[KS] Chinese influence and communities in Korea

[gkl1 at columbia.edu]

       The general impression that I have and that seems to be corroborated
by the postings of the last few days, is that, at any given time in  
the traditional periods before the treaties with Japan and Western  
countries, and Yuan Shikai, there were Chinese individuals in Korea  
but no Chinese communities. Chinese permitted to live in Korea would  
have some Korean-assigned status. The same would apply to Jurchens and  
Japanese who lived in Korean communities.

       I've read through a lot of documents connected with tributary  
diplomacy but with the exception of the perennial ginseng smuggling on  
both sides of the northern borders I cannot recall any tributary  
business involving Chinese in Korea. But tributary regulations  
prescribed that any visitors from either side had to be officially  
designated by their respective officials. So, in a way, as far as  
Korea and China were concerned, one might consider the  tributary
system an inhibitant rather than as a facilitator for alien residency.

       It is clear from the writings of Hong Taeyong (1731-1783) that  
there were unofficial Koreans living in a small community in Beijing.  
But also that they
correspondingly had some kind of Chinese-assigned status. In the Qing  
period, most Koreans that one reads of were descended from prisoners  
of the wars of the 1620s and '30s. Such people were incorporated  
within the various Manchu banners.

       Hong describes a small community of such Koreans that he  
encountered as the embassy caravan made their way toward Beijing:  
"Fort Korea (Gaolibao [고려보,高麗堡]) is 20 li from Fengrun 豊潤 [about 190km  
east of Beijing). In front of the village are paddy fields, which in  
spite of their crude and overgrown state are still of Korean style.  
There is nothing else like it inside or outside the Shanhaiguan  
customs barrier [the border checkpoint between Manchu lands and China  
proper]. The people here have dumplings made of short grain rice mixed  
with pieces of jujubes, not unlike our Korean steamed cakes. Twenty or  
thirty years ago, people at this fort would see our embassies and  
really lay out a welcome, offering wine and food and calling  
themselves 'descendants of Korea' (고려자손, 高麗子孫). But more recently, the  
personnel and soldiers of our embassies have forcibly demanded wine  
and food from them, and cheated the people out of various goods.  
Unable to bear the pain, the people became indifferent and stopped  
welcoming them. A member of our embassy asked them what had happened  
to the 'descendants of Korea,' and they all got angry. 'We have Korean  
ancestors,' they said, 'but no Korean descendants.'" [As most of the  
list will be aware, the name of the KoryO dynasty, Gaoli in Chinese,  
was still the common term for "Korea" in China up until the modern era.]

       China's situation was quite different from Korea in that it had  
numerous non-Chinese communities, while traditional Korea's sojourners  
were restricted to Chinese, Japanese, Jurchens, and a very few  
Ryukyuans. China also had two completely different institutions for  
dealing with foreigners--the tributary system and what might be called  
an ethnic minorities system, administered by the Lifanyuan 理蕃院. These  
communities were governed by their own ethnic leaders, who were  
designated--and held accountable--by the Manchu directors of the  
Lifanyuan. The nomads among them could go and come as they pleased
between the homeland and the metropole.

       In addition to the occupations of Chinese in the early modern  
period, Don Clark might have also mentioned builders and craftsmen.  
They were the people who were most responsible for most the  
western-style houses and buildings built in those times. And I believe  
that Chinese engineers and craftsmen were  preferred for the mines  
operated by foreign entrepreneurs. This was certainly the case at the  
Unsan gold mines operated by the notorious American exploiter Leigh  
Hunt.

      There hasn't been much comment on the second question originally  
asked by Hilary--about Confucianism. If she thinks that Confucianism  
was highly regarded by the Japanese, she will find that Korea was  
incomparably the more Confucian site. The Japanese knew of  
Neo-Confucianism from the 13th century through the writings of Chinese  
Buddhist monks, but did not really pay much attention to them until  
the 18th century and onward, when Japanese intellectuals began to  
import the writings of Korean Neo-Confucians in the 18th century and  
into the Meiji period. In Japan, Buddhism and Shinto were the main  
concerns, and Confucianism was only a late concern in spite of much  
interest in Nara and Heian times when it was mainly the Analects and  
Mencius. Essentially, the Japanese respected Confucian ethics but  
rejected the Confucian religion. The most important impact of  
Confucianism in late Japanese history was on educators and the school  
system. So, on the whole, Japan ended up with a balance of respect for  
Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism.

      Of course Korea since the 14th century had had an examination  
system centered on Neo-Confucianism, but especially in ChosOn times  
Buddhism and the Korean equivalent of Shinto--Shamanism--were pushed  
to the edges and ignored. In essence, Traditional Korea ended up as a  
Confucian state and society, with a near-universal respect for  
Confucianism.

      In more recent times the younger Korean generations have  
generally rejected Confucianism along with much other Chinese  
historical influence.
Nowadays Buddhism is thriving and the shamans will give you a  
cathartic dance ceremony and some good advice and one can pay by  
credit card.

Gari Ledyard

Quoting Donald Clark <dclark at trinity.edu>:







> I too remember the Chinese community in the streets of Myongdong in
> the fifties and sixties, and also the small "Chinatown" in Inch'on.
> But I want to call attention to the fact that there were many more
> Chinese resident in the various cities of Korea during the Japanese
> period, into the 1930s.  There were quite a few Chinese merchants in
> Korea, some of them famous suppliers of things to the Western expat
> community.  A Chinese known at "E.D. Steward" (name derived from
> former career as a steward on a  British ship) ran a store that
> supplied exotic Western foodstuffs, with a branch in Pyongyang and
> seasonal branches at the summer beach resorts at Sorai and Wonsan.  A
> Chinese tailor named "Taion" supplied suits and other clothing to the
> Western residents of Pyongyang.  And so forth.  Steward and Taion were
> Chinese residents; there were thousands of temporary Chinese migrant
> workers in Korea who came and went during spring and summer. Some of
> these stayed on and settled down. The Government General's annual
> report for 1930 shows as many as 67,000+ Chinese residents in Korea.
>      Many subscribers to this list know about the Wanpaoshan Incident
> in Manchuria in 1931 and its aftermath in Korea.  The situation in
> Korea was that Korean migrants--some of the people displaced by
> Japanese land grabs back home--became irritants to Chinese in
> Manchuria and there were clashes between them. It was typical for
> Chinese in Korea to suffer various kinds of abuses whenever reports
> came back about these clashes in Manchuria.  I did some work on this,
> relating to eyewitness accounts by missionaries in Korea of violent
> reprisals against Chinese residents by Koreans.  The Wanpaoshan
> Incident itself is better-known than the aftermath in Korea and the
> way the Japanese colonial authorities appear to have manipulated
> Korean anger there as a way of cleansing Korea of its Chinese
> population. The following paragraph is based on work I did for my book
> Living Dangerously in Korea (Eastbridge, 2003), p. 162 ff:
>      In July 1931, there was a climactic confrontation between Korean
> farmers in northern Manchuria and local Chinese over water rights and
> the building of an irrigation ditch near the town of Wanpaoshan
> [Korean: Manposan] in the vicinity of Changchun. The fields' owners
> had attacked Koreans digging the ditch across some neighboring fields
> without permission.  It seemed that Japanese intentionally exaggerated
> reports of the incident reaching Korea in an attempt to inflame the
> Koreans.  The news touched off a wave of reprisals against Chinese
> people and neighborhoods in towns within Korea.  In Pyongyang, a
> Korean mob laid waste the Chinese business quarter, burning and
> looting the shops and covering the street with Chinese belongings.
> Chinese truck farmers working little patches of land on the edges of
> the city were set upon and actually killed by rioters.  My grandfather
> Charles Allen Clark wrote in his diary about seeing Chinese houses set
> on fire by angry Koreans.  The Chinese manager of Taion's (the tailor)
> lost family members in the fracas and shortly left Korea.  The Taion
> store was stripped and bolts of Taion's best cloth were strung on
> telephone wires and lampposts.
>      A summary article in the Seoul Press on July 10, 1931 reported
> that an estimated 4,000 Chinese had fled across the Yalu into
> Manchuria during the preceding week, and that a thousand more had left
> Inch'on by ship. Accounts through the remainder of the year show a
> continual exodus of thousands of Chinese residents from Korea to China
> by rail and ship.
>      An interesting aspect of this is the way the Japanese manipulated
> the situation.  I always thought it was ironic that they seemed to
> support the Korean migrants' claims in Manchuria against the Chinese,
> and that they stood by as Korean rioters wrought violence on Chinese
> residents in Korea--at least according to missionary accounts.  The
> missionaries in Pyongyang employed Chinese as gardeners and were
> mainly sympathetic to their plight.
>      An elaborate account of the Wanpaoshan Incident and its aftermath
> in Korea is in the U.S. Consular archives for Seoul, in the National
> Archives.  I used this along with newspaper accounts and missionary
> archives to reconstruct the story of what happened inside Korea after
> Wanpaoshan.
> Don
> --
> Donald N. Clark, Ph.D.
> Murchison Professor of History and
>     Co-director of East Asian Studies at Trinity (EAST)
> Trinity University, One Trinity Place,  San Antonio, TX 78212 USA
> +1 (210) 999-7629;  Fax +1 (210) 999-8334
> http://www.trinity.edu/departments/history/html/faculty/donald_clark.htm
>
>
>