earticle

영어

The essay introduces Liang Qichao's Eumbingsiljayuseo, especially its translation in 1908, which exercised huge influence on Korea in the modern period of enlightenment, and examines the social and cultural causes underlying its translational style of writing Korean with Chinese characters in it. His book, in a persuasive way, dealt with basic concepts and themes about modern civilization, including civilization(文明), barbarity(野蠻), freedom(自由), democracy(民主), civil rights(民權), sovereignty(國權), nation(民族), people(國民), national spirit(國魂), army(軍隊), law(法), press(言論). Accordingly, a number of contemporary Korean intellectuals gave it much attention, trying to employ it positively for the patriotic enlightenment movement. The mixed style of Korean and Chinese writing played an important role in the process. It seems contradictory at first glance that the mixed style of Korean and Chinese writing was prevalent in the establishing process of modern nation-state where much emphasis was given to the use of the national language and the unity of speech and writing. However, it is considered very understandable that the popularity came in a very natural way from Koreans' strategy to build a modern nation-state by freeing themselves from the yoke of Chinese characters yet taking over in an appropriate way its cultural asset at the same time. To illustrate the causes and background of this process in the social context, the essay cites themes like the users of the mixed style, the effect of translation, the tradition of borrowed writing, the re-adjustment of Chinese character and writing's position, the confusion in Korean writing and so on.