The Trans-temporal and Trans-spatial Contexts of “Sadae", “Kyorin", and “Sojunghwa" as the Historical Frameworks of Modern Korean Historiography

Since the liberation, ROK historians have depicted the history of the Korean peninsula as that of an already-always, bordered territorial entity, evolving in a continuous linear progression into the modern nation-state. This paper seeks to challenge conventional nationalist Korean historiography and the territorialized imaginary and Confucian civilizational bias that support it, and to elucidate the complex and dynamic historical relationships between the peoples and states inhabiting this geographical space. I do so through scrutinizing South Korean historiography on the early Joseon period, analyzing the ways in which the models of political, economic, cultural and military interaction between Joseon and its neighbors inhabiting its peripheral spaces have been reinterpreted in modern times to underpin the dominant nationalist paradigm and the boundaries of Korean-ness it polices. South Korean historiography has constructed a model of the Northeast Asian region based on a Neo-Confucian hierarchy and conceptual dichotomy between “civilized” center and “barbarian” periphery, which has been combined with contemporary understandings of the nation-state. Through this process, these dogmatic frameworks, so called Sadae(事大; 사대) and Kyorin(交隣; 교린) that relegate the complex web of dynamic relationality between early Joseon and its neighbors to a fixed hierarchy based on Confucian civilizational biases, have been established and they are still dominating South Korean historiography. By providing a new trans-temporal and trans-spatial approach based on transnational perspective which enables us to profoundly understand how South Korean historiography re-appropriated traditional Confucian civilizational paradigm early Joseon dynasty had appropriated from Ming under the hegemony of U.S. in late 20th century, I assert such frameworks which have substantialized hierarchical set of the relations among Ming, Jurchen, Joseon, Tsushima, Muromachi Bakufu are the invention of South Korean nationalist Historiography, and have categorically denied the fluidity of spaces and peoples.