Search

During the 1930s the Japanese Government General of Korea's Society for the Compilation of Korean History commissioned facsimiles of some 21 rare historical sources to accompany the publication of the colossal History of Korea (Chōsenshi 朝鮮史), funnelling select xylographic, typographic, and chirographic products of the defunct Chosŏn dynasty's book ecology through offset lithography and collotype, and on occasion movable type. This article investigates the Society for the Compilation of Korean History's collection and classification of historical materials against the larger backdrop of colonial knowledge production, illuminates the different economic and editorial logics of the new printing technologies used to produce the facsimiles, and examines the products as one example of the significance of facsimiles in the field of history. It suggests that the interplay of traditional print media, dominated by woodblock prints, and the new photomechanical means of reproduction, allowed for the swift reproduction of the unfolded page image and the easy utilization of traditional-style binding, permitting the Society to create purposefully antiquated reproductions with a high degree of fidelity to the original. At the same time, the use of modern materials (paper, string, and covers) and certain features common to traditional Japanese book binding meant that the facsimiles were irrevocably hybrid. These facsimiles ended up in a wide range of research libraries, representing the Korean past to the scholarly community in the Japanese empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pre-modern Korea, paper was renowned for its white glossy surface and cloth-like strength, becoming an important item in both tributary exchanges and private trade. The unique material of the tak tree and related technical innovations, including toch'im, the repeated beating of just-produced paper that provides sizing and fulling effects, were crucial to this fame. However, the scholar-officials who integrated papermaking into the state production system in order to meet administrative and tributary needs initially made toch'im corvée and then penal labor, thereby dismissing it as simple toil. They were not alone, though, in denigrating a form of manual labor. Historiographies of modern science and technology are generally silent about such work, focusing instead on how we invented the human out of drudgery. However, papermakers in late Chosŏn Korea (the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) chose to identify their artisanship with toch'im and eventually succeeded in securing recognition for that technique as a highly paid specialty. By examining this skilling of toch'im, this paper seeks to change the historiographical silence about toil. It overcomes the archival silence that accompanies manual skills by tracing toch'im's contours through its changing locations and associations in society's changing social and material networks, revealing paper artisans' social techniques, or everyday politics that eventually dignified their laborious technique. Paper artisans' changing relationships with tak barks, tools and facilities, central and local authorities, farmers, merchants, and scholar-officials reveal how such social skilling was made in late Chosŏn Korea, where papermaking became a most successful industry. This tracing of toch'im re-situates creative toil and everyday politics of artisanal hands in the interconnected transformation of social relations, craft, and knowledge practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qiu Jun of Ming China, with the aim of "rendering the Zhuzi jiali both accessible and practicable for ordinary folks," compiled the Jiali yijie. Among the annotations of Jiali in the Ming dynasty, Jiali yijie gained the widest popularity and greatest influence, and was regarded as a new classic, on par with the Jiali itself. In the 16th century, Jiali yijie was also introduced to Joseon Korea, where it was regarded as "an important supplement to the Zhuzi jiali" by Korean scholars, attaining a high level of popularity. This paper draws on 23 versions of the Jiali yijie from the Ming dynasty and 33 from the Qing. Historically, the Jiali yijie was introduced to the Joseon dynasty from China by Kim Anguk in 1518. Through the comparison of these four Joseon print versions and their Chinese counterparts, we are led to the conclusion that it was the Yingtian prefecture's print, dated the twelfth year of the Zhengde Era, that Kim Anguk brought back to Joseon from Ming China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the seventeenth-century discourses between the West and the Orient regarding Hamel and Joseon illustrate an antinomy whereby what is regarded as ‘true’ in one society can be defined as ‘false’ in another. Hamel who assumed that the West was superior to Joseon, encountered the antinomy in which their superior self-identity was not supported in Joseon society. However, in their Western discourse, Hamel disparaged Joseon’s people and casted them in the image of the Other who is inferior. On the other hand, Joseon considered itself as a culturally superior ‘little China’ and formed a dichotomous hierarchy with Hamel. This superior stature of Joseon was however shattered when dealing with Great Qing and Japan. In sum, the seventeenth-century discourses between the West and the Orient fall into an antinomy in which the same incident can be either true or false depending on who takes the position of the subject in the discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have stressed that regional dynamics led to the outbreak of the Musin Rebellion, the largest rebellion in eighteenth-century Korea. Scholars have examined the economic and political situation leading up to the violence and concluded that political marginalization caused Kyŏngsang Province elites (from the Southerner faction) to launch the rebellion. This paper analyses evidence from official sources about rebel motivations, rebel geographical associations and the court view of the causes. Although post-rebellion government statements acknowledge tensions between the court and many Kyŏngsang Province elites, rebel testimony showed no evidence of any anger about discrimination against elites from a single region. There is also inconsistent evidence of regional concerns in the membership of the rebel organization, which was drawn from three southern provinces and mainly concentrated around the capital. My findings challenge the conclusions of regionalist scholars and place the Musin Rebellion in a trajectory of late Chosŏn rebellion that was attempting to redress factional political discrimination and was not caused by regional concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Numerous Ming Chinese took refuge in Choson Korea during the early seventeenth century. Despite the supposed sinocentrism of Choso's elites, refugees from China were treated as belonging to the category of submitting-foreigner (hyanghwain), a protected but distinctly humble social status that had been used primarily as a tool for settling Japanese and Jurchen from Choson's frontiers. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, however, the Choson court considered it incongruous to include Ming Chinese descendants in that category. Chinese lineages were thus distinguished from other submitting-foreigners and reclassified according to the considerably more prestigious category of imperial subjects. This paper explores this change, seeing it as part of a trend in the Qing Empire and indeed in Eurasia as a whole in which identity and subjecthood became increasingly bureaucratized, and loyalties treated as absolute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mummy studies in Korea are instrumental in reconstructing the health and disease status of pre-modern Joseon peoples using firm scientific evidence. However, this scientific approach to such investigations in Korea is a relatively new discipline which began only within the last decade. Previous studies on Joseon tombs and their contents were performed exclusively by dress historians because most of the artefacts recoverable from Joseon tombs were textiles. In this report, we examine some of the excavation records left by dress historians in order to elucidate the approximate number and preservation status of Korean mummies discovered prior to the advent of their scientific investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mummy studies in Korea are instrumental in reconstructing the health and disease status of pre-modern Joseon peoples using firm scientific evidence. However, this scientific approach to such investigations in Korea is a relatively new discipline which began only within the last decade. Previous studies on Joseon tombs and their contents were performed exclusively by dress historians because most of the artefacts recoverable from Joseon tombs were textiles. In this report, we examine some of the excavation records left by dress historians in order to elucidate the approximate number and preservation status of Korean mummies discovered prior to the advent of their scientific investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]