The GREAT ENTERPRISE

Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea

By HENRY H. EM

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5357-7

Contents

Acknowledgments……………………………………………………ixIntroduction………………………………………………………1PART I. Sovereignty………………………………………………..1. Sovereignty and Imperialism………………………………………212. Imperialism and Nationalism………………………………………53PART II. History Writing……………………………………………3. Nationalizing Korea’s Past……………………………………….874. Universalizing Korea’s Past………………………………………1145. Divided Sovereignty and South Korean Historiography…………………138Appendix 1. Names and Vital Dates……………………………………161Appendix 2. Character List………………………………………….165Notes…………………………………………………………….171Bibliography………………………………………………………229Index…………………………………………………………….247

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

SOVEREIGNTY AND IMPERIALISM

A historically meaningful imperialism is not only or essentially military andmaritime panoply, not only economic and financial prosperity, but, also,this ability to determine in and of itself the content of political and legalconcepts…. A nation is conquered first when it acquiesces to a foreignvocabulary, a foreign concept of law, especially international law.—CARL SCHMITT, lecture, 1933

On January 7, 1895, King Kojong, accompanied by Queen Min, CrownPrince Yi Ch’ok, the Taewon’gun (regent), royal princes, cabinet ministers,vice ministers, and hundreds of officials, musicians, dancers, and attendants,was at the chongmyo, the Choson dynasty’s Royal Ancestral Temple.Performing the grand sacrificial rite at the Royal Ancestral Temple as adirect male descendant of Yi Song-gye, the dynastic founder (King T’aejo),King Kojong stood before the spirit chambers of Choson dynasty kings andtheir queens as the archetypal filial son, Choson Korea’s supreme sacerdotalauthority, and as its monarch, the carrier of the dynastic mission andthe bearer of Heaven’s mandate (ch’onmyong). In 1895 the nineteen spiritchambers in the Main Hall held the spirit tablets of the major Choson dynastykings and their queens, starting with the spirit tablet of the dynasticfounder and his queen in the westernmost chamber, with descendingkings and queens in sequence toward the eastern end. As he performedthe great offerings, King Kojong swore to preserve the dynasty that his ancestorshad founded and sustained for 503 years. Reading the Oath “in thepresence of the Spirits of Our Ancestors in Heaven,” Kojong vowed, “Wewill no longer lean upon another state [t’abang] but will lay broad the des tinyof the nation [kukbo: destiny of the state], restore prosperity, build upthe happiness of Our people, and thus secure Our autonomy and independence[chaju tongnip].”

We declare publicly to all the Imperial Ancestors that We, your humble descendant,have received and guarded the mighty heritage of Our Ancestors….But now in our generation, the times are greatly changed…. A neighboringPower and the unanimous judgment of all our officers unite in affirming thatonly as an independent ruler can We make our country strong. How can Weyour humble descendant, having received the spirit of the times from Heaven,refuse to conform and thus fail to preserve the heritage bestowed by Our Ancestors?… From this time forth We will no longer lean upon another statebut will lay broad the destiny of the nation, restore prosperity, build up thehappiness of Our people and thus secure Our independence…. Therefore,We, Your humble descendant, do now take the fourteen great Laws and swearin the presence of the Spirits of Our Ancestors in Heaven and announce that,relying on the merits bestowed by Our Ancestors, we will bring these to asuccessful issue, nor will We dare to retract Our word. Bright Spirits, descendand behold!

1. All thought of dependence on China shall be put away so that the heritageof independence may be secured.

Perhaps the scores of musicians, dancers, and attendants did not know,but high-level officials certainly did, that it was the “neighboring Power”(ubang: allied country) — specifically, Inoue Kaoru, Meiji Japan’s envoy extraordinaryand minister plenipotentiary to Korea—who had compelledKing Kojong to make this “Oath of Independence.” It was Inoue who hadtaken the lead in using the great offering at chongmyo-sajik to render theWestern concepts of sovereignty and independence sensible and manifestto the scholar-official class and the broader public. Isabella Bird, who witnessedthis “singular ceremony,” recounted how the Oath was taken “incircumstances of great solemnity in a dark pine wood, under the shadowof Puk Han [Mt. Pukhan] at the most sacred altar in Korea, in presence ofthe Court and the dignitaries of the kingdom.” “Old and serious men hadfasted and mourned for two previous days, and in the vast crowd of white-robedand black-hatted men which looked down upon the striking scenefrom a hill in the grounds of the Mulberry Palace, there was not a smile ora spoken word. The sky was dark and grim, and a bitter east wind was blowing—ominous signs in Korean estimation.”

In the late Choson period, great offerings at the Royal Ancestral Templeand at the Altars of Land and Harvest formed the core of the dynasty’sauspicious rites and were performed several times each year. By the nineteenthcentury the Main Hall of the Royal Ancestral Temple complex, withits long front corridor connecting the nineteen spirit chambers, boasted theworld’s longest floor space in a wooden structure. At the temple, to the eastof the main palace, the Choson dynasty monarch reported to the ghosts ofhis dead ancestors regarding important matters of state and asked for theirhelp and guidance. At the Altars of Land and Harvest (sajik), to the west ofthe main palace, the monarch prayed to the gods of earth and grain for hispeople’s security and well-being. Throughout the Choson period, until thevery end of King Kojong’s reign (1864–1907), Choson dynasty kings as wellas scholar-officials (sadaebu) regarded these two ritual sites as the metonymfor what we would call the Choson state. Choson dynasty monarchscould, and did, subscribe to the notion that the people (min) constitutedthe foundation, and that the people’s welfare formed the raison d’etre ofthe state. But sovereignty—supreme authority within Korea’s borders—belongedto the Choson monarch, and a core function of dynastic ritualshad to do with the (re)production of knowledge and sentiment associatedwith filiality and loyalty as appropriate for a strictly hierarchical and patri archalsocial order. Although the power of Choson dynasty monarchs wascircumscribed by the scholar-official class, a class that resolutely clung tothe conceit that the Choson dynasty was its creation, it was dynastic kinglypower as manifested by the Royal Ancestral Temple and the Altars of Landand Harvest (chongmyo-sajik) that stood guard over the progressively lesserprerogatives of the king’s subjects. Neither the scholar-official class northe commoners, and certainly not the slaves (nobi), could presume to claimthe chongmyo-sajik as their own. If the Choson monarch spoke French hewould have said, “L’état, c’est moi.”

While the chongmyo-sajik provided the symbolic and cognitive coordinatesfor identifying and identification with Choson Korea as a dynasticstate, its state rituals also designated Choson as a not so exemplary vassalstate of China. In 1395, when the Choson dynasty built its Royal AncestralTemple in the new capital, Hanyang (Seoul), its structure conformed to ancientprescriptions proper to a tributary state. The temple was built accordingto the “same hall, different chambers” system utilized in the Han dynasty,with the westernmost chamber as the honored position. The originalMain Hall was a seven-kan structure with five spirit chambers, the numberof spirit chambers stipulated by the Zhou dynasty as appropriate for a tributarystate. But by 1834 the Main Hall had been expanded to a nineteen-kanstructure. In China the royal shrines of Tang and Song dynasties had onlyeleven chambers. Thus, as in other institutions and practices, the Chosondynasty’s Royal Ancestral Temple complex, patterned on Chinese precedents,came to take on a uniquely Korean and not so subservient character.

During the previous dynasty, Koryo (918–1392) had also entered intosome form of tributary relations, often reluctantly, with Song, Liao, and Jinas those dynasties established control over parts of “China” in succession.At the same time, from the very beginning of the Koryo dynasty throughthe latter part of the thirteenth century, many Koryo scholar-officials, inboth official and private writing, referred to the Koryo ruler as a Son ofHeaven (K: ch’onja, C: tiãnzi) and emperor (hwangje, songhwang, che). AsRo Myoung-ho has pointed out, until 1270, when Koryo capitulated to theMongols after thirty years of resistance, early Koryo rulers and most of itsofficials had held a “pluralist” (tawonjok) outlook that recognized greaterand equal empires in China and in Manchuria, while positing Koryo as thecenter of a separate and bounded world ruled by the Koryo emperor, whoclaimed a ritual status reserved for the Son of Heaven. Koryo rulers fromthe dynastic founder Wang Kon (T’aejo, r. 918–43) to Wonjong (r. 1214–74)had the imperial suffix-cho, or -jong for their posthumous temple names.The Koryo Army was organized into five armies rather than the three allowedto a king. During this period Koryo rulers were addressed with theimperial pyeha (C: bixia), wore the imperial yellow, used their own reignnames, invested members of the royal family as kings (wang), and conductedsacrifices to Heaven. As Remco Breuker notes, imperial designationsfor edict, crown prince, palace, and so on are easily found in extantrecords, while epitaphs and eulogies on steles reveal “diverse and colorfulinstances of imperial appropriations.”

Referring to the Koryo ruler as emperor and Son of Heaven seems tohave been commonplace in early Koryo; for example, among “folk” songs(sogak) in the music (akji) section of the Koryosa, “P’ungipsong” eulogizesthe Koryo ruler as “Son of Heaven in the East” (Haedong ch’onja), who asemperor, with the help of Buddha and Heaven, pacifies the world throughhis transformative instruction (kyohwa). Indeed the rise and fall of variousdynasties in “China,” from the late Tang to the establishment of the Yüandynasty, encouraged late Silla and early Koryo courts to articulate, usingostensibly Sinocentric spatial terms, their own centrality in a multipolarworld. Until capitulation to the Mongols, Koryo was an “empire” with itsown microtributary system. The Koryo emperor forced Jurchen tribes outside its borders to pay tribute and accept Koryo’s suzerainty, and then bestowedtitles appropriate to tribute-offering vassals from beyond Koryo.Unequal sovereignty did not neatly correspond to borders: it was not asimple matter of being a king abroad and an emperor at home. For late Sillaand early Koryo rulers, their appropriation, or annexation, of All underHeaven (K: ch’onha, C: tianxia) to assert their vision of different, coexisting”worlds” as a broadly shared idea went hand in hand with the production ofcomplex discursive strategies that affirmed these rulers’ possession of fullde jure sovereignty, that is, possession of Heaven’s mandate. Even as Sillaand Koryo rulers received investiture from (another) Son of Heaven, it wasHeaven itself that ostensibly supported these rulers’ authority. As the folksong “P’ungipsong” suggests, Koryo was the center of the haedong (East ofthe Sea) world, and the ruler of Koryo ruled as emperor and Son of Heaven.It seems this folk song was sung well into the Choson period.

Haidong (East of the Sea; K: haedong) in Tang dynasty texts referred toa geographic area considered to be separate and distinct from China, ahistoricized space that encompassed the three kingdoms Koguryo, Silla,and Paekche. According to Ch’u Myong-op, the term Haedong was appropriatedby the Silla court during the “Unified” Silla period to name abounded world south of the Liao River. While the boundaries of Haedong,or for that matter the boundaries of Samhan (referring to Koguryo, Silla,and Paekche), did not remain fixed, the spatial imaginaries Haedong andSamhan constituted the “world” (ch’onha) that the early rulers of the Koryodynasty claimed as emperors and Sons of Heaven. In 933, when Wang Konreceived investiture from the ruler of later Tang, Tang acknowledged thedynastic founder of Koryo as the legitimate successor to King Chumong,the legendary founder of Koguryo. At the same time, as Sem Vermeerschpoints out, Wang Kon’s reign title ch’onsu (Heaven Bestowed) made it clearthat he had received the mandate to rule directly from Heaven.

While this pluralist outlook seems to have prevailed in early Koryo, someadvocated a more full throated version of Koryo as the center of Haedong.In the early twelfth century, with Liao (of the Khitan) fading and Jin (ofthe Jurchen) taking its place, the monk Myoch’ong advocated war withthe Jin to “recover” the heartland of Koguryo, extending deep into Manchuria.Myoch’ong prophesied that the thirty six countries (that is, the entire world) would eventually submit to Koryo and bring tribute. Whilea definitive assessment is impossible, given the paucity of records fromthe Koryo period, it seems there was significant sympathy and support foran expansionist, irredentist effort. Arguing that the topography of Kaegyong(Kaesong), Koryo’s capital, was losing its vital energy, Myoch’ongargued for moving the capital to the Western Capital (Pyongyang). ForMyoch’ong, the shifting of the capital to Pyongyang also would have signaleda commitment to shift away from a China centered Confucian culture.In the end, Myoch’ong’s forces were defeated by Kim Pu-sik, a defeatthat the twentieth century historian Sin Ch’ae ho would refer to asone of the greatest tragedies in Korean history. Well aware of Koryo’s imperial claims and practices, but also aware of its own limits, (Southern)Song’s attitude toward Koryo imperial claims and practices was rather tolerant.As for the Liao and Jin, they were more willing to recognize anotherSon of Heaven, according to Breuker, “perhaps because they always had tocompete with other Sons of Heaven.” At times Song reception rituals forKoryo envoys and Koryo reception rituals for imperial envoys from Song,Liao, and Jin suggested equal rather than hierarchical relations; that is,while Song, Liao, and Jin did not wholly recognize Koryo imperial claimsand practices, neither did they reject them completely.

In 1270, after thirty years of struggle against the Mongols, Koryo finallycapitulated to the Yüan. The Yüan established commanderies in Pyongyangand Ssangsong and demoted the titles of the Koryo ruler, court, andofficials. This capitulation to the Mongols assured dynastic continuity interms of the Koryo name, ancestral shrines, and guardian deities of thestate. But starting with King Ch’ungnyol (r. 1274–1308), the Koryo crownprince was raised in Beijing, Koryo kings married princesses of the Yüanimperial house, and Koryo became a son-in-law state (puma’guk) of theYüan empire. During this period the Yüan dynasty exerted a powerful influenceover kingly succession in Koryo, and the temple names of six Koryokings, from Ch’ungnyol to Ch’ungjong (r. 1348-51), were made to beginwith ch’ung (loyalty), indicating loyalty to the Yüan. The Koryo court’s sonin law status—that is, its loss of full sovereignty—lasted until the midfourteenth century, when King Kongmin captured Ssangsong and declaredthe Koryo throne autonomous.

At the beginning of the Choson dynasty, to reconfirm sovereign autonomythat had been lost to the Yüan during the latter part of the Koryoperiod, the Choson court built an Altar to Heaven. The officials on theBoard of Rites insisted, however, that the Altar be called wondan (RoundAltar) rather than won’gudan (Round Hill Altar), to avoid the appearance ofasserting the Choson monarch’s ritual equivalence with the Ming emperorand thus avoid conflict with Ming China. The majority of the sadaebu resistedthe wishes of early Choson dynasty kings to personally conduct thesacrifice to Heaven at the wondan, an act that would have unmistakablyconstituted the Choson monarch as equal in ritual status with the Mingemperor. Preventing the monarch from conducting sacrifices to Heavenwas a duty of the scholar-official class checking the power of Choson dynastykings. The sadaebu repeatedly reminded early Choson monarchsthat only the Son of Heaven (the emperor of China) had the requisite ritualstatus to conduct sacrifices to Heaven. After King Sejo’s reign (1455–68),subsequent Choson dynasty monarchs seem to have given up on the wondan,and it faded away. Thus in 1895 the Choson dynasty chongmyo-sajikconfiguration, delimited by the absence of an Altar to Heaven, unmistakablysignified Choson’s ritually subordinate status to China. In 1897, whenKing Kojong declared Korea an empire, an Altar to Heaven was rebuilt onthe site where high level envoys from Qing China used to be lodged. In1913, three years after annexation, the Japanese colonial government dismantledthe Altar to Heaven, and a hotel was built on the site.

In establishing the Choson dynasty in 1392, Yi Song-gye found it necessaryto seek tributary status from the Ming emperor, and subsequentChoson dynasty kings had to continue the practice of receiving investiturefrom the Ming emperor. But at the same time, the capital based scholarofficials who helped Yi Song-gye establish the Choson dynasty maintainedthat the dynastic founder had received Heaven’s mandate to rule. In August 1392, the founding year of the Choson dynasty, Cho Pak of the Boardof Rites submitted a memorial to the throne in which he affirmed a longhistory of Korean rulers receiving the mandate directly from Heaven: “Because Tan’gun was the first ruler to receive the Mandate of Heaven in Korea(Tongbang), and Kija [C: Jizi] was the first ruler to bring civilization to fruitionin Korea, the magistrate in Pyongyang should be instructed to conductsacrifices to them at appropriate times.” In confirming Tan’gun’s directrelationship to Heaven and his status as the founder of the first “Korean”state (in 2333 BCE near Pyongyang), and by having the city of Pyongyangconduct sacrifices to both Tan’gun and Kija, the sadaebu of the early Chosondynasty chose to buttress a religious and political narrative (and practice)that was already well established during the Koryo period: the claim to adistinct and indigenous history of legitimacy (chongt’ong) that reached farback into the mythic past, indeed to the days of Tan’gun contemporaneouswith the Chinese sage kings Yao and Shun.
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