[KS] Yu Kilchun

Sat May 13 11:19:24 EDT 2006

If we are to continue to explore an interesting issue of how Poland was 
(mis)understood by the Korean intellectuals in the beginning of the 20th 
C. - the picture "Korean voices" paint, is indeed fascinating. Before 
1910, the books like the one by Shibue twice translated by Korea's 
"enlightenment thinkers", mostly explained Poland's demise by the 
"internal wrangling", "the lack of unity among the rulers and between 
the rulers and the ruled"  - and that was perfectly acceptable for a 
collectivist Social Darwinist mindset, which viewed elimination of the 
weak by the strong as a cosmic law, and all sorts of internal 
contradictions and struggles - as a "threat to the state survival". In 
fact, this imperialist "blame the victim" paradigm was applied by 
Korea's "modernity pioneers" to other places as well - in his seminal 
"HUnghaksOl" (Treatise on how to develop the learning), Pak Unsik, for 
example, explained the colonization of India as a consequence of its 
"failure to reform its customs", and semi-colonial conditions in Persia 
- as a consequence of "brutal Muslim customs, which led to the 
degradation of the humanities". Interestingly, the "success" of Prussia 
in crushing France in 1870-71 was explained by the universal literacy of 
its conscript army, which greatly improved its skills, and by the 
"patriotic self-sacrificial spirit" of the Prussian officers. This sort 
of logic was very good for those, who, unlike Pak Unsik, himself, were 
going to collaborate with the Japanese colonizers - if Korea's demise 
was also grounded in its "accumulated evils and internal weaknesses", 
then, collaboration could look almost inescapable. But in the 1920s, 
after Poland did achieve what Korean nationalists were dreaming of, and 
became an independent nation-state, the tone changed - and in the first 
issue of Sin Ch'aeho's journal, <Ch'On'go> (1921), you have an article 
entitled "P'aran Kwangbok chi yaksa" (A Brief history of Polish 
liberation), which explains "Polish success" - in terms of patriotism, 
educational achievements, and development of local democracy. Poland was 
indeed a popular topic for Korea's newspapers and journals in the 
1920-30s - <Quo vadis> being even serialized in <Maeil Sinpo>.

Vladimir (Pak Noja)

On 10.05.2006 05:13, gkl1 at columbia.edu wrote:
>    The current discussion on Neo-Darwinism, etc., etc. is
> interesting, indeed fascinating and obviously very well informed.
> We can always benefit from such a spirited examination of some of
> the major concepts and ideas of the last century and a half, and I
> sure have. But what I'm waiting for is some kind of a Korean voice
> from the 1890s and 1900s and some focusing on what those ideas
> meant for Korean intellectuals of that time-- some reference to
> materials such as those used by Andre Schmid in his great book on
> that period that would Koreanize the discussion for the Korea List.
> Apart from some early remarks by Vladimir, there's been pretty much
> nothing.
>    In the original question, we were asked about the title and date
> of the book on Polish history by Yu Kilchun, whose name in the
> subject heading still looms, though limply, to identify the thread
> we started with. If there is anyone out there who has read that
> book or knows anything about it, I'd love to hear more about it.
>    We learned from Vladimir that the book was really a translation
> of 1899 by Yu, not his original work. In that regard I was
> interested to see in a Korean bibliography that the author of
> <P'aran'guk mallyOn chOnsa> was a Japanese named Shibue Yasu (the
> given name looks incomplete but the surname--Kor. pron. Sapkang--is
> all there), and that the book was published in Seoul. That makes it
> look like the Japanese writer (was he too a translator, of a
> European work?) was in Seoul, which sounds odd; but more likely
> this is Yu's Korean translation of Shibue's work (or translation).
> My limited home library could not yield anything on Shibue.
>    Shibue's title translates as "History of the Wars over Poland in
> its Last Years." Yu's translation is sometimes cited using
> <soemang> rather than <mallyOn> which would change my englishing to
> "...in its Decline and Fall." (Did somebody translate Gibbon too?)
> 
> Gari Ledyard
> 
> 
> 
> Quoting Andrzej Wadas <andrzejwadas at yahoo.co.uk>:
> 
> 
>>Dear List Members,
>>
>>I wonder what was the korean title and the year of
>>publishing  of Yu Kilchun "A history of Poland". I
>>would be greatful for any replies.
>>
>>Sincerely
>>
>>Andrzej Wadas
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>___________________________________________________________
>>Switch an email account to Yahoo! Mail, you could win FIFA World
>>Cup tickets. http://uk.mail.yahoo.com
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>>
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Vladimir Tikhonov,
Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages,
Faculty of Humanities,
University of Oslo,
P.b. 1010, Blindern, 0315, Oslo, Norway.
Fax: 47-22854828; Tel: 47-22857118
Personal web page: http://folk.uio.no/vladimit/
 
http://www.geocities.com/volodyatikhonov/volodyatikhonov.html
Electronic classrooms: East Asian/Korean Society and Politics:
                        http://folk.uio.no/vladimit/eastasianstudies.htm
                        http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2002/main.html
                        East Asian/Korean Religion and Philosophy:
 
http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2003/classroom.html