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Lee, Eugene (2018) Between identity and difference : othering, bordering and the self‐fashioning of the reading public in late Choson travel writing. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30892 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. 1 Between Identity and Difference: Othering, Bordering, and the Self-Fashioning of the Reading Public in Late Chosŏn Travel Writing Eugene Lee Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2017 Department of Japan and Korea SOAS, University of London 3 Abstract This dissertation explores Chosŏn perceptions of self, China, and the wider world during the first two centuries of Chosŏn-Qing relations, as expressed in yŏnhaengnok, Chosŏn travelers’ accounts of China that proliferated during this same period. I approach yŏnhaengnok as an unofficial counterpart and counterweight to official discourses on Chosŏn and its Others, inasmuch as the production and consumption of yŏnhaengnok involved a widening cross-section of Chosŏn society, the reading public, and provided an alternative avenue for disseminating knowledge, constructing identities, and exercising influence. The bifurcated status of yŏnhaengnok in contemporary scholarship— marginalized as outsider sources on Qing China while privileged as firsthand sources on late Chosŏn intellectuals and intellectual life—reflects a common, overriding concern among historians and literary scholars with the reliability and usefulness of yŏnhaengnok as documentary sources. The dominant scholarly practice of mining yŏnhaengnok for biographical and ideological information about the authors, though productive in its own right, has overshadowed the need to also treat yŏnhaengnok as objects of study in themselves. Here, I seek to demonstrate how attention to the evolving parameters and function of the yŏnhaengnok, as a genre and form of discourse, can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of late Chosŏn identity formation and maintenance. The greater part of this dissertation examines where and how Chosŏn travelers employed the strategies of othering and bordering to represent their encounters in contrasting and hierarchical terms. I attempt to identify the particular subjectivities invoked in such negotiations between identity and difference by combining close 4 readings with broader investigations into the social, intellectual, and literary milieus to which the authors and their readers belonged (or aspired to belong). Finally, I argue that the yŏnhaengnok’s self-referentiality and popularity as a platform for self- fashioning, particularly in the nineteenth century, indicate a stronger interaction between yŏnhaengnok production and reception than has been posited in previous scholarship. 5 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Introduction 7 Chapter One Sinocentrism and Its Discontents: Chosŏn-Qing Relations in Twentieth- and 49 Twenty-first-century Historiography Sadae as Sinocentrism and the De-centering of China in Early Twentieth- 52 Century Korean Nationalist Discourse The Chinese World Order and the Semi-Accidental Legacy of 60 Hae-jong Chun Not So “Model” After All: Challenges to the Model Tributary Thesis 69 De-centering China Again: Chosŏn Chunghwa 73 Yŏnhaengnok as Genre and Discourse 80 Chapter Two Naming the Other and Other Others: Collective Designations in Official 84 Discourse and Yŏnhaengnok Othering Labels in Official Discourse: From Yain to Hoin 89 Labels for the Manchu Qing in Yŏnhaengnok 108 Images of Manchus in Kim Ch’angŏp’s Yŏnhaeng ilgi 113 The Other Others 119 6 Chapter Three The Other Sex: Women and Gender in Yŏnhaengnok 129 Travelers’ Expectations and the Han Chinese-Manchu Dichotomy 133 Irreconcilable Differences: Gender Roles and Footbinding 141 Diminishing Differences 148 Desire and Spectacle 152 Chapter Four The Ŭiju-Fenghuang Border Region as Ritualized Space: A Response to Marion Eggert 161 Preparations and Leave-taking 166 No Man’s Land 174 The Palisade Gate 179 Chapter Five Books and Mirrors: Images of Liulichang in Yŏnhaengnok 186 Liulichang’s Rise in Historical Context 187 Eighteenth-Century Representations of Liulichang 191 Nineteenth-Century Representations of Liulichang 205 Bibliography 214 7 Introduction Ch’oe Pu 崔溥 (1454-1504) had barely settled into his post as Commissioner of Slave Registers in Cheju when a family slave came bearing the news of Ch’oe’s father’s death. Ch’oe set sail on the third day of the intercalary first month, 1488, to return to his paternal home in Chŏlla Province, but his ship fell prey to a violent storm and then to pirates, eventually forcing Ch’oe and his crew to make an inland detour through China. They traveled from the Chinese coastal province of Zhejiang up the Grand Canal to Beijing, and from there they proceeded east to the Sino-Korean border at the Yalu river. By the time Ch’oe finally set foot on mainland Chosŏn, he would have been more than five months late to his father’s funeral—but, if not for such bad luck, he would not have written the P’yohaerok 漂海錄 (Record of drifting across the sea), arguably the most sensational and famous of early Chosŏn travel accounts. Ch’oe originally wrote the P’yohaerok under the title Chungjo kyŏnmun ilgi 中朝見聞日記 (Daily Record of Things Seen and Heard in the Chinese Empire) to submit as a report to King Sŏngjong upon his return from China.1 Ch’oe had seen a part of China that most Chosŏn travelers, in taking an established land route to Beijing, did not get to see, and the unique vantage point of his eyewitness account was not lost on his readers. His Chungjo kyŏnmun ilgi was retitled P’yohaerok and underwent multiple printings in the sixteenth century: in 1511, Royal Secretary Yi Sein 李世仁 appealed for its official publication, emphasizing the informative value of its contents,2 and in 1569, Ch’oe Pu’s grandson Yu Hŭich’un 柳希春 had it printed 1 Sŏngjong sillok 217:12a (1488/06/04); Kim T’aejun, Han’guk ŭi yŏhaeng munhak, p. 107. 2 Chungjong sillok 13:33b-34a (1511/03/14). 8 privately.3 The P’yohaerok was also read in Japan, having made its way there during the Imjin War, and was known to Edo readers as the Tōdo kōteiki 唐土行程記 and, alternatively, as the Tsūzoku hyōkairoku 通俗漂海錄.4 The circumstances of the P’yohaerok’s composition and its subsequent reception history may seem extraordinary, but Ch’oe Pu himself, as an office-holding yangban male, was not unlike the typical travel writer of his day. The only crucial difference was that he had been something of an accidental tourist, more concerned about getting home to perform his filial duties than acting in any diplomatic capacity, whereas most others, as exemplified by Kwŏn Kŭn 權近 (1352-1409), Yi Sŏkhyŏng 李石亨 (1415-1477), and Sŏng Hyŏn 成俔(1439-1504), had gone to Ming China as official envoys dispatched by the Chosŏn court. Even well into the eighteenth century, long after the Ming’s demise, early Chosŏn travelers’ accounts of Ming China continued to receive favorable attention from the Chosŏn court as reliable sources of information and were considered for official publication from time to time as a means of enlightening and boosting the morale of the populace.5 Cho Hŏn’s 趙憲 Choch’ŏn ilgi 朝天日記 (1574), for example, was printed under the auspices of King Yŏngjo in 1734, on account of its not only containing “detailed descriptions of Chinese court rituals and the travel route to Beijing,” but also having miraculously survived the “double devastation” of the Imjin War and Manchu invasions.6 In contrast, embassy travel accounts of Qing China, which would have contained more up-to-date and topically relevant 3 Kim T’aejun, Han’guk ŭi yŏhaeng munhak, p. 107. 4 Pak Wŏnho, “Ch’oe Pu P’yohaerok pŏnyŏk sulp’yŏng,” pp. 369-370. 5 For example, references to the travel poetry and prose of Wŏlsa Yi Chŏnggu (1564-1635), who made four embassy trips to Ming China, can be found in the following: Kwanghaegun ilgi 158:7a (1620/11/17), Sukchong sillok 65:19a (1720/06/08), Sŭngjŏngwŏn ilgi 1318:106a (1771/06/20). 6 Yŏngjo sillok 38:29a (1734/06/21). 9 information, did not enjoy the same positive evaluation or receive nearly as much attention in state discourse.7 Yŏnhaengnok 燕行錄 (lit., record of a journey to Beijing), as these late Chosŏn travel accounts are now commonly known, were in a sense byproducts of Chosŏn Korea’s capitulation to the Manchus in 1637 and subsequent coercion into tributary relations with the Manchu Qing. As the Qing’s legitimacy was highly questionable to Chosŏn ruling elites given the Manchus’ non- Han, “barbarian” origins, so, too, was the value of officially endorsing yŏnhaengnok: why express any interest in yŏnhaengnok, when doing so could be construed as support for an illegitimate, barbarian regime? At least, this is one view implicit in the dismissive (or, more likely, discreet) silence of the Chosŏn court on the production and consumption of yŏnhaengnok, whereas the yŏnhaengnok themselves