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Catholicism of Joseon and Micro-politics

LEE KEUN SE 1

1국민대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper sets the process of accepting Catholicism in the late Joseon Dynasty as an problematic issue for consideration and discusses the ways to be requested to the political power and the private sector. Eastern-Western relationship, which particularly began to be regularized through the Jesuits’ religious propagation to the Eastern, was established in China, Japan and then the Joseon Dynasty. This process of accepting Catholicism in the name of Seohak(西學) or Western Studies in the late Joseon Dynasty can be considered as the origin of the pluralism of our society today. Passing through stages of the subject of scholarly study, acknowledgement as religion, the ordeal caused by religious persecution and then the object of institutional acquiescence by opening ports, the Catholicism of the late Joseon Dynasty is deeply involved in the modernity of our society. However, the process of accepting Catholicism brought about various conflict and tragic experiences in many aspects as it is inevitably accompanied by not only clashes between different cultures but the multiple-layer rules of thoughts, ideologies, religions, politics, and social movements. In other words, the process of accepting Catholicism in the late Joseon Dynasty imposes a vital task on us with regard to the management plan for the society, apart from the simple historical dimension. In this paper, we deal with, based on the problematic issue presented from the historical process of the Catholic acceptance in the late Joseon Dynasty, the value orientation of political power related to power and tolerance, explore the meaning of cultural diversity and the direction of communication between different cultures and discuss possible micro-political responses of private sectors, especially of the intellectual class.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.