[KS] Chinese influence and communities in Korea

[Kwang On Yoo]

Hello all,

Dr. Hillary's second question addresses the study of the Confucian classics
in Korea.
Henny Savenije (Professsor Lee Hae Kang) mentioned the mean Chinese
landlords of Hendrick Hamel and fellow Dutchmen while they were in Seoul
(1653-1656) and since Dr. Gari Ledyard had contributed to this same thread,
I will quote Hamel's observation of 17 Century Korean education (Chinese
Classics) from Dr. Gari's 1971 book," The Dutch Come to Korea, An Account of
the First Westerners in Korea (1653-1666):

"Education
The Nobility, and all Free-man in general, take great care of the education
of their Children, and put them very young to learn to
read and write, to which that Nation is much addicted. They use no manner of
rigour on their method of teaching, but manage all
by fair means, giving their Scholar an Idea of Learning, and of the Worth of
their Ancestors, and telling them how honourable
those are who by this means have rais'd themselves to a great Fortunes,
which breeds Emulation, and makes them student.
It is wonderful to see how they improve by these means, and how they
expounded the Writings they give them to read, wherein
all their Learning consists. Besides this private Study, there is in every
Town a House where the Nobility, according to ancient Custom,
of which they are very tenacious, take care to assemble the Youth, to make
them read the History of the Country, and the Condemnation of Great Men,
who have been put to death for their Crimes. To perfect them in their
Learning there are Assemblies kept yearly in two or three Towns of each
Province,
where the Scholars appear to get Employment either by the pen or by the
Sword. The Governors of Towns send able Deputies thither to examine them,
and choose the best qualified;
and according to the report made to them , they write to the King. The
greatest Men in the Kingdom are there, where they are in Post or not.
Their Employment are bestow'd on those that are thought worthy, and the King
orders Commissions to be issu'd out. The old Officers,
who till than have only had Ciivil or Military Commissions, at this time use
all their endeavours to be employ'd in both Professions, to increase their
Revenue.
The aspiring to these Honours is often the ruin of Candidates, because of
the present they make, the treats they give, to gain Reputation, and obtain
Votes,
Some there are also that die by the way, and most of them are satisfy'd with
getting the Title of Employ they aim at, thinking it honour enough to have
been design;d
for a post." page 218-9

Regards,

Kwang-On Yoo

2011/7/3 James B. Lewis <jay.lewis at orinst.ox.ac.uk>

> In regards to Japan, I think Prof. Ledyard means the 17th century, not
> the 18th century. Japan in the 17th century experienced a boom of
> Sinophilia. Preceding this and partly stimulating it must have been the
> looted libraries and large numbers of Korean Confucianists abducted
> during the Imjin Waeran.
>
> JB Lewis
> ______________________________
>
> On 04-Jul-11 4:12 AM, gkl1 at columbia.edu wrote:
> >         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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Dr. James B. Lewis
> University Lecturer in Korean History
> Oriental Institute
> University of Oxford
> Pusey Lane
> Oxford,  OX1 2LE
> United Kingdom
> Email: jay.lewis at orinst.ox.ac.uk
> Tel: +44-(0)1865-278200
> http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/html/ea/korean/korean.html
>
> Currently:
> Visiting Researcher
> Room 454 (International Center for Korean Studies)
> Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies
> Seoul National University
> 599 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742
> Republic of Korea
>
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>
>
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