The Korean Catholic Church is usually considered to be a unique case in the whole history of Christianity, since its evangelization was supposedly started without foreign missionaries in the 1780s. The early Korean converts did indeed study Jesuit books and convert prior to the arrival of European priests in Chosŏn. This article is aimed at rethinking this topic beyond a Korea-centered perspective. More precisely, it focuses on Chosŏn envoys in Beijing through a comparison of Chinese and Korean historio- graphies. My main idea is to present Beijing as a “contact zone” where the Catholic experience of Chosŏn envoys was not just limited to visiting the four churches and their European missionaries. To be sure, Chosŏn officials also gained much knowledge about Catholicism through their encounters with Chinese literati and converts. Stated differently, this article explores several facets of the early encounters between Koreans and the Catholic faith. It demonstrates that these encounters and the birth of the Korean Church were not only linked to reform-minded Korean literati, but also to the complexity of Sino- Korean relations in Qing times and missionary methods used in Beijing (such as the conversion from top to bottom and the apostolate through books). This article more generally suggests a new research direction which explores the emergence of the Korean Catholic Church beyond national boundaries and on different scales.
목차
Abstract INTRODUCTION CHOSŎN EMBASSIES IN BEIJING CHOSŎN ENVOYS AND BEIJING CHURCHES THE “SILK LETTER” AS AN EXAMPLE OF QING “BENEVOLENCE” TOWARDS CATHOLICISM THE BEIJING MISSIONARIES AS SCHOLARS AND IMMORTALS FROM THE WEST THE NORTHERN LEARNING SCHOOL (PUKHAK 北學) AND CHINESE LITERATI CONCLUSION REFERENCES
키워드
Chosŏn KoreaQing ChinaBeijingCatholicismcirculation of knowledge
저자
PIERRE-EMMANUEL ROUX [ an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Université Paris Diderot, France ]
한국연구원은 1970년 5월 한국 민속의 각 분야에 걸친 자료의 수집과 학술적 연구를 목적으로 '한국민속연구소'로 출발하였다. 그 후 1973년 5월 연구 분야를 확대하며 민속뿐만 아니라 한국학 전반에 걸친 연구를 위해 '한국학연구소'로 개편하였고, 다시 1989년 3월 한국의 국제적 위상의 부상과 함께 한국학 연구의 중요성이 높아짐에 따라 '한국학연구원'으로 확대, 개편하였다. 한국학연구원은 한국학 전반에 걸친 연구를 통해 지역과 민족문화 발전에 기여하며 한국학의 세계화를 위해서 학술활동을 강화하고 나아가 내·외국인에 대한 한국문화 교육을 담당하고자 한다.