Research Article
Cultural Exchanges between a Korean and the Jesuits Seen from Yi Kiji’s Beijing Travelogue in 1720
Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Seoul National University
Published: December 2009 · Vol. 31 No. 2 · pp. 377-411
Full Text
Abstract
This article examines the encounter between the Korean envoys and the Jesuits in Beijing, as documented in Yi Kiji’s (1690-1722) Beijing travelogue, Iram yŏn’gi. Yi Kiji accompanied the Korean diplomatic mission to Beijing in 1720 as a personal attendant of his father, the senior envoy Yi I-myŏng (1658-1722). During his two-month stay, Yi Kiji frequented Beijing’s Catholic churches, where he was warmly welcomed by and established favorable relationships with a number of Jesuit fathers. It was an extraordinary encounter in which the Korean intellectual and the Jesuits enthusiastically exchanged ideas on a wide range of topics and artifacts of various kinds.
Encounters between the China Jesuits and Korean visitors have long been the topic of special importance for historians of the Western Learning in late Chosŏn Korea. The previous historical accounts highlighted those encounters as being the beginning points of the transmission of the advanced science and technology of the West into Korea, which would make substantial impacts on the isolated Confucian society. In other words, the encounters provided the Koreans with the moment of “enlightenment,” in which they were exposed by the Jesuits to the superior knowledge of the West, and more importantly, the new world picture much wider than they had previously conceived. In this sense, the encounters were portrayed as transparent and one-directional processes of knowledge transmission from the Westerners to the Koreans.
Taking Yi Kiji’s travelogue as a case, I will question this simplistic picture and reconstruct the complex dynamism of the encounter as was seen from the Korean side. First of all, Yi Kiji’s travelogue helps us to restore the reciprocity of the meeting between the Koreans and the Jesuits. As will be clear from Yi Kiji’s description, the encounter was not a one-directional transmission of knowledge and artifacts from the Jesuits to the Korean sides. While the Koreans benefited much from the meeting with the Jesuits, Yi Kiji noticed behind the Jesuits’ friendliness certain motives to use him as an informant about Korea. In this sense, Yi Kiji portrayed the encounter not as a transparent medium of knowledge transmission but a problematic process with tensions between the two actors of different aims.
Encounters between the China Jesuits and Korean visitors have long been the topic of special importance for historians of the Western Learning in late Chosŏn Korea. The previous historical accounts highlighted those encounters as being the beginning points of the transmission of the advanced science and technology of the West into Korea, which would make substantial impacts on the isolated Confucian society. In other words, the encounters provided the Koreans with the moment of “enlightenment,” in which they were exposed by the Jesuits to the superior knowledge of the West, and more importantly, the new world picture much wider than they had previously conceived. In this sense, the encounters were portrayed as transparent and one-directional processes of knowledge transmission from the Westerners to the Koreans.
Taking Yi Kiji’s travelogue as a case, I will question this simplistic picture and reconstruct the complex dynamism of the encounter as was seen from the Korean side. First of all, Yi Kiji’s travelogue helps us to restore the reciprocity of the meeting between the Koreans and the Jesuits. As will be clear from Yi Kiji’s description, the encounter was not a one-directional transmission of knowledge and artifacts from the Jesuits to the Korean sides. While the Koreans benefited much from the meeting with the Jesuits, Yi Kiji noticed behind the Jesuits’ friendliness certain motives to use him as an informant about Korea. In this sense, Yi Kiji portrayed the encounter not as a transparent medium of knowledge transmission but a problematic process with tensions between the two actors of different aims.