Premodern Korea in a Global Context: Premodern Literature and Cultural Exchange

Premodern Korea in the Emergent World

This session examines the representation of Korea on Korean and non-Korean maps to learn how the ways that Koreans and non-Koreans have perceived each other have changed. We will also cover such important questions as 1) how the Korean world maps were made, their characteristics, and whether they were influenced by Chinese or Japanese maps, and 2) how and when Western world maps were introduced to Korea and how they affected Korean lives during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We will trace the travel routes of Koreans as they are represented in Korean literature to understand the geographical boundaries imagined by Koreans and the gap between imaginary and actual geography. Finally, based on a thorough understanding of the cultural exchange between Korea and the West, and the fact that the existence of many other countries was well-known to Koreans, we will discuss the limits of Koreans’ engagement with Westerners and the possible reasons why Korea was viewed by the West as a Hermit Kingdom.

Read:
Kangnido
Map of integrated lands and regions of historical countries and capitals (Chosŏn, 1470 [1402])


Ref. Pax Mongolica

Read:




 

Ch’ŏnhado chido 

Ch’ŏnha do chido in the Yŏjido; a hand-copied version (1770s) of Giulio Aleni’s Wanguo quantu (1623) from the collection of the Kyujanggak at Seoul National University. 


Konyŏ man'guk chŏndo (map of ten thousand countries)
A 1708 Korean copy of the world map by Matteo Ricci. The Chinese original is the oldest surviving Western map in East Asia.



Ref. Ch’oe Ch’ŏk's travel routes

An English translation of “the Tale of Ch’oe Chŏk” is available in Premodern Korean Literary Prose: An Anthology, edited by Michael J. Pettid, Gregory N. Evon, and Chan E. Park, 132–161. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 



Ch'ŏnhado

Wŏnhyŏng Ch'ŏnhado from the 18th century Haedong chido; in the collection of the Kyujanggak at Seoul National University  



 

Chigu chŏnhudo, an 1834 world map by Ch'oe Han'gi



 

Taedong yŏjido, an 1861 map of Korea by Kim Chŏngho





 

Author Biography

Sookja Cho is an assistant professor of Korean at Arizona State University. Cho’s research fields include Pre-modern Korean and Chinese literature and culture, Sino-Korean exchange and East Asian comparative literature, performance literature, and oral storytelling and folk literature. She is the author of two books, Transforming Gender and Emotion: The Butterfly Lovers Story in China and Korea (University of Michigan Press, 2018) and The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty and Romance (Columbia University Press, 2018). She is currently working on projects on Sino-Korean literature and cultural exchange. 

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