초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber are representative novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties respectively. In Joseon Korea the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was popular among the general public, but the Dream of the Red Chamber was read by relatively fewer people. This difference was due to the different times of the books' arrival in Korea and differences in the reception of these books on arrival. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was introduced in the late sixteenth century. It was printed with metal movable type at Gyoseo Printers under protection of the government. The literati enjoyed it so much that the central and local government both published editions, despite criticism by conservative Confucians. However, they did this with woodblock printing. Also, it was translated or adopted into Korean and circulated among the common people. People used this book as a textbook to learn literary Chinese. The Dream of the Red Chamber was directly introduced to the royal court and translators made very elaborate handwritten bilingual editions due to the great interest of high ranking officials. Even the five sequels were translated. However, although the Dream of the Red Chamber was very popular at court, it was rarely read by the common people. In the twentieth century, these two books were finally serially published in newspapers with both hangul and Sinitic characters. Yang, Baek-wha(梁白華), a Korean translater, played an important role in the popularization of these two books by publishing them in serial editions with translations.
