University of Hawai'i Press
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  • Turning Toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea by Adam Bohnet
Turning Toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea, by Adam Bohnet. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2020. 284 pages.

The discourse of homogeneity has been dominant in South Korean society for a long time. However, the increase in international marriages led South Korea to gradually transform into a multiracial society. This transformation means the emphasis on homogeneity in the national identity is losing its persuasive power. The Korean peninsula has already experienced an influx of foreigners since the premodern period. Chosŏn was no exception. In particular, the Chosŏn court agonized over how to treat aliens properly. Then, what brought foreigners to Chosŏn? How did the Chosŏn court classify them in terms of the social order? Adam Bohnet's Turning Toward Edification: Foreigners in Chosŏn Korea finds answers to those queries.

Bohnet's monograph investigates the identity construction of foreigners concerning the centralization of Chosŏn Korea. Bohnet argues that Chosŏn Korea promoted foreigners' settlement through "edification" based on Confucianism. Above all, this book mainly focuses on the imperial subject, who migrated from the Ming empire during the Ming-Qing transition. According to Bohnet, the late Chosŏn identified itself as the new center of Chunghwa (Ch. Zhonghua/the central efflorescence) by improving the social status of imperial subjects, who were classified the same as other submitting foreigners before. Therefore, the Chosŏn court's [End Page 407] policy on constructing the identity of aliens shaped Chosŏn's national identity.

The book consists of six chapters. First of all, chapter one elucidates foreigners' settlement in the Early Chosŏn period. Chosŏn monarchs labeled foreigners from Jurchen and Japan as submitting-foreigner status (hyanghwain). By labeling hyanghwain, the Chosŏn court encouraged Jurchens and Japanese people to adjust to the Chosŏn society well. In chapter two, the author explains demographic transformation post-Imjin war. The author proves a significant influx of aliens after the Imjin war. Chapter three showcases that Jurchens and Liaodongese fled to the Korean peninsula during the conflicts between later Jin and Southern Ming. In chapter four, Bohnet analyzes the settlements of migrants after the warfare. Even though an influx of foreigners ceased, a submitting-foreigners status was maintained within the administrative system. Chapter five explains that as late Chosŏn set its identity as the last remaining bastion of the Chunghwa legitimacy, and the status of Ming migrants also changed. In chapter six, the author indicates imperial subjects (hwangjoin) set their identity as the descendants of the Ming loyalists by recording their loyalism toward ancestors in biographies.

Bohnet's Turning Toward Edification interweaves the four branches of genres: foreign relations history, social history, intellectual history, and political history. The author describes the geopolitical context in which foreigners came to Chosŏn. For example, incidents like the Imjin War, the Ming-Qing transition, and the Manchus War (Horan) caused an inflow of foreigners into the Korean peninsula. In other words, the Korean peninsula was a gathering place of diverse races. When it comes to social history, Bohnet traces back how foreigners were absorbed and adjusted to the Chosŏn society. In detail, he elucidates that they were accepted as social members through an absorbance of Confucian ideology. Also, some of these aliens contributed to the development of Chosŏn's military technology. In terms of intellectual history, the author shows that Chosŏn identified itself as the center of the civilization within the Chunghwa ideology to overcome trauma from warfare with Japan and the Jurchen. King Yŏngjo and King Chŏngjo conducted political ceremonies to consolidate this Chunghwa identity.

Bohnet's book provides a significant contribution to premodern Korean historiography. The book is noteworthy as it indicates that the dominating ideology of nationalism in South Korea should not be taken for granted. Bohnet effectively proves it in two ways. First, the author insists that the nationalistic perspective on Korean history stemmed from the [End Page 408] Korean empire era. Sin Ch'aeho, a pioneering nationalist historian, distorted Sino-Korean relations as "toadyism." According to Sin, Chosŏn abandoned the "self" by accepting Chinese culture (pp. 5–6). Namely, Sin regarded Sino-Korean relations as an obstacle to Chosŏn's independence (jajudongnip). Sin's narrative on Sino-Korean relations corresponds with the emergence of nationalism (minjokjuŭi) during the late period of the Korean empire.

Instead, Bohnet reinterprets Sino-Korean relations by indicating that Chosŏn sajok aristocrats and intellectuals envisioned Chosŏn as both an independent state and part of the broad realm of Chunghwa culture and politics (p. 7). It means that even if the Chosŏn society claimed to be a member of the Chunghwa civilization, Chosŏn had a distinctive identity from the Chinese empire. In addition, the author convincingly asserts that it is inadequate to comprehend Sino-Korean relations only within the tributary system. He supports his argument by depicting the diplomatic tension between Chosŏn and the Ming·Qing empire surrounding control over northern borderlands.

Secondly, the book broadens understanding on the Imjin war. This war served as a popular subject in Korea to overcome the "humiliating" memory of Japanese colonialism. Korean mass culture has emphasized the victorious battles of the Chosŏn navy during the warfare, making "hero" Yi Sun-sin stand out. However, it is improper to merely focus on the competition between Korea and Japan, since the Imjin war transformed the East Asian international order. Specifically, the Ming confronted a fiscal burden after dispatching troops to Chosŏn, and this dispatch accelerated the Ming's downfall. While the Ming lost its control over the Northern regions, Nurhaci emerged as the new leader to rule China. Also, Chosŏn experienced demographic changes by accepting many Japanese and the Ming deserters. As mentioned in chapter two, deserters from Japan and the Ming spread military technologies to Chosŏn.

Turning Toward Edification is also significant in terms of giving an opportunity to understand the current issues of Korean society. Nowadays, many foreigners increasingly migrate to South Korea. However, many Koreans are not hospitable to all of them. Depending on the migrants' ethnicity or cultural background, Koreans treat them distinctively. This phenomenon is reminiscent of the Chosŏn court's viewpoint on Japanese people, Jurchen, and Han Chinese people. As the late Chosŏn defined Japanese and Jurchen as "barbarians" and Han Chinese people as the "civilized," I think contemporary Koreans also apply this binary between the civilized and barbarians. While Koreans tend to give preferential [End Page 409] treatments to foreigners from developed countries favorably, they tend to treat those from developing countries less favorably. This tendency proves that the dichotomy between the civilized and barbarians has been reproduced and is still dominant in Korean society.

On the other hand, this book leaves some questions. Bohnet elucidates that the court recategorized the Ming descendants as hwangjoin. Furthermore, the Chosŏn dynasty expressed loyalism to the Ming through the ritual of Taebodan. However, the relationship between Chosŏn and the Qing empire became relatively more cordial than in the seventeenth century. As many Korean historians point out, King Chŏngjo volunteered to dispatch emissaries to celebrate the Qianlong emperor's eightieth birthday. It indicates that the Chosŏn monarch acknowledged the Qing as the new big country. In this grand banquet, the Qianlong emperor recognized Chosŏn as the most loyal tributary system. Then how should we comprehend the gap between the ritualization of Ming loyalism and diplomacy with the Qing? Why did Chosŏn express the Ming loyalism while improving its relationship with the Qing? I would like to suggest to illustrate how Chosŏn officials accepted Chŏngjo's diplomacy with the Qing. With this improvement, this book will better contribute to understanding the ritualization of Ming loyalism in terms of diplomacy.

Despite several critiques, I believe that Turning Toward Edification contributes to the new comprehension of premodern Korean history. This monograph convincingly verifies that Chosŏn was a multiethnic society. Taking this argument into account, Chosŏn was not a "hermit" kingdom.

Yeseung Yun
Ph.D. student at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

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