A History of Korea (52 page)

THE RETURN OF PAK CHEGA TO KOREA, 1778

In 1778, Pak Chega, a little-known intellectual, gained the privilege of accompanying a close friend on a tribute mission to China. So inspired was he by this trip that, upon his return later in the year, Pak wrote the
Discourse on Northern Learning
, at once a travelogue as well as a wide-ranging social commentary on the ills of his native country. Through this work, Pak Chega voiced the views of a scholarly movement that drew together some of the country’s brightest minds, who together pushed for a thorough renovation of Chos
n dynasty society, and particularly its economy, by looking to the example of contemporary China. While
Koreans had a long history of adopting Chinese models, for over a century before Pak’s appointment most Korean elites had dismissed Qing dynasty China, established by the Manchus in 1644, as a country ruled by barbarians.

From the vantage point of Pak Chega and those in his intellectual circle of “northern learning” advocates, the urgency of reform directly correlated to the challenge of overcoming this long-held, ethnicized bias against the Manchu-run Qing dynasty—the “north”. Nearly all of these scholars had visited Qing China and come back with an eye-opening impression of its socioeconomic advancement. These advocates of northern learning declared not only that Koreans must overcome their prejudices regarding the Manchus, but that this must in turn spur a comprehensive reconsideration of long-held Korean tenets and practices, including those of the Confucian orthodoxy. In this way the northern learning movement constituted, however briefly, an apt capstone to the Chos
n dynasty’s “golden era” of the late eighteenth century, marked by peace, relative political stability, and cultural flourishing. Little wonder, then, that this period is also preferred by Koreans as a truer representation of the latter Chos
n era, before the ravages of the nineteenth century led to the tragedies of the twentieth.

“UTILITY FOR THE GREATER GOOD”

The unofficial motto for the northern learning school, appearing repeatedly in the writings, was “iyong husaeng,” a term that can be translated in many ways, including “utility for the greater good,” and reflects an approach to solving problems practically and logically. Historians tend to identify the northern learning cohort as part of a wider scholarly movement in the late Chos
n era called “practical learning” (
sirhak
), but this was a coherence constructed mostly by modern historians. Furthermore, one could argue that all Confucian reform proposals that targeted policies affecting the lives of people, by their very nature, were a reflection of “practical learning.” The northern learning movement, however, was real—nearly all of the movement’s figures had a singularly influential experience of visiting China, befriended each other and, in their writings and advocacy activities, supported common core principles. These principles in pursuit of “utility for the greater
good” included an embrace of foreign models, especially the scientific teachings of the West; an encouragement of manufacturing, trade, commerce, and even consumption, as well as the concomitant removal of the social stigma attached to profiteering and commercial activities; and the leveling of the social hierarchy. Together, these positions, in fact, went about as far as one could in questioning Neo-Confucianism itself—or at least the domination of its long-held tenets in Korea—without explicitly rejecting it.

The apex figure of this movement was Hong Taeyong, who visited China as part of a tribute mission to Beijing in 1765. There he became well acquainted with Chinese scholars, Catholic clergymen, and a plethora of writings about the world beyond the peninsula. Hong’s experience left him in stunned awe, and he meticulously recorded his observations in a travelogue he wrote following his return. In this and other works, Hong noted the extraordinary energies in the daily lives and economic activities of the Chinese, even beyond the showcase capital of Beijing itself. He took this as an impetus to launch a general critique of Korean customs and Confucian orthodoxy, most clearly in evidence in his “
isan Mountain Dialogue,” which features a conversation about the world and nature between the imaginary characters “Empty” and “Substantive.” Needless to say, “Empty” reveals himself as a thinly veiled caricature of the Korean scholar mired in the abstractions of Neo-Confucian philosophy. As seen in this work and others, however, the interaction with Chinese and Western scholars seems to have most affected Hong’s received view of the larger cosmos, and indeed it is Hong’s scientific writings for which he is best known. In them he propounded and legitimated, mostly through deduction, the ideas of a round, rotating earth that encircled a stationary sun, and of humanity’s commonalities with the rest of the natural world. Some historians still consider Hong Taeyong the greatest scientific thinker of the Chos
n era.

Hong’s circle of like-minded colleagues included his protégé Pak Chiw
n, who finally took his own trip to China in 1780 and returned to write the best-known travelogue of this period, the “Diary of the [Journey to the Chinese Emperor’s] Summer Palace.” Like Hong, Pak admiringly described the flourishing lives of the Chinese, whose use of advanced practical technologies was
directly connected to their economic productivity and governmental efficiency. This work was far more than a travelogue, however; his observations of China induced critical reflections on a wide range of topics concerning his home country, to which he applied the extraordinary literary skill that placed him among the most innovative writers of the Chos
n era. Indeed, aside from the “Diary of the Summer Palace,” Pak’s best-known works are short stories, written in literary Chinese. Many have in common a satirical portrayal of the late Chos
n society and mindset, in tandem with allusions to the very different examples found in China. In his “Tale of the Yangban” or “Tale of H
Saeng,” for example, Pak takes aim at Korea’s hereditary social hierarchy, in which one’s social status corresponded little, if at all, to one’s contributions to the greater good. These stories depict a parasitic aristocracy that relied upon empty learning and the privileges accorded by birth, while people of lower standing were engaging in socially productive, practical work and even growing rich.