[KS] Chinese "control" over Choson

[David Mason]

Greetings to everyone.  Thanks to Mark Peterson for 
bringing up the ceremonies to the Ming held in rural
northern Gapyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do -- for it brings 
up melancholy but pleasant old memories for me.

Yes there is a large well-kept traditional wooden 
walled shrine there, and three Emperors of the Ming 
Dynasty are enshrined within.  The three were selected
because they helped Korea militarily against invasions
by Manchus and Japanese (or in the case of the third,
the last Ming Emperor, he was viewed as having sincerely
tried to help although it proved fruitless).

The ceremonies expressing gratitude to these three and
proclaiming the legitimacy & righteousness of the Ming
(and implicitly protesting any pro-Ching feelings or
actions by successive Korean leaders) were started by
the great philosopher U-am Song Shi-yeol, and continued
by generation after generation of his disciples and 
their disciples.  They were conducted secretly during 
the Japanese occupation, and continue to the present day.
Although the shrine/ceremony and the association that 
maintain them are private, I believe that Gapyeong
recognizes it as a local cultural asset of some sort.

The shrine is near the large "Da Ming" [Dae Myeong] 
characters carved on a /bawi/ that Mark visited -- I
seem to recall that those characters were written as
calligraphy-on-paper by U-am Song Shi-yeol himself, 
then that paper was brought to that site by one of 
his disciples and used as a model to carved those 
characters on the outstanding boulder, per U-am's 
instructions.  The shrine was built later on.

I attended the ceremonies several times from the end 
of the eighties through the early nineties, got to know
the six remaining scholars who performed them (Mr. Pung,
Kim "Song Heon" and the others).  They were fascinating,
all more than 70, the last that remained of a 300+-year
unbroken teacher-disciple line from U-am.  Long white 
robes & long white beards, white hair in topknots under
/kat/.  They had spent their entire lives doing Neo-
Confucian scholarship and rituals taught and performed 
in the traditional style, knew everything in the old
Chinese characters, could do the old styles of poetry 
in calligraphy, etc -- didn't know much about the modern
world and didn't seem to care -- just as the modern 
world had no use for their knowledge and wisdom.
Talking with them was a rare authentic glimpse into 
the mentality of the late Joseon Dynasty...

Kind of sadly comic that in the 1990s this small 
brotherhood was still vehemently proclaiming the Ming 
as the legitimate government of China and center of 
the political universe, reminding Koreans to express 
thanks to them and denouncing the Manchus as barbarians
who did not follow the Principles.  They were so sincere
about it, however, that I felt a great Nobility in their
hopeless but continuing efforts.

They also denounced Communists, and thanked the United 
States for saving half of Korea from them -- drawing an
obvious parallel from the Ming to the USA, saying these
are the only two foreign nations that ever "sincerely"
assisted Korea (they included gratitude to the 14 other
allied Korean war countries under the American banner),
their sole gesture to modernity I guess.

Not one of them had a real official disciple -- they 
knew they were the End Of The Line and were terribly
tragically sad about that, felt guilty for having 
"failed"; I really felt bad for them.  Every year when
I came to the ceremony one more of their brotherhood 
had died.  By the mid-nineties they were all gone; the
rituals were being continued by their sons or nephews,
regular modern short-haired shaven Korean guys in 
business-suits -- it wasn't authentic or interesting 
anymore so I stopped attending.

In 1991 this became my first-ever academic publication
in a journal, "The Sam-hwangje Baehyang, Korea's link
to China's Ming Dynasty" in Korea UNESCO's _Korea 
Journal_, Autumn 1991 edition (30th anniversary issue).
I refer anyone further interested in this topic to that
article -- it includes four photos of the ceremony.

Mr. Pung was very kind in letting me look at their 
extensive collection of old documents, translate some
relevant passages.  After my publication he presented 
me with a plaque done in classical Hanja with his own
calligraphy, thanking me for being the first scholar 
(or even journalist) to ever pay serious attention to 
their group and ceremony, publicize it -- they very 
much believed in what they were doing, were still 
quite proud of it -- but frustrated that no Korean 
professors or any other Koreans had ever bothered to
study / write about them.  I still display that plaque
in my office...


David A. Mason  
http://san-shin.org

Professor of Korean Tourism, KyungHee University
Office #710,  phone 02-961-0852
Mobile Ph: 011-9743-9753   home: 02-442-7391