the exception that the identical dress and emblems,
etc. were two ranks (in the nine-rank scheme) lower in Korea. That
is, the court dress of a Rank I (the highest rank) ChosOn official
was identical to that of a Rank III official at the Ming court.
This means that the last two ChosOn ranks, VIII and IX, had
distinctive Korean designs.
When Korean official embassies reached the area just outside the
Chaoyang (East) Gate of Peking, they changed into their formal
court dress and marched in a procession into the city and through
the streets to their residence. It is said that those Chinese who
still nourished pro-Ming (and therefore anti-Manchu) sentiments
would come to secretely enjoy the spectacle. There are many stories
in embassy diaries and other casual literature about emotional
scenes with Chinese begging to touch, or even briefly wear, the
Korean formal clothing. Other than this, the only permitted display
of Ming dress that was permitted in Qing China was in the theatre,
since the Peking Opera was essentially a Ming institution, and the
historical character of the stories made the dress of earlier
dynasties appropriate. One consequence of this is that when Korean
officials went through the streets of the capital on their
business, less sophisticated spectators would point and say, "Look!
Actors!"
Gari Ledyard
Quoting Michael Robinson :
> Dear List:
>
> It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be more
> up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials
> patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a
> throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong.
> I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are
> dealing with half a millennium here.
>
> Mike Robinson
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| Re: Choson period official dress [message #8401 is a reply to message #8399] |
Thu, 16 March 2006 07:52 |
David Richard McCann
Messages: 103
Registered: August 1998
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Senior Member |
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But didn't the royal robes have to show dragons with one less claw per
foot (c.p.f.)?
David McCann
On 3/15/06 11:55 PM, gkl1@columbia.edu wrote:
>If Henny says so I guess I must've said something about this once,
>but it's easier to repeat it than look up what I said. Yes, ChosOn
>dynasty court dress was identical with the court dress of the Ming
>dynasty, with the exception that the identical dress and emblems,
>etc. were two ranks (in the nine-rank scheme) lower in Korea. That
>is, the court dress of a Rank I (the highest rank) ChosOn official
>was identical to that of a Rank III official at the Ming court.
>This means that the last two ChosOn ranks, VIII and IX, had
>distinctive Korean designs.
> When Korean official embassies reached the area just outside the
>Chaoyang (East) Gate of Peking, they changed into their formal
>court dress and marched in a procession into the city and through
>the streets to their residence. It is said that those Chinese who
>still nourished pro-Ming (and therefore anti-Manchu) sentiments
>would come to secretely enjoy the spectacle. There are many stories
>in embassy diaries and other casual literature about emotional
>scenes with Chinese begging to touch, or even briefly wear, the
>Korean formal clothing. Other than this, the only permitted display
>of Ming dress that was permitted in Qing China was in the theatre,
>since the Peking Opera was essentially a Ming institution, and the
>historical character of the stories made the dress of earlier
>dynasties appropriate. One consequence of this is that when Korean
>officials went through the streets of the capital on their
>business, less sophisticated spectators would point and say, "Look!
>Actors!"
>
>Gari Ledyard
>
>Quoting Michael Robinson :
>
>
>
>>Dear List:
>>
>>It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be more
>>up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials
>>patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a
>>throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong.
>>I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are
>>dealing with half a millennium here.
>>
>>Mike Robinson
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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| Re: Choson period official dress [message #8402 is a reply to message #8399] |
Thu, 16 March 2006 08:27 |
michael Robinson[1]
Messages: 53
Registered: July 2004
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Member |
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Thank you Gari:
I'm making a point in the first chapter about Chinese influence in the
structure and look of the Choson government, not its interior operations.
This ms is focused on Korea's twentieth century and the first chapter has to
carry the weight of characterizing the ChosOn system and traditional society
etc. I'm literally down to a single sentence to handle some larger ideas.
At least this reference won't be off. We know ChosOn Korea was Korean, but
I'm still surprised at all the references to Chinese control and dominance
over Korea for "centuries and centuries" out there in the secondary
literature. I don't want to feed into that. I will try not to abuse the
list as a fact check.....but cutting a corner here and there is nice.
thanks again, Mike Robinson
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:55 PM
Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress
> If Henny says so I guess I must've said something about this once,
> but it's easier to repeat it than look up what I said. Yes, ChosOn
> dynasty court dress was identical with the court dress of the Ming
> dynasty, with the exception that the identical dress and emblems,
> etc. were two ranks (in the nine-rank scheme) lower in Korea. That
> is, the court dress of a Rank I (the highest rank) ChosOn official
> was identical to that of a Rank III official at the Ming court.
> This means that the last two ChosOn ranks, VIII and IX, had
> distinctive Korean designs.
> When Korean official embassies reached the area just outside the
> Chaoyang (East) Gate of Peking, they changed into their formal
> court dress and marched in a procession into the city and through
> the streets to their residence. It is said that those Chinese who
> still nourished pro-Ming (and therefore anti-Manchu) sentiments
> would come to secretely enjoy the spectacle. There are many stories
> in embassy diaries and other casual literature about emotional
> scenes with Chinese begging to touch, or even briefly wear, the
> Korean formal clothing. Other than this, the only permitted display
> of Ming dress that was permitted in Qing China was in the theatre,
> since the Peking Opera was essentially a Ming institution, and the
> historical character of the stories made the dress of earlier
> dynasties appropriate. One consequence of this is that when Korean
> officials went through the streets of the capital on their
> business, less sophisticated spectators would point and say, "Look!
> Actors!"
>
> Gari Ledyard
>
> Quoting Michael Robinson :
>
>> Dear List:
>>
>> It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be more
>> up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials
>> patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a
>> throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong.
>> I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are
>> dealing with half a millennium here.
>>
>> Mike Robinson
>
>
>
>
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8405 is a reply to message #8403] |
Thu, 16 March 2006 16:54 |
Yong-Ho Choe
Messages: 65
Registered: October 1998
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Member |
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Korea-China relations in the traditional periods are very special and unique, and if we try to apply the modern yard-stick used by the Westerners, there is no way we can comprehend them correctly.
At 07:07 AM 3/16/2006, Baker Don wrote:
>Mike's point about exaggeration of and over-emphasis on the degree of control China exercised over Korea is a point well-taken. However, we also don't want to present the Choson dynasty as totally independent. In the little bit of research I've done on the foreign policy of the Choson dynasty, I found that Choson engaged in independent diplomatic relations, but had to hide that fact from the Chinese. I was focusing on early Choson's relations with the Kingdom of the Ryukyus and with Japanese from Kyushu. Every once in a while, I'd run across a statement in the sillok to the effect that "We can't let China find out about this." Has anybody seen evidence of that same need to hide Korea's diplomatic relations with Japanese after 1600? Didn't Korea have to hide from China the fact that it regularly sent envoys to Tokugawa Japan in the 17th and 18th centuries? If that is the case, then we have to conclude the Choson Korea wasn't a totally independent country, since an independent country can conduct its own foreign policy without foreign interference, something Choson could not do.
>
>Don Baker
>Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies
>Director, Centre for Korean Research
>University of British Columbia
>Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2
>dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca
>
>
>
>
>>From: "Michael Robinson"
>>Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>>To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
>>Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress
>>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:27:55 -0500
>>
>>Thank you Gari:
>>
>>I'm making a point in the first chapter about Chinese influence in the structure and look of the Choson government, not its interior operations. This ms is focused on Korea's twentieth century and the first chapter has to carry the weight of characterizing the ChosOn system and traditional society etc. I'm literally down to a single sentence to handle some larger ideas. At least this reference won't be off. We know ChosOn Korea was Korean, but I'm still surprised at all the references to Chinese control and dominance over Korea for "centuries and centuries" out there in the secondary literature. I don't want to feed into that. I will try not to abuse the list as a fact check.....but cutting a corner here and there is nice.
>>
>>thanks again, Mike Robinson
>>----- Original Message ----- From:
>>To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
>>Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:55 PM
>>Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress
>>
>>
>>>If Henny says so I guess I must've said something about this once,
>>>but it's easier to repeat it than look up what I said. Yes, ChosOn
>>>dynasty court dress was identical with the court dress of the Ming
>>>dynasty, with the exception that the identical dress and emblems,
>>>etc. were two ranks (in the nine-rank scheme) lower in Korea. That
>>>is, the court dress of a Rank I (the highest rank) ChosOn official
>>>was identical to that of a Rank III official at the Ming court.
>>>This means that the last two ChosOn ranks, VIII and IX, had
>>>distinctive Korean designs.
>>> When Korean official embassies reached the area just outside the
>>>Chaoyang (East) Gate of Peking, they changed into their formal
>>>court dress and marched in a procession into the city and through
>>>the streets to their residence. It is said that those Chinese who
>>>still nourished pro-Ming (and therefore anti-Manchu) sentiments
>>>would come to secretely enjoy the spectacle. There are many stories
>>>in embassy diaries and other casual literature about emotional
>>>scenes with Chinese begging to touch, or even briefly wear, the
>>>Korean formal clothing. Other than this, the only permitted display
>>>of Ming dress that was permitted in Qing China was in the theatre,
>>>since the Peking Opera was essentially a Ming institution, and the
>>>historical character of the stories made the dress of earlier
>>>dynasties appropriate. One consequence of this is that when Korean
>>>officials went through the streets of the capital on their
>>>business, less sophisticated spectators would point and say, "Look!
>>>Actors!"
>>>
>>>Gari Ledyard
>>>
>>>Quoting Michael Robinson :
>>>
>>>>Dear List:
>>>>
>>>>It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be more
>>>>up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials
>>>>patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a
>>>>throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong.
>>>>I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are
>>>>dealing with half a millennium here.
>>>>
>>>>Mike Robinson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
Yong-ho Choe, Professor Emeritus
Department of History
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
Tel: 808 956-6762
Fax: 808 956-9600
E-mail: choeyh@hawaii.edu
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8413 is a reply to message #8403] |
Sat, 18 March 2006 11:02 |
lawrence driscoll
Messages: 27
Registered: December 2001
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Junior Member |
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While deferring to the authorities on the subject, it seems to me the magnanimous Confucian nature of the Koreans allowed them to be conciliatory toward the Japanese even after years of piratical attacks by that countries citizens in the 14th and 15th centuries, and again the after the withdrawal of Hidiyeoshi's invasion forces at the end of the 16th century.
While the Ming government came to Korea's defense during that "Imjin war" it put a considerable strain on the Ming dynasty's treasury and was even cited as a cause for its demise. (dealing with collaborating Japanese-Chinese pirates on its own coast was apparently another). Owing to this timely help in coming to its defense, I would expect the Koreans to avoid any possibility of alienating a traditional neighbor and ally on the northern border. Lamentations about an old friend, the Ming, not withstanding.
As for the Ryukyus, they apparently had lost their own independence by this time at the hands of Satsuma.
Lawrence Driscoll
Morristown,NJ, USA
> From: ubcdbaker@hotmail.com> To: Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws> Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 00:02:08 -0800> Subject: Re: [KS] Chinese "control" over Choson> > I wasn't claiming that Korea was completely under China's control during > the Choson dynasty. Korea had a de facto independent foreign policy, but > formally they were subservient to China. (Somewhat like the independence of > Taiwan today. It too is an independent country in all but name.) At times, > however, that formal subservience hindered their freedom of action and kept > them from carrying out an independent foreign policy openly. > > The notes I remember from the SIllok said things like, "we'll be in trouble > if China finds out that we are accepting tribute missions from the Kingdom > of the Ryukyus." Whether or not China actually acted to stop Korea's > dealings with its neighbors, Korea was certainly concerned China might do > so. We also have cases of Korea bribing Chinese envoys so that they > wouldn't report Korea's dealing with other peoples to the Emperor (for > example, when some of the stranded Dutch contacted a Chinese envoy in Seoul > in the 17th century). And, of course, we all know that the famed 1882 > friendship treaty between Korea and the US was actually negotiated by the > US and China. Korea was simply handed the treaty China had negotiated on > its behalf and told to sign it. As for Korea standing up to the Qing, > didn't they hide their altar to the Ming Emperors? As for border disputes > with the Qing (Andre, correct me if I am wrong here), rather than boldly > confronting the Qing, didn't they try to trick them into accepting a border > farther north than the Qing originally wanted? > > In some ways, Korea's behavior during the Choson dynasty reminds me of > Korea's behavior in the 1960s and the 1970s. American congressmen I talked > to in the 1970s thought that the South Korean government was under the > control of the US. They bragged of US advisors in every government > ministry, as though their very presence gave them actual power. Of course, > as we all know, Park let the Americans think that they were in charge, when > that served what he thought was Korea's best interest, but he controlled > what went on in Korea, not the Americans. Perhaps the Choson dynasty > experience of often exercising actual autonomy but pretending to always > follow the dictates of a stronger power helped Korea in the 2nd half of the > 20th century deal effectively with American hegemony. > > > Don Baker> Associate Professor, > Department of Asian Studies> Director, Centre for Korean Research> University of British Columbia> Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2> dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca> > > > > >From: "Michael Robinson" > >Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List > >To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" > >Subject: Re: [KS] Chinese "control" over Choson> >Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 16:53:39 -0500> >> >Don:> >> >I wonder if you are reading a bit too much of the present into > >diplomatic useage and relations of the 17th century. Certainly all > >governments (perhaps the U.S. as an exception) have to think about > >the ramifications of their international actions. I'm thinking and > >have always thought that the way to characterize Korean > >"independence" has to do with effective non-interference. Tell me > >if I'm wrong, but the Ch'ing didn't fuss too much about what ChosOn > >was doing after its initial incursions....what in 1627 and then a > >decade so or later. Would the fact that the Koreans were sending > >missions to the Japanese provoke an invasion from China? It seems > >in one of the best documented dealings with the Ch'ing (the border > >issues in the late 1700s) the Koreans stood rather toe to toe with > >their Chinese counterparts in negotiations.> >> >Mike Robinson> >----- Original Message ----- From: "Baker Don" > >> >To: > >Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 12:07 PM> >Subject: [KS] Chinese "control" over Choson> >> >> >>Mike's point about exaggeration of and over-emphasis on the degree > >>of control China exercised over Korea is a point well-taken. > >>However, we also don't want to present the Choson dynasty as > >>totally independent. In the little bit of research I've done on the > >>foreign policy of the Choson dynasty, I found that Choson engaged > >>in independent diplomatic relations, but had to hide that fact from > >>the Chinese. I was focusing on early Choson's relations with the > >>Kingdom of the Ryukyus and with Japanese from Kyushu. Every once in > >>a while, I'd run across a statement in the sillok to the effect > >>that "We can't let China find out about this." Has anybody seen > >>evidence of that same need to hide Korea's diplomatic relations > >>with Japanese after 1600? Didn't Korea have to hide from China the > >>fact that it regularly sent envoys to Tokugawa Japan in the 17th > >>and 18th centuries? If that is the case, then we have to conclude > >>the Choson Korea wasn't a totally independent country, since an > >>independent country can conduct its own foreign policy without > >>foreign interference, something Choson could not do.> >>> >>Don Baker> >>Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies> >>Director, Centre for Korean Research> >>University of British Columbia> >>Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2> >>dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>From: "Michael Robinson" > >>>Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List > >>>> >>>To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" > >>>Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress> >>>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:27:55 -0500> >>>> >>>Thank you Gari:> >>>> >>>I'm making a point in the first chapter about Chinese influence in > >>>the structure and look of the Choson government, not its interior > >>>operations. This ms is focused on Korea's twentieth century and > >>>the first chapter has to carry the weight of characterizing the > >>>ChosOn system and traditional society etc. I'm literally down to > >>>a single sentence to handle some larger ideas. At least this > >>>reference won't be off. We know ChosOn Korea was Korean, but I'm > >>>still surprised at all the references to Chinese control and > >>>dominance over Korea for "centuries and centuries" out there in > >>>the secondary literature. I don't want to feed into that. I will > >>>try not to abuse the list as a fact check.....but cutting a corner > >>>here and there is nice.> >>>> >>>thanks again, Mike Robinson> >>>----- Original Message ----- From: > >>>To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" > >>>Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:55 PM> >>>Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress> >>>> >>>> >>>>If Henny says so I guess I must've said something about this > >>>>once,> >>>>but it's easier to repeat it than look up what I said. Yes, > >>>>ChosOn> >>>>dynasty court dress was identical with the court dress of the > >>>>Ming> >>>>dynasty, with the exception that the identical dress and emblems,> >>>>etc. were two ranks (in the nine-rank scheme) lower in Korea. > >>>>That> >>>>is, the court dress of a Rank I (the highest rank) ChosOn > >>>>official> >>>>was identical to that of a Rank III official at the Ming court.> >>>>This means that the last two ChosOn ranks, VIII and IX, had> >>>>distinctive Korean designs.> >>>> When Korean official embassies reached the area just outside > >>>>the> >>>>Chaoyang (East) Gate of Peking, they changed into their formal> >>>>court dress and marched in a procession into the city and through> >>>>the streets to their residence. It is said that those Chinese who> >>>>still nourished pro-Ming (and therefore anti-Manchu) sentiments> >>>>would come to secretely enjoy the spectacle. There are many > >>>>stories> >>>>in embassy diaries and other casual literature about emotional> >>>>scenes with Chinese begging to touch, or even briefly wear, the> >>>>Korean formal clothing. Other than this, the only permitted > >>>>display> >>>>of Ming dress that was permitted in Qing China was in the > >>>>theatre,> >>>>since the Peking Opera was essentially a Ming institution, and > >>>>the> >>>>historical character of the stories made the dress of earlier> >>>>dynasties appropriate. One consequence of this is that when > >>>>Korean> >>>>officials went through the streets of the capital on their> >>>>business, less sophisticated spectators would point and say, > >>>>"Look!> >>>>Actors!"> >>>>> >>>>Gari Ledyard> >>>>> >>>>Quoting Michael Robinson :> >>>>> >>>>>Dear List:> >>>>>> >>>>>It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be > >>>>>more> >>>>>up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials> >>>>>patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a> >>>>>throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong.> >>>>>I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are> >>>>>dealing with half a millennium here.> >>>>>> >>>>>Mike Robinson> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> > >
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8414 is a reply to message #8409] |
Sat, 18 March 2006 10:47 |
Mark Peterson
Messages: 55
Registered: July 1998
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Member |
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Greetings Don, Mike, Gari and all y'all,
On the subject of clandestine ceremonies to the Ming, carried out
without Qing knowledge:
When I was working on my dissertation and spending a lot of time at the
Kyujanggak, I met a man who was looking up things on his ancestors by
the name of P'ung -- odd name for Korea, right? It is two-water
radical with horse, ma, pronounced P'ung, or Feng in Chinese.
Obviously a name of Chinese origin, that man explained that his
ancestor was in the Ming army that came to rescue Korea from Hideyoshi.
The man explained that his first ancestor to come to Korea was a
soldier, a general (of course), who thought it better to stay in Korea.
Mr. P'ung told me about the site in (was it?) Kap'yøng county, east of
Seoul, where every year, he and a group of Ming loyalists met to carry
out ceremonies to the founder of the Ming dynasty. I asked about it,
and he offered to take me there. The timing did not work out to visit
the ceremony, but we went to the site. It was fascinating. From the
road one could not see anything noteworthy, but as you walked up to the
cliff, to a steep hillside that climbed upward away from you, there was
a notch in the rocks that allowed you to go around behind a set of
prominent rocks. And there, tucked away from the view of others,
around behind a huge boulder, on the rock surface was carved in huge
characters was "da ming" (tae myøng). Each character was about three
feet tall, standing vertically with the top about ten feet off the
floor. Was there an alter there?, I'm trying to remember. At any
rate, on that spot from the fall of Da Ming until that day in 1977 they
had continued the ceremonies.
Mr. P'ung bragged that Korea was the only country in the world that
still carries out the ceremonies to the Ming -- "why, they don't even
do that in Taiwan!"
So, did post-Qing Chosøn carry out secret affairs behind Qing's back?
Yes. Did they use the Ming calendar, continuing to repeat the reign
year of the last emperor up to the fifth 60-year cycle? Yes, on
documents that Qing envoy's would not see. And did they carry out
ceremonies honoring Ming? Yes, but in a place far removed and safe
from the possible viewing and hearing of the Qing envoys (and other
possible snitches, I would suppose).
Has anyone else on this list been to the "Da Ming" ceremonial site, I
wonder? Are the ceremonies still going on? Would someone in Seoul,
please call one of the P'ung's in the phone book and ask about it?
best,
Mark Peterson
On Mar 17, 2006, at 1:02 AM, Baker Don wrote:
> I wasn't claiming that Korea was completely under China's control
> during the Choson dynasty. Korea had a de facto independent foreign
> policy, but formally they were subservient to China. (Somewhat like
> the independence of Taiwan today. It too is an independent country in
> all but name.) At times, however, that formal subservience hindered
> their freedom of action and kept them from carrying out an independent
> foreign policy openly.
> The notes I remember from the SIllok said things like, "we'll be in
> trouble if China finds out that we are accepting tribute missions from
> the Kingdom of the Ryukyus." Whether or not China actually acted to
> stop Korea's dealings with its neighbors, Korea was certainly
> concerned China might do so. We also have cases of Korea bribing
> Chinese envoys so that they wouldn't report Korea's dealing with other
> peoples to the Emperor (for example, when some of the stranded Dutch
> contacted a Chinese envoy in Seoul in the 17th century). And, of
> course, we all know that the famed 1882 friendship treaty between
> Korea and the US was actually negotiated by the US and China. Korea
> was simply handed the treaty China had negotiated on its behalf and
> told to sign it. As for Korea standing up to the Qing, didn't they
> hide their altar to the Ming Emperors? As for border disputes with the
> Qing (Andre, correct me if I am wrong here), rather than boldly
> confronting the Qing, didn't they try to trick them into accepting a
> border farther north than the Qing originally wanted?
> In some ways, Korea's behavior during the Choson dynasty reminds me of
> Korea's behavior in the 1960s and the 1970s. American congressmen I
> talked to in the 1970s thought that the South Korean government was
> under the control of the US. They bragged of US advisors in every
> government ministry, as though their very presence gave them actual
> power. Of course, as we all know, Park let the Americans think that
> they were in charge, when that served what he thought was Korea's best
> interest, but he controlled what went on in Korea, not the Americans.
> Perhaps the Choson dynasty experience of often exercising actual
> autonomy but pretending to always follow the dictates of a stronger
> power helped Korea in the 2nd half of the 20th century deal
> effectively with American hegemony.
>
> Don Baker
> Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies
> Director, Centre for Korean Research
> University of British Columbia
> Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2
> dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca
>
>
>
>
>> From: "Michael Robinson"
>> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
>> Subject: Re: [KS] Chinese "control" over Choson
>> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 16:53:39 -0500
>>
>> Don:
>>
>> I wonder if you are reading a bit too much of the present into
>> diplomatic useage and relations of the 17th century. Certainly all
>> governments (perhaps the U.S. as an exception) have to think about
>> the ramifications of their international actions. I'm thinking and
>> have always thought that the way to characterize Korean
>> "independence" has to do with effective non-interference. Tell me if
>> I'm wrong, but the Ch'ing didn't fuss too much about what ChosOn was
>> doing after its initial incursions....what in 1627 and then a decade
>> so or later. Would the fact that the Koreans were sending missions
>> to the Japanese provoke an invasion from China? It seems in one of
>> the best documented dealings with the Ch'ing (the border issues in
>> the late 1700s) the Koreans stood rather toe to toe with their
>> Chinese counterparts in negotiations.
>>
>> Mike Robinson
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Baker Don"
>> To:
>> Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 12:07 PM
>> Subject: [KS] Chinese "control" over Choson
>>
>>
>>> Mike's point about exaggeration of and over-emphasis on the degree
>>> of control China exercised over Korea is a point well-taken.
>>> However, we also don't want to present the Choson dynasty as
>>> totally independent. In the little bit of research I've done on the
>>> foreign policy of the Choson dynasty, I found that Choson engaged in
>>> independent diplomatic relations, but had to hide that fact from the
>>> Chinese. I was focusing on early Choson's relations with the Kingdom
>>> of the Ryukyus and with Japanese from Kyushu. Every once in a while,
>>> I'd run across a statement in the sillok to the effect that "We
>>> can't let China find out about this." Has anybody seen evidence of
>>> that same need to hide Korea's diplomatic relations with Japanese
>>> after 1600? Didn't Korea have to hide from China the fact that it
>>> regularly sent envoys to Tokugawa Japan in the 17th and 18th
>>> centuries? If that is the case, then we have to conclude the Choson
>>> Korea wasn't a totally independent country, since an independent
>>> country can conduct its own foreign policy without foreign
>>> interference, something Choson could not do.
>>>
>>> Don Baker
>>> Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies
>>> Director, Centre for Korean Research
>>> University of British Columbia
>>> Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2
>>> dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: "Michael Robinson"
>>>> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List
>>>> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
>>>> Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress
>>>> Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:27:55 -0500
>>>>
>>>> Thank you Gari:
>>>>
>>>> I'm making a point in the first chapter about Chinese influence in
>>>> the structure and look of the Choson government, not its interior
>>>> operations. This ms is focused on Korea's twentieth century and the
>>>> first chapter has to carry the weight of characterizing the ChosOn
>>>> system and traditional society etc. I'm literally down to a single
>>>> sentence to handle some larger ideas. At least this reference won't
>>>> be off. We know ChosOn Korea was Korean, but I'm still surprised
>>>> at all the references to Chinese control and dominance over Korea
>>>> for "centuries and centuries" out there in the secondary
>>>> literature. I don't want to feed into that. I will try not to
>>>> abuse the list as a fact check.....but cutting a corner here and
>>>> there is nice.
>>>>
>>>> thanks again, Mike Robinson
>>>> ----- Original Message ----- From:
>>>> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:55 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [KS] Choson period official dress
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> If Henny says so I guess I must've said something about this once,
>>>>> but it's easier to repeat it than look up what I said. Yes, ChosOn
>>>>> dynasty court dress was identical with the court dress of the Ming
>>>>> dynasty, with the exception that the identical dress and emblems,
>>>>> etc. were two ranks (in the nine-rank scheme) lower in Korea. That
>>>>> is, the court dress of a Rank I (the highest rank) ChosOn official
>>>>> was identical to that of a Rank III official at the Ming court.
>>>>> This means that the last two ChosOn ranks, VIII and IX, had
>>>>> distinctive Korean designs.
>>>>> When Korean official embassies reached the area just outside the
>>>>> Chaoyang (East) Gate of Peking, they changed into their formal
>>>>> court dress and marched in a procession into the city and through
>>>>> the streets to their residence. It is said that those Chinese who
>>>>> still nourished pro-Ming (and therefore anti-Manchu) sentiments
>>>>> would come to secretely enjoy the spectacle. There are many stories
>>>>> in embassy diaries and other casual literature about emotional
>>>>> scenes with Chinese begging to touch, or even briefly wear, the
>>>>> Korean formal clothing. Other than this, the only permitted display
>>>>> of Ming dress that was permitted in Qing China was in the theatre,
>>>>> since the Peking Opera was essentially a Ming institution, and the
>>>>> historical character of the stories made the dress of earlier
>>>>> dynasties appropriate. One consequence of this is that when Korean
>>>>> officials went through the streets of the capital on their
>>>>> business, less sophisticated spectators would point and say, "Look!
>>>>> Actors!"
>>>>>
>>>>> Gari Ledyard
>>>>>
>>>>> Quoting Michael Robinson :
>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear List:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It is a small point but I thought someone out there might be more
>>>>>> up on this than myself. Were the robes for Choson officials
>>>>>> patterned after the regalia of the Ming? I'm saying this in a
>>>>>> throw away sentence in my new text...but perhaps this is wrong.
>>>>>> I'm wondering about the evolution of official dress since we are
>>>>>> dealing with half a millennium here.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Mike Robinson
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8416 is a reply to message #8403] |
Sun, 19 March 2006 00:44 |
David Mason
Messages: 38
Registered: October 2000
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Member |
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Greetings to everyone. Thanks to Mark Peterson for
bringing up the ceremonies to the Ming held in rural
northern Gapyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do -- for it brings
up melancholy but pleasant old memories for me.
Yes there is a large well-kept traditional wooden
walled shrine there, and three Emperors of the Ming
Dynasty are enshrined within. The three were selected
because they helped Korea militarily against invasions
by Manchus and Japanese (or in the case of the third,
the last Ming Emperor, he was viewed as having sincerely
tried to help although it proved fruitless).
The ceremonies expressing gratitude to these three and
proclaiming the legitimacy & righteousness of the Ming
(and implicitly protesting any pro-Ching feelings or
actions by successive Korean leaders) were started by
the great philosopher U-am Song Shi-yeol, and continued
by generation after generation of his disciples and
their disciples. They were conducted secretly during
the Japanese occupation, and continue to the present day.
Although the shrine/ceremony and the association that
maintain them are private, I believe that Gapyeong
recognizes it as a local cultural asset of some sort.
The shrine is near the large "Da Ming" [Dae Myeong]
characters carved on a /bawi/ that Mark visited -- I
seem to recall that those characters were written as
calligraphy-on-paper by U-am Song Shi-yeol himself,
then that paper was brought to that site by one of
his disciples and used as a model to carved those
characters on the outstanding boulder, per U-am's
instructions. The shrine was built later on.
I attended the ceremonies several times from the end
of the eighties through the early nineties, got to know
the six remaining scholars who performed them (Mr. Pung,
Kim "Song Heon" and the others). They were fascinating,
all more than 70, the last that remained of a 300+-year
unbroken teacher-disciple line from U-am. Long white
robes & long white beards, white hair in topknots under
/kat/. They had spent their entire lives doing Neo-
Confucian scholarship and rituals taught and performed
in the traditional style, knew everything in the old
Chinese characters, could do the old styles of poetry
in calligraphy, etc -- didn't know much about the modern
world and didn't seem to care -- just as the modern
world had no use for their knowledge and wisdom.
Talking with them was a rare authentic glimpse into
the mentality of the late Joseon Dynasty...
Kind of sadly comic that in the 1990s this small
brotherhood was still vehemently proclaiming the Ming
as the legitimate government of China and center of
the political universe, reminding Koreans to express
thanks to them and denouncing the Manchus as barbarians
who did not follow the Principles. They were so sincere
about it, however, that I felt a great Nobility in their
hopeless but continuing efforts.
They also denounced Communists, and thanked the United
States for saving half of Korea from them -- drawing an
obvious parallel from the Ming to the USA, saying these
are the only two foreign nations that ever "sincerely"
assisted Korea (they included gratitude to the 14 other
allied Korean war countries under the American banner),
their sole gesture to modernity I guess.
Not one of them had a real official disciple -- they
knew they were the End Of The Line and were terribly
tragically sad about that, felt guilty for having
"failed"; I really felt bad for them. Every year when
I came to the ceremony one more of their brotherhood
had died. By the mid-nineties they were all gone; the
rituals were being continued by their sons or nephews,
regular modern short-haired shaven Korean guys in
business-suits -- it wasn't authentic or interesting
anymore so I stopped attending.
In 1991 this became my first-ever academic publication
in a journal, "The Sam-hwangje Baehyang, Korea's link
to China's Ming Dynasty" in Korea UNESCO's _Korea
Journal_, Autumn 1991 edition (30th anniversary issue).
I refer anyone further interested in this topic to that
article -- it includes four photos of the ceremony.
Mr. Pung was very kind in letting me look at their
extensive collection of old documents, translate some
relevant passages. After my publication he presented
me with a plaque done in classical Hanja with his own
calligraphy, thanking me for being the first scholar
(or even journalist) to ever pay serious attention to
their group and ceremony, publicize it -- they very
much believed in what they were doing, were still
quite proud of it -- but frustrated that no Korean
professors or any other Koreans had ever bothered to
study / write about them. I still display that plaque
in my office...
David A. Mason
http://san-shin.org
Professor of Korean Tourism, KyungHee University
Office #710, phone 02-961-0852
Mobile Ph: 011-9743-9753 home: 02-442-7391
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8428 is a reply to message #8403] |
Tue, 21 March 2006 21:50 |
Gari Keith Ledyard
Messages: 124
Registered: September 1999
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Senior Member |
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|
That's quite a yarn that Mark got started, while a discussion on
how China somehow "controlled" Korea veered off into one of the
more bizarre episodes in Korean-Chinese cultural relations. The two
interesting postings by David and Adam add further grist to the
story of the Kap'yOng site. With Adam, I share some doubts about the
history spun by the P'ung family of how Kap'yOng's Chojong shrine
developed. I agree with him that it had, at least originally, more
to do with a shrine to this particular group of Ming defectors (it
certainly wasn't the only such group). I also think the P'ungs
may well have invented Song SiyOl's connection with Kap'yOng's
Chojong Shrine, or at least greatly exagerated it. I hope Adam's
research will not only clarify the Kap'yOng situation but also dig
deep into the very rich vein of pro-Ming sentiment in late ChosOn
times. It's not every Korean's favorite histopical theme, but it
is fascinating and was by any criterion a genuine, authentic
movement that deserves serious study.
The P'ung spin gives a big role to Uam Song SiyOl (d. 1689), but
the shrine usually associated with Song was the Mandongmyo in
Hwayangdong, his native home about 30km east of Ch'Ongju in
Ch'ungbuk province-- quite a way from Kap'yOng. His project was
quite similar to that of many of the famous SOwOn. It started out
as his personal wish, and as it developed, and as his own
reputation posthumously grew greater and greater, it morphed into a
national institution, with court recognition, grants of land and
slaves, and the governor of Ch'ungch'Ong province (then comprising
both north and south) being designated as the official celebrant.
King YOngjo then added to the endowment with twenty more kyOl of
tax-free land. In the meantime, King Sukchong had already in 1704
created a parallel institution to enshrine Ming loyalty, the
Taebodan (Altar of the Great Requital) in the PiwOn in Ch'angdOk
Palace, which brought the Ming cult into institutionalized ritual in
Seoul. The TaewOngun abolished the Mandongmyo in 1865, but at the
initiative of the disciples of HwasO Yi Hangno (who had died in
1868) it was restored in 1874 after the TWG retired and Kojong
assumed full powers. Both the Mandongmyo and the Taebodan were
abolished for good sometime in the mid 1890s. You will look in vain
for any mention of either in the vast section devoted to official
rituals in the revised and expanded MunhOn Pigo of 1908
(editorially completed in late 1904).
I suspect that the main ideological campaign in favor of the
Kap'yOng cult owed much more to Yi Hangno than to Song SiyOl. The
P'ung story, as passed on in David's 1991 Korea Journal article,
has accounts of Song writing letters to various people connected to
the Kap'yOng group. It is certainly possible; Song wrote thousands
of letters and was well connected to fervent Confucians throughout
the Korean countryside. But when the research is done and Song's
letters thoroughly searched, I would not be surprised if they all
turned out to connected with the Mandongmyo in Hwayangdon g, and
that the P'ung story is a 19th century grafting of a local Kap'yOng
group ancestral cult onto the bigger Mandongmyo/Taebodan nexus.
One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official
ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
"Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
That's the complete entry. Given the concrete experiences and
accounts of Mark and David, this seems quite beyond belief.
Possibly it refers only to the original shrine building itself,
while simply ignoring the more recent structures and the inscribed
rock. If so, could it possibly be a put-down by the munhwajae
czars?
On the same page, there is also item 0317-27-006, the
"KyOnghyOndan," (Altar of the Esteemed Wise Ones). The entry lists
twelve enshrined individuals, of which Yi Hangno is one. Only the
surnames and pen names are given. Checking out the pen names in
appropriate sources, I couldn't make any other link with the nine
enshrined wise ones in David's list on p. 128 of his 1991 article.
My experience with the has not given me
great faith in its accuracy. In 1978, after having just acquired a
copy of this three-volume register, I noticed a stone inscription
and a shrine in Seoul in honor of Yang Hao, a Chinese general who
was regarded as a great supporter of Korea by Imjin contemporaries.
At the indicated site all I could find was another huge excavation
for a new Seoul skyscraper, so I went to the Munhwajae Kwalliguk
people and asked where the remains of the site were preserved. They
had no clue or record. When shown their own entry in the published
register, they were baffled. Later I found information identical to
their entry in the , a history of Seoul officially
compiled by the Japanese authorities in 1934. Obviously the
Munhwajae people had copied it without attribution and done no
further research. (Many years later the stone inscription was
located and re-erected at MyOngji University. My thanks to Dennis
Lee, or Yi HyOnsUng, then a student working in Seoul, who tracked
down for me several inscriptions of this type in Seoul in 2003-04.)
Incidentally, the earliest sprouts of the gratitude-to-China cult,
which were already blooming in Seoul before the Imjin War was over,
are treated in my article "Confucianism and War: The Korean Security
Crisis of 1598," in , v. 6, 1988-89.
To go back to the original theme of this thread, that security
crisis grew out of what the king and all factions in the court
believed to be a Ming betrayal, engineered by an anti-war faction
in the Ming government. This caused King SOnjo to literally go on
strike, refusing to give any orders or directives related to the
war and especially to supply of the front lines. This was
complemented by a barrage of memorials to Peking, shaming the
Chinese in Confucian terms for not recognizing Korea's loyalty to
the alliance. It is that episode that is analyzed in that article.
The truth is, Chinese "control" was hardly absolute. While the
Koreans had to play the hand they were dealt, they repeatedly
prevailed in diplomacy and argument. This was not just in Imjin
times. I could cite other examples of how Korea often prevailed and
convinced China to retreat from an aggressive position. In other
words, the tributary system did provide for effective
communication, and Chinese and Korean officialdom spoke from a
common Confucian vocabulary. In THAT front, the relationship was
equal, if not at times actually in Korea's favor.
Gari Ledyard
Quoting David Mason :
> Greetings to everyone. Thanks to Mark Peterson for
> bringing up the ceremonies to the Ming held in rural
> northern Gapyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do -- for it brings
> up melancholy but pleasant old memories for me.
>
> Yes there is a large well-kept traditional wooden
> walled shrine there, and three Emperors of the Ming
> Dynasty are enshrined within. The three were selected
> because they helped Korea militarily against invasions
> by Manchus and Japanese (or in the case of the third,
> the last Ming Emperor, he was viewed as having sincerely
> tried to help although it proved fruitless).
>
> The ceremonies expressing gratitude to these three and
> proclaiming the legitimacy & righteousness of the Ming
> (and implicitly protesting any pro-Ching feelings or
> actions by successive Korean leaders) were started by
> the great philosopher U-am Song Shi-yeol, and continued
> by generation after generation of his disciples and
> their disciples. They were conducted secretly during
> the Japanese occupation, and continue to the present day.
> Although the shrine/ceremony and the association that
> maintain them are private, I believe that Gapyeong
> recognizes it as a local cultural asset of some sort.
>
> The shrine is near the large "Da Ming" [Dae Myeong]
> characters carved on a /bawi/ that Mark visited -- I
> seem to recall that those characters were written as
> calligraphy-on-paper by U-am Song Shi-yeol himself,
> then that paper was brought to that site by one of
> his disciples and used as a model to carved those
> characters on the outstanding boulder, per U-am's
> instructions. The shrine was built later on.
>
> I attended the ceremonies several times from the end
> of the eighties through the early nineties, got to know
> the six remaining scholars who performed them (Mr. Pung,
> Kim "Song Heon" and the others). They were fascinating,
> all more than 70, the last that remained of a 300+-year
> unbroken teacher-disciple line from U-am. Long white
> robes & long white beards, white hair in topknots under
> /kat/. They had spent their entire lives doing Neo-
> Confucian scholarship and rituals taught and performed
> in the traditional style, knew everything in the old
> Chinese characters, could do the old styles of poetry
> in calligraphy, etc -- didn't know much about the modern
> world and didn't seem to care -- just as the modern
> world had no use for their knowledge and wisdom.
> Talking with them was a rare authentic glimpse into
> the mentality of the late Joseon Dynasty...
>
> Kind of sadly comic that in the 1990s this small
> brotherhood was still vehemently proclaiming the Ming
> as the legitimate government of China and center of
> the political universe, reminding Koreans to express
> thanks to them and denouncing the Manchus as barbarians
> who did not follow the Principles. They were so sincere
> about it, however, that I felt a great Nobility in their
> hopeless but continuing efforts.
>
> They also denounced Communists, and thanked the United
> States for saving half of Korea from them -- drawing an
> obvious parallel from the Ming to the USA, saying these
> are the only two foreign nations that ever "sincerely"
> assisted Korea (they included gratitude to the 14 other
> allied Korean war countries under the American banner),
> their sole gesture to modernity I guess.
>
> Not one of them had a real official disciple -- they
> knew they were the End Of The Line and were terribly
> tragically sad about that, felt guilty for having
> "failed"; I really felt bad for them. Every year when
> I came to the ceremony one more of their brotherhood
> had died. By the mid-nineties they were all gone; the
> rituals were being continued by their sons or nephews,
> regular modern short-haired shaven Korean guys in
> business-suits -- it wasn't authentic or interesting
> anymore so I stopped attending.
>
> In 1991 this became my first-ever academic publication
> in a journal, "The Sam-hwangje Baehyang, Korea's link
> to China's Ming Dynasty" in Korea UNESCO's _Korea
> Journal_, Autumn 1991 edition (30th anniversary issue).
> I refer anyone further interested in this topic to that
> article -- it includes four photos of the ceremony.
>
> Mr. Pung was very kind in letting me look at their
> extensive collection of old documents, translate some
> relevant passages. After my publication he presented
> me with a plaque done in classical Hanja with his own
> calligraphy, thanking me for being the first scholar
> (or even journalist) to ever pay serious attention to
> their group and ceremony, publicize it -- they very
> much believed in what they were doing, were still
> quite proud of it -- but frustrated that no Korean
> professors or any other Koreans had ever bothered to
> study / write about them. I still display that plaque
> in my office...
>
>
> David A. Mason
> http://san-shin.org
>
> Professor of Korean Tourism, KyungHee University
> Office #710, phone 02-961-0852
> Mobile Ph: 011-9743-9753 home: 02-442-7391
>
>
>
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8429 is a reply to message #8428] |
Wed, 22 March 2006 02:04 |
Mark Peterson
Messages: 55
Registered: July 1998
|
Member |
|
|
Gari,
I'm always pleased to read your comments on this list. I am grateful
for all you have contributed to this thread (and every thread you
contribute to).
And I've appreciated David's and Adam's experiences with the rock, the
shrine and the P'ung's. I wondered when I opened this vein of
discussion if others had had experiences with the Kapyøng shrine, and
it's been interesting to read of David's and Adam's experience.
I don't remember seeing a building there when I visited in 1977. I
didn't take photographs and am just relying on a much-flawed memory,
but the building just doesn't surface on my hard drive. And Gari's
note:
> One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
> the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official
> ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
> it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
> "Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
> T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
> 1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
> That's the complete entry.
I wonder if the building is of recent vintage. Sometime after my visit
and before David's.
The notation, hy0njae yuji-nUn Opta, is probably reference to the
building alone -- it couldn't be a reference to the inscription on the
rock. Curious though, that they wouldn't note the inscription. The
note "nothing remains at present" reinforces my memory of the scene.
Adam; are you able to find out when the building on the site was built?
Well, this is all minutiae, but the question of Chosøn loyalty to Ming
is, as Gari says, worth study.
But Gari, why do you think that Song Si-yøl did not write the
inscription? Why would the P'ung's have invented that point? Song was
still alive at the time. I don't doubt that you have good reasons for
such suspicion -- but that's precisely why wonder what your suspicion
is based on.
Maybe this is beating a dead horse for most of you on the list, but for
a few of us, this is fascinating.
best regards to all,
Mark
On Mar 21, 2006, at 7:50 PM, gkl1@columbia.edu wrote:
> That's quite a yarn that Mark got started, while a discussion on
> how China somehow "controlled" Korea veered off into one of the
> more bizarre episodes in Korean-Chinese cultural relations. The two
> interesting postings by David and Adam add further grist to the
> story of the Kap'yOng site. With Adam, I share some doubts about the
> history spun by the P'ung family of how Kap'yOng's Chojong shrine
> developed. I agree with him that it had, at least originally, more
> to do with a shrine to this particular group of Ming defectors (it
> certainly wasn't the only such group). I also think the P'ungs
> may well have invented Song SiyOl's connection with Kap'yOng's
> Chojong Shrine, or at least greatly exagerated it. I hope Adam's
> research will not only clarify the Kap'yOng situation but also dig
> deep into the very rich vein of pro-Ming sentiment in late ChosOn
> times. It's not every Korean's favorite histopical theme, but it
> is fascinating and was by any criterion a genuine, authentic
> movement that deserves serious study.
> The P'ung spin gives a big role to Uam Song SiyOl (d. 1689), but
> the shrine usually associated with Song was the Mandongmyo in
> Hwayangdong, his native home about 30km east of Ch'Ongju in
> Ch'ungbuk province-- quite a way from Kap'yOng. His project was
> quite similar to that of many of the famous SOwOn. It started out
> as his personal wish, and as it developed, and as his own
> reputation posthumously grew greater and greater, it morphed into a
> national institution, with court recognition, grants of land and
> slaves, and the governor of Ch'ungch'Ong province (then comprising
> both north and south) being designated as the official celebrant.
> King YOngjo then added to the endowment with twenty more kyOl of
> tax-free land. In the meantime, King Sukchong had already in 1704
> created a parallel institution to enshrine Ming loyalty, the
> Taebodan (Altar of the Great Requital) in the PiwOn in Ch'angdOk
> Palace, which brought the Ming cult into institutionalized ritual in
> Seoul. The TaewOngun abolished the Mandongmyo in 1865, but at the
> initiative of the disciples of HwasO Yi Hangno (who had died in
> 1868) it was restored in 1874 after the TWG retired and Kojong
> assumed full powers. Both the Mandongmyo and the Taebodan were
> abolished for good sometime in the mid 1890s. You will look in vain
> for any mention of either in the vast section devoted to official
> rituals in the revised and expanded MunhOn Pigo of 1908
> (editorially completed in late 1904).
> I suspect that the main ideological campaign in favor of the
> Kap'yOng cult owed much more to Yi Hangno than to Song SiyOl. The
> P'ung story, as passed on in David's 1991 Korea Journal article,
> has accounts of Song writing letters to various people connected to
> the Kap'yOng group. It is certainly possible; Song wrote thousands
> of letters and was well connected to fervent Confucians throughout
> the Korean countryside. But when the research is done and Song's
> letters thoroughly searched, I would not be surprised if they all
> turned out to connected with the Mandongmyo in Hwayangdon g, and
> that the P'ung story is a 19th century grafting of a local Kap'yOng
> group ancestral cult onto the bigger Mandongmyo/Taebodan nexus.
> One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
> the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official
> ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
> it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
> "Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
> T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
> 1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
> That's the complete entry. Given the concrete experiences and
> accounts of Mark and David, this seems quite beyond belief.
> Possibly it refers only to the original shrine building itself,
> while simply ignoring the more recent structures and the inscribed
> rock. If so, could it possibly be a put-down by the munhwajae
> czars?
> On the same page, there is also item 0317-27-006, the
> "KyOnghyOndan," (Altar of the Esteemed Wise Ones). The entry lists
> twelve enshrined individuals, of which Yi Hangno is one. Only the
> surnames and pen names are given. Checking out the pen names in
> appropriate sources, I couldn't make any other link with the nine
> enshrined wise ones in David's list on p. 128 of his 1991 article.
> My experience with the has not given me
> great faith in its accuracy. In 1978, after having just acquired a
> copy of this three-volume register, I noticed a stone inscription
> and a shrine in Seoul in honor of Yang Hao, a Chinese general who
> was regarded as a great supporter of Korea by Imjin contemporaries.
> At the indicated site all I could find was another huge excavation
> for a new Seoul skyscraper, so I went to the Munhwajae Kwalliguk
> people and asked where the remains of the site were preserved. They
> had no clue or record. When shown their own entry in the published
> register, they were baffled. Later I found information identical to
> their entry in the , a history of Seoul officially
> compiled by the Japanese authorities in 1934. Obviously the
> Munhwajae people had copied it without attribution and done no
> further research. (Many years later the stone inscription was
> located and re-erected at MyOngji University. My thanks to Dennis
> Lee, or Yi HyOnsUng, then a student working in Seoul, who tracked
> down for me several inscriptions of this type in Seoul in 2003-04.)
> Incidentally, the earliest sprouts of the gratitude-to-China cult,
> which were already blooming in Seoul before the Imjin War was over,
> are treated in my article "Confucianism and War: The Korean Security
> Crisis of 1598," in , v. 6, 1988-89.
> To go back to the original theme of this thread, that security
> crisis grew out of what the king and all factions in the court
> believed to be a Ming betrayal, engineered by an anti-war faction
> in the Ming government. This caused King SOnjo to literally go on
> strike, refusing to give any orders or directives related to the
> war and especially to supply of the front lines. This was
> complemented by a barrage of memorials to Peking, shaming the
> Chinese in Confucian terms for not recognizing Korea's loyalty to
> the alliance. It is that episode that is analyzed in that article.
> The truth is, Chinese "control" was hardly absolute. While the
> Koreans had to play the hand they were dealt, they repeatedly
> prevailed in diplomacy and argument. This was not just in Imjin
> times. I could cite other examples of how Korea often prevailed and
> convinced China to retreat from an aggressive position. In other
> words, the tributary system did provide for effective
> communication, and Chinese and Korean officialdom spoke from a
> common Confucian vocabulary. In THAT front, the relationship was
> equal, if not at times actually in Korea's favor.
>
> Gari Ledyard
>
> Quoting David Mason :
>
>> Greetings to everyone. Thanks to Mark Peterson for
>> bringing up the ceremonies to the Ming held in rural
>> northern Gapyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do -- for it brings
>> up melancholy but pleasant old memories for me.
>>
>> Yes there is a large well-kept traditional wooden
>> walled shrine there, and three Emperors of the Ming
>> Dynasty are enshrined within. The three were selected
>> because they helped Korea militarily against invasions
>> by Manchus and Japanese (or in the case of the third,
>> the last Ming Emperor, he was viewed as having sincerely
>> tried to help although it proved fruitless).
>>
>> The ceremonies expressing gratitude to these three and
>> proclaiming the legitimacy & righteousness of the Ming
>> (and implicitly protesting any pro-Ching feelings or
>> actions by successive Korean leaders) were started by
>> the great philosopher U-am Song Shi-yeol, and continued
>> by generation after generation of his disciples and
>> their disciples. They were conducted secretly during
>> the Japanese occupation, and continue to the present day.
>> Although the shrine/ceremony and the association that
>> maintain them are private, I believe that Gapyeong
>> recognizes it as a local cultural asset of some sort.
>>
>> The shrine is near the large "Da Ming" [Dae Myeong]
>> characters carved on a /bawi/ that Mark visited -- I
>> seem to recall that those characters were written as
>> calligraphy-on-paper by U-am Song Shi-yeol himself,
>> then that paper was brought to that site by one of
>> his disciples and used as a model to carved those
>> characters on the outstanding boulder, per U-am's
>> instructions. The shrine was built later on.
>>
>> I attended the ceremonies several times from the end
>> of the eighties through the early nineties, got to know
>> the six remaining scholars who performed them (Mr. Pung,
>> Kim "Song Heon" and the others). They were fascinating,
>> all more than 70, the last that remained of a 300+-year
>> unbroken teacher-disciple line from U-am. Long white
>> robes & long white beards, white hair in topknots under
>> /kat/. They had spent their entire lives doing Neo-
>> Confucian scholarship and rituals taught and performed
>> in the traditional style, knew everything in the old
>> Chinese characters, could do the old styles of poetry
>> in calligraphy, etc -- didn't know much about the modern
>> world and didn't seem to care -- just as the modern
>> world had no use for their knowledge and wisdom.
>> Talking with them was a rare authentic glimpse into
>> the mentality of the late Joseon Dynasty...
>>
>> Kind of sadly comic that in the 1990s this small
>> brotherhood was still vehemently proclaiming the Ming
>> as the legitimate government of China and center of
>> the political universe, reminding Koreans to express
>> thanks to them and denouncing the Manchus as barbarians
>> who did not follow the Principles. They were so sincere
>> about it, however, that I felt a great Nobility in their
>> hopeless but continuing efforts.
>>
>> They also denounced Communists, and thanked the United
>> States for saving half of Korea from them -- drawing an
>> obvious parallel from the Ming to the USA, saying these
>> are the only two foreign nations that ever "sincerely"
>> assisted Korea (they included gratitude to the 14 other
>> allied Korean war countries under the American banner),
>> their sole gesture to modernity I guess.
>>
>> Not one of them had a real official disciple -- they
>> knew they were the End Of The Line and were terribly
>> tragically sad about that, felt guilty for having
>> "failed"; I really felt bad for them. Every year when
>> I came to the ceremony one more of their brotherhood
>> had died. By the mid-nineties they were all gone; the
>> rituals were being continued by their sons or nephews,
>> regular modern short-haired shaven Korean guys in
>> business-suits -- it wasn't authentic or interesting
>> anymore so I stopped attending.
>>
>> In 1991 this became my first-ever academic publication
>> in a journal, "The Sam-hwangje Baehyang, Korea's link
>> to China's Ming Dynasty" in Korea UNESCO's _Korea
>> Journal_, Autumn 1991 edition (30th anniversary issue).
>> I refer anyone further interested in this topic to that
>> article -- it includes four photos of the ceremony.
>>
>> Mr. Pung was very kind in letting me look at their
>> extensive collection of old documents, translate some
>> relevant passages. After my publication he presented
>> me with a plaque done in classical Hanja with his own
>> calligraphy, thanking me for being the first scholar
>> (or even journalist) to ever pay serious attention to
>> their group and ceremony, publicize it -- they very
>> much believed in what they were doing, were still
>> quite proud of it -- but frustrated that no Korean
>> professors or any other Koreans had ever bothered to
>> study / write about them. I still display that plaque
>> in my office...
>>
>>
>> David A. Mason
>> http://san-shin.org
>>
>> Professor of Korean Tourism, KyungHee University
>> Office #710, phone 02-961-0852
>> Mobile Ph: 011-9743-9753 home: 02-442-7391
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
|
|
|
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8433 is a reply to message #8429] |
Wed, 22 March 2006 11:27 |
Hildi and S.W. Kang
Messages: 6
Registered: March 2006
|
Junior Member |
|
|
Mark (and all the rest of you who have kept adding to this topic)
Mark ended by saying "but for a few of us, this is fascinating" and I have
to jump in here to add that there are more than a few of us on the periphery
that you will never hear from because the entire topic is so new to us,
who find it equally fascinating! I for one have saved every entry!.
Hildi Kang
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Peterson"
To: "Korean Studies Discussion List"
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 11:04 PM
Subject: Re: [KS] Chinese "control" over Choson
Gari,
I'm always pleased to read your comments on this list. I am grateful
for all you have contributed to this thread (and every thread you
contribute to).
And I've appreciated David's and Adam's experiences with the rock, the
shrine and the P'ung's. I wondered when I opened this vein of
discussion if others had had experiences with the Kapyøng shrine, and
it's been interesting to read of David's and Adam's experience.
I don't remember seeing a building there when I visited in 1977. I
didn't take photographs and am just relying on a much-flawed memory,
but the building just doesn't surface on my hard drive. And Gari's
note:
> One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
> the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official
> ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
> it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
> "Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
> T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
> 1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
> That's the complete entry.
I wonder if the building is of recent vintage. Sometime after my visit
and before David's.
The notation, hy0njae yuji-nUn Opta, is probably reference to the
building alone -- it couldn't be a reference to the inscription on the
rock. Curious though, that they wouldn't note the inscription. The
note "nothing remains at present" reinforces my memory of the scene.
Adam; are you able to find out when the building on the site was built?
Well, this is all minutiae, but the question of Chosøn loyalty to Ming
is, as Gari says, worth study.
But Gari, why do you think that Song Si-yøl did not write the
inscription? Why would the P'ung's have invented that point? Song was
still alive at the time. I don't doubt that you have good reasons for
such suspicion -- but that's precisely why wonder what your suspicion
is based on.
Maybe this is beating a dead horse for most of you on the list, but for
a few of us, this is fascinating.
best regards to all,
Mark
On Mar 21, 2006, at 7:50 PM, gkl1@columbia.edu wrote:
> That's quite a yarn that Mark got started, while a discussion on
> how China somehow "controlled" Korea veered off into one of the
> more bizarre episodes in Korean-Chinese cultural relations. The two
> interesting postings by David and Adam add further grist to the
> story of the Kap'yOng site. With Adam, I share some doubts about the
> history spun by the P'ung family of how Kap'yOng's Chojong shrine
> developed. I agree with him that it had, at least originally, more
> to do with a shrine to this particular group of Ming defectors (it
> certainly wasn't the only such group). I also think the P'ungs
> may well have invented Song SiyOl's connection with Kap'yOng's
> Chojong Shrine, or at least greatly exagerated it. I hope Adam's
> research will not only clarify the Kap'yOng situation but also dig
> deep into the very rich vein of pro-Ming sentiment in late ChosOn
> times. It's not every Korean's favorite histopical theme, but it
> is fascinating and was by any criterion a genuine, authentic
> movement that deserves serious study.
> The P'ung spin gives a big role to Uam Song SiyOl (d. 1689), but
> the shrine usually associated with Song was the Mandongmyo in
> Hwayangdong, his native home about 30km east of Ch'Ongju in
> Ch'ungbuk province-- quite a way from Kap'yOng. His project was
> quite similar to that of many of the famous SOwOn. It started out
> as his personal wish, and as it developed, and as his own
> reputation posthumously grew greater and greater, it morphed into a
> national institution, with court recognition, grants of land and
> slaves, and the governor of Ch'ungch'Ong province (then comprising
> both north and south) being designated as the official celebrant.
> King YOngjo then added to the endowment with twenty more kyOl of
> tax-free land. In the meantime, King Sukchong had already in 1704
> created a parallel institution to enshrine Ming loyalty, the
> Taebodan (Altar of the Great Requital) in the PiwOn in Ch'angdOk
> Palace, which brought the Ming cult into institutionalized ritual in
> Seoul. The TaewOngun abolished the Mandongmyo in 1865, but at the
> initiative of the disciples of HwasO Yi Hangno (who had died in
> 1868) it was restored in 1874 after the TWG retired and Kojong
> assumed full powers. Both the Mandongmyo and the Taebodan were
> abolished for good sometime in the mid 1890s. You will look in vain
> for any mention of either in the vast section devoted to official
> rituals in the revised and expanded MunhOn Pigo of 1908
> (editorially completed in late 1904).
> I suspect that the main ideological campaign in favor of the
> Kap'yOng cult owed much more to Yi Hangno than to Song SiyOl. The
> P'ung story, as passed on in David's 1991 Korea Journal article,
> has accounts of Song writing letters to various people connected to
> the Kap'yOng group. It is certainly possible; Song wrote thousands
> of letters and was well connected to fervent Confucians throughout
> the Korean countryside. But when the research is done and Song's
> letters thoroughly searched, I would not be surprised if they all
> turned out to connected with the Mandongmyo in Hwayangdon g, and
> that the P'ung story is a 19th century grafting of a local Kap'yOng
> group ancestral cult onto the bigger Mandongmyo/Taebodan nexus.
> One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
> the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official
> ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
> it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
> "Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
> T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
> 1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
> That's the complete entry. Given the concrete experiences and
> accounts of Mark and David, this seems quite beyond belief.
> Possibly it refers only to the original shrine building itself,
> while simply ignoring the more recent structures and the inscribed
> rock. If so, could it possibly be a put-down by the munhwajae
> czars?
> On the same page, there is also item 0317-27-006, the
> "KyOnghyOndan," (Altar of the Esteemed Wise Ones). The entry lists
> twelve enshrined individuals, of which Yi Hangno is one. Only the
> surnames and pen names are given. Checking out the pen names in
> appropriate sources, I couldn't make any other link with the nine
> enshrined wise ones in David's list on p. 128 of his 1991 article.
> My experience with the has not given me
> great faith in its accuracy. In 1978, after having just acquired a
> copy of this three-volume register, I noticed a stone inscription
> and a shrine in Seoul in honor of Yang Hao, a Chinese general who
> was regarded as a great supporter of Korea by Imjin contemporaries.
> At the indicated site all I could find was another huge excavation
> for a new Seoul skyscraper, so I went to the Munhwajae Kwalliguk
> people and asked where the remains of the site were preserved. They
> had no clue or record. When shown their own entry in the published
> register, they were baffled. Later I found information identical to
> their entry in the , a history of Seoul officially
> compiled by the Japanese authorities in 1934. Obviously the
> Munhwajae people had copied it without attribution and done no
> further research. (Many years later the stone inscription was
> located and re-erected at MyOngji University. My thanks to Dennis
> Lee, or Yi HyOnsUng, then a student working in Seoul, who tracked
> down for me several inscriptions of this type in Seoul in 2003-04.)
> Incidentally, the earliest sprouts of the gratitude-to-China cult,
> which were already blooming in Seoul before the Imjin War was over,
> are treated in my article "Confucianism and War: The Korean Security
> Crisis of 1598," in , v. 6, 1988-89.
> To go back to the original theme of this thread, that security
> crisis grew out of what the king and all factions in the court
> believed to be a Ming betrayal, engineered by an anti-war faction
> in the Ming government. This caused King SOnjo to literally go on
> strike, refusing to give any orders or directives related to the
> war and especially to supply of the front lines. This was
> complemented by a barrage of memorials to Peking, shaming the
> Chinese in Confucian terms for not recognizing Korea's loyalty to
> the alliance. It is that episode that is analyzed in that article.
> The truth is, Chinese "control" was hardly absolute. While the
> Koreans had to play the hand they were dealt, they repeatedly
> prevailed in diplomacy and argument. This was not just in Imjin
> times. I could cite other examples of how Korea often prevailed and
> convinced China to retreat from an aggressive position. In other
> words, the tributary system did provide for effective
> communication, and Chinese and Korean officialdom spoke from a
> common Confucian vocabulary. In THAT front, the relationship was
> equal, if not at times actually in Korea's favor.
>
> Gari Ledyard
>
> Quoting David Mason :
>
>> Greetings to everyone. Thanks to Mark Peterson for
>> bringing up the ceremonies to the Ming held in rural
>> northern Gapyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do -- for it brings
>> up melancholy but pleasant old memories for me.
>>
>> Yes there is a large well-kept traditional wooden
>> walled shrine there, and three Emperors of the Ming
>> Dynasty are enshrined within. The three were selected
>> because they helped Korea militarily against invasions
>> by Manchus and Japanese (or in the case of the third,
>> the last Ming Emperor, he was viewed as having sincerely
>> tried to help although it proved fruitless).
>>
>> The ceremonies expressing gratitude to these three and
>> proclaiming the legitimacy & righteousness of the Ming
>> (and implicitly protesting any pro-Ching feelings or
>> actions by successive Korean leaders) were started by
>> the great philosopher U-am Song Shi-yeol, and continued
>> by generation after generation of his disciples and
>> their disciples. They were conducted secretly during
>> the Japanese occupation, and continue to the present day.
>> Although the shrine/ceremony and the association that
>> maintain them are private, I believe that Gapyeong
>> recognizes it as a local cultural asset of some sort.
>>
>> The shrine is near the large "Da Ming" [Dae Myeong]
>> characters carved on a /bawi/ that Mark visited -- I
>> seem to recall that those characters were written as
>> calligraphy-on-paper by U-am Song Shi-yeol himself,
>> then that paper was brought to that site by one of
>> his disciples and used as a model to carved those
>> characters on the outstanding boulder, per U-am's
>> instructions. The shrine was built later on.
>>
>> I attended the ceremonies several times from the end
>> of the eighties through the early nineties, got to know
>> the six remaining scholars who performed them (Mr. Pung,
>> Kim "Song Heon" and the others). They were fascinating,
>> all more than 70, the last that remained of a 300+-year
>> unbroken teacher-disciple line from U-am. Long white
>> robes & long white beards, white hair in topknots under
>> /kat/. They had spent their entire lives doing Neo-
>> Confucian scholarship and rituals taught and performed
>> in the traditional style, knew everything in the old
>> Chinese characters, could do the old styles of poetry
>> in calligraphy, etc -- didn't know much about the modern
>> world and didn't seem to care -- just as the modern
>> world had no use for their knowledge and wisdom.
>> Talking with them was a rare authentic glimpse into
>> the mentality of the late Joseon Dynasty...
>>
>> Kind of sadly comic that in the 1990s this small
>> brotherhood was still vehemently proclaiming the Ming
>> as the legitimate government of China and center of
>> the political universe, reminding Koreans to express
>> thanks to them and denouncing the Manchus as barbarians
>> who did not follow the Principles. They were so sincere
>> about it, however, that I felt a great Nobility in their
>> hopeless but continuing efforts.
>>
>> They also denounced Communists, and thanked the United
>> States for saving half of Korea from them -- drawing an
>> obvious parallel from the Ming to the USA, saying these
>> are the only two foreign nations that ever "sincerely"
>> assisted Korea (they included gratitude to the 14 other
>> allied Korean war countries under the American banner),
>> their sole gesture to modernity I guess.
>>
>> Not one of them had a real official disciple -- they
>> knew they were the End Of The Line and were terribly
>> tragically sad about that, felt guilty for having
>> "failed"; I really felt bad for them. Every year when
>> I came to the ceremony one more of their brotherhood
>> had died. By the mid-nineties they were all gone; the
>> rituals were being continued by their sons or nephews,
>> regular modern short-haired shaven Korean guys in
>> business-suits -- it wasn't authentic or interesting
>> anymore so I stopped attending.
>>
>> In 1991 this became my first-ever academic publication
>> in a journal, "The Sam-hwangje Baehyang, Korea's link
>> to China's Ming Dynasty" in Korea UNESCO's _Korea
>> Journal_, Autumn 1991 edition (30th anniversary issue).
>> I refer anyone further interested in this topic to that
>> article -- it includes four photos of the ceremony.
>>
>> Mr. Pung was very kind in letting me look at their
>> extensive collection of old documents, translate some
>> relevant passages. After my publication he presented
>> me with a plaque done in classical Hanja with his own
>> calligraphy, thanking me for being the first scholar
>> (or even journalist) to ever pay serious attention to
>> their group and ceremony, publicize it -- they very
>> much believed in what they were doing, were still
>> quite proud of it -- but frustrated that no Korean
>> professors or any other Koreans had ever bothered to
>> study / write about them. I still display that plaque
>> in my office...
>>
>>
>> David A. Mason
>> http://san-shin.org
>>
>> Professor of Korean Tourism, KyungHee University
>> Office #710, phone 02-961-0852
>> Mobile Ph: 011-9743-9753 home: 02-442-7391
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
|
|
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8442 is a reply to message #8403] |
Thu, 23 March 2006 17:42 |
Gari Keith Ledyard
Messages: 124
Registered: September 1999
|
Senior Member |
|
|
Hi Jonathan-- Yes, there was a big difference between Qing
relations with ChosOn on the one hand and the Mongols on the other.
On the bureaucratic level, Qing's relationship with ChosOn was
managed by the Board of Rites under the traditions and protocols of
the tributary (zhigong/chikkong) system as inherited from Ming and
earlier Chinese dynasties, while the relationship with the Mongols
was under the control of the Buffer Nations Administration
(Lifanyuan), along with those with the Tibetans, unaffiliated
Manchus, and various central Asian Turkic groups.
Both relationships were similar in that they were hierarchical
and involved tribute and periodic court appearances. But the buffer
relationships had a different history and were more in the nature of
inter-tribal relations with non-Chinese peoples. The Manchus had
already subjected the Mongol tribes closest to China before their
conquest of China. The various buffer nations had permanent
facilities in Peking and much more access to China than the
tributary states; nomads periodically drove their herds of horses,
sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle to the Peking or Xi'an markets and
contributed mightily to the Chinese diet; while in Peking they
could move freely around the city and engage in petty trade. Large
open spaces were provided within the walls for their animals and
tents. There were also generous provisions for their religious
needs. Official Buddhism under the Manchus was Lamaist rather than
the traditional Chinese Buddhism. The ceremonial protocols were
traditional and tribal in nature; documents in Chinese played only
a minor role. Buffer attendance at court was kept completely
separate from that of the tributary states. In the case of Tibet
and the Central Asian buffer nations, Qing inherited the Ming
structure in which the Chinese military had managed the relations.
Interestingly enough, the peoples involved in buffer-type
relationships are mostly all under Chinese rule today, whether in
Tibet, Xinjiang (which was only made a province in 1881), or "Inner
Mongolia" (Reher, part ofLiaoning), the territories of which
correspond those of the Mongols with whom the Manchus had
pre-existing relationships, as opposed to those further north who
were more aloof but also less of a threat).
The tributary states (principally Korea, Annam, the Ryukyu
Kingdom) conducted the diplomatic discourse in classical Chinese
according to long established classical precedents. In form it was
governed more by ritual than by legal requirements. There was a
considerable flow of documents; in Korea's case the archival
residue of these relations is immense. The states were ranked in
order of their privileges, and Korea was ranked highest during both
the Ming and Qing dynasties. It had more access (between two and
three embassies a year on average), larger numbers of officers and
staff participated, there was more trade, and richer gifts from the
emperor. Tributary requirements were much more costly for Korea
during Ming than in Qing times, and privileges while in China were
incomparably more permissive with Qing than Ming (which provide an
odd context for the Gratitude-to-Ming and hostility-to-the-Manchus
that obsessed the SOin/Noron politicians who dominated Korea in
Qing times). In terms of security, Korea was closer to the Chinese
capital and was more likely to have Chinese assistance if there was
trouble from a third party, as with the Imjin Wars. Still,
self-interest was always a determining factor, just as it usually
has always been in international relationships in general. It took
the Ming government a couple of months to commit to sending troops,
and it did so only when it was clear that Hideyoshi intended to
invade China. In fact, while he fully intended
to remain in and hold Korea, his principle objective was the
overthrow of the Ming dynasty. The Ming troops were not always
pleasant guests, but there is no question that without them Korean
history would have been very different than it turned out to be.
Contrary to the case with the buffer nations, none of the
traditional tributary states are part of Chinese territory today.
This might give a little comfort to those who fear that the PRC, in
its "Northeast" project and KoguryO game, is really angling for
Korean territory. I don't believe it for a minute. That said, they
do like very much that Korea is divided. When Korea is unified, it
will take some getting used to for the Chinese. But they will
handle it. So will Korea, and it will have many more advantages
under the international/legal system in force throughout the
world today. The most onerous of the tributary requirements-- the
ritual submission and patronizing relationship--all the sadae stuff
which understandably galls Koreans today--will not be there. On the
other hand, even a unified Korea will be smaller than many of the
Chinese provinces, and its diplomats will have to be just as cany,
alert, and resourceful as they were in tributary times. The degree
to which Korea's traditional diplomacy with China was successful is
widely unappreciated today precisely because the sadae humiliations
have been kept in the foreground while the actual diplomatic
history is regarded as an unrewarding field for study. People might
be surprised! No one knows this better than the Chinese themselves.
No one understands it less than my own country. The Chinese have
always seemed to me to have some institutional memory of what tough
customers the Koreans were during tributary times. When pressed by
the US to "handle" the North Koreans, I always imagine the Chinese
thinking, "That's easy for you to say..."
This has been much more than Jonathan asked for, but I wanted to
weigh in more directly on the so-called "control" that has named
this thread for the last week or so. I think that word has very
little to do with the actual substance of the traditional
Korea-China relationship, especially under the Ming and Qing
regimes.
Gari Ledyard
Quoting Jonathan Best :
> This is a question arising from the recent discussion of Chinese
> "control": in the eyes of the Ch'ing government was there a
> difference in theory or practice in their relationships with
> Choson
> and Tibet?
>
> Wondering about things well beyond my time,
>
> Jonathan Best
> --
> Jonathan W. Best
> Art History Program, CFA
> Wesleyan University
> Middletown, CT 06459-0442
>
> Telephone: (860) 685-3025
> FAX: (860) 685-2061
> E-mail: jbest@wesleyan.edu
>
>
>
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8449 is a reply to message #8403] |
Fri, 24 March 2006 00:51 |
David.C.Kang
Messages: 24
Registered: December 1998
|
Junior Member |
|
|
Fascinating thread from all of you. I've enjoyed it immensely and learned quite
a bit. Gari's latest post has prompted a question from me, about how Korea was
different in Ming/Qing relations than the buffer states in Mongolia/Tibet/etc.
What I'd love to hear is thoughts from all of you about how similar or different
Korean and Japanese interactions with China during this period.
It may be not quite germane to a Korean studies list, but I've been looking at
the historical relations in East Asia very superficially, and would love to hear
anything you know off the top of your head, or suggestions of good readings on
this subject. I've read the Cambridge histories, Key-hiuk Kim's great book, Kirk
Larsen, Tashiro Kazui, Etsukuo Kang, Ronald Toby, William Wray, etc. But I'm
clearly not an historian, so any suggestions or postings would be great.
Thanks much.
Dave
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8464 is a reply to message #8449] |
Sat, 25 March 2006 06:26 |
Kenneth R. Robinson
Messages: 243
Registered: January 2001
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Senior Member |
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David Kang asks about additional readings for late Choson period relations
with Japan and/or China. He has also read James B. Lewis' book, too, I
believe. In addition, in Korean, among others, ChOng SOngil's book is a
must-read for K-J relations. He, Tashiro, and the late Nakamura Tadashi
have been engaged in a discussion of the volume of trade in Pusan compared
to the volume of trade in Nagasaki. Tashiro's more recent work has
concentrated on other features of the trade, such as ginseng and medicine.
Others writing in Korean whose scholarship on K-J relations is well worth
reading include Ha Ubong, HyOn MyOngch'Ol, Son SUngch'Ol, Yi Hun, and the
recent PhDs and current advanced graduate students. The "Hanguksa yOngu
huibo" will be quite helpful in this regard. Nam-lin Hur has also been
busy of late in English. Recently, attention has turned toward relations
with Qing China, too. Han MyOnggi has tackled the Kwanghaegun, and others,
such as Yi Ch'OlsOng, are writing on economic relations. Kirk is much
better informed here.
The scholarship in Japanese is especially mountainous if one also wants to
follow the t'ongsinsa through Japan. On other topics, Tsuruta Kei,
Yonetani Hitoshi (especially on Amenomori Houshuu), Ikeuchi Satoshi, Izumi
Chouichi, Yun Yusuk, and many other historians are well worth your time.
The quantity of writing on post-1868 is as voluminous as it is in South
Korea. Good luck there! Perhaps of value to David will be Namiki
Masahito's writings on collaboration in colonial Korea. The bibliography
at http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~mizna/sengo/
and "Magazine Plus" (aka "Zasshi kiji sakuin"), the latter of which should
be accessible through university library homepages, will help.
For the Tibet/Mongol side of the question, James Hevia's "Cherishing Men
from Afar" is a place to start.
I hope this helps.
Ken Robinson
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| Re: Chinese "control" over Choson [message #8470 is a reply to message #8464] |
Mon, 27 March 2006 19:39 |
Kirk W. Larsen
Messages: 25
Registered: November 2000
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Junior Member |
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Hello all,
Some belated comments on what has been a fascinating thread on Chinese
control over Chosôn follow:
Many thanks to all who have participated in this discussion. It is these
types of exchanges that make this discussion list so interesting and
worthwhile.
The way I would describe Qing-Chosôn relations (a topic about which I go to
considerable lengths in my book which hopefully will see the light of day
some time soon) is in terms of Qing informal imperialism in Korea.
Why imperialism? Because the relationship included two salient features of
what many (though surely not all) recognize as requirements for a
relationship to be described as such: 1) assertion of dominance or control
by one polity over another polity that is beyond the metropoles boundaries,
and 2) recognition of such a relationship by the prevailing regional or
international orders of the day. This would appear to apply quite nicely to
the case of the Qing and Chosôn polities as both sides (as well as other
polities in the region) agreed that the relationship was unequal and
hierarchical. That the Qing did not control most aspects of Chosôns
domestic or even foreign policy should not distract from the fact that it
did assert control over the terms of the relationship, much in the same way
that many Western imperialist powers insisted that their relations with the
world be predicated on Westphalian assumptions of treaty-bound relations
between sovereign and equal nation-states (even while often actually
behaving in ways that were rather un-Westphalian). The Jurchen/Manchus were
very explicit on this point when they demanded in 1636 that You break off
relations with them [the Ming], stop using the era name of [the Ming], and
all the documents will treat us as the suzerain state. In addition, the
Qing demanded tribute (including human tribute in the early years) and the
expensive reception of Qing envoys who visited Korea from time to time. It
has become fashionable to dismiss these aspects of Qing-Chosôn relations as
mere (and empty?) ritual that shed little light on the real state of
affairs in substantive arenas. Such a conclusion, however, downplays the
importance and significance of such rituals. One of the benefits of James
Hevias book that Ken Robinson mentioned earlier is that it prompts one to
reconsider the role of ritual in Western diplomatic and commercial
interactions: if the ketou (kowtow) were such an insignificant ritual, a
distraction from the real issues of commercial, political and diplomatic
import, why didnt MacCartney simply knock his head on the ground in order
to be able to move on to real issues of substance? MacCartney refused to do
so because he recognized that rituals matter as much (if not more) than
matters of substance.
Why informal imperialism? Because the Qing never asserted direct territorial
control in the same way that it (albeit though different mechanisms and
avenues) asserted control of Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia as Gari points
out. Why the Qing never contemplated the annexation and absorption of Korea,
even in the expansionistic heyday of the Kangxi or Qianlong periods is still
something of a mystery to me (though I have some suspicions). But the fact
remains that the Qing did not do so. Hence, when foreigners approached the
Zongli Yamen in the late 19th century and asked for a precise definition of
Qing-Chosôn relations, they were often given a reply something along the
lines of: "Korea, though a dependency of China, is completely autonomous in
her politics, religion, prohibitions and orders. China has never interfered
into it. or It is known by all nations of the world that Korea is a
dependent state of China. It is also known by all that she is an autonomous
country. These replies confused many Westerners but they actually nicely
encapsulated the nature of Qing-Chosôn relations: Qing assertion of control
over the terms and ritual expression of Koreas foreign relations combined
with complete Korean autonomy in nearly all other matters.
Even in the late 19th century when the Qing essentially abandoned its
long-standing practice of non-interference in Chosôns domestic affairs, the
leading Qing statesman of the time, Li Hongzhang, consistently and
vigorously refused to heed the calls of some purist party (qingliudang)
elements who called for the direct annexation of Korea. Li and his man on
the ground, Yuan Shikai may have meddled and interfered in Korean affairs in
a matter unprecedented in the history of Qing-Chosôn relations (and arguably
in Sino-Korean relations more generally) but the Qing sought to maintain the
informal nature of its more aggressive imperialism in Korea. And, with a
few exceptions, most other major powersBritain, the U.S., France, and
Germanyaccepted this state of affairs, at least until Japan asserted its
claim that Korea should be pried loose from its Sino-centric orbit by
defeating the Qing in the Sino-Japanese War.
As for Mr. Pung, the various descriptions of him jogged a memory of an
enjoyable conversation with an amiable gentleman one afternoon at the
Kyujanggak years ago. I had no idea that he was something of a Kyujanggak
institution. Had I known that, I probably would have pestered him with all
sorts of pressing questions. Talk about lost opportunities!
Cheers,
Kirk W. Larsen
Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of
History and International Affairs
Co-director International Affairs Program
1957 E Street, 503H
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-5253
kwlarsen@gwu.edu
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