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This article explores the widowed mother figures in So Hyŏnsŏng rok 蘇賢聖錄 (The Record of So Hyŏnsŏng), particularly how a widowed mother successfully distinguishes herself as the head of the household through her relationship with her son. The story deals with the aspirations of mothers of elite yangban families who dream of achieving power despite the social limitations placed upon them. The Record presents the ideal mother–son relationship as both close and hierarchical. The closeness of their relationship enables the mother and son to achieve emotional unity when the boy is young. However, by demonstrating that she is more capable and has better judgment than her son, the mother ensures that their relationship remains hierarchical, enabling her to retain a superior position in the relationship into the boy’s adulthood. The story portrays the complicated relationship between a controlling mother and submissive son in a positive light, despite it being in sharp contrast to the compassionate mother and heroic son of earlier literary works. This article argues that Madame Yang, the widowed mother and main protagonist, reflects both the anxiety and aspirations of contemporaneous Korean women facing the major social changes of the 17th century.

The tragic death of Crown Prince Sado in a rice chest in 1762 has been the subject of much discussion, not only in the academic world but also in South Korean popular culture. In contrast to historical data that suggest that Sado was mentally ill and a violent person whose death was necessary to safeguard the position of the Yi royal house, popular culture has presented him in a more sympathetic light as a victim, blaming political power struggles for his alienation from his father King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–76) and his eventual death. This article explores this glorification of Crown Prince Sado in South Korean popular culture. Cases in point are a wall-tile painting in downtown Seoul, which portrays the procession of King Chŏngjo to the grave of Prince Sado in 1795, the TV series Pimil ŭi mun (Secret Door, 2014), the film Sado (The Throne, 2015), and examples from pseudohistory that apply the Sado narrative to portray Korean history as an ongoing battle between good (us) and evil (them). To understand the narratological motivation behind the glorification of Sado, the article also makes use of historical sources such as Hanjungnok 閑中錄 (Records written in silence), the memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng, and Hyŏllyungwŏn chi 顯隆園志 (Hyŏllyung tomb epitaph), the epitaph King Chŏngjo wrote for this father. We argue that, for the public, Sado has become the epitome of a tragic hero who fell victim to the forces of the establishment.

The Confucian concept of shu (恕) (reciprocity) is a leitmotif which is continuously interpreted and reinterpreted in response to changing circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to determine the features of shu in t he Analects (Lunyu 論語) and the Great Learning (Daxue 大學), as interpreted by Chŏng Yagyong 丁若鏞 (1762-1836), widely regarded as one of the greatest and most original Korean thinkers, by comparing his interpretations with those of Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), whose brand of Neo-Confucianism in Chosŏn constituted an almost unassailable orthodoxy. Both placed great emphasis on shu, but there are important differences in their interpretations. This paper thus contributes to an understanding of the dynamics of the Confucian concept of shu in East Asia.

This article explores the historical and educational background of Takahashi Toru (1868–1967), a pioneering scholar in the history of Chosŏn Confucianism. Previous research on Takahashi’s colonial historiography has focused mainly on his personal characteristics, whereas this article looks at the period in his life which most influenced his worldview and subsequent scholarship. To do this, it focuses on two articles he published in the year he graduated from the Department of Chinese Studies at Tokyo Imperial University. By looking at the professors who influenced him and their scholarly orientations, it is possible to identify the origins of his intellectual outlook. Shigeno Yasutsugu, a textual critic, taught him positivistic source critique, while Ludwig Riess, a Rankean, inspired Takahashi’s tendency to view nations as the main actors in history and to describe them in terms of national characteristics. In addition, Inoue Tetsujiro, an Orientalist scholar, implanted in Takahashi his own understanding of the history of Chinese philosophy. This viewpoint prioritizes philosophy over Chineses exegesis, and endorses the superiority of socially engaged Confucianism. This article shows that Takahashi’s later view that “Zhuzixue is monotonous" is a result of his acceptance of Inoue’s Orientalist approach to Chinese philosophy. I argue that the scholarly framework on the history of philosophy presented in the two Takahashi articles was the foundation for this later research on the history of Chosŏn Confucianism. He adopted a positivistic research approach based on the preconception that Zhuzixue was simplistic. At the same time, he endeavored to uncover distinctive national characteristics of the Chosŏn people.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable characteristics of the work of Ch’ae Mansik is his capacity for satire within a deeply traumatic historical context. Although he is known as a satirist, academic studies have approached his categorization from different perspectives. Given the significance of satire in identifying Ch'ae's legacy, this article aims to provide a classification of his works in which satire plays a crucial role. In addition, through literary analysis, it proposes a theory concerning the archetypal character often found in his satirical novels. The article focuses on works that depict the "chameleon"–an opportunist archetype willing to do anything and disregard ethical considerations in order to attain material wealth and social acceptance. Furthermore, it explores the contrasting ways in which this archetype differs from the satirical portrayals of intellectuals found in some of his works from the 1930s. In so doing, this study seeks to elucidate how a focus on the chameleon archetype can contribute to a better understanding of literary legacy of Ch’ae Mansik.

The paper examines the formative phase of Pyongyang’s diplomacy toward Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania through the lenses of North Korean propaganda. It points out that the DPRK leaders' initial views of this distant and little-known region were heavily shaped by the information transmitted by their Soviet bloc allies, and they showed less interest in the Maghreb than East Germany and North Vietnam. When they did develop a more distinctive attitude, the peculiar features of their propaganda narratives often indicated a narrower and less empathetic perspective than East Germany’s. Subsequent North Korean claims stressing the DPRK's historically rooted solidarity with other colonial and post-colonial countries were partially contradicted by Pyongyang’s own propaganda, whose wide swings between vocal solidarity and deafening silence revealed the conditional and selective nature of North Korean solidarity. The prolonged news blackouts imposed upon Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania implied that the DPRK leaders attributed no intrinsic news value to the events in the Maghreb, and even to the very existence of these nations, unless they could be presented in such a way that buttressed Pyongyang’s narratives of militant anti-imperialist struggle. That is, the main thrust of North Korea’s solidarity was directed toward certain specific actions of the Maghreb countries, rather than toward the countries as such. The contrast between Pyongyang’s strong preference for armed struggle and its limited ability to provide economic assistance played a major role in that the DPRK managed to overtake East Germany in Algeria, but lagged behind it in Morocco and Tunisia.