By Mark Peterson
After writing last week about my Chinese tutor, Na Kap-ju, and the study of the Chinese classics in Korea, it occurred to me that there is much more I would like to say.
When I was first in Korea in the signboards on virtually all businesses were in Chinese. There were some signs in Hangeul. I remember thinking "why do so many signs have 'CH' in English on them?" That was the word "대," meaning great or big. So, I do remember some signs in Hangeul, but there were so many signs in Chinese. From time to time I see photographs of Korea in the '50s and '60s and am reminded of how much Chinese was used.
Newspapers were loaded with Chinese. The headlines were always in Chinese and much of the text was as well. And books, too, were loaded with Chinese.
Things gradually changed. Newspapers continued to use Chinese in the headlines, and the text was predominantly in Hangeul. Books moved from titles and text loaded with Chinese, to titles in Chinese, but text in Hangeul with Chinese in parenthesis. And finally, all titles and text in Hangeul. A book I wrote in 1998 is an interesting case in point. A year after the text was published, I visited the publisher to see how the book was doing. We talked about its sales and such for a time, and I was about to leave, when the publisher said, "Oh, one more thing: you might be interested to know that your book was the last book we have published with Chinese in the title on the cover."
I first thought that it was nice to be a part of history ― to have my book as the last of a generation. But the thought was mixed with sadness that we have moved into a new era. Many would celebrate, but for me, to have worked so hard to achieve a degree of Korean-Chinese literacy, and then see it cast aside left me with a feeling of saddened nostalgia.
Mr. Na, my Chinese tutor was an interesting case in the documentation of the change. He was a classically educated ordinary person who watched the decline in Chinese scholarship in Korea in the 1950s, 60s and '70s. But when he found out that his somewhat ordinary or mundane education was not useless, as he had feared, but had real value in a scholarly world that was no longer steeped in Chinese-Confucian learning in that he could teach a rising generation for whom a few the acquisition of classic Chinese was useful in modern scholarship ― in history, literature, and philosophy, mainly.
Mr. Na thought the world was passing him by and that his skills, primarily for those keen on passing the traditional exams as access to government positions, were no longer useful. But at the suggestion of Prof. Song June Ho that he go to Seoul and help teach modern graduate students of history, literature and philosophy, Mr. Na found new life.
He had ten children ― again, a symbol of his traditional-ness ― and he had sold off nearly all of his land to get them all educated. He was nearly penniless, but he had done his duty by his children. So, at the suggestion of Prof. Song, he picked up and moved to Seoul, living in a small rented room, initially.
I was his first student. It was I who started paying him to tutor me, and to pour out of his head bits and pieces of all that he had memorized as a young man. And gradually, after starting to teach me, he picked up more and more students. His rented room near Yonsei, Ewha, and Sogang Universities in the Shinchon area was soon replaced with a house he was able to buy with rent-out rooms on the first floor, where he lived on the second floor.
His apex of success in tutoring students now from all over Seoul including those at Seoul National University, Korea University, Sungkyunkwan University and all the prestigious universities of Seoul was to buy a better piece of land on a mountainside near Seoul as a place to rebury his father and to plan for his own burial. It was a place specially recommended by a geomancer ― a kind of fortune teller who "reads" the earth to determine the best places to bury one's ancestors in order to acquire good fortune for subsequent generations. And a new, bigger home.
Thus, Chinese scholarship has retained value after becoming largely invisible in Korea. And a handful, relatively, of scholars have inherited that wisdom. I mentioned last time that I was impressed with the scholarship of Shin Chae-yong, a Ph.D. candidate, whom I met on my recent trip to Korea. The tradition lives on.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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When I was first in Korea in the signboards on virtually all businesses were in Chinese. There were some signs in Hangeul. I remember thinking "why do so many signs have 'CH' in English on them?" That was the word "대," meaning great or big. So, I do remember some signs in Hangeul, but there were so many signs in Chinese. From time to time I see photographs of Korea in the '50s and '60s and am reminded of how much Chinese was used.
Newspapers were loaded with Chinese. The headlines were always in Chinese and much of the text was as well. And books, too, were loaded with Chinese.
Things gradually changed. Newspapers continued to use Chinese in the headlines, and the text was predominantly in Hangeul. Books moved from titles and text loaded with Chinese, to titles in Chinese, but text in Hangeul with Chinese in parenthesis. And finally, all titles and text in Hangeul. A book I wrote in 1998 is an interesting case in point. A year after the text was published, I visited the publisher to see how the book was doing. We talked about its sales and such for a time, and I was about to leave, when the publisher said, "Oh, one more thing: you might be interested to know that your book was the last book we have published with Chinese in the title on the cover."
I first thought that it was nice to be a part of history ― to have my book as the last of a generation. But the thought was mixed with sadness that we have moved into a new era. Many would celebrate, but for me, to have worked so hard to achieve a degree of Korean-Chinese literacy, and then see it cast aside left me with a feeling of saddened nostalgia.
Mr. Na, my Chinese tutor was an interesting case in the documentation of the change. He was a classically educated ordinary person who watched the decline in Chinese scholarship in Korea in the 1950s, 60s and '70s. But when he found out that his somewhat ordinary or mundane education was not useless, as he had feared, but had real value in a scholarly world that was no longer steeped in Chinese-Confucian learning in that he could teach a rising generation for whom a few the acquisition of classic Chinese was useful in modern scholarship ― in history, literature, and philosophy, mainly.
Mr. Na thought the world was passing him by and that his skills, primarily for those keen on passing the traditional exams as access to government positions, were no longer useful. But at the suggestion of Prof. Song June Ho that he go to Seoul and help teach modern graduate students of history, literature and philosophy, Mr. Na found new life.
He had ten children ― again, a symbol of his traditional-ness ― and he had sold off nearly all of his land to get them all educated. He was nearly penniless, but he had done his duty by his children. So, at the suggestion of Prof. Song, he picked up and moved to Seoul, living in a small rented room, initially.
I was his first student. It was I who started paying him to tutor me, and to pour out of his head bits and pieces of all that he had memorized as a young man. And gradually, after starting to teach me, he picked up more and more students. His rented room near Yonsei, Ewha, and Sogang Universities in the Shinchon area was soon replaced with a house he was able to buy with rent-out rooms on the first floor, where he lived on the second floor.
His apex of success in tutoring students now from all over Seoul including those at Seoul National University, Korea University, Sungkyunkwan University and all the prestigious universities of Seoul was to buy a better piece of land on a mountainside near Seoul as a place to rebury his father and to plan for his own burial. It was a place specially recommended by a geomancer ― a kind of fortune teller who "reads" the earth to determine the best places to bury one's ancestors in order to acquire good fortune for subsequent generations. And a new, bigger home.
Thus, Chinese scholarship has retained value after becoming largely invisible in Korea. And a handful, relatively, of scholars have inherited that wisdom. I mentioned last time that I was impressed with the scholarship of Shin Chae-yong, a Ph.D. candidate, whom I met on my recent trip to Korea. The tradition lives on.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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