Ideology, State, and Religion in the Late Chosŏn Dynasty
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THE AMBIGUITY OF VIOLENCE: IDEOLOGY, STATE, AND RELIGION IN THE LATE CHOSŎN DYNASTY by FRANKLIN DAVID RAUSCH B.A., Indiana University (Bloomington), 2000 M.A., Indiana University (Bloomington), 2002 A THESE SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Asian Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2011 © Franklin David Rausch, 2011 Abstract My dissertation focuses on the violence associated with two Korean Catholics from the late Chosŏn dynasty. My first subject, Alexius Hwang Sayŏng, wrote a letter during the anti- Catholic suppression of 1801 to the bishop of Beijing proposing that a Western armada invade Korea to force the Chosŏn state to tolerate Catholicism, only to be arrested and executed for treason. In 1909, my second subject, Thomas An Chunggŭn, assassinated Itō Hirobumi, the first resident-general of Korea, in hopes that his death would lead to the restoration of Korean independence. Through the study of their writings, interrogation reports, court records, public pronouncements, newspapers, missionary letters and journals, I reveal the different types of violence they sought to justify, suffered, and were reacting to. While Hwang and Neo-Confucian officials both believed that violence could be legitimately deployed in order to actualize the worldviews mandated by their respective religions, the centrality of religion had largely been eclipsed by the secular ideologies of nationalism, Social- Darwinism, and Pan-Asianism, by An‟s time. This situation led to a struggle within and between An and foreign missionaries over the proper relationship between nation, state, and religion, and eventually to An‟s decision to kill Itō for both religious and secular reasons, even as the Catholic Church forbade violent resistance to Japan‟s colonial project. Through a comparison of the violence associated with Hwang and An, I show that religion can both encourage and discourage violence at the same time, and that its influence can be shaped, magnified, or diminished by secular worldviews, proving the difficulty in simply labeling violence as “religious” or “secular,” and the essentially ambiguous nature of violence. I therefore propose that, in contravention to scholars who argue that religion is somehow more violent than secular ideologies, it is not so much whether a type of violence can be labeled as secular or religious, but the contents of that worldview, its relationship with other worldviews within an individual, and the historical context in which it is actualized, that is more important in determining its propensity for violence. ii Preface Chapter 2 contains some material published in my article, “Wicked Officials and Virtuous Martyrs: an Analysis of the Martyr Biographies in Alexius Hwang Sayŏng‟s Silk Letter.” Kyohoesa yŏn’gu [Research Journal of Korean Church History], no. 32 (July 2009): 5-30. Chapters 5 and 6 contain material published in my article, “Chonggyo wa p‟ongnyŏk chŏngdangsŏng [Religion and the Justification of Violence].” In An Chunggŭn yŏn’gu ŭi sŏnggwa wa kwaje [Issues in the Study of An Chunggŭn], edited by An Chunggŭn Ŭisa Kinyŏm Saŏphoe, 207-31. Seoul: Ch‟aeryun, 2010. Chapters 7 and 8 contain material published in my article, “Saving Knowledge: Catholic Educational Policy in the late Chosŏn Dynasty.” Acta Koreana 11, no. 3 (December 2008): 47-85. I translated Hwang Sayŏng‟s Silk Letter, as well as some sections from his interrogation records, in collaboration with Professor Don Baker. I also translated selections from An Chunggŭn‟s autobiography and A Treatise on Peace in the East in collaboration with Jieun Han. Our translation of A Treatise on Peace in the East has been published online at the University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Korea‟s website (http://www.utoronto.ca/csk/prize.html) and as “A Treatise on Peace in the East.” Asia 6, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 48-75. My co-translators and I are currently in the process of preparing both of these translations for publication. Translations of these sources appearing in this dissertation are the ones I undertook with Don Baker and Jieun Han. iii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………..........ii Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………v Dedication………………………………………..........……………………………..…………..vi Introduction…………………………………………….……………………………………...…1 1 Hwang Sayŏng, the Chosŏn Dynasty, and Catholicism in Korea………………………....33 2 Violence and the Silk Letter…………………………………………………….………...….66 3 Hwang Sayŏng, the Silk Letter, and the Chosŏn State’s Persecution of Catholicism.…94 4 Transitions…………………………………………………………………………………..128 5 World Reactions to the Assassination of Itō Hirobumi…………………………………..154 6 The Trial and Execution of An Chunggŭn………………………………………………..191 7 An Chunggŭn Tells His Story…………………………………………………………...…232 8 An Chunggŭn, Religion, and Violence…………………………………………………….275 9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..309 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………….. 319 iv Acknowledgements Writing a dissertation is impossible without the help of many people. In particular I would like to thank my adviser, Dr. Don Baker, and my committee members, Drs. Nam-lin Hur and Tsering Shakya, for their guidance and insightful criticism, as well as their patience with the rather length comprehensive exams and dissertation chapters that I have afflicted them with. I would also like to thank Drs. Steven Lee and John Cooper who sat on my defense. Professor Cho Kwang kindly acted as my adviser while I was in Korea doing research and the Korea Foundation and the Vancouver Korean-Canadian Scholarship Foundation provided me with generous funding. I wish also to express my heart-felt appreciation to Fulbright Korea, which made possible ten months of study in the country with a wonderful community of scholars in the comforts of its own apartment building. I would also like to thank the governments and peoples of Canada and Korea for their kind support and for the friendships my family and I have formed in both those countries during my graduate career. Professors Bruce Fulton and Ross King helped me to develop my Korean language skills and Professors Francesca Harlow, Harjot Oberoi, and Peter Nosco helped me to grow as an aspiring academic. Many people assisted me over the course of researching and writing this dissertation. Yicheng Yeh helped me to decipher Chinese handwriting in some of the primary sources I used, Jeffrey Newmark and Woobinn Kim helped me to understand some tricky passages in Japanese newspapers, and Dongkyu Kim and Kangri Park did the same with some Korean ones. Jieun Han helped me to translate some of An Chunggŭn‟s materials. Fathers Yŏ Chinch‟ŏn and Kim Chinso provided me with important sources and guidance, and Dr. Eugene Park assisted me with some questions I had about genealogy and the military exam system. Several members of the v Han’guk Kyohoesa Yŏn’guso (Korean Church History Institute), especially Drs. Yi Changwu, Ch‟oe Seonhye, Pang Sanggŭn, and Cho Hyŏnbŏm, provided me with a great deal of help and support. I am especially indebted to the institute for giving me the opportunity to present and publish my work. Dr. Sin Unyong and the An Chunggŭn Ŭisa Kinyŏm Saŏphoe (Association for the Commemoration of An Chunggŭn) provided me with similar opportunities. The staff of the An Chunggŭn Ŭisa Kinyŏmgwan (An Chunggŭn Memorial Hall) were also very helpful. A fellow graduate student at Korea University, Kim Kyŏngt‟ae, kindly provided me with a source that I was in desperate need of. I must also express my thanks to the Newburgh Public library system for having been able to obtain more books than I can count for me, enabling me to write my dissertation at home. There are many more people who I am sure have helped me without my direct knowledge, and I would like to thank them as well. Finally, I would like to thank my mother (Linda), father (Francis), wife (Arlene), and son (David) for their kind support, patience, and prayers. vi Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the people it treats, in hopes that in some small way, it might help bring something good from the suffering they endured. God grant them rest and peace. vii Introduction Violence is by nature ambiguous. There is something grotesque in the shedding of blood, the breaking of bones, and the destruction of bodies that demands explanation from the highest of moral authorities, such as religion, ideology, and the state, in order for it to be accepted as legitimate. To further our understanding of the relationship between violence and these three sources of moral authority, both in general and in the history of East Asia, this dissertation will take as its subject the lives and times of two Korean Catholics who lived during the latter half of the late Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910). Specifically, I will examine how they justified violence, how violence was justified against them, and how their stories were used in narratives to legitimize the authority of the states that executed them. This study‟s first subject, Alexius Hwang Sayŏng (1775-1801), wrote a letter to the Bishop of Beijing during the great anti-Catholic suppression of 1801 asking for help. In his letter, Hwang proposed several plans that he hoped would win tolerance for the Catholic Church in Korea, including inviting a Western armada to invade Korea and threaten the life of the king. Hwang justified his actions by appealing to the authority of the “Lord of Heaven” and his representative on earth, the pope, as well as to the spiritual salvation and earthly benefits Catholicism would make available were it tolerated in Korea. Unfortunately for Hwang, he was informed on, arrested, and the letter was seized. The government justified his execution, and that of his fellow Catholics, by pointing to the threat they posed to the state and to the Confucian morality upon which it rested, and portrayed the foiling of his designs as a great victory, illustrating the government‟s devotion to Neo-Confucian orthodoxy and legitimizing its rule.