A New Middle Kingdom

Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700–1850)

J. P. Park

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780295743264
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Asian Art

Historians have claimed that when social stability returned to Korea after devastating invasions by the Japanese and Manchus around the turn of the seventeenth century, the late Chosŏn dynasty was a period of unprecedented economic and cultural renaissance, in which prosperity manifested itself in new programs and styles of visual art. A New Middle Kingdom questions this belief, claiming instead that true-view landscape and genre paintings were likely adopted to propagandize social harmony under Chosŏn rule and to justify the status, wealth, and land grabs of the ruling class. This book also documents the popularity of art books from China and their misunderstanding by Koreans and, most controversially, Korean enthusiasm for artistic programs from Edo Japan, thus challenging academic stereotypes and nationalistic tendencies in the scholarship about the Chosŏn period. As the first truly interdisciplinary study of Korean art, A New Middle Kingdom points to realities of late Chosŏn society that its visual art seemed to hide and deny. A William Sangki and Nanhee Min Hahn Book

1

CONFLICTED REALITIES

MODERNITY AT LARGE IN LATE CHOSŎN SOCIETY

A vision of the world is a division of the world.

— PIERRE BOURDIEU, The Logic of Practice

THE LATE CHOSŎN PERIOD, FROM APPROXIMATELY THE LATE SEVENTEENTH TO the early nineteenth century, was a time of great change, not only throughout the Korean Peninsula but also across East Asia. In politics, mainland China had a major regime change, and Japan hailed a new ruling family; both powers governed their states in relative peace and prosperity until the mid-nineteenth century. Meanwhile, as European countries competitively turned their attention to the east, these three states began to take a growing interest in Western science and technology. On a sociocultural level, East Asia was developing an unmistakable degree of modernity: an educated middle class enjoyed urban life, commerce and trade was having a heyday, and artistic leisure had come to be democratized across different classes. The Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) was no exception, yet many of these developments evolved rather differently than in neighboring China and Japan. Late Chosŏn Korea faced so many challenges that its subsequent societal and moral transformations tended to sharply contradict preexisting ideology and customs.

Early modern Korea’s problems were truly unprecedented in their number and scale: invasions by Manchu China and Japan not only destroyed the security of the nation but also its cultural and ethnic pride; the traditional worldview went into crisis with the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the introduction of new world maps by Europeans; the solidity of the class system in principle was undermined by social fluidity in reality; and social harmony was impaired by the unequal distribution of wealth. Furthermore, the conservative Confucian doctrine faced constant questioning by progressive elites, traditional styles and values in art and literature came under criticism, and Koreans’ confidence in their cultural superiority was contested by comparison with contemporary China and Japan. Thus, the late Chosŏn period experienced “comprehensive departure from existing patterns.”¹

The late Chosŏn period was a time of constant negotiation, when new propositions to resolve periodic issues were met with some acceptance, some opposition, and almost inevitable revision. Public opinion on any given subject was always deeply divided. Thus, any history of the period should not only explore how Chosŏn Korea responded to a series of revolutionary transformations, but also how its diverse interest groups competed and collaborated to manage the ever changing and conflicted ideological, social, political, and cultural environment of the time. This phenomenon suggests a still premature yet bourgeoning modernity in late Chosŏn society, where the diversified voices of citizens were heard even if not many of them could prevail.

The Last Bastion of Confucian Civilization

The story begins on a warm and sunny spring day in 1644. Koreans must have been shocked by news that had just arrived: the Ming dynasty, the big brother state and loyal ally of Korea’s Chosŏn dynasty, had fallen, leaving its three-hundred-year imperial glory behind. The last emperor of the Ming, Chongzhen (r. 1627–1644), committed suicide as domestic rebels approached the Forbidden City. Beijing was taken soon after by the Manchus, who established their own dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911). The Middle Kingdom — that is, China — belonged to a new power.

This was not simply a regime change in a neighboring country. For Chosŏn Koreans it meant that the world they used to live and believe in had ceased to exist. It was a final and crushing blow after the tumultuous adversities they themselves had gone through for half a century. A seven-year-long invasion by the Japanese, begun in 1592, devastated the country. Millions of lives were lost, more than two-thirds of all arable land was ruined, and the palaces in the capital were ransacked, while the country’s various cultural assets, including historical archives and many Buddhist temples, were reduced to ashes. Furthermore, a number of skilled artists and artisans were kidnapped and spirited away to Japan. The Koreans had been able to fend off the Japanese only with military aid from the Ming, for which they would remain grateful for many centuries.

As the country slowly began to rebuild, it was subsequently invaded by the Manchus in 1636. The Koreans fought back, but they were overwhelmed by the Manchus’ military might and had no choice but to surrender to this emerging superpower. Forced to renounce its allegiance to the Ming, Chosŏn Korea became a vassal state of the Qing. This was a difficult but inevitable choice, made to protect the land and its people. Although the Manchus did not do as much damage as the Japanese, submission to the former, whom Koreans had always looked down on as nomadic barbarians, was a deep humiliation.² When the Ming also fell to the Manchus eight years later, Koreans finally had to accept the harsh reality: they could never go back to the old world guided by that bastion of civilization and culture, Ming China. Physically and emotionally, the country was defeated. A statement made by the scholar-official O Toil (1645–1703) expressed the despair of Chosŏn elites at this development: “The world has now collapsed and civilization has turned upside down. The high level of civility, music, and culture of the Middle Kingdom has fallen deep into the rotten and nauseating filth of dogs and pigs.”³

Animosity against the Manchu regime endured for the remainder of Chosŏn history. And it was not limited to the emotional realm: during the reign of King Hyojong (r. 1649–1659), the Chosŏn government even plotted to undertake action clearly beyond its own means. By trying to strengthen its army, it hoped to attack the Qing to avenge its disgrace and help Ming loyalists to recover the Middle Kingdom. This plan was the brainchild of Song Siyŏl (1607–1689), a hardcore Neo-Confucianist and nationalist. His proposition was to build an army of one hundred thousand soldiers and take the Qing by surprise, at which point the millions of Ming loyalists in China would join the cause and wrest the Middle Kingdom from the Manchu barbarians.⁴ The plan, however, lost momentum with King Hyojong’s unexpected death in 1659, followed by the Qing’s successful suppression of all Ming loyalist rebellions by 1662.

Still, Korean antagonism toward the Qing continued unabated. In the late seventeenth century, the Korean Peninsula suffered a series of catastrophic climate events which led to kingdom-wide famines. Unusually cold weather in the summer of 1670, for example, decimated the year’s harvest. The official records of the time document the urgency of the situation: one tells the gruesome story of a slave woman, who, due to her extreme hunger, boiled and ate her own baby.⁵ With no means to meet the needs of his people, King Hyŏnjong (r. 1659–1674) proposed petitioning the Qing for aid, but a majority of officials opposed the idea, asserting that it would not arrive on time or that the Qing might not have enough to share. Their real reason, although unspoken, is unmistakably clear: Chosŏn officials did not want to be indebted to the Manchus even in the face of a national emergency.⁶ A memorial by the minister of defense, Min Chŏngjung (1628–1692), notes that even though Chosŏn Korea had become a subject of the Qing, it should not pursue survival by receiving grain from the Manchu regime.⁷ This decision cost more than one million Korean lives that year.⁸

Unfortunately, this was just the beginning. The worst famine of the late Chosŏn period was the one that started in 1695 and lasted for four consecutive years. The situation was even worse than it had been in 1670, as expressed in accounts of atrocities and the inhumanity of people desperate to survive: “People became poisonous as dragons and snakes after cannibalism”; “A son murdered his father”; “People were eating the other humans while they are still alive.”⁹ It was by far the worst famine in Korean history. Between 1694 and 1699, as recent research suggests, the kingdom lost four million people — nearly 30 percent of its population — and was forced to seek external help.¹⁰ In 1697, two years into the famine, a majority of officials finally agreed to approach the Qing for relief. Such incidents bring home just how stubborn and reluctant Chosŏn elites were to seek help from the Qing, ever a barbarian state in their eyes.¹¹

As Chosŏn Korea’s antipathy and contempt for the Qing spread, so did its deference toward the fallen Ming. Chosŏn fidelity to the Ming had a strong foundation from the beginning of its history. When it replaced the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) and forsook old allegiances to the Mongols, the Chosŏn regime based its legitimacy on new ideological bedrock amid the changing landscape of international power struggles. Rescinding Buddhism as the state religion and marginalizing military elites in state governance, the founding members of the new dynasty established the authority of the scholar-official class and adopted Neo-Confucianism as the state ideology. This moved its principle priority to a social order and harmony sustained by morality and hierarchy in familial and social relationships. This ideological orientation was further extended to their relationship with the Ming dynasty. The Ming not only possessed the greatest strength at the time, having expelled the Mongols from China, but it was also a state founded by the ethnic Han Chinese, who could legitimately claim the legacy of the Middle Kingdom as their own. The Chosŏn court decided to serve the Ming, and this hierarchical compact is reflected in how Korean kings named themselves in their diplomatic documents. They referred to themselves as “your subject” (sin; Ch. chen), the way an official would humbly refer to himself in conversation with his ruler, indicating that the chain of command between Ming and Chosŏn was firmly institutionalized early on.

After the fall of the Ming, conservative and nationalistic elites in the late Chosŏn initiated an unexpected and provocative step to regain their self-confidence. They began to claim Korea’s cultural independence from, and even superiority over, China. This attitude emerged after the Manchus invaded Korea in 1636, followed by the collapse of Ming China in 1644. The newly established Qing court was, to Chosŏn Confucian scholars, a mere barbarian tribe who through lucky timing had won the lands of China. Even though they were now the new rulers, they were nonetheless deemed illegitimate heirs to the civilization of the Middle Kingdom. In the absence of a true successor, Chosŏn Korea, a country that had learned and shared much culture with China over the ages, began to take pride in its own culture and to look on itself as “the last bastion of Confucian civilization” or “the Young Middle Kingdom” (So Chunghwa; Ch. Xiao Zhonghua).¹² They claimed that Koreans had shared a cultural lineage with the Chinese for thousands of years: when the legendary ruler Kija (Ch. Qizi) became an enfeoffed king of Old Chosŏn (Ko Chosŏn) on the Korean Peninsula around 1100 BCE, he brought with him the great culture of the Middle Kingdom, which Koreans had preserved throughout their history.¹³

This attitude of self-assurance was materialized in the architectural projects and Confucian rituals practiced by Korean scholars and kings. After the death of Song Siyŏl, the nationalistic scholar who planned military retaliation against the Manchu Qing, one of his trusted students, Kwŏn Sangha (1641–1721), following the will of his teacher, built a shrine, the Mandongmyo, dedicated to two Ming emperors in 1703. It was located near the Academy for the Restoration of China (Hwayang Sŏwŏn), which was erected to honor Song at the site of his old residence and school in 1695. The shrine provided a venue where rites could be performed for the Wanli emperor (r. 1572–1620), in appreciation for his military assistance during the Japanese invasion, and for the Chongzhen emperor, to memorialize his honorable suicide upon the fall of the empire. Furthermore, Song Siyŏl himself had left many inscriptions in stone near his academy that announced his reverence to these two emperors. One good example is his carving of Chongzhen emperor’s calligraphy reading, “With no righteous reason, I would not proceed” (pili pudong; Ch. feili budong). Later, his students and colleagues added Song’s own calligraphic work to the lower right: “The world of the Great Ming, sun and moon of the Chongzhen emperor” (Tae Myŏng ch’ŏnji Sungjŏng ilwŏl; Ch. Da Ming tiandi Chongzhen riyue).¹⁴

Late Chosŏn monarchs were also active patrons of such practice. In 1726, King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776) entrusted a land stipend to the Mandongmyo shrine, and his successor King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800), upon his accession to the throne in 1776, commissioned a signboard for the shrine, thus bestowing on it the status of a royally supported (saaek) establishment. Furtherm...

Table of contents

• A New Middle Kingdom
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note
• 1. Conflicted Realities: Modernity at Large in Late Chosŏn Society
• 2. The Ordinary Is Extraordinary: The Epic in Everyday Life
• 3. Tableaux De Mode: Landscape and Person in Late Chosŏn Society
• 4. The Anxiety Of Influence: (Mis)reading Chinese Art in Late Chosŏn Korea
• 5. Rescuing Art History From The Nation: The Late Chosŏn between Europe and Edo Japan
• Postface
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index