[KS] Chinese "control" over Choson

[Mark Peterson]

Gari,

I'm always pleased to read your comments on this list.  I am grateful 
for all you have contributed to this thread (and every thread you 
contribute to).

And I've appreciated David's and Adam's experiences with the rock, the 
shrine and the P'ung's.  I wondered when I opened this vein of 
discussion if others had had experiences with the Kapyøng shrine, and 
it's been interesting to read of David's and Adam's experience.

I don't remember seeing a building there when I visited in 1977.  I 
didn't take photographs and am just relying on a much-flawed memory, 
but the building just doesn't surface on my hard drive.  And Gari's 
note:

> One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
> the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official <Munhwa yujOk
> ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
> it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
> "Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
> T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
> 1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
> That's the complete entry.

I wonder if the building is of recent vintage.  Sometime after my visit 
and before David's.

The notation, hy0njae yuji-nUn Opta, is probably reference to the 
building alone -- it couldn't be a reference to the inscription on the 
rock.  Curious though, that they wouldn't note the inscription.  The 
note "nothing remains at present" reinforces my memory of the scene.  
Adam; are you able to find out when the building on the site was built?

Well, this is all minutiae, but the question of Chosøn loyalty to Ming 
is, as Gari says, worth study.

But Gari, why do you think that Song Si-yøl did not write the 
inscription?  Why would the P'ung's have invented that point?  Song was 
still alive at the time.  I don't doubt that you have good reasons for 
such suspicion -- but that's precisely why wonder what your suspicion 
is based on.

Maybe this is beating a dead horse for most of you on the list, but for 
a few of us, this is fascinating.

best regards to all,
Mark




On Mar 21, 2006, at 7:50 PM, gkl1 at columbia.edu wrote:

>    That's quite a yarn that Mark got started, while a discussion on
> how China somehow "controlled" Korea veered off into one of the
> more bizarre episodes in Korean-Chinese cultural relations. The two
> interesting postings by David and Adam add further grist to the
> story of the Kap'yOng site. With Adam, I share some doubts about the
> history spun by the P'ung family of how Kap'yOng's Chojong shrine
> developed. I agree with him that it had, at least originally, more
> to do with a shrine to this particular group of Ming defectors (it
> certainly wasn't the only such group). I also think the P'ungs
> may well have invented Song SiyOl's connection with Kap'yOng's
> Chojong Shrine, or at least greatly exagerated it. I hope Adam's
> research will not only clarify the Kap'yOng situation but also dig
> deep into the very rich vein of pro-Ming sentiment in late ChosOn
> times. It's not every Korean's favorite histopical theme, but it
> is fascinating and was by any criterion a genuine, authentic
> movement that deserves serious study.
>    The P'ung spin gives a big role to Uam Song SiyOl (d. 1689), but
> the shrine usually associated with Song was the Mandongmyo in
> Hwayangdong, his native home about 30km east of Ch'Ongju in
> Ch'ungbuk province-- quite a way from Kap'yOng. His project was
> quite similar to that of many of the famous SOwOn. It started out
> as his personal wish, and as it developed, and as his own
> reputation posthumously grew greater and greater, it morphed into a
> national institution, with court recognition, grants of land and
> slaves, and the governor of Ch'ungch'Ong province (then comprising
> both north and south) being designated as the official celebrant.
> King YOngjo then added to the endowment with twenty more kyOl of
> tax-free land. In the meantime, King Sukchong had already in 1704
> created a parallel institution to enshrine Ming loyalty, the
> Taebodan (Altar of the Great Requital) in the PiwOn in Ch'angdOk
> Palace, which brought the Ming cult into institutionalized ritual in
> Seoul. The TaewOngun abolished the Mandongmyo in 1865, but at the
> initiative of the disciples of HwasO Yi Hangno (who had died in
> 1868) it was restored in 1874 after the TWG retired and Kojong
> assumed full powers. Both the Mandongmyo and the Taebodan were
> abolished for good sometime in the mid 1890s. You will look in vain
> for any mention of either in the vast section devoted to official
> rituals in the revised and expanded MunhOn Pigo of 1908
> (editorially completed in late 1904).
>    I suspect that the main ideological campaign in favor of the
> Kap'yOng cult owed much more to Yi Hangno than to Song SiyOl. The
> P'ung story, as passed on in David's 1991 Korea Journal article,
> has accounts of Song writing letters to various people connected to
> the Kap'yOng group. It is certainly possible; Song wrote thousands
> of letters and was well connected to fervent Confucians throughout
> the Korean countryside. But when the research is done and Song's
> letters thoroughly searched, I would not be surprised if they all
> turned out to connected with the Mandongmyo in Hwayangdon g, and
> that the P'ung story is a 19th century grafting of a local Kap'yOng
> group ancestral cult onto the bigger Mandongmyo/Taebodan nexus.
>    One wonders exactly WHEN those big characters were engraved on
> the rocks in Kapy'Ong. I checked in the official <Munhwa yujOk
> ch'ongnam>, published by the Munhwajae kwalliguk (1977) to see what
> it had to say. In Vol 1, p 258, under item 0317-25-002, we find the
> "Chojongmyo." The description is as follows: "Enshrined are Ming
> T'aejo, Sinjong, and Uijong. It is said to have been erected in
> 1684, but there are presently no remains." (hyOnjae yuji-nUn Opta.)
> That's the complete entry. Given the concrete experiences and
> accounts of Mark and David, this seems quite beyond belief.
> Possibly it refers only to the original shrine building itself,
> while simply ignoring the more recent structures and the inscribed
> rock. If so, could it possibly be a put-down by the munhwajae
> czars?
>    On the same page, there is also item 0317-27-006, the
> "KyOnghyOndan," (Altar of the Esteemed Wise Ones). The entry lists
> twelve enshrined individuals, of which Yi Hangno is one. Only the
> surnames and pen names are given. Checking out the pen names in
> appropriate sources, I couldn't make any other link with the nine
> enshrined wise ones in David's list on p. 128 of his 1991 article.
>    My experience with the <Munhwa yujOk ch'ongnam> has not given me
> great faith in its accuracy. In 1978, after having just acquired a
> copy of this three-volume register, I noticed a stone inscription
> and a shrine in Seoul in honor of Yang Hao, a Chinese general who
> was regarded as a great supporter of Korea by Imjin contemporaries.
> At the indicated site all I could find was another huge excavation
> for a new Seoul skyscraper, so I went to the Munhwajae Kwalliguk
> people and asked where the remains of the site were preserved. They
> had no clue or record. When shown their own entry in the published
> register, they were baffled. Later I found information identical to
> their entry in the <Keij^o fushi>, a history of Seoul officially
> compiled by the Japanese authorities in 1934. Obviously the
> Munhwajae people had copied it without attribution and done no
> further research. (Many years later the stone inscription was
> located and re-erected at MyOngji University. My thanks to Dennis
> Lee, or Yi HyOnsUng, then a student working in Seoul, who tracked
> down for me several inscriptions of this type in Seoul in 2003-04.)
> Incidentally, the earliest sprouts of the gratitude-to-China cult,
> which were already blooming in Seoul before the Imjin War was over,
> are treated in my article "Confucianism and War: The Korean Security
> Crisis of 1598," in <The Journal of Korean Studies>, v. 6, 1988-89.
>    To go back to the original theme of this thread, that security
> crisis grew out of what the king and all factions in the court
> believed to be a Ming betrayal, engineered by an anti-war faction
> in the Ming government. This caused King SOnjo to literally go on
> strike, refusing to give any orders or directives related to the
> war and especially to supply of the front lines. This was
> complemented by a barrage of memorials to Peking, shaming the
> Chinese in Confucian terms for not recognizing Korea's loyalty to
> the alliance. It is that episode that is analyzed in that article.
>    The truth is, Chinese "control" was hardly absolute. While the
> Koreans had to play the hand they were dealt, they repeatedly
> prevailed in diplomacy and argument. This was not just in Imjin
> times. I could cite other examples of how Korea often prevailed and
> convinced China to retreat from an aggressive position. In other
> words, the tributary system did provide for effective
> communication, and Chinese and Korean officialdom spoke from a
> common Confucian vocabulary. In THAT front, the relationship was
> equal, if not at times actually in Korea's favor.
>
> Gari Ledyard
>
> Quoting David Mason <mntnwolf at yahoo.com>:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
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