KJC Korea
Journal Central

This paper was written to clarify the timing when Choe Chiwon re-entered the Tang Dynasty as an envoy at the command of the king of Silla. There is no historical record of when he re-entered Tang, so the exact time is not known. For this reason, historians have made various claims about it. In this paper, I classified the previous arguments and reviewed them from a critical standpoint. Then, what this paper found and analyzed chinese poem written by Choe Chiwon on his way to Tang as an envoy, and used it as the logical basis for argument about the re-entry timing of Tang. As a result, it was confirmed that Choe Chiwon's re-entry took place between 898 and October 900, which corresponds to the early reign of King Hyogong of Silla.

This study is the first research performance that attempted the in-depth analysis on ‘Manggwol’ which often appears the diplomatic protocol on Song Dynasty in the early Goryeo Dynasty. Manggwol refers to performing rituals towards the Song’s Palace. Based on Goryeodogyeong, this article proves when Goryeo performs the ritual with the envoy of Song, the places were assigned and the procedure were performed according to the concept of ‘Manggwol’ and it was the same in the ritual performed by king of Goryeo as well as the ritual performed by the official of Goryeo in 3 islands within the precincts of Jeonju, Cheongju, and Gwangju. It also identified that such a ritual was very unfamiliar in Goryeo but it is common in Song's ritual performed by the officials who deliver the order of emperor, and analyzed the characteristic and the type of ‘Manggwol’ that appeared in Jeongwhaoryesinui. Lastly, it re-organizes Goryeo’s concrete route of diplomatic protocol on Song Dynasty by referring the type of ‘Manggwol’ which was analyzed in this way.

Yeo-sohak was written by a person named Park Mun-ho, who was a Confucian scholar and lived in the Chungcheong-do region. Critical of the reality in which females were never granted adequate access to education, he created this book for them to have proper guidance. His intentions, however, were never to promote a modern ideal for women, but to facilitate restoration of a more traditional one. Yeo-Sohak, while featuring aspects similar to those presented in other female educational materials authored by either traditional Confucian scholars or modern idealists, turned out to be quite different from them as well. Like other materials of the time, Park placed an emphasis on concepts such as different social roles for different genders, the value of female labor, and the virtue of obedience. He also promoted not only Chinese but Korean cases as well, albeit to a lesser degree compared to others. But at the same time he also deviated from the mold by allocating a substantial amount of efforts to the task of meticulously categorizing female ritual protocols, and even proposing the establishment of a Holy Women’s Shrine, a space reserved for memorials to commemorate honorable women. We can see what Park Mun-ho wished to say from the “Old Stories” chapter of Yeo-Sohak, as well as an addendum attached to the end of Yeo-Sohak entitled “Seong’nyeo-myo Doseol”(A blueprint for the Inside of the Holy Women’s Shrine), as they both contain a lot of Yeol’nyeo (females who fiercely protected and preserved their own dignity and chastity, even by death) and Hyo’nyeo (pious daughters) cases. Regarding the former, Park took interest in particular Yeol’nyeo figures who willingly gave their lives to safeguard their own righteousness or the honor of their husbands, in the face of insurmountable odds, crises of a paramount nature, and formidable enemies. This was probably because Park, who was witnessing his own country’s sovereignty being stripped away by the Japanese, identified the females’ ultimate choice to give up their lives as the ultimate way to save the country in distress, just as other modern scholars did as well. Meanwhile, regarding the Hyo’nyeo cases, the pious daughters, Park highlighted many cases: daughters who would literally die for their parents, or daughters who invited mysterious and auspicious phenomena with their own pious actions, probably to encourage others to engage in such actions as well. Then he also highlighted other types of pious daughters, who for example refused to marry a man to instead care for their own parents, or even after getting married still remained pretty much devoted to their past maiden lives serving their own parents instead of the parents of their husbands. In the process, he let us know there have been two types of females in Joseon: who perfectly fit the traditional criteria for a female in Joseon, and who actually did not fit that model but remained pious nonetheless.

The interest of the United States in the Korean Peninsula was initiated as a part of its foreign policy regarding the Pacific Ocean after the Civil War. This Korea-U.S. relationship started with the U.S. favor toward Joseon’s amicable foreign policy, namely the rule of pacifying distant peoples or nations (柔遠之義). However, the General Sherman incident, which had led to the death of Americans, brought about a conflict between Joseon and the U.S. over the Americans’ prospect of survival and the responsibility over their death, and resolving this issue had become an important task in determining the relationship between the U.S. and Korea. The U.S. State Department tried to resolve the Korea-U.S. relations diplomatically, but the U.S. Pacific Fleet had the use of military force under serious consideration. Bell, the commanding officer of the Pacific Fleet, sent Robert W. Shufeldt, who had a lot of experience in military and diplomacy, to investigate the matter. Unlike the France government, Shufeldt expressed gratitude for the hospitality shown by the Joseon government in accordance with their foreign policy while demanding the Joseon government to provide factual information about the circumstance of the General Sherman incident. In Joseon, Shufeldt made various attempts to investigate the matter, but as he could not fully resolve the issue, this then became the source of conflict between Joseon and the United States. Initially, France had shown the most interest in Joseon, but France, along with Great Britain, had been withdrawing from Joseon since the French intrusion on Korea (丙寅洋擾) had failed. Under these circumstances, the U.S. eventually became a country among the western world with the greatest interest in the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. intention was to act jointly with Britain and France in dealing with Joseon, but their refusal led U.S. to an independent intrusion upon Joseon. This eventually made the United States the first Western country to sign a treaty with Korea.

In the research of modern Korean history, consumption culture has been studied intermittently in the limited materials and specific areas, and vast research achievements have not been accumulated nor has an agreed historical recognition been reached. Therefore, in order to revitalize consumption culture research, this thesis shows the fact that the topics related to consumption research are broad and diverse, and raises the need to re-evaluate consumption in the historical past. Through a review of existing studies, I tried to raise questions and throw ideas to fully reveal the possibilities and future of the rich areas that research needs to be challenged: such as the making of mass-consumption society, the policy and discourse of consumption, the social history of consumer goods for daily necessities, luxury consumption and cultural symbolism, leisure culture and popular culture, and the problem of the subject as a consumer.