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A Korean Confucian Encounter with the Modern World: Yi Hangno and the West, by Chai-sik Chung. Korean Research Monograph 20. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1995. 268 pp.
A Korean Confucian Encounter with the Modern World is essentially a study in Korean intellectual history. Chai-sik Chung focuses on the writings of Yi Hangno (1792-1868), a well known Neo-Confucian scholar, to illustrate the great cultural gulf that existed between late Choson Korea and the Western world on the eve of Korea's opening to the West. Yi's total rejection of the West's culture, values, and practices-as Yi understood them-vividly illustrates the power of Neo-Confucian ideals among many of Korea's yangban elite during the nineteenth century. Somewhat less directly, Chung's study also offers suggestions concerning the particular difficulties that Korea has experienced in moving from a traditional to a modem society.
The book itself is broken up into five specific sections. Chapter 1, "General Cultural Orientations in Traditional Korea," provides a broad overview of the impact of Neo-Confucianism on Korean culture during the Choson period. After first noting Korea's traditional cultural and philosophical dependence upon Chinese civilization, Chung then discusses the establishment of the Choson (Yi) dynasty and the rise of Neo-Confucianism as the preeminent philosophical force in the kingdom. As the author remarks, "The founding of the Yi dynasty was not merely another dynastic change from Koryo to Choson. Rather, it was a pivotal transition from a culture dominated by Buddhism to a society primarily dominated by Confucianism. To the founders of early Yi, turning to the Confucian Way was not an act culturally disjunctive to their heritage, but a proud resumption of the cultured way of governing human beings and society exemplified in antiquity in their land by the sage-king Kija" (17). The Confucianism that the Choson dynasty stressed, of course, was the Neo-Confucianism of the Song philosopher Zhu Xi, with its strong emphasis upon metaphysics, loyalty, and authoritarianism.
As the centuries passed, Neo-Confucian scholars in Korea increasingly stressed the need to maintain ideological orthodoxy. All "deviant" thought systems-whether in the form of Buddhism, Taoism, shamanism, or even challenges to Zhu Xi's writings within the Confucian tradition-had to be rejected. This rigidity was not simply an effort to reinforce proper thought and...