[KS] Hanbando, etc.

[Hyung Pai]

Dear members,
I have found the use of "Hanbando" in Japanese historical literature  
around the 1900s. It seems to be used to contrast the geographical  
and environmental conditions (fudo-p'ungt'o)of Korea as a peninsula  
nation as opposed to Japan which is an island nation (shima kuni).  
These kinds of analogies most frequently appear when the Japanese  
scholars I read ( mostly art historians, archaeologists and  
anthropologists) are attempting to explain  why Korea's art,  
architectural and archaeological remains as compared to that of China  
as a great continent ( Taeryuk kijil) remained small in scale and  
remained stagnant in development after the Silla Period. The Korean  
people and their culture and civilization could not expand  because  
they were geographically circumscribed by more powerful empires, and  
physical barriers such as mountains, seas as a bando nation.
There are also many articles that attempt to compare Japanese racial,  
artistic and architectural achievements in the Nara period to that of  
Ancient Greece ( Esp.  Buddhist sculpture and the Graeco-Buddhist  
Origins of Japanese art) due to their geographic similarities as  
islands that spawned the roots of Western civilization. On the other  
hand, the Korean peninsula in ancient times is often written as  
resembling Italy -again a peninsula that was once great in the past  
but had declined since the Roman empire. There are still many Korean  
scholars today who throw out these general statements regarding such  
environmental/racial deterministic reasons for explaining the rise  
and fall of civilizations.
On May 10, 2006, at 3:45 PM, Stefan Ewing wrote:

> Dear KS list members:
>
> Well, that's two missteps in two days.  I hang my head in shame.   
> As one list member has pointed out offline, "Odong" means exactly  
> what Javier Cha wrote: "our country."  In my haste (again), I  
> scanned too quickly over his list, and misread the character "na o"  
> in "Odong" as "taso^t o," missing the conspicuous "ip ku" radical  
> underneath--and wondering what "Five East" could possibly mean.
>
> I'll think twice before extemporizing like this again.
>
> Thanks,
> Stefan Ewing
>
> ***
>
>> From: "Stefan Ewing" <sa_ewing at hotmail.com>
>> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
>> To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
>> Subject: Re: [KS] A Question about the term hanbando
>> Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 11:31:43 -0700
>>
>> Dear Javier:
>>
>> Thank you for the correction regarding my reading of the Sillok.   
>> (I must look like a fool now!)  I must admit that I am a rank  
>> amateur when it comes to properly reading this material, and was  
>> too hasty in posting without thinking.
>>
>> Anyhow, several of the various terms you presented for Korea have  
>> fairly transparent meanings, but could you or another list member  
>> possibly explain the meaning or origin of "Odong"?
>>
>> Yours,
>> Stefan Ewing
>>
>>> From: "Javier Cha" <javiercha at gmail.com>
>>> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
>>> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
>>> Subject: Re: [KS] A Question about the term hanbando
>>> Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 01:19:19 -0700
>>>
>>> In Choson documents that I usually look at, I don't recall Korea or
>>> the Korean peninsula ever being referred to as Han 韓.  
>>> Instead, I find
>>> the following expressions:
>>>
>>> Odong 吾東 "our Eastern [country]"
>>> Tongguk 東國 "Eastern country"
>>> Ch'onggu 靑邱 "green hill"
>>> Chwahae 左海 "left of Bohai"
>>> Haedong 海東 "east of Bohai"
>>> (I am sure there are a lot more I left out.)
>>>
>>> As for the expression "pando," I don't ever see a reference to
>>> anything like "peninsula" in traditional sources. The Liaodong
>>> peninsula will be simply referred to as "Liaodong" and the Shandong
>>> peninsula as "Shandong." Also, just a word of caution to the online
>>> Shillok entries that make references to "pando" -- those are  
>>> footnotes
>>> added by contemporary scholars.
>>>
>>> Javier
>
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