Historians of late premodern Korea have tended to regard it as a hermit kingdom, isolated from its neighbours and the wider world. In fact, as Ro argues in this book, Korean intellectuals were heavily influenced by both Chinese Neo-Confucianism and the European Enlightenment in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In the late Choson period the regime felt threatened by the new, more empirical, approaches to knowledge emerging from both the East and the West. For this reason many Korean intellectuals felt it necessary to work in the shadows and formed secret societies for the study of nature. Because of the secrecy of these societies, much of their work has remained unknown even in Korea until recent years. Ho looks at the work of these intellectuals and analyses the impact their thinking and experimentation had on knowledge production in Korea. A fascinating insight into the largely overlooked story of how globalization affected intellectual life in Korea before the 20th century. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Korean history and of Asian intellectual history more broadly.

Chinese and Japanese Neo-Confucius scholars have traditionally claimed that Korean Neo-Confucianism was an imitation of Chinese Neo-Confucianism, a belief which was generally accepted by Western scholars. Now, this book edited from the theses of representative Korean Neo-Confucius scholars, shows that the three Korean scholars, T'aegye, Yulgok and Dasan in the Chosŏn Dynasty, developed Neo-Confucianism as a national political and religious philosophy which became specialized in a uniquely Korean way.

This important new study explores the impact of Neo-Confucianism on Korean society and politics between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This volume is the first comprehensive and in-depth discussion written in English of the Confucian tradition in the context of the intellectual history of Korea. It deals with the historical, social, political, philosophical and spiritual dimensions of Korean Confucianism, arguably the most influential intellectual tradition, ethical and religious practice, and political-ideological system in Korea. This volume analyzes the unique aspects of the Korean development of the Confucian tradition by examining the role of Confucianism as the ruling ideology of the Choson Dynasty (1302-1910). It investigates Confucianism’s social and cultural construction, and intellectual foundation in highlighting the Korean achievement of the Neo-Confucian discussion on "human nature and its principle" in light of the Chinese Neo-Confucian development. The volume also surveys the most influential Korean Confucian scholars discussing their philosophical significance in relation to one of the most fundamental Neo-Confucian discourses, namely the li (principle) and qi (material force) debates, to elucidate how metaphysical theories shaped the socio-political factions of the Choson Dynasty. Furthermore, issues concerning the relationship between Confucianism and Buddhism and other native traditional belief systems are also included in this volume. The volume explores the Confucian confrontation with modernity, encounter with the "Western Learning" including Western science and Catholicism, and the Confucian struggle with modernity in dealing with issues such as democracy, human rights, and gender in modern Korea. Individual contributors of this volume are either well established senior scholars or promising young scholars in the field.

This book explores the philosophical and religious dimensions of Korean Neo-Confuciansim as expounded by one of the foremost Korean Neo-Confucian thinkers, Yi Yulgok (1536-1584). Yulgok's creative interpretations reformulate some fundamental issues of Confucian philosophy. This book explores the significance of the fundamental assumption which underlies the entire system of Yulgok's Confucian thought. That philosophical assumption is characterized by the author as 'non-dualistic' and 'anthropocosmic'. It is a unique aspect of Korean Neo-Confucianism which leads to a new way of understanding the Confucian world view and spirituality. This 'non-dualistic' vision sheds a new and critical light on the dialectical framework of thinking at work in Western formulations of understanding the ultimate reality, nature, the universe, and human being. The 'anthropocosmic' vision in this respect will challenge fundamental assumptions of Western theological formulation and suggest a new understanding of human nature and the universe. A 'non-dualistic' and 'anthropocosmic' interpretation of Yulgok's thought is a fruitful way of approaching the Korean way of thinking and of coming to grips with one Neo-Confucian mode of attaining human self-understanding.

No book has addressed the simultaneous phenomena of Korea’s rapid economic development and its vibrant democratization in a single coherent paradigm. The late developmentalist approach emphasizes the strong role of Korea’s state and bureaucratic efficiency but does not explain how political development was concurrent with the economic miracles in the Han River; modernization and dependence theories also fail to explain the aspect of simultaneity in this phenomenon. What these three theories commonly miss is the unique relationship between state and society in Korea’s long history of political culture. In this book, Jongwoo Han takes a holistic approach to understanding these phenomena by examining the state’s role in the unprecedented economic development and society’s capabilities to resist the state’s centralized power. Han re-articulates state-society relations through Onuf’s social constructivist approach based on three rules of a political community: hegemony, hierarchy, and heteronomy. This book expands upon this effort to re-construct the state and society relations in two ways. First, it produces case studies of the capital city of Hanyang (Joseon Dynasty from 1392 to 1910), Kyeongseong (Japanese colonial control from 1910 to 1945), and Seoul (1945-current). The capital city is analyzed as a container for the major ideologies and ways of thinking that have shaped three important political eras. Second, i adopts two indigenous thoughts, Neo-Confucianism and geomancy, as sources of the main political and cultural ideologies that shape Korea’s state and society relations. These sources have never been treated as units of political analysis. This book finds that both Neo-Confucianism and geomancy, over two periods of Hanyang and Kyeongseong, are two main contributing factors of the emergence of the developmental state and vibrant democracy in Korea in the Seoul era.