Il'am Yi Ki-Ji's embassy to Beijing in 1720 and its meaning: Focusing on comparison with other representative "records of embassies to Beijing" (Yǒnhaengnok)

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Abstract

This paper has focused on Yi Ki-ji's 1720 mission to survey the unique characteristics of his embassy to Beijing. The level of interest that Yi recorded in his ynhaengnok in Western painting, astronomy, and calendrical science-including accounts of the nine visits he made to the missionaries at the cathedrals-is difficult to find in other yǒnhaengnok of his time. Given that the scholarly consensus has until now been that it was only in the late eighteenth century that yǒnhaengnok began to display an active, explicit reception of "Northern Learning" (Pukhak),1 we cannot but conclude that Yi's record was ahead of its time. The unique aspects of Yi Ki-ji's yǒnhaengnok reveal the necessity of reconsidering the conventional wisdom regarding these embassies and their records, which holds that it was not until the mid to late eighteenth century that the objective realities of Qing life were recognized among Chosǒn's ambassadors or that the cultural attributes of the Qing were actively sought out and favorably accepted. Yi Ki-ji's embassy to Beijing alerts us to the fact that-though exceptional-the act of asserting Chosǒn's autonomous identity, while at once working earnestly to recognize and accept the realities of Qing China when necessary, was not impossible in the early eighteenth century.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)301-329
Number of pages29
JournalActa Koreana
Volume19
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2016

Keywords

  • Eighteenth-century Korea
  • Embassy to Beijing
  • Northern Learning (Pukhak)
  • Records of embassy to Beijing (yǒnhaengnok)
  • Yi Ki-ji

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