Negotiating Cultural Identities in Conflict: A Reading of Paek Kyonghae's Writings

Friday, May 7, 2004
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
(Pacific)
Philippines Conference Room, Encina Hall
Speaker: 
  • Sun Joo Kim

A buffet lunch will be available to those who RSVP to Rakhi Patel at rpatel80@stanford.edu by Tuesday, May 5. Only recently have scholars begun to invest a substantial amount of effort in researching the history of the "forgotten" region of P'yóngan Province in Korean historiography. These works, which focus mostly on the period before the Hong Kyóngnae Rebellion of 1812, mainly investigate particular historical experiences of this region that culminated in the cross-class rebellion. These works are extremely valuable for a number of reasons. They represent the first comprehensive historical research on the northwestern region of the Korean peninsula, currently a part of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea). Most of these studies start with the notion that there was no yangban aristocracy in P'yóngan Province -- a prevailing perception of late Chosón literati, and one that rationalized social and political discrimination against people from this region. One of the main goals of this study is to challenge this perspective through a close reading of the writings of Paek Kyónghae (1765-1842), a literatus from P'yóngan Province, to illuminate his perceptions and responses to regional discrimination and his cultural identity as a man from a politically and socially condemned region. This discussion offers a microscopic examination of the bilateral relations between the center and the periphery through Paek's life experiences. Particularly because Paek Kyónghae lived as a yangban official through the major social and political disruption posed by the Hong Kyóngnae Rebellion -- to which regional discrimination against the people of P'yóngan Province in terms of political advancement by the central court provided an ideological justification -- his views and personal choices partly explain how the existing regime survived the rebellion.