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The understanding of human nature (renxing 人性) in the Korean philosophical narrative has its background in and has evolved from the classical Chinese debate on this most fundamental theme. We must go back to this beginning in the Mencius in order to appreciate what is persistent and what is distinctive about this idea as it has been revisioned by Korean philosophers. In spite of Mencius’s rejection of tautological naturalism in 6A3—that is, humans are good because they are good—it is just such an impoverished reading of Mencius—xing is an unlearned given that makes us good—that not only persists but in fact prevails among commentators even today. Xingshan 性善 is a claim that in the contemporary interpretive literature on Mencius—both Western and Chinese alike—has almost ubiquitously been understood as “human nature is good.” Indeed, the uncritical assumption is that for Mencius xing references a universal, inborn, fixed, self-sufficient endowment that is defining of all human beings and that programs us naturally as human beings to be good in what we do. In this essay, I want to celebrate the attempt by our teacher, colleague, and friend, Angus Graham, to save Mencius from the familiar essentialist misreadings of xing—both the discovery and the developmental models—by pointing the commentarial tradition in the direction of a third position. Graham offers us what we would call a “narrative” understanding of xing in which person and world evolve together in a dynamic, contrapuntal relationship. The identities of persons are certainly grounded in the native beginnings of family, community, and environing relationships that need to be both nurtured and protected from loss or injury, but such identities only emerge in the process of these relationships achieving thick resolution as they are cultivated, grown, and consummated over their lifetimes. Their potential far from being a given, in fact emerges contrapuntally in the always transactional events that in sum constitute lives lived in the world.

In the course of the great disputes of Korean Confucianism, the Four-Seven and Horak Debates, multiple perspectives came to be formulated on the problem of human nature; these were later taken up as orthodox stances by competing lineages of Korean scholars. Thinkers active during the late eighteenth century often sought to replace this authoritative corpus by means of alternative approaches represented by reform-ist sirhak currents or inspired by so-called ‘Western Learning’; nonetheless, the vast majority of scholars continued to explore the basic questions of Confucian discourse within the limits of previous tradition. A leading example of a scholar faithful to orthodox legacy, yet formulating radical and new perspectives on the basic questions of Confucian doctrine and the problems of human nature, can be found in the personage of Nongmun Im Sŏngju (1711–1788) and his work Nongnyŏ chapchi (Miscellaneous records of the Deer Hut). The focus of this study is to present the strategies and arguments Nongmun used to defend the concept of goodness of human nature in relation to both the Chinese and Korean authorities of previous tradition.

The eighteenth-century Neo-Confucian scholars in Korea were deeply concerned with two questions, namely, whether human nature and non-human nature are the same or not and whether all human nature is the same or not. In answering the second question, they focused on the moral nature of mibalsimche 未發心體 by asking whether the state of the mind or mind-substance before the arousal of feelings (or thoughts) is morally good or not. As noted, in Neo-Confucianism the unaroused state of feelings chŏng情 is generally identified with a state of nature sŏng性 which is pure and clear, and which is therefore characterized as morally good. However, Korean Neo-Confucian scholars noticed that this characterization could be controversial since the account of the unaroused state given by the Chinese Neo-Confucian, Zhu Xi, was not clear enough, but ambiguous. The problem of mibal was a matter of interest since the Four-Seven Debate in the sixteenth century in Korea, and it once again became the subject of intense contention in the eighteenth-century debate between Yi Kan and Han Wŏn-jin, who endeavored to reveal the exact moral characteristics of human nature in terms of the qualities of human constituents, i.e. li and ki. In what follows, I shall begin by examining Zhu Xi’s diverse accounts of mibal, show the emergence of the problem of mibal in the Four-Seven Debate between Yi Hwang and Yi I, and, finally, discuss the moral nature in the state of mibal presented by Yi Kan and Han Wŏn-jin.

Tasan Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836) used terminology borrowed from the mainstream Neo-Confucian tradition to construct a philosophy of human nature that was very different from what is seen in the writings of Neo-Confucians who preceded him. He agreed with them in ranking human beings as morally superior to animals. However, his reason for doing so was not the same as theirs. He argued that human beings, unlike animals, are endowed with a heart-and-mind capable of penetrating insight, which allows them to choose how to act. Moreover, their decisions on how to act are influenced by two conflicting propensities, one for acting morally and one for acting selfishly. That meant human beings were not virtuous by nature. It was as natural for them to act selfishly as it was for them to act appropriately. In another break with Neo-Confucian tradition, he argued that above human beings there existed another category of sentient beings. Unlike human beings, they were spiritual beings, in that they were not composed of ki, the matter-energy both human beings and animals were made of. They were spirits, conscious immaterial beings. When we examine how Tasan defined human nature and how he compared it to the natures of other material beings as well as to the natures of totally immaterial beings, it becomes clear that, for Tasan, human beings were between heaven and earth, neither lowly animals nor pure spirits. They were simply human beings, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entailed.

During the Koryŏ (918–1392) to Chosŏn (1392–1910) transition, constructing a patrilineal society was one of the state’s primary goals. From the early Chosŏn, the state implemented the Confucian style of marriage and allowed men to have one legitimate wife from the same social status and take lower status women as concubines. As women of different status came to live in the same household, the new marriage practice generated tensions between wives and concubines. The concubinage system was already an intrinsic part of the social fabric in Korean history, but the meaning of conjugal relations shifted during the Chosŏn period and the tension between women of different status became more visible. By using marriage as a site, the aim of this article is to examine how the state intervened in intimate domains such as emotions, sexuality, and familial virtue and how the state emphasized and regulated gendered emotions such as jealousy to embrace Confucian patriarchal values in the domestic space. By examining wives’ jealousy that often led to brutal violence against concubines, this article unveils the cultural meaning of jealousy between partners in the context of Confucian patriarchal and hierarchical society. Furthermore, it demonstrates the power dynamics in conjugal relations and the vulnerability of concubines and how the Confucian style of marriage manifested tensions among Confucian ideals, the law, and social practice.

This article presents the major power competition over Korean telegraph lines and its postal system within the framework of Korean neutralisation, subjects that have largely escaped Western diplomatic historians’ attention. To this end, under-examined British, French, and Russian diplomatic and personal documents are consulted, shedding new light on lesser-known aspects of major power activities in Korea during the age of High Imperialism from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Ultimately, the attempts of foreign powers, especially Japan, to control these means of communication severely undermined Korea’s independent capacity to execute diplomacy during key moments and eventually extinguished any chance for Korea to retain its fragile independence through neutralisation.

After Itō Hirobumi’s assassination by An Chunggŭn, Japanese media tended to urge the Japanese government to adopt coercive policies toward Korea, under which Japan suppressed “Korean riots” and finally annexed Korea. However, there were also some Japanese intellectuals who viewed An’s action sympathetically. They shared the Confucian ideal of shishi (gentleman activist), a universal ethico-political model in pre-modern East Asia. This article will attempt to analyze the logic of these Japanese who endeavored to understand An’s action from the vantage point of Korea’s subalterns. An Chunggŭn’s self-legitimization of his act, based as well on pan-regional Confucian ethics, was appropriated by his Japanese sympathizers as a sort of shishi consciousness, sometimes undistinguishable from the “bushidō (Way of the warrior) spirit”. The appropriations happened differently in diverse milieus, including socialist and Christian circles. Most of them limited themselves to sympathizing with An’s sacrifice for the sake of his country’s independence, without an attempt to criticize imperialist discourses. Although remaining a tiny minority, Baba Kochō (a progressive author and translator, 1869–1940), Kōtoku Shūsui (a socialist activist, 1871–1911) and Kashiwagi Gien (a Christian activist, 1860–1938) criticized Japan’s imperialist turn and its violations of Korea’s sovereignty which eventually precipitated the assassination attempts against Japanese officials. Kōtoku even went further offering a revolutionary strategy of anarchist communism and anti-imperialism aimed at building class solidarity between Asian peoples. While Kashiwagi did not renounce nationalism per se, he was in a position to relativize it based on the universal truth of Christianity. This article aims at grasping the meanings and historical significance of the expressions of sympathetic understanding towards An’s act in Japan.

The Man’gyŏng River is a medium-sized river passing through the southwestern Chŏlla region, one of the most productive rice cultivation areas of Korea. This article analyzes projects related to water management, such as the construction of irrigation facilities, river improvement, and farmland rearrangement, conducted in the river basin during the period of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), with an emphasis on the reactions of local Korean peasants. Immediately after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japanese immigrants began to acquire land around the middle and lower reaches of the river, and by the time of the colonization of Korea in 1910, large Japanese landowners had established modern-style irrigation associations for supplying water to their farms, which were tilled by Korean tenants. However, construction of developmental infrastructure, such as railways, roads, and irrigation facilities induced the exacerbation of flood damage once the river overflowed because of the obstruction of water drainage. The interests of local Korean peasants and those of large Japanese farm owners clashed over the issue of preventing flood damage. Eventually, the colonial government decided to proceed with the river improvement project proposed by the Japanese-led irrigation associations.

This article examines the influence of Soviet Army experience and tradition on the formation of the army of North Korea in the late 1940s–1950s. As North Korea itself was born out of the Soviet occupation zone, the USSR exercised a strong influence and the Korean People’s Army was largely shaped in the Soviet image. The author analyses North Korean military regulations, unit structure, ranks, the political officer system and Party organisations in the army. The article’s findings are that the KPA was moulded according to the Soviet model, borrowing elements of its structure from different eras of Soviet history, including those that predated the creation of the North Korean state. Although some elements of its Soviet origin disappeared over time, it would not be an exaggeration to say the North Korean army is still a Soviet-type one.

This article examines the origin of the sijo form based on the traditional Korean music scores such as mandaeyŏp (慢大葉, fifteenth to sixteenth century music) and chinjak 1 (眞勺一, twelfth to fifteenth century music) and estimates that sijo originated in the late fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. It is commonly believed that sijo originated in hyangga or Koryŏ kayo and has been sung and enjoyed since the late Koryŏ dynasty (高麗, 918–1392). However, this common perception lacks empirical evidence. Sijo is a sung form and its music originated from the mandaeyŏp (慢大葉) song, so an examination of its musical background is necessary to provide solid evidence to determine its origin. Some researchers have argued that the first sijo song, mandaeyŏp (慢大葉), originated from chinjak 3, but have not provided specific evidence of the relationship between the two compositions. This research investigates the derivation of mandaeyŏp from chinjak 1 (眞勺一) rather than chinjak 3 (眞勺三) on the basis of clear similarities in form and melody between the two types of composition. Because mandaeyŏp shows such concrete influences from chinjak 1 in Taeak hubo (大樂後譜), a collection of popular songs during King Sejo’s reign (世祖, r. 1455–1468), readers have inferred that the time of derivation of mandaeyŏp is close to that of chinjak 1. In fact, mandaeyŏp scores did not emerge before King Sejo’s reign, during the late fifteenth century, but appeared continuously after his reign. Looking at the problem from a literary perspective, sijo poems initially emerged in munjip (文集), or literati’s private collections, and their poetic form is intricately connected with the mandaeyŏp score. This consistent evidence clearly shows that the sijo form originated and developed under the influence of mandaeyŏp scores around the late fifteenth century.

This article explores the transnational interaction of early modern Korean literature with special attention to the practice of “censorship.” By examining media control by the government authorities in both late Chosŏn Korea and late imperial China, this study aims to examine how the state and policymakers attempted to control the flow of unorthodox books and how the production of books epitomized the cultural values of the day. “What value system prompted the authorities to forbid a certain body of texts?” “What agencies were instrumental in the circulation of books?” By analyzing various travelogues to Beijing (yŏnhaengnok) and notes on poetry (sihwa), this article examines how the transnational interaction between China and Korea and changing textual environments influenced the production of literature in late Chosŏn. Using a specific case study of Yi Tŏng-mu (1741–1793), this article demonstrates that various “informal networks” outside of conventional channels functioned as the actual key drivers of book culture. In particular, a number of “book brokers” in the Qing and Chosŏn facilitated the distribution of forbidden books. My study on these circulatory dynamics reveals how negotiations between the control of media and the distributing of books influenced the textual environments and how the cultural value system shaped the production of literature.

In the academic realm, the title The Journey to the West is generally identified with the Shidetang edition of the 100-chapter novel allegedly written by Wu Cheng’en in the Ming Dynasty at the end of the sixteenth century. In Korea, though, the title is generally associated not with the 100-chapter novel but with various shorter retellings, which tend to highlight the fantastic and adventurous facets of the story. For this reason, many scholars have assumed that Ch’oe Inhun’s Sŏyugi, written between 1966 and 1971, is a parody of these overwhelmingly popular retellings, when in fact the author is parodying the complex 100-chapter novel. Much of the scholarly analysis of Sŏyugi focuses on reading Ch’oe Inhun’s novel against the politically charged background of 1960s Korea. By undertaking a close comparison of Sŏyugi and the 100-chapter novel, I argue that such a spatiotemporal frame is too narrow. Unlike other retellings of The Journey to the West, Sŏyugi does not merely share characters or artistic motivations with the original text, but also makes use of parallels on the structural and stylistic level, and these have generally been neglected in other studies. Sŏyugi demonstrates how ideological debates can be reduced to relative truths through its parody of the many voices and perspectives present in The Journey to the West.