[KS] Re: Tsushima/Taema-do

Fri Oct 9 22:09:20 EDT 1998

Dear Professor Ledyard,

After reading of about 650 documents about Tsushima in "Sillok", from
1392 to 1494, I recently got some ideas on the relationship between
ChosOn and Tsushima. Topics in which you are also interested are
scketched ed as follow:

A. on the question of Tsushima Island and national territoriality

1. It was King T'aejong who mentioned that Tsushima once belonged to
Korea during an expedition to the island, but without any convincing
historical document. (1419 Sejong 1(year)/6(month)/9(day) Imo: Sillok,
2:321)
2. King T'aejong insisted again that the island was a part of Silla's
teritory. But he failed to cite any historical record. (1419 Sejong
1/7/17 KyOngsin: Sillok, 2:326)
3. The envoy and the ruler of Tsushima rejected the T'aejong's opinion.
(1421 Sejong 3/4/6 Musul and 7 Kihae: Sillok, 2:428)
4. Korean authority  including King Sejong mentioned without concrete
evidence that the island was pastureground of horses. (1421 Sejong 3/4/7
Kihae: sillok, 2:428; 1447 Sejong 29/5/26 PyOngjin: Sillok, 5:24)
5. Korean high ranking officials such as Yu Uison accepted that the
island was Japanese territory. The island was additionally marked in the
Japanese map. (1438 Sejong 20/2/19 Kyeyu: Sillok, 4:131)
6. King Sejong guessed that Tsushima was the same as Tuji Island where a
certain Kim Chunggon [KoryO Dynasty] owned slaves. (1441 Sejong 23/11/21
Kabin: Sillok, 4:370)
7. Some Korean officials influenced by the King's opinion said that the
island turned into the Japanes hands during the late KoryO Dynasty. They
could not, however, prove their theory based on historical
documents.(1441 Sejong 23/11/22 Ulmyo: Sillok, 4:370)
8. Several rulers of Japanese islands, rivals of Tsushima's ruler,
mentioned that Tsushima was originally Korean territory. But this cannot
be proved, because of lack of historical document. (1444 Sejong 26/4/30:
Sillok, 4:552) 

Based on these facts, I am in the opinion that the theories of Korean
authority from 15th century are not convincing. Additionally, I will
note that no single sentence which help us in the territorial question
of Tsushima was found by me in Samguk Sagi and Samguk yusa. Because
KoryOsa was compiled in the very 15th century, I do not want to examine
it for this purpose.

B. on the Tsushima's political position

1. Korean Kings including both of above mentioned King T'aejong and
Sejong treated the rulers of Tsushima not as Korean official but as
Chief of a Japanese island. Japanese sovereignty of the island was never
questioned by Korean authority. According to Sillok, the envoy of
Tsushima was "Envoy from Tsushima Island of Japan". (for instance, 1397
T'aejo 6/5/6 ChOngsa: Sillok, 1:106; 1474 SOngjong 5/10/6 Muja: Sillok,
9:151)
2. None of Korean officials was sent to the island to administrate the
inhavitants of the island, even after a couple of successful expeditions
to the island. There was no single Japanese ruler or t'aesu of the
island was appointed as Korean Govonor of the island. In addition, the
Japanese ruler of the island did not collect any kind of tax for Korean
government. What the rulers gave to the Korean kings were merely
tribute.
3. After getting of tribute from Tsushima, the korean kings gave gifts
to the Japanese island. The value of the gifts exceeded the tribute.
Hence, there were even unauthorized Japanese envoys or merchants from
the island. (1439 Sejong 21/4/18 Ulmi: Sillok, 4:204)

These historical facts make clear, in my view, that Tsushima was only a
Korean tributary during the early ChosOn period, together with Jurchen
tribes and Japanese rulers of other small islands.

C. On assignment of Korean post to the persons from/of Tsushima

1. Envoys from Tsushima got often Korean ranks and posts, such as Manho
(Military officer) and Hogun (a kind of general). It dose not mean that
such Japanese became Korean officials, in the narrow sense, because they
did not have concrete tasks. The titles had only a simbolic meaning.
(1397 T'aejo 6/5/6 ChOngsa: Sillok, 1:106)
2. Military posts were also given to relatives of the Tsushima's ruler
and members of powerful family on the island. In this case, the posts
were honorable ones, too. Among these Japanese elite, there were lots of
people who had never met the Korean King and recieved their salary.
(1494 SOngjong 25/9/18 Kymyo: Sillok, 12:585; 1479 SOngjong 19/8/21:
Sillok, 10:46)
3. There were, however, some Japanese who gained Korean nationality and
served as military officers in the Korean government. Many of them
returned to their home after retirement. 

Regarding these facts, we can conclude that the assignment of Korean
post has nothing to do with direct governing of island by Korean
authority. It was, as we already know from other Chinese historical
records, old custom in the tributary system in East asia.

Sincerely,

Paik Sungjong
----------------------------
Dr sungjong Paik
Seminar fuer Sinologie und Koreanistik
der Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstr. 133
D-72074 Tuebingen/Germany
e-Mail: sungjong.paik at uni-tuebingen.de

----------------------------
Gari Keith Ledyard wrote:
> 
> Dear Ken,
>         Thanks for your response to my posting on Tsushima.  It is not
> news that in Korea there were and are different discourses on Tsushima.  I
> wonder if you could identify some of the "multiple"  discourses "current
> in ChosOn" on the subject of Tsushima's territoriality, and illustrate
> them with some names and typical texts, whether oral or written, whether
> transmitted or only reported.  I'm really interested in checking some of
> these things out.
>         I cited some Korean historical texts on Tsushima and identified
> some consistency in them on the question of Tsushima Island and national
> territoriality.  Within my human limits I did not find other texts of
> comparable date or interpretability for the Three Kingdoms, Silla, and
> KoryO periods.  I certainly would welcome any others that might be
> pointed out to me.  I freely concede that for the early decades of ChosOn
> history I would expect to find some asserting Korean possession of the
> territory of Tsushima at some time in past.  I concentrated on T'aejong's
> statement because it had already come up in the postings and because, of
> all of ChosOn's early kings (say, up through SOngjong) he seems to have
> been more of a nationalist than the others.
>         Your response asserts that "...the ChosOn government treated the
> island as Korean territory, at least during the first 200 years."  You do
> not cite any evidence for this view, but I cited some against it which you
> didn't mention or criticize.  Sin Sukchu, as one of the negotiators of the
> 1443 trade agreement and structure for diplomatic relations with Tsushima
> and Japan, certainly represented the ChosOn government.  As director
> of the Board of Rites during the Sejo years, he presided over
> Japan/Tsushima relations in the name of that government.  That government
> officially printed and once or twice reprinted his book <Haedong cheguk
> ki>, which considers Tsushima a part of Japan and provides explicit
> cartographic representations of that fact.  I'm curious how you reconcile
> that with your assertion.
>         You say: "On several occasions Korean kings assigned a domestic
> post to officials being sent to the island."  Without knowing which
> particular domestic post you refer to, I'm not sure what posts you include
> and exclude from that category.  But sure, people with a post like the
> magistrate of Tongnae (Tongnae pusa), along with his superior the governor
> of KyOngsang province (surely domestic posts), are the designated
> authorities for dealing on the spot with Tsushima.  If these are the
> domestic officials you speak of, it is just that they are the closest
> <tangsang> officials available and have been given that responsibility. In
> the same way, under the tributary system the governor of Liaodong had pro
> tempore authority for dealing with Korea and officially and frequently
> communicated with the Korean Board of Rites or sent his subordinates on
> missions in Korea.  Likewise the governor of Guangdong dealt with the
> British in the 19th century as China's official spokesman and executive.
> Koreans holding domestic posts frequently went as ambassadors and in other
> official capacities to Ming and Qing, but of course that fact had nothing
> to do with Chinese territoriality.  In the absence of particulars on what
> you mean by domestic posts in connection with Korea/Tsaushima affairs, I'm
> just not sure how to take your statement.  I'd be happy to see some
> expansion on this point.
>         In trying to imagine for myself some serious grounds on which the
> ChosOn government might consider Tsushima territory its own, the only
> thing I could think of was the tributary system.  There are some ways one
> could consider Tsushima a tributary, or at least some kind of a
> dependency, of Korea.  One could cite in support of that argument that the
> king of Korea granted a seal to the daimyo^ of Tsushima that in effect
> licensed his trade with Korea through three designated ports (Tongnae,
> Ulsan, Ungch'On), that for protocol purposes the assistant director of the
> Board of Rites was equal in status to the daimyo^ (implying that all
> Korean officials of higher rank and of course the king himself were the
> daimy^o's superiors), and that Korean military authorities had control
> over who went into and out of the Japanese compound in Tongnae.
>         This model would closely parallel Chinese arrangements with Korea.
> My view, though, is that Tsushima was not a Korean tributary, because its
> relationship with the island also provided a relationship with Japan
> proper, and in fact the latter was a particular goal of both the KoryO and
> ChosOn governments.  Remember that the normalization of 1443 was
> negotiated in Japan with the Ashikaga shogunate, not on Tsushima with the
> daimyo^, although he was a party on the Japan side.
>         But beyond that, I don't believe that tributary status has
> anything to do with territory, at least as that system was practiced in
> East Asia in the last thousand years.  Tributary relations between China
> and Korea provide the structure of a superior/inferior relationship
> between the Chinese and Korean monarchs, certain ritual obligations (New
> Year's bows in the superior's capital, mutual notification of deaths and
> changes of status within the two ruling families, etc.), acceptance of the
> superior's calendar including year designations, tribute from inferior to
> superior, superior's providing of diplomatic and living expenses within
> China, and access by the inferior (within specified conditions) to the
> markets of the superior.  In 1592, Korea claimed that that tributary
> status required the Chinese emperor to send troops to help defend Korea
> against the Japanese, and the Chinese agreed and sent the troops.  (On the
> other hand, if they had decided not to, as many Chinese officials at the
> time urged, Korea would have had no appeal and would have been out of
> luck.)  But none of this meant, for instance, that Korea lost its
> <<territorial>> rights.  Koreans could and did refuse entry to Chinese
> diplomats in cases where they had not followed specific tributary
> procedures.  Korean law and Korean law alone applied on Korean territory.
> Korea determined its own royal succession without China's approval in
> advance.  Korea made its own political decisions independently.  Korea
> administered every square inch of its territory and China could not
> meddle.  On Korean territory, Korea could and regularly did restrict the
> movements of Chinese officials including the ambassador.
>         I go into this kind of detail simply to emphasize that mere
> tributary status, which might be claimed or implied by those who assert
> some kind of Korean sovereignty over Tsushima in the first 200 years of
> the ChosOn dynasty (and for that matter even after), does not mean
> territorial possession.  A tributary relationship is one between separate
> and distinct countries, each with its own territory.  It specifically
> excludes jurisdiction of the territory of the tributary state.  Chinese
> administrators, judges and prosecutors, tax collectors, etc.,
> do not operate there.  Chinese law is not in effect there.  No Chinese can
> go there but by the agreed joint understanding of the two governments.
> Even during the Imjin Wars of the 1590s, when Chinese generals often
> spurned diplomatic niceties, there were limits on what Chinese military
> authorities could do.  When the tributary relationship was collapsing
> during the years after the Kanghwa treaty and specifically during the Yuan
> Shikai interlude from 1885 to 1894, some of these principles were
> compromised or violated by the Chinese, but that was the end of the system
> anyway.
>         If you think that the "ChosOn government treated the island as
> Korean territory," I would welcome a discussion of the details of this
> treatment, specifically, how that treatment concretely operated on
> Tsushima, and what is the definition of "territory" for purposes of this
> discussion.
>         Also, I would like to hear from you or anyone on the details of
> the "Tsushima is (was) ours" discourse?  Who are its heroes and villains?
> In what ideology or theoretical construct is it embedded?  What classes or
> groups constructed these concepts and practiced this discourse, in order
> to advance what interests?  What texts or narratives, oral or written,
> represent this discourse?  When does this discourse make its first
> historical appearance?
> 
>                         *       *       *
>         In regard to your question about the <KoryO sa> on CD-ROM, I see
> that another list member has already given you the information on
> ordering, etc.
>         For those who rely on more traditional versions of the text, and
> who are accustomed to dealing with it in its original language and not
> through a translation, there is an extremely thorough index of all the
> names, terms, and institutions in the <KoryO sa>.  It is entitled <KoryO
> sa saegin>, compiled by the Tongbanghak yOn'guso (YOnse University) under
> the supervision of Paek Nakchun, and published by YOnse University Press
> in 1961.  It is beautifully printed and bound, 1,094 pages in length, and
> its listings deliver you to the specific line where the name or term
> appears in the YOnhUi University photolithographic reprint of the original
> ChosOn movable type printing (1454?).  The CD-ROM will certainly have its
> attractions, but with this index and the three volumes of the photolitho-
> graphic reprint you have access in seconds, without even booting up, to
> the original text in Chinese.  For many purposes this will still be
> superior to the CD-ROM version.  Of course, it is admitted that it is not
> that easy to find a copy of this index these days.  But major east Asian
> research libraries should have it.  Perhaps an inquiry to the Tongbanghak
> yOn'guso at Yonsei would yield more up to date information.
>         The most interesting thing about this new CD-ROM version of the
> <KoryO sa> is that the translation was done in the DPRK, but it is being
> published in Seoul by a private publisher.  Thus it's kind of a first in
> DPRK/ROK cultural cooperation.  I hope that this is only the beginning of
> such joint efforts.  When you think that both the DPRK and the ROK
> separately translated the entire sillok (over 115,000 pages in the
> original printings, with between three and four hundred Chinese characters
> per page), the mind boggles at the needlessly duplicated effort and
> expense.  The ROK's publication of its translation of the sillok on CD-ROM
> was a great milestone in Korean history and historiogreaphy, but for all
> practical purposes the DPRK effort has been rendered worthless.
> 
> Gari Ledyard
> 
> On Sun, 4 Oct 1998, Kenneth R. Robinson wrote:
> >
> >         Thanks to Professor Lewis and Professor Ledyard for their detailed
> > and informative comments about Tsushima.  If I may add a footnote, the
> > ChosOn government treated the island as Korean territory, at least during
> > the first 200 years.  On several occasions Korean kings assigned a domestic
> > post to officials being sent to the island.  The first instance occurred
> > before the retired king T'aejong made his comments in 1419.  Korean elites
> > often repeated this Korean history of the island.  Multiple discourses on
> > Taema-do/Tsushima were current in ChosOn, and a Japanese history of
> > Tsushima was but one history of the island.
> >
> >         On a different note, several months ago someone asked for
> > information about a CD-ROM version of the KoryO sa.  I don't recall seeing
> > a reply, but I may have overlooked it.  Is there any information available?
> >
> >
> > Ken Robinson
> >

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