A Companion to Korean Art 1118927044, 9781118927045

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A Companion to Korean Art

WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ART HISTORY These invigorating reference volumes chart the influence of key ideas, discourses, and theories on art, and the way that it is taught, thought of, and talked about throughout the English‐speaking world. Each volume brings together a team of respected ­international scholars to debate the state of research within traditional subfields of art history as well as in more innovative, thematic configurations. Representing the best of the scholarship governing the field and pointing toward future trends and across disciplines, the Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series provides a magisterial, state‐of‐the‐art synthesis of art history. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945 edited by Amelia Jones A Companion to Medieval Art edited by Conrad Rudolph A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton A Companion to Renaissance and Baroque Art edited by Babette Bohn and James M. Saslow A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present edited by Dana Arnold and David Peters Corbett A Companion to Modern African Art edited by Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà A Companion to Chinese Art edited by Martin J. Powers and Katherine R. Tsiang A Companion to American Art edited by John Davis, Jennifer A. Greenhill and Jason D. LaFountain A Companion to Digital Art edited by Christiane Paul A Companion to Dada and Surrealism edited by David Hopkins A Companion to Public Art edited by Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Volumes 1 and 2 edited by Finbarr Flood and Gulru Necipoglu A Companion to Modern Art edited by Pam Meecham A Companion to Contemporary Design since 1945 edited by Anne Massey A Companion to Illustration edited by Alan Male A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art edited by Alejandro Anreus, Robin Greeley and Megan Sullivan A Companion to Feminist Art edited Hilary Robinson and Maria Elena Buszek A Companion to Curation edited by Brad Buckley and John Conomos A Companion to Korean Art edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi

Forthcoming 1

A Companion to Australian Art edited by Christopher Allen

A Companion to Korean Art Edited by

J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi

The Korea Foundation has provided financial assistance for the undertaking of this publication project.

This edition first published 2020 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Editorial Office The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print‐on‐demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Park, J.P., editor. | Jungmann, Burglind, editor. | Rhi, Juhyung,  editor. Title: A companion to Korean art / edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann,   Juhyung Rhi. Description: Hoboken, NJ, USA : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2020. | Series:   Wiley blackwell companions to art history | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020018137 (print) | LCCN 2020018138 (ebook) | ISBN   9781118927045 (hardback) | ISBN 9781118927014 (ePDF) | ISBN   9781118927007 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Art, Korean. Classification: LCC N7360 .C66 2020 (print) | LCC N7360 (ebook) | DDC  709.519–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018137 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018138 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo Set in 10/12.5pt Galliard by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India Printed in the UK by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

About the Editors

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Notes on Contributors

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Editors’ Preface

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Series Editor’s Preface

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Introduction: The Contours of Korea’s Cultural History  Donald L. Baker

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Part I  Ancient to Medieval Cultures on the Korean Peninsula

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1 Early Paintings of Korea: Murals and Craft Decorations  Minku Kim

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2 Sculptures of the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla Sunkyung Kim

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3 Buddhist Architecture, Politics, and Gender in the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla Youn-mi Kim

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4 Art and Artifacts of Three Kingdoms Tombs Hyunsook Kang

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Part II  The Koryŏ Dynasty

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5 Introduction and Development of Koryŏ Celadon Namwon Jang

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6 Koryŏ Buddhist Sculpture: Issues and History Sun-ah Choi

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7 The Art of Salvation: New Approaches to Koryŏ Buddhist Painting Yoonjung Seo

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8 Establishing a New Tradition: Koryŏ Buddhist Architecture Seunghye Lee

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9 Arts of Refinement: Lacquer and Metalwares of Koryŏ235 Charlotte Horlyck Part III  The Chosŏn Dynasty

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10 The Emergence of Confucian Culture: Early Chosŏn Painting Insoo Cho

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11 Transformation: Three Centuries of Change in Late Chosŏn Painting Chin-Sung Chang

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12 Ceramics and Culture in Chosŏn Korea Soyoung Lee

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13 Ritual and Splendor: Chosŏn Court Art Burglind Jungmann

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14 Faith, Ritual, and the Arts: Chosŏn Buddhist Art and Architecture Unsok Song

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Part IV  Modern & Contemporary Developments

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15 Modern Korean Art in the Japanese Colonial Period Jungsil Jenny Lee

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16 The Long Breath: Postwar Korean Art Joan Kee

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17 Situating Contemporary Art of South Korea, 1980 to 2016 Young Min Moon

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18 South Korean Cinema in the Age of Hallyu Kyung Hyun Kim

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Index513

About the Editors

J.P. Park is June and Simon Li Associate Professor in the History of Art at the University of Oxford.  His most recent books include  A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosǒn Korea (1700–1850) in 2018 and Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China in 2012, both published by the University of Washington Press. Burglind Jungmann studied East Asian art history at the University of Heidelberg and at Seoul National University. She was Professor of Korean art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, the first such position in the United States, from 1999 to 2017. Jungmann wrote numerous articles and books on Chosŏn dynasty art, including Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth Century Japanese Nanga (Princeton University Press, 2004) and Pathways to Korean Culture: Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty (Reaktion Books, 2014). Along with being editor, she is a contributor to this volume. Juhyung Rhi is Professor of Art History at Seoul National University. He is foremost known as an authority on early Buddhist art of South Asia, especially of the Gandharan region, but has also written on diverse subjects of Korean Buddhist art.  His publications include  books in Korean such as Gandharan Art (Sakyejul, 2003), Afghanistan: A Lost Civilization (Sahoe Pyeongnon, 2004), and the editing of East Asian Pilgrims and Indian Buddhist Monuments (Sahoe Pyeongnon, 2008). He has also written a number of articles and book chapters in English on Buddhist art of South Asia and Korea.

Notes on Contributors

Donald L. Baker is Professor of Korean history and civilization in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaiʽi Press, 2008) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the religious and cultural history of Korea from the seventeenth century to the present day. His research focuses on Christianity, Confucianism, traditional medicine, and the life and philosophy of Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836). Chin‐Sung Chang is Professor of East Asian art history at Seoul National University. He was a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow in 2005–2006 and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in 2013–2014 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is the co‐author of Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632–1717) (Yale University Press, 2008) and Korea: Highlights of the Newark Museum’s Collection (Hollym, 2016). Insoo Cho is a Professor in the Department of Art Theory, School of Visual Arts at Korea National University. He has edited books and published numerous articles, both in English and Korean, on Korean and Chinese art, focusing on portraiture from the Chosŏn dynasty and images of Daoist immortals from the Ming dynasty. His most recent co‐authored book is Click: Asian Art (Yegyong, 2015). Sun‐ah Choi is Associate Professor of Buddhist art in the Department of Art History at Myongji University, Korea. After receiving her PhD degree in art history from the University of Chicago in 2012, she served as a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Columbia University and joined Myongji University in 2013. Her research interest centers on the ways in which the ontological status of sacred images were imagined and represented. Her publications include “Zhenrong to Ruixiang: The Medieval Chinese Reception of the Mahābodhi Buddha Statue” (Art Bulletin (97) 4, 2015).

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Charlotte Horlyck is Senior Lecturer of Korean art history in the Department of History of Art and Archeology at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London. She has published widely on ceramics and metalwares of the Koryŏ kingdom, addressing issues of their manufacture and use, as well as the collecting of them in the early twentieth century. Her most recent book is on Korean Art from the 19th Century to the Present (Reaktion Books, 2019). Namwon Jang is Professor of Korean and Asian ceramic history at Ewha Womans University. She has published numerous research articles on Korean ceramic history and is co‐author of New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryŏ (Harvard University Press, 2013 ) and Understanding Korean Art: From the Prehistoric through the Modern Day (Jimoondang, 2011). Hyunsook Kang is Professor of Korean archeology in the Department of Archeology and Art History at Dongguk University, Kyŏngju. She specializes in tombs of the Three Kingdoms period, particularly those of Koguryŏ. She published Study of Koguryŏ tombs (Chininjin, 2013) and Comparative perspective on the mural tombs of Han, Wei, Jin, and Koguryŏ (Chisik sanŏpsa, 2005). Joan Kee is Professor in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  Her books include  Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method  (2013) and  Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post‐Sixties America (2019). She has co‐edited volumes on scale in art for Wiley‐Blackwell and on contemporary Southeast Asian art. Kee is also a contributing editor to Artforum and serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia, including the Asia Art Archive, and the journals Art History, Art Margins, and Oxford Art Journal. Kyung Hyun Kim is Professor of East Asian languages and literatures and Director of the Center for Critical Korean Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the co‐editor of The Korean Popular Culture Reader (2014) and the author of Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era (2011) and The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (2004)—all published by Duke University Press. He has also co‐ produced both the restoration project of The Housemaid (dir. Kim Ki‐young, 1960) and its remake that premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. He recently published a Korean‐language novel entitled In Search of Lost G. Minku Kim is Assistant Professor of art history at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Previously he taught at the University of Minnesota and was an Andrew W. Mellon Scholar in the Humanities at Stanford University. He earned his PhD degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and focuses in his research on Buddhism and the cult of images in medieval China. He has published articles in Archives of Asian Art, Ars Orientalis, Misulsa nondan, and Pulgyo hakpo. Recently, he curated an exhibition of South Korean contemporary art, titled Seoul Times (2019) at Hui Gallery in Hong Kong. Sunkyung Kim received her PhD from Duke University and specializes in Buddhist art, focusing on mortuary practices and visuality in early medieval China and Korea.



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She was an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow and taught at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Her journal articles on cave sanctuaries, Buddhist steles, and sacred mountains have appeared in Asia Major, The Journal of Korean Studies, Archives of Asian Art, and Ars Orientalis. Youn‐mi Kim is Associate Professor of Asian art history at Ewha Womans University. Prior to joining the Ewha faculty,  she was Assistant Professor at Yale University (2012–2016) and Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University (2011–2012). She is the editor of New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryŏ  (Harvard University Press, 2013). Jungsil Jenny Lee received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and taught Korean art history at the Kress Foundation Department of Art History at the University of Kansas (2015–2018), California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and at several California State Universities. Her research interests include the (dis)continuity between tradition and modernism in Korean art, and the particularity and interdependency of modern/contemporary Korean art in the global context of East Asia and beyond. Seunghye Lee holds a PhD in art history from the University of Chicago with a specialty in Chinese and Korean Buddhist art. Currently, she is a curator at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, where she co‐curated the exhibition Exquisite and Precious: The Splendor of Korean Art in 2015 and edited its catalogue. Her annotated translation of Ko Yusŏp’s A Study of Korean pagodas: Joseon tappa ui yeon’gu was published by the Jogyeo Order of Korean Buddhism in 2017. She has published several articles on the art and practice of enshrining Buddhist relics within pagodas and statues in pre‐modern China and Korea. Soyoung Lee is the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator at the Harvard Art Museums. Her research interests include Korean and Japanese ceramics from 1400 to 1700 and cross‐cultural exchanges in East Asia. Lee was the Curator for Korean Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2003 to 2018. Her publications include Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art (2018) and Korean Buncheong Ceramics from the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (2011), both published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Young Min Moon’s art and art criticism reflect his migration across cultures and his awareness of the hybrid nature of identities forged amid the complex historical and political relationships between Asia and North America. A Guggenheim Fellow in 2014, Moon is currently a Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Yoonjung Seo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Myongji University, Seoul. Her research interests include court painting of the Chosŏn dynasty, the Sino‐Korean relationship in the early modern period, cultural exchange between East and West, Korean garden culture, collecting, provenance research, and the cultural biography of Korean art. She has published journal articles, anthology chapters, conference papers, and catalogue essays on transcultural perspectives of Chosŏn Korea.

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Unsok Song is Associate Professor in the Department of Archeology and Art History at Dongguk University, Kyŏngju. He received his doctoral degree from Seoul National University and specializes in Korean Buddhist art, focusing on image production and the monk‐sculptors of the Chosŏn period. He is the author of History of late Chosŏn Buddhist sculpture, published in 2012.

Editors’ Preface

Korean pop culture has recently become an international phenomenon. Millions of fans across borders cheer for pop songs, TV shows, and films from Korea. Newspapers and journals compete to generate frenzy over Korean pop culture as academic research investigates the reasons behind the ever‐increasing popularization of cultural products from Korea. Major academic conferences on art and the humanities nowadays offer dozens of sessions on Korean art and culture. It is impressive that a country whose recent history has been marked by a series of disasters—thirty‐six years of colonization by the Japanese empire, the Korean War, and a military dictatorship that lasted into the late 1980s—has risen to command the spotlight not only in its economic standing but also in cultural production. Going from one of the world’s poorest states in the 1950s to the thirteenth largest economy in the world today, Korea remains small geographically, commanding only one percent of the area of the United States or China. Nonetheless, it has become a major player in the international culture industry and a trendsetter in producing contents and technology. Even with all the fervor over ‘contemporary’ Korean culture, there exist serious challenges regarding the presentation and understanding of ‘traditional’ Korean culture: genuine interest in pre-modern and modern Korean art and culture has been marginal. The neglect and lack of knowledge about Korean art and visual culture is due to the late arrival of international scholarship and public exhibitions with a focus on special aspects of Korean art. Until the turn of the millennium, with only a few exceptions, exhibitions of Korean art in the United States and Europe were conceived as general overviews of “5000 Years of Korean Art,” presenting a canon of ‘masterpieces,’ and often showing the same objects repeatedly

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with little variation.1 However, such a generic and unimaginative approach, rather than exploring the specificity of its visual culture, confirmed the age‐old prejudice that Korean art and culture was little more than a smaller (and therefore a less interesting) copy of Chinese styles and traditions. Only when more specialized exhibitions started to be held and scholarly investigations into certain aspects of Korean art were published in the early 2000s, did it become clear that the peninsula’s heritage had its own distinct history and character, and that a blind spot on the map of East Asian culture needed to be filled. Although Korean studies were well established at some of the most prestigious research universities in the United States and Europe, courses on Korean art were extremely rare. Similarly, Asian art courses rarely mentioned the contribution of the peninsula. In contrast dozens of schools in the United States currently offer courses on Korean art and leading research universities have established a regular curriculum. In addition, major museums, including the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museum of Asian Art in Cologne, have designated exhibition spaces for Korean art. The significance of Korean art and culture is attracting increased attention across academia, but in the absence of any up‐to‐date college‐level materials on this subject, teaching and learning about Korean art remains a challenge. Of course, articles on the topic have been featured in exhibition catalogues and in short handbooks from commercial presses, and commentaries and essays by non‐professionals have appeared on websites, but few specialized research pieces have been published in peer‐reviewed journals. In our experience of teaching Korean art history, we often had to assign reading materials we would never have considered for any other art history course. Due to the dearth of Western experts in the field, most available texts on Korean art history in English are outdated, either because they do not reflect the latest research published in Korean, or because they do not answer questions of recent theoretical frameworks employed in the West. This lack of core teaching materials has been unanimously recognized as the biggest obstacle to conveying reliable update information on Korean art history outside Korea. Thus, this book will be the first professionally researched academic anthology on the history of Korean art in English, as it takes the latest Korean scholarly publications on the largest possible spectrum of Korean art and archeology into account and responds to the demands of a Western audience who sees Korean culture in the context of Asian and world history. Furthermore, this volume can motivate instructors and scholars of Asian art history to incorporate the visual arts of Korea into their research and teaching. The   The last two such exhibitions were Arts of Korea at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1998) and Korea: die alten Königreiche at the Villa Hügel in Essen, Germany (1999). Rare exceptions were The Story of a Painting, A Korean Buddhist Treasure from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection (1991) and Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century: Splendor and Simplicity (1993), both held at the Asia Society Gallery in New York.

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geographic location of the Korean peninsula itself suggests its importance in p ­ an‐East Asian culture. Throughout its history the peninsula has been a much‐contested region, due to its strategic geographical position. In the twentieth century it became, and still is, a battleground for superpowers. Starting with its forced opening in the late nineteenth century, the country has been frequently referred to as the ‘hermit kingdom.’ This idea is essentially wrong. It was conceived at a time when European powers, the United States, and Japan started to conquer, divide, and colonize East Asia. Within the Asian sphere the peninsula was always well‐­connected. Korea was an indispensable partner in the diplomatic, economic, and cultural exchange within East Asia. Receiving inspiration from diverse cultures on the Chinese mainland throughout history and exporting its own regional techniques, styles, and aesthetic ideas to its neighbors both in China and Japan, Korea was a most important player in the cultural exchange among the three countries for centuries. Thus, understanding its art is an important asset for historians of Chinese and Japanese art. Cultural exchange will be a pivotal topic throughout the entire volume. Just as studying Korean art without reference to Chinese art would be meaningless, the study of Japanese art definitely benefits from a sound understanding of Korea’s art and culture. This volume covers the history of visual culture of the Korean peninsula from earliest historic times to the present. Followed by an introductory historical survey discussing major political, socio-economic, and cultural developments, this volume is divided into four parts: Ancient to Medieval Cultures on the Korean Peninsula, The Koryŏ Dynasty, The Chosŏn Dynasty, and Modern and Contemporary Developments. The essays in each part explore major aspects of the visual culture in a certain period while throwing light on the political, social, and religious contexts. In spite of the editors’ efforts to cover as many facets as possible, some themes were left out, partly for lack of extant materials and partly because little research has been done so far into important fields, which include architecture, calligraphy, and the history of print media.2 Research on historic sites and scholarship in North Korea are less accessible and therefore the chapters on the historic periods when the center of power was in the north, particularly during the Koryŏ dynasty, concentrate more on materials in South Korea and Japan. Despite such minor issues, this book aims to maintain theoretical and interpretive balance without falling into any regional prejudice and academic hegemony. Furthermore, contributors discuss visual and material artifacts of Korean art housed in various archives and collections around the globe. In sum, this book is the first successful collaboration among major scholars of Korean art in the Asia, North America and Europe that will enjoy a longer shelf life not only within the academic community, but also among the general public. J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi   In the field of calligraphy, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently premiered Beyond Line: The Art of Korean Writing, the first major exhibition of Korean calligraphy in the United States (June 2019). For an important Korean contribution to print history in East Asia, see Lothar Ledderose’s Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art, published by Princeton University Press (2000).

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Series Editor’s Preface

The Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History is a series of edited collections designed to cover the discipline of art history in all its complexities. Each volume is edited by specialists who lead a team of essayists, representing the best of leading scholarship, in mapping the state of research within the sub-field under review, as well as pointing toward future trends and lines of enquiry. A Companion to Korean Art aims to rebalance and expand knowledge of the art of the Korean peninsular across a broad chronological sweep and in a cross-cultural context. The volume comprises newly commissioned essays that draw on the collections of Korean art in museums and galleries, in Korea and across the world. Supported by a introductory historical survey that sets historical, socio-economic and cultural developments into context , the essays cover Korean art from early beginnings to contemporary developments in art and cinema. Together, these essays combine to provide an exciting and challenging revision of our conception and understanding of Korean art that will be essential reading for students, researchers and teachers across a broad spectrum of interests. A Companion to Korean Art is a very timely and welcome addition to the series. Dana Arnold, 2020

Introduction: The Contours of Korea’s Cultural History Donald L. Baker

Readers interested in Korea’s past will frequently encounter the statement that Korea has five thousand years of history. It is beyond dispute that Korea has a very long history. However, the figure of five thousand years should not be taken literally. If Korean history is defined as the length of time there have been human settlements on the geographic region we now call Korea, then Korean history stretches back at least eight thousand years. It reaches back much farther than that, to forty thousand or fifty thousand years ago, if we want to say that any Homo sapiens on what is now a peninsula, even wandering bands of hunter‐gatherers, counts as history. However, pushing that far into the past makes it awkward to use the term “Korea” since as recently as the last Ice Age, which ended about ten thousand years ago, what is now the Korean peninsula was connected by land to what is now China’s Shandong peninsula as well as through a land bridge to what is now Japan. If, however, we use the distinction historians often make between pre‐history (meaning the period before written records) and history (the time period for which there are written records), then there are only around two thousand years of Korean history, since it is only within the last two thousand years that we have found written records produced on or near the Korean peninsula. Moreover, it is anachronistic to use the term “Korean” for cultures and peoples who would not have defined themselves as living in the country of Korea or even as members of a Korean ethnic group thousands of years ago. In pre‐historic times, ­people would, if asked, have given their kinship group, their village, or their tribe as the primary identity. There was no Korea they could identify with back then. When kingdoms first began to emerge in and around the Korean peninsula about two ­thousand years ago, people may have identified themselves as belonging to the kingdoms within which borders they lived but they definitely did not yet have a larger Korean identity, since

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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donald l. baker

Korea had not yet emerged from the merging of those various kingdoms. Most historians argue that it has been only within the last thousand years, when most of the peninsula fell under the control of one government for the first time, that peoples living on the Korean peninsula have come to see themselves as one people, comprising a single cultural and political group. Nevertheless, in order to avoid the confusion a number of different names for different groups may cause, we will use the term “Korean” in this chapter [and the rest of the volume] for earlier periods as well, except when we want to highlight differences among the various groups that have contributed over the centuries to the formation of Korean civilization. Besides, in discussing the evolution of Korean civilization over the centuries, it is important to remember that what people see as their history is more important than what their history actually was. Because Koreans in more recent centuries have come to believe that peoples in and around the peninsula millennia ago are their ancestors and therefore should be called “Koreans” as well, the belief that Korean history and culture forms an unbroken line stretching several millennia into the past has shaped their self‐identity and therefore has played an important role in their continuing cultural production. In other words, Koreans, like people all over the world, have produced art, music, and literature partially on the basis of who they think they are, and who they think they are is significantly determined by who they think their ancestors were. Therefore, in order to more accurately reflect the cultural environment in which Koreans in recent centuries have constructed Korean culture, we need to take into consideration their assumption that they are building on a foundation of Korean civilization thousands of years old. One way to ensure we do that is to use the term “Korean” for people and cultural developments on the peninsula thousands of years ago even when we feel that is not technically accurate. We can also justify our use of the term “Korean’ before the peoples we are writing about would have used that term because it is clear that the various early cultures on the peninsula and stretching into Manchuria, as well as the kingdoms that appeared later, shared some distinctive characteristics that separate them from the Chinese cultural sphere and therefore constitute a separate cultural zone. One distinctive characteristic is language. Although it is highly unlikely that the various peoples on and around the peninsula spoke the same language two thousand or more years ago, it is highly likely that the languages they spoke were members of the same language family. And that language family is separate and distinct from the Chinese language family. Unlike Chinese, Korean is an agglutinative language (that means it sticks [‘glues’] syllables to nouns and verbs to represent various grammatical functions such as tense and number, degrees of certainty and probability, and even levels of respect for the person spoken to and the person spoken about). Moreover, because it uses attached syllables to identify such grammatical distinctions as subject and object, it does not need to follow the strict subject‐verb‐object order we see in Chinese. Korean also has its own distinct sound system. Not only does it not have the tones we see in Chinese, it distinguishes three different k, p, and t sounds, and two different s sounds, in a way we do not see in Chinese. Even though it was not until the fifteenth century that Koreans had a phonetic script they could use to write the way they spoke (han’gu˘l), they were clearly speaking a different language from Chinese for millennia before that.

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Language is not the only cultural characteristic that separates Korea from its neighbors. The geography of Korea, the fact that it is a peninsula jutting off a part of Northeast Asia which was culturally and politically distinct from China until the last couple of centuries, means that it was close enough to China to borrow elements of Chinese culture but distant enough to adapt those borrowed elements to meet Korean needs and Korean aesthetic tastes and make them their own. The fact that it usually required either a walk of several days or a trip by ship across often rough seas to reach Chinese settlements allowed Korea to maintain not only its political but also its cultural independence. It also was separated by sea from the Japanese islands, guaranteeing that, until modern nautical technology shrunk distances in the late nineteenth century, Korea could maintain its political and cultural independence from Japan as well. That is why we can find evidence of Korea’s cultural distinctiveness from ancient times up to the present day, from its early burial patterns and its housing styles to its cuisine (kimchi is a distinctly Korean form of fermented vegetables such as cabbages or radishes) and its religious culture (a unique mixture of imported and indigenous religions). And, of course, we also see evidence of Korea’s cultural distinctiveness in its art.

Prehistoric Korea The first clear evidence of Homo sapiens on what is now the Korean peninsula dates back to around fifty thousand years ago (Bae 2012). This is the Paleolithic age, m ­ eaning the age of crude stone tools. By crude stone tools, we primarily mean hand axes. We know those hand axes are man‐made because they all appear to have been hammered by other rocks to reduce their size until they can be held by one hand. They are also shaped through pounding to give them a pointed end on top of a round base so that they can be used for tasks such as hunting, skinning the results of a successful hunt, or digging up plants. The hand axes used in Paleolithic Korea are somewhat similar in appearance to the hand axes we find in Paleolithic sites in Europe and north China. But that doesn’t mean that the people in Korea were Europeans or Chinese, or that the people in Europe or China were Koreans! Technological similarities does not n ­ ecessarily mean ethnic similarities. Rather people in Europe, people in China, and people in Korea independently discovered how to make the same sort of simple tool. When we move into examining Neolithic culture in Korea, it is important to remember that not only does technological similarity not necessarily imply ethnic similarity, but technological and cultural distinctions do not necessarily mean ethnic differences. The Neolithic age in Korea, from about ten thousand years ago to about three thousand years ago, refers to progress in stone technology that results in the production of sharpened stone tools, such as arrowheads, spears, and even daggers made of stone. The Neolithic age in Korea is characterized by the emergence not only of polished stone tools but also of settled communities along with the appearance of various styles of pottery and different types of burials. Archeologists give different names to various Neolithic cultures to highlight diversities in their burial practices and pottery styles. However, we do not know if the different burial practices and pottery styles we find in Korea over the seven thousand years of the Neolithic period represent multiple ethnic groups or simply local variations caused when some members of one tribe moved to a new site and

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adapted to slightly changed environments. We cannot tell from the archeological record if new groups of people moved onto the Korean peninsula, bringing with them new customs, or if the people already there simply changed the way they did things. For example, although all the pottery during the Neolithic era is simple earthenware, meaning that it has not been fired at a temperature higher than about 1000º Celsius and therefore is not as hard as later ceramics, we find pottery with strips of clay applied to it for decoration and we find pottery decorated by markings that looks as though a comb has been run across the surface of the clay. We find earthenware jars with pointed bottoms and earthenware jars with flat bottoms. Then, about three thousand years ago, about the time Koreans started acquiring bronze artifacts, we find pottery with no decorations on the clay body. Instead it is colored either red or black instead of the brownish coloring of earlier jars. Do these different styles of pottery represent different ethnic groups or are they all the products of the same Korean ingenuity? We do not yet, and may never, have a definitive answer to that question. We have the same problem with burial practices. There are said to be 30,000 to 40,000 dolmens on the Korean peninsula, all dating from the Bronze Age (1500 BCE–300 BCE) into the early Iron Age (300 BCE–100 BCE). Dolmens are large boulders placed on top of graves, sometimes placed directly on the ground above the burial pit and sometimes placed like an altar on perpendicular stones surrounding the burial pit (Lee Young‐moon 2007). They can weigh several tons, so the fact that a lot of manpower was imperative to move them into place suggests that they were used to mark the grave of someone politically powerful. However, we find simple stone cist tombs dating from the same time period. A stone cist tomb is one in which the sides of a pit are lined with stone, the coffin is placed inside, and it is then covered with more stones and dirt. Normally, that simpler form of burial would imply a lower social status. However, though both dolmens and stone cist tombs are used during the Korea’s Bronze Age, if we excavate the graves under dolmens in most cases we find only stone artifacts, including stone daggers (the later dolmens found along the southern coast are a conspicuous exception). We are much more likely to find bronze daggers and other bronze artifacts in simple stone cist tombs. Yet we would expect that, since bronze daggers are more difficult to produce than stone daggers, being buried with bronze daggers would be a mark of higher status. Are we then dealing with two different burial customs, implying two different ethnic groups, living in Korea at the same time, or does the difference in burial goods imply different types of high social status? Might it be that dolmens were for the politically powerful, such as tribal chiefs, and stone cist tombs were for those with special status as leaders of religious rituals, since bronze artifacts are often associated with religious rituals? (See Bale and Ko 2006 on the rise of elites during the Bronze Age.) We have no way of answering that question unless we can invent a time machine and go back three thousand years in time to ask the people living then why they did what they did. No matter what sort of graves they provided for their dead, one thing the people of Neolithic Korea came to share was the shift from hunting and gathering to the intensive cultivation of crops. It took a while to make that transition but before the Bronze Age began around 1500 BCE Koreans were already relying heavily on cultivated crops. They probably began to cultivate millet and soybeans around five thousand

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years ago, in the middle of the Neolithic period. A thousand or so years later they began to grow rice as well (Lee Gyoung‐Ah 2011; Norton 2007). At the same time, however, Koreans were also mining the seas for food. Outside of the city of Ulsan, along Korea’s southeastern coast at a site called Pan’gudae, there is a cliff on which you can see rock drawings made by Koreans during the late Neolithic period and into the Bronze Age. Those drawings clearly show large sea animals, such as whales, sharks, and turtles, and show human beings hunting them. It is highly unlikely that the people who made those drawings were simply using their imagination. It is more likely that they made those drawings as a sort of magic to help them catch the animals they depicted using methods they were familiar with (Bangudae Petroglyphs Institute 2013). The people on the peninsula had begun importing bronze artifacts around three thousand and five hundred or so years ago. By 800 BCE they were making their own bronze artifacts. Seven hundred years later they began making iron artifacts as well. Bronze and iron production implies craft specialization, which in turn implies large enough communities to support occupational specialists. However, archeological data tells us that people at this time were still living in pit‐dwellings in small villages. Groups of those villages may have come under the political leadership of tribal chiefs, but no archeological evidence has yet been found for the existence of large towns or cities at this time, or for kingdoms, though histories written centuries later claim that kingdoms had already emerged before the Common Era.

The Chinese Stimulus The earliest datable archeological evidence for a concentration of people sizable enough to be called urban is the result of Chinese intervention in Korea. Chinese records tell us that in 109 BCE China’s Han dynasty (208 BCE–220 CE) launched an attack on a political entity it called Choso˘n (we now call it Old Choso˘n to distinguish it from the dynasty that ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910). What that entity called Choso˘n was is not clear. Some later records call it a kingdom but we have not yet found any archeological or textual evidence testifying that there was a king who exercised any sort of centralized administration (a requirement for a kingdom to be a real kingdom), appointed local officials, and collected taxes (Barnes 2001: 9–15). However, it was strong enough to resist the Han for a year. It most likely was a tribal federation. Choso˘n eventually was defeated in 108 BCE and the Han dynasty proceeded to establish an outpost on the site of what is now the city of P’yo˘ngyang, which they called Lelang (K. Nangnang). It established three other such outposts in and around the peninsula as well, but the others didn’t last long (Byington 2013). Lelang, however, lasted for over four centuries, until 313, and had a significant impact of the development of Korean culture. It is important to keep in mind that Han China did not make Korea a colony. Lelang was nothing more than an outpost with responsibility for acquiring goods from the inhabitants of the Korean peninsula through trade. There was no attempt to turn the people who were already on the peninsula when Lelang was established into Chinese either politically or culturally. Nevertheless, it is likely that it was through Lelang that the peoples on the peninsula were exposed for the first time to

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organized government, to writing, and to urban life. For example, the oldest example of writing found in Korea comes from Lelang (Kim Chang‐seok 2014: 200–203). Koreans also began to build brick‐chamber tombs because of the influence of Lelang (Byington 2013: 126).

Map 1  Lelang and its neighbors. Drawn by Sanghwan Lee & mastered by Ina Jungmann.

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It also may have been the market provided by Lelang, with its more than two hundred thousand inhabitants, and its connection to China proper that inspired the southeastern corner of the peninsula, an area later called Kaya, to become a leading producer of iron artifacts, which it sold both to Lelang and to Japan (Byington 2013: 172). The most important influence Lelang had on the peninsula, however, was the model of organized government it provided. It was only after Lelang had been established that Korea’s tribes began slowly organizing into larger tribal federations which evolved into kingdoms (Pai 1992). The traditional chronology, based on histories written centuries after the fact, has Koguryo˘, Paekche, and Silla as full‐blown kingdoms in the first century BCE. The traditional dates for their birth as kingdoms are 57 BCE for Silla, 37 BCE for Koguryo˘, and 18 BCE for Paekche. That sounds far too early. Reports by a Chinese traveler suggest that most peoples in and around the Korean peninsula were still in the tribal federation stage as late as the second century. The largest political entity that Chinese traveler noticed was Puyo˘ in the northern reaches of Manchuria, far from the peninsula, which he tells us had a king ruling over about eighty thousand households, meaning probably at most three hundred to four hundred thousand people, about twice the size of Lelang. Koguryo˘ had only thirty thousand households at that time. Those are the only groups said to have any sort of strong central authority (Lee et al. 1993: 15–24). Moreover, the south, where Paekche and Silla were supposed to have emerged as kingdoms two thousand years ago, was much less politically centralized than even Puyo˘ and Koguryo˘ were (Byington 2009).

The Three Kingdoms and Kaya Of the traditional three kingdoms of Koguryo ˘ , Paekche, and Silla, Koguryo ˘ emerged as a full‐fledged kingdom first, but it was probably not until the early third century that Koguryo ˘ had a government with enough centralized authority to be considered a real kingdom. A century later, in 313, Koguryo ˘ was strong enough to conquer Lelang, which had limped along for almost a century after the Han dynasty had ended back in China. Despite its reach deep down into the peninsula, Koguryo ˘ remained primarily a Manchurian kingdom. Koreans often point to the stele of the Koguryo ˘ king Kwanggaet’o (r. 391–413) as the oldest example of writing by Koreans, but that stone monument to Kwanggaet’o’s martial accomplishments was erected on what is now the Chinese side of the Amnok (C. Yalu) River in what was then the capital of Koguryo ˘ . Its capital remained north of the Amnok River until 427 when pressure from the north pushed it southward onto the peninsula. Paekche appears as one of many tribal federations in the southwestern quarter of the peninsula as far back as the third century but did not emerge as a real kingdom until the second half of the fourth century. It then engaged in struggles with Koguryo˘, forcing it to move its capital from the Seoul area to more secure sites farther south in the late fifth century (Best 2006). The last of the three kingdoms to emerge was Silla. The tribal federations in the southeastern corner of the peninsula did not begin to merge into a true kingdom until late in the fifth century. That kingdom then began to struggle with both Paekche and Koguryo˘. The wars among Silla, Paekche, and Koguryo˘ lasted until the 660s, suggesting that the peoples of those three kingdoms did not see themselves as one people any more than the peoples of Europe, who have fought wars against each other in recent centuries, saw themselves as one people. The wars of the

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Three Kingdoms were not a civil war. They were wars of one state against another. The eventual winner, with help from Tang China (618–907), was Silla, in 668. Before Silla defeated Paekche and Koguryo˘, it had already absorbed the various city‐ states of Kaya (42–562 CE) in the southeastern corner of the peninsula. Kaya was a group of cities grown rich on trade with Lelang and with Japan. It was never able to coalesce into a unified kingdom with centralized authority before the last of those cities was absorbed by Silla in 562 (Byington 2012). Compared to the Three Kingdoms, Kaya had particularly close relations with the peoples living in southern Japan. We can trace the origins of pottery, armor, and horse trappings in Japan to earlier examples in Kaya. The exact nature

Map 2  The Three Kingdoms plus Kaya. Drawn by Sanghwan Lee & mastered by Ina Jungmann.

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of the Kaya‐Japan relationship, however, is not clear, though archeological evidence disproves early Japanese historical records claiming that Kaya was its colony. Though, as already noted, the Three Kingdoms and Kaya coalesced at different rates and were as a result separate and distinct political entities, they shared certain political and cultural characteristics that differentiate that part of East Asia from its neighbors. First of all, with the exception of trade‐oriented Kaya, their leaders, both kings and officials, were a hereditary military elite. They were warriors more than they were administrators. In determining elite status, both paternal and maternal ancestry were important, a trait we continue to see in Korea up through the nineteenth century. Moreover, family background and land ownership were more significant than official government titles in determining a person’s position in the social hierarchy. In addition, since those kingdoms evolved from tribal federations, the power of kings was limited by councils formed from representatives of the leading families. For example, the king of Silla could not go to war without the unanimous approval of the members of the Council of Notables (Hwabaek). It also took unanimous approval by the Council for Silla to officially accept Buddhism early in the sixth century.

Buddhism and Culture Before Silla accepted Buddhism, it had already been accepted by Koguryo˘ and Paekche in the second half of the fourth century. Buddhism was the first truly organized religion in Korea. Before Buddhism, religion was local, focusing on ritual interactions with neighborhood deities (often animated natural objects such as mountains and rivers) and ancestral deities. Bronze rattles found in tombs from two thousand years ago suggest the probable existence of shamans, ritual specialists who claim a special ability to interact with spiritual beings such as ancestors or long‐dead heroes. However, neither animism nor shamanism established a pan‐regional network nor did they promote the erection of impressive statues or worship halls. Buddhism, on the other hand, brought with it from China not just the teachings of the Indian sage S´¯akyamuni Buddha (ca. 563 BCE–483 BCE) but also new forms of art, including statues of the many different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, paintings with religious themes, and monumental architecture. The Buddhism that entered Korea was Maha¯ ya¯ na Buddhism. Maha¯ ya¯ na Buddhists emphasize that the Buddha took many different forms, appearing not only as the historical individual S´¯a kyamuni but also as Maitreya (the Buddha of the future) and Amita¯ bha (the Buddha who presides over the Western Paradise). They also expressed in art their devotion to specific Buddhas as well as to Bodhisttvas, supernatural beings who had earned the right to enter nirvana but stayed behind in this world in order to help other sentient beings reach nirvana as well. Different Buddhists define nirvana differently but basically it means a state in which you are free from the frustrations and disappointments that are an unavoidable part of life in this world. Maha¯ ya¯ na Buddhists produced wood and metal statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and also erected buildings to house and engage in ritual homage to them. In addition, they painted scenes inside and on the outside walls of worship halls to illustrate Buddhist teachings. Buddhism, therefore, was a significant stimulus pushing Korean art and architecture in new directions.

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Buddhism began as a religion for the elite. Kings promoted it in the belief that if they showed devotion to Buddha, he would support their grip on power. That is why, for example, the magnificent temple Pulguksa was built in the Silla capital of Kyo˘ngju in the mid‐eighth century. Pulguksa literally means “Temple for Buddha’s Realm.” However, the name does not imply that Buddhism was the religion of everyone in Silla. The second syllable in that temple’s name refers primarily to the ruling elite, so it would be best understood as “a temple asking the Buddha’s protection for the ­ruling elite in this country.” Nonetheless, before too long Buddhism began to extend beyond the court to the general population. It did not replace animism and shamanism but instead came to co‐exist with them.

Mature Silla By the time Pulguksa was built, Silla had eliminated Paekche and Koguryo˘ and was in sole control of the lower two‐thirds of the Korean peninsula, almost up to where the North Korean capital of P’yo˘ngyang is now. South Korean historians generally call this period in which Silla reigned supreme over most of the peninsula “Unified Silla” (668–935). North Korean historians, however, point out that Silla did not bring the territories of all three kingdoms under one government, since most of Koguryo˘’s ­territory fell under the control of the Manchurian‐based kingdom of Parhae (698– 926). They therefore insist that to call Silla after 680 “Unified Silla” is misleading. There is some merit in their suggestion, so recently some historians outside of North Korea have started using the term “Mature Silla” instead. Mature Silla lasted until 935. In contrast to the constant military conflicts of the sixth and seventh centuries, it had a much more civilian air. Even hwarang, the young men from aristocratic families who provided much of the leadership on the battlefield during the wars against Paekche and Koguryo˘, faded into the background (Tihonov 1998; Rutt 1961). Rather than climbing on their horses to go forth and fight an enemy, the elite enjoyed sitting around Anapchi Pond in the capital city of Kyo˘ngju, exchanging poems, discussing Buddhist philosophy, and promoting art more in line with Chinese practice. When Silla was still a young kingdom, it produced art with a playful air. For example, there is a jar from the fifth or sixth century that has animal and human figures on it, with one of the human figures playing the kayagu˘m (Korean zither). During that same period, Silla also produced a drinking cup in the shape of a warrior riding a horse. In the eighth and ninth centuries, however, Silla art became more serious, and more Buddhist (Rhi 2013). China was the dominant cultural force in East Asia at the time, providing the model for what an advanced civilization should look like. Silla wanted to be known as advanced as well, so it began to produce art that was more in line with the type of art, Buddhist and otherwise, that China was producing at the time. That transformation in art styles does not mean that Silla tried to imitate China in every way. Neither Daoism nor Confucianism, both important components of Tang Chinese culture, had much visibility in Silla. Nor did Silla abandon its hereditary caste system, including the important role maternal ancestors played in social class that China itself was beginning to question. Despite some emulation of

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Chinese culture in Silla art, Silla remained Silla. Whom you could marry, what sort of saddle you could put on your horse, what sort of fabric you could use for your clothing (including your underwear), and even the number of steps in front of your home were all determined by your “bone rank” (kolp’um), which is dictated by who your ancestors were. There was no such rigid differentiation of class in China. In the late ninth century, the power of the Silla throne weakened, allowing a Later Paekche (892–936) in the west and a Later Koguryo˘ (901–918) in the north to challenge Silla’s complete control over the peninsula. The revival of the names of those earlier rivals to Silla suggests that even when they lived under the rule of a Silla king many people saw themselves less as part of the Silla state than as members of smaller, regional communities. In other words, there was no solid national identity yet. That changed under the next kingdom, the Koryo˘ (918–1392), which emerged in the early tenth century to assume control over the vast majority of what is Korean territory today. Taking advantage of the destruction of the government of Parhae in 926 by Khitan armies from the north, Koryo˘ was able to bring under its control not only all of what had been Silla territory but also exercise authority all the way up to the Amnok River in the west. Though in the east it could not extend its control all the way to the current border with China, the Tuman River, it managed to bring much more of the northeastern region under its control than Silla.

Koryo˘ Koryo˘ not only gave Korea roughly the configuration it has today (with the exception of that northeastern corner), it also gave it its English name. The name “Korea” entered European languages when Europeans who lived in China during the period of Mongol rule heard about Koryo˘. Those Europeans first learned about Koryo˘ long after it had emerged on the peninsula, and after it had already gone through some significant changes. The Koryoˇ dynasty was one of the most turbulent periods in Korean history (at least, before the twentieth century). The Wang family, who sat on the Koryo˘ throne for over four and a half centuries, survived invasions from the Khitan from the north early in the eleventh century. Tense relations with the Jurchen, who had defeated the Khitan and also seized part of northern China in the twelfth century, inspired one monk named Myoch’o˘ng (d. 1135) to rise up in rebellion in an effort to force the government to be more aggressive against the Jurchen. Finally, in the thirteenth century, invasions by the Mongols ended with the Wang family still on the throne but under Mongol control. There were major internal changes as well. A few decades into its first century, major battles between officials in the capital led to the expulsion of many officials of non‐Silla background. In the twelfth century, a powerful official named Yi Chagyo˘m (d. 1126) who also happened to be both the grandfather and the father‐in‐law of the king became tired of exercising influence from behind the scenes and tried to seize the throne for himself. His plot was blocked only at the last minute. That was followed a decade later by the rebellion of Myoch’o˘ng. Then a few decades after that military

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Map 3  Koryo ˘ . Drawn by Sanghwan Lee & mastered by Ina Jungmann.

officers seized control of the government, but left the Wang family on the throne and appointed some civilian officials willing to work with them. Nevertheless, historians consider this an unusual break from the tradition of civilian rule that has characterized Korean politics until the twentieth century (Shultz 2000). Military control of the Koryo˘ government lasted almost a century, ending only when the generals failed to protect Koryo˘ against Mongol invaders. The generals

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were overthrown, and Korea was forced to accept Mongol overlordship in 1259. Rather than replacing the monarch with one of their own, as they did in China, the Mongols left the Wang technically in charge of Koryoˇ but required them to take Mongol wives, thus to make the children of those Mongol wives the next kings. Koryo˘ became a son‐in‐law state to the Mongols. The royal family, and some of the aristocratic families who helped them govern Koryo˘ during the period of Mongol overlordship, became so intertwined with the Mongol imperial family in China that when the Mongols were forced out of China, the Wang family soon fell as well and a new royal family, the Yi, emerged and established the Choso˘n dynasty (1392–1910). After Koryo˘ replaced Silla in the early tenth century, but before the Choso˘n dynasty began at the end of the fourteenth century, much changed on the Korean peninsula. First of all, the social structure was not nearly as rigid as it had been under the Three Kingdoms. Koryo˘ had nothing like the bone rank system of Silla. In another departure from Silla precedents, in the second half of the tenth century, Koryo˘ began using Confucian civil service examinations to test the qualification of government officials. However, Koryo˘ kept enough of the traditional respect for hereditary status to ensure that those examinations did not provide the high degree of social mobility we see in China at the same time. Many officials took the high‐ level exams only after they had begun an official career. Passing the exam validated their qualifications for government posts and made it easier for them to advance higher up the ranks. Nevertheless, we can see some cases of sons of local elites joining the civil service and becoming part of the capital‐based elite, sometimes because of their performance on those exams and sometimes because of connections their family had built with powerful families in the capital, or a combination of the two. There is definitely more circulation among the elite class than there was in Silla. A larger group of families contributed sons to high posts, and contributed daughters to the royal bedrooms, than had been the case in Silla. However, those at the lower rungs of society were usually doomed to stay there. It is estimated that possibly as much as thirty percent of the population of Koryo˘ were nobi, people who inherited the unfortunate distinction of being vulnerable to being bought and sold. Nobi status implied a life‐long exploitation, one almost impossible to escape from. Normally people who, because of who their parents were, are treated like property and are forced to work for their masters without being paid for doing so, are called slaves in English. However, many scholars of Korean history insist that nobi should not be called slaves, since they were members of the same ethnic group as the rest of the population and were not mistreated like slaves were in the antebellum American south. Moreover, nobi could own their own nobi, something slaves in other societies normally could not do. That is why many scholars prefer to leave the term nobi untranslated rather than use the potentially misleading term “slave.” The fact that such a large portion of the Koryo˘ population was nobi suggests that there was a labor shortage in Koryo˘. Koryo˘ was an agrarian society. Its upper class were landowners. If they could have hired people to work their land for them, they would have done so, since that would have freed them from shouldering full responsibility for the livelihood of the human property that worked their land. The problem they faced

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was that they needed people to work their vast landholdings. Otherwise, that land was useless. Since there was not enough surplus labor they could hire on a temporary basis to tend their farmland, to ensure they had a sufficient labor supply when they needed it, they purchased nobi. It was not until the second half of the Choso˘n dynasty, after 1700, that the population grew large enough to provide the labor surplus needed to undercut the economic advantages of the nobi system and the percentage of the ­population that was relegated to permanent servitude began to decline. We do not know much about the sort of beliefs and values the nobi had. About the only information we have for Koryo˘ tells us about those of the literate elite. From records kept by the government and writings by a few scholars, as well as from the architectural and archeological records they left behind, we can see that, in the words of one European scholar of Koryo˘, it was a “pluralistic society” (Breuker 2010). Buddhism had the strong support of the state, just as it did in Silla and in Paekche and Koguryo˘ in their last couple of centuries as well (Vermeersch 2008). But it would be an exaggeration to say that Buddhism was the official religion of Koryo˘. Confucianism also had a role, particularly in the civil service examinations but also in some state rituals. It clearly was taken more seriously in Koryo˘ than it had been in Silla. At times the state also supported Daoism. In a departure from the practice in Silla, the court sometimes called on Daoist priests to perform rituals on behalf of the health of the state and the royal family, even though, unlike the case with Buddhism and Confucianism, there does not appear to be any institutional presence of Daoism beyond the capital city. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism were all used to convince the people of Koryo˘ that the royal family had a legitimate claim to power, and was backed by supernatural forces. Shamanism was also present in Koryo˘, though it appears to have played only minor roles in getting the people to accept the Wang family as their legitimate ruler. Shamanism was not given any institutional support by the government and was even harshly criticized by some government officials and members of the Confucian scholar elite (Lee et al. 1993: 444–446). Though Buddhism was not the only religion utilized by the court to legitimize its rule, it had much more influence on Koryo˘’s visual culture than either Confucianism or Daoism did. Most of the paintings and sculptures from Koryo˘ times that are still admired today are Buddhist paintings and statues. Moreover, Buddhism inspired some of Koryo˘’s greatest technological achievements. In an attempt to gain help from the Buddha against foreign invaders, in the thirteenth century Koryo˘ monks created the world’s most complete pre‐modern set of Maha¯ ya¯ na scriptures, the famous Koryo˘ Tripitaka, on 81,258 wooden blocks, each one able to be used to print two pages of text. A century later, near the end of the dynasty, Koreans produced the first book ever printed using movable metal type. The book, printed in 1377, was a Buddhist text, which evidently appeared several decades before Gutenberg invented his famous printing press. Probably the most famous cultural product of the Koryo˘ dynasty was not Buddhist art but ceramics, which may have been used by elite Buddhists monks in addition to being used by the royal family, government officials, and aristocrats. Incorporating the skills learned from exiled potters from Zhejiang in southeastern China and from the defeated Khitan people in the north to their own centuries‐old tradition of

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perfecting the creation of beautiful ceramics, Korean potters in the twelfth century began producing some of the most advanced ceramics the world had seen up to that time—or since. Koryo˘ potters pioneered the use of inlaid designs as well as the use of an underglaze copper oxide, which produced a brilliant red. However, after almost a century and a half, the quality of Korean ceramics went into decline, possibly because the kilns were destroyed or the potters scattered by the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century (Adams 1990). The most important cultural development during the four and a half centuries of the Koryo˘ dynasty was not in art but in consciousness. Before the Koryo˘ dynasty the people on the peninsula did not identify as Koreans, as one people of one country and one culture. Koguryo˘, Paekche, and Silla produced their own separate histories, though those works are no longer extant. It was not until Koryo˘ that we find histories written that bring all three together to form a history of Korea. Those unifying histories are the Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms, also referred to as the History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi), written in the twelfth century, and the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa), written in the thirteenth century. Both are written by men of Silla descent, so they tend to emphasize Silla over Paekche and Koguryo˘. Nevertheless, they treat the history of those three kingdoms as all part of one history, the history of the Korean nation. The Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms goes even farther and posits a Korean kingdom, the Choso˘n kingdom of Tan’gun, which predates not only Koguryo˘, Paekche, and Silla but even the Han outpost of Lelang, giving Korea a primordial unity. This new sense of Korean identity, possibly inspired by the need for the people on the peninsula to unite against Khitan and Mongol invasions, became a permanent part of the way the people on the peninsula define themselves. That was the first time that the myth of Tan’gun and his kingdom had appeared in writing, but it quickly became engraved on the minds of the Korean people, becoming one of the factors, along with language, geography, cuisine, and culture broadly defined that the people on the peninsula used to construct a Korean identity. Though what it meant to be a Korean would change over the following centuries, the idea that the people living in Korea were all Koreans, sharing a distinct political and cultural identity that distinguished them from their neighbours, would not.

Choso˘ n In 1392, when Koryo˘ fell and was replaced by the kingdom of Choso˘n, Korea experienced more than just a change in its name. It underwent a dramatic transformation in the philosophical underpinnings of its politics, society, and culture. Buddhism was pushed to the sidelines and Confucianism became the guiding ideology. There are fundamental differences between the Buddhist and the Confucian view of the world. Buddhists believe that we live in a world of unceasing change. Unfortunately, there are things in this world, such as our pets, our family members and our close friends, that we would like to keep as part of our world forever but, like everything else, they will change. They may die or move to a location far from our own. This transitory nature of everything near and dear to us makes disappointment inevitable. However,

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we can lessen the sorrow we experience when we lose something we prefer remains with us by reminding ourselves that everything changes. Buddhism teaches that conscious attention to the transitory nature of the phenomenal world will minimize our expectation that things we love will be with us for a long time and therefore will minimize how disappointed we feel when they change, as they inevitably will. Confucianism, especially the more philosophical form of Confucianism called Neo‐ Confucianism that emerged in China during the Song dynasty (960–1279) and began entering Korea at the end of the Koryo˘ period, accepted the Buddhist assumption that the world around us is constantly changing. However, Confucians believe that, rather than trying to rise above those changes, we need to learn to work with them. For ­example, when we are students we need to concentrate on studying but when we have graduated we may change into teachers, at which time we should concentrate on being good teachers. Confucian ethics focuses on being aware of what sort of situation we are in at any particular time and then acting accordingly. Confucian ethics is also interpersonal ethics. It tell us how to behave in interactions with our fellow human beings. That is why Confucians tell us to pay attention to our social environment rather than try to distance ourselves from it as the Buddhists suggest. They tell us to treat our parents, our older siblings, and our political superiors with respect, to recognize that husbands and wives have different responsibilities, and to always be worthy of trust from our friends. The Confucian goal is not escape from the world of inevitable disappointment (that is the Buddhist goal) but social order maintained through harmonious interactions. Choso˘n was the first truly Confucian dynasty in Korea. It therefore set about trying to remodel Korea to better conform to Confucian ideals. For example, it tried to change the family to give men more authority in the public sphere and restrict the economic and social autonomy many women had exercised under earlier dynasties. That included allowing men to have more than one spouse but requiring women to be faithful to one man only, even if he had died and left them alone (Han 2004). It also placed more emphasis on the Confucian civil service exam than Koryo˘ had. Heredity, including maternal ancestry, was still important. It was very difficult for someone whose ancestors on either his father’s or his mother’s side had not held a government post to take the highest‐level exam and be appointed to a high‐level government post. Women, of course, were barred completely from taking that exam. However, the range of candidates from which government officials could be chosen was much wider than it had been in previous dynasties. Nevertheless, there was still a hereditary social ­hierarchy. Technical experts such as physicians, mathematicians, astronomers, musicians, and artists tended to come from families of physicians, mathematicians, astronomers, musicians, and artists respectively. They had little hope of rising into the higher ranks of the bureaucracy. And, at the bottom of society, along with Buddhist monks (they had fallen from the high status they enjoyed during the Koryo˘ dynasty), were nobi, still composing around thirty percent of the population until around 1700. Because of the withdrawal of most state support for Buddhism and the rise of Confucianism to dominance, though Buddhism did not completely disappear, we do not see many Buddhist paintings and Buddhist statues being produced. Instead we see more emphasis on portraiture, often of a very somber‐looking Confucian official, and on landscapes in which human figures are only a small part, to remind the viewer

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of the Neo‐Confucian belief that human beings are part of nature and must live and work within it rather than against it. Ceramics continue to be produced but they ­usually are more subdued in their designs and colors than Koryo˘ ceramics, reflecting the Neo‐Confucian belief that we need to quiet our emotions in order to interact appropriately with the world around us.

Map 4  Choso ˘ n. Drawn by Sanghwan Lee & mastered by Ina Jungmann.

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Choso˘n also had much quieter relations with its neighbors than Koryo˘ had. It enjoyed almost two centuries of peace before the unsuccessful Japanese invasion of the 1590s and the successful Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636, followed by another two centuries of peace, which lasted until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Like the Mongols before them, the Manchu left the Korean ruling family on the throne but then went on to put one of their own on the imperial throne in China. The Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1912) ruled over China into the early twentieth century. Koreans, who had looked down on the Jurchen ancestors of the Manchu as barbarians, reacted to the Manchu occupation of China by rethinking their own position in the only civilized world they knew at the time, the Confucianized world of East Asia. With the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Koreans decided they had the last true Confucian government left on earth. Their pride in their Confucian government and society led them to redefine their cultural identity. They began to see themselves as not just Koreans but as a highly civilized people, with civilization defined in Confucian terms. That meant they were the guardians of civilization and therefore they became even more rigorous in their adherence to Confucianism than they had been earlier (Haboush and Deuchler 1999). At the same time, feeling that China was no longer worthy of the respect they had once given it, they began looking inward at their own history and culture. Whereas earlier in Korea most histories had been sponsored by the government, we find after 1700 an upsurge in private individuals writing histories of Korea. They continued the tradition which began during the Koryo˘ period of looking at Korean history as a whole, treating Koguryo˘, Paekche, and Silla as all part of Korean history and including Tan’gun’s kingdom in the history of Korea as well. We also find artists turning their eye toward things Korean. For the first time artists, such as Cho˘ng So˘n (1676–1759), began to paint real Korean landscapes instead of Chinese or imaginary ones (Yi 2015). We also find artists, such as Kim Hongdo (1745–1806), painting scenes of daily life in Korea, something we had not seen since the tomb murals of the Koguryo˘ period (Jungmann 2014: 240–267). It is ironic that Koreans began to define their identity in Confucian terms borrowed from earlier periods in Chinese history at the same time that they also began to display more interest in, and pride in, their own distinctive geography and culture. The Choso˘n dynasty lasted about half a century longer than the Koryo˘ dynasty but it, too, eventually fell in 1910. Historians still debate the reason for its inability to resist a Japanese takeover after five centuries of independence. Some claim that the conservative nature of Korean Confucianism kept Choso˘n from adapting to the changes brought by the modern world in the nineteenth century. Others claim that corruption and factionalism in the nineteenth century so weakened the government that resistance to the Japanese was ineffectual. There is another possible explanation: Korea is a small country without much d ­ ifference between what can be grown in one part of the country and what can be cultivated elsewhere on the peninsula. That lack of agricultural diversity, combined with Korea’s position far away from world trade routes, meant there was much less stimulus in Korea than in Japan or in China for commercial development. In addition, Korea lacked the waterways found in other countries that provided inexpensive routes for transporting commercial goods. As a result, Choso˘n Korea had an underdeveloped commercial sector and

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therefore had not acquired the financial surplus it needed in the late nineteenth century to acquire the military and industrial technology necessary to survive in the age of imperialism. The result was that, when Japan decided to expand by adding Korea to its empire in 1910, there was nothing Korea could to prevent that from happening.

Under Japanese Rule Korea fell under Japanese control for thirty‐five years, from 1910 to 1945. Over those decades, Japanese and Koreans worked together (though usually within parameters set by the Japanese) to modernize infrastructure on the peninsula. By 1945 Korea had many more modern schools, modern railway lines, modern medical facilities, and modern means of communication (such as telegraph lines, radio stations, and newspapers) than it had had in 1910 (Shin and Robinson 1999). Many more Koreans could read and write in 1945 than could in 1910, and Koreans, especially women, found that they had many more educational and occupational opportunities available to them than their ancestors had had under the Choso˘n dynasty. The traditional hereditary social hierarchy almost disappeared. Nevertheless, those years of Japanese colonial control were difficult years for Koreans. Their Japanese overlords treated them as an inferior people needing Japanese help to cope with the challenges of the modern world. Koreans responded to this Japanese insult to their self‐esteem by again redefining what it meant to be a Korean. One aspect of the modernization of Korea in the first half of the twentieth century was cultural. Koreans began to write in a script that reflected the language they spoke. Just as Europeans wrote in Latin for centuries after that was no longer their spoken language at home, so, too, did Koreans write in Literary Sinitic (literary Chinese) throughout most of the Choso˘n dynasty, even though King Sejong had, in the fifteenth century, given them a script (now called Han’gu˘l) they could use to reproduce the sounds of their own language. Only at the end of the nineteenth century do we see the Han’gu˘l alphabet assuming an important role in public communication. In the twentieth century it became the primary medium for Koreans to express their cultural identity through poetry, fiction, and essays. Koreans, at least the educated elite, used to define themselves as civilized because they could write in Literary Sinitic as well as the Chinese could. Stimulated by Japanese rule to look more closely at what defined them as Koreans, they saw that one such defining characteristic was their own language, which they resolved needed to be made more manifest in writing. Koreans also took advantage of new forms of art and literature to redefine Koreans in ethnic rather than Confucian terms. They learned from the West, through the Japanese, modern and more realistic styles of painting. They also acquired modern forms of literature, leading them to set aside the traditional Confucian disdain for fiction and write short stories and novels. Koreans used those new art forms to explore what it meant to be a Korean. It was under the forced modernization of Japanese rule that Koreans moved away from defining themselves as civilized according to the criteria they had borrowed from China toward defining themselves as an ethnic (or racial) group. Influenced by the new notion of race that Westerners and the Japanese had

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introduced to Korea at the end of the nineteenth century, they concluded that there were many ethnic groups, i.e. “races” (minjok), on earth and no one ethnic group was superior to the others. Koreans, therefore, they concluded, needed to understand what it means to be a Korean (explorations of Korean life through modern modes of history, art, and literature could tell them that) so that they could be just as proud of being Korean as Japanese were of being Japanese and Americans were of being American. Another significant change for Koreans living in the first half of the twentieth century was the collapse of Confucianism as the hegemonic ideology. The failure of Confucianism to preserve Korean autonomy had cost it the power it once wielded. For many, the best replacement was Christianity, because Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, which had pioneered the establishment of modern schools and hospitals in Korea at the end of the nineteenth century, appeared to Koreans to offer an alternative to the approach to modernization the Japanese were imposing. For others, however, the better alternative was socialism, which promised them that by harnessing the power of the masses they could build a just and egalitarian society that would be superior to what the capitalist Japanese had, as they naively believed the Soviet Union had built.

Korea Independent and Divided The division between Christians and socialists in colonial Korea was mirrored by the division in world politics between the Christian capitalist United States and the Communist Soviet Union. When the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August, 1945, forcing Japan to concede defeat in World War II in the Pacific and dismantle its empire, Korea was on the road to again enjoy independence. However, at first the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea into two zones of occupation, purportedly to prepare Koreans to govern themselves (though Koreans had already governed themselves for thousands of years until the Japanese seized control in 1910). In a strange twist of fate, the Soviet Union ­occupied the northern half of the peninsula, where over half of Korea’s Christians in 1945 lived. The United States occupied the southern half, which had the strongest Communist underground on the peninsula. Many of the Christians moved south and many of the Communists migrated north, with the result that those two o ­ ccupations ended up producing two separate Korean governments in 1948, both of which still divide the Korean homeland today, despite an invasion by the north in 1950 in a bloody but failed attempt to unite the two halves. The north has been a totalitarian state since its founding and has struggled economically. The south, on the other hand, after decades under authoritarian rule, is now a prosperous and democratic country. The different fates of the two parts of the peninsula in the aftermath of liberation from Japanese rule have led to very different cultures, though both remain recognizably Korean. Over the seven decades of separation, cultural differences have grown so wide that many young people in the south no longer see people in the north as member of the same ethnic group, despite their shared physical appearance. The difference between authoritarian rule in the south and totalitarian rule in the north allowed southerners more artistic freedom, more freedom to experiment and expand their cultural

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horizons, than was available to their compatriots in the north. An authoritarian government by definition restricts criticism of that government or its policies but allows people to otherwise follow their own muse. It may try to direct art into certain channels to support government policies but it does not force it to do so (Kim Hyungsook 2015). A totalitarian government, on the other hand, as its name implies, tries to exercise total control over all areas of society, including art and other cultural products. Only art that explicitly supports government policies is allowed, for example.

Map 5  Korea today. Drawn by Sanghwan Lee & mastered by Ina Jungmann.

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South Koreans exercised the greater leeway they have enjoyed, especially after the end of authoritarian rule in 1987 and the growth of democracy, to find ways to express their new Korean identity through both traditional culture, such as the modified version of farmers’ music known as p’ungmul, and modern global culture, such as the performance of Western classical music (Hesselink 2006; Harkness 2014). They have also continued the project begun during the colonial period to use literature and film to both explore and define Korean identity. At first South Koreans focused on how they preserved a Korean identity over the course of the painful history of the twentieth century, with the humiliation of Japanese rule, the trauma of the Korean War, and the arduous march toward industrialization under authoritarian regimes. However, since the 1980s, as South Korea has joined the ranks of the more economically advanced countries, the people have used culture more and more to celebrate their other achievements. South Koreans now define themselves as a dynamic and creative modern people who are proud of their traditional culture and comfortable with modern Western culture. As examples, they like to point to Psy (a.k.a Park Jae‐sang, b. 1977), who created a global hit with a pop song sung mostly in Korean, and Nam June Paik (1932–2006), who is considered the founder of video art. Many Koreans are also proud of the popularity of Korean girl bands and boy bands as well as Korean melodramas around the world. North Korean culture has not had the same global success. Much of modern South Korean culture is influenced by Christianity, since Christians comprise approximately thirty percent of the population. Buddhism has also regained popularity, claiming the adherence of around a quarter of the population. Both Christianity and Buddhism are global religions and give South Koreans a common language to communicate with peoples in other cultures. The North, on the other hand, defines itself as the last true socialist nation on earth, much as Choso˘n Koreans defined Korea as the only remaining Confucian bastion after the fall of the Ming. Moreover, the official ideology of North Korea is Chuch’e (Juche), a uniquely North Korean blend of Marxism, Confucianism, and worship of the ruling Kim family—the current leader Kim Jong Un (b.1984) is the son of the preceding leader and the grandson of the first leader of North Korea—that does not provide much in the way of a common vocabulary for talking with the rest of the world. Moreover, North Korea strictly controls cultural production. It is the purpose of all cultural products, whether art, literature, music, or dance, to support the government by stimulating loyalty and reverence for the Kims as well as pride in the northern version of Korean identity. A prime example of the North Korean use of culture to serve political ends can be seen in a video of North Korea’s top rock band Moranbong singing a song called “Tansume” (in a split second) which ends with a video on the screen behind the band showing a missile rising into the sky, flying across the Pacific Ocean, and then causing massive destruction in America (Moranbong 2013). North Korea has a radically different cultural identity than South Korea has, since it was formed by seven decades of a radically different political, economic, social, and cultural system. The North Korean national identity is one defined by membership in what they proudly call a monolithic society held together by pride in their history, their culture, their Juche ideology, and their ruling family.

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Despite the cultural differences we see between North and South Koreans today, they both are products of thousands of years of history on the peninsula in which Koreans have taken what they have found useful from other cultures—mostly from China in traditional times and from Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century—and adapted it to better fit their own indigenous customs, beliefs, and values. The result has been a changing but nonetheless distinctive Korean identity which has served for centuries to distinguish the people of Korea from other peoples around the world.

References Adams, Edward B. 1990. Korea’s Pottery Heritage. Seoul: Seoul International Publishing House. Bae, Christopher J. and Kidong Bae. 2012. “The Nature of the Early to Late Paleolithic Transition in Korea: Current Perspectives.” Quaternary International 281: 26–35. Bale, Martin and Min‐jung Ko. 2006. “Craft Production and Social Change in Mumun Pottery Period Korea.” Asian Perspectives 45 (2): 159–187. Bangudae Petroglyphs Institute, University of Ulsan, ed. 2013. Bangudae: Petroglyph Panels in Ulsan, Korea in the Context of World Rock Art. Seoul: Hollym. Barnes, Gina. 2001. State Formation in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives. London: Routledge. Best, Jonathan W. 2006. A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Breuker, Remco E. 2010. Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea. 918–1170: History, Ideology, and Identity in the Kory˘o Dynasty. Leiden: Brill. Byington, Mark, ed. 2009. Early Korea: The Samhan Period in Korean History. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Byington, Mark, ed. 2012. Early Korea: The Rediscovery of Kaya in History and Archaeology. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Byington, Mark, ed. 2013. The Han Commanderies in Early Korean History. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Haboush, JaHyun Kim and Martina Deuchler, eds. 1999. Culture and the State in Late Choso˘n Korea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. ˘ n Dynasty.” International Han, Hee‐sook. 2004. “Women’s Life during the Choso Journal of Korean History 6: 113–160. Harkness, Nicholas. 2014. Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hesselink, Nathan. 2006. P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jungmann, Burglind. 2014. Pathways to Korean Culture: Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910. London: Reaktion Books. Kim, Chang‐seok. 2014. “Ancient Korean Mokkan (wooden slips): With a Special Focus on their Features and Uses.” Acta Koreana 17 (1): 193–222. Kim, Hyungsook. 2015. “National Identity Discourses in Visual Culture and Art Education.” Korea Journal 55 (1): 112–137.

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Lee, Gyoung‐Ah. 2011. “The Transition from Foraging to Farming in Prehistoric Korea.” Current Anthropology 52 (4): 307–329. Lee, Peter H., Wm. Theodore de Bary, Yongho Ch’oe, and Hugh H.W. Kang, eds. 1993. Sourcebook of Korean Civilization Vol. 1: From Early Times to the Sixteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, Young‐moon. 2007. “Overview of Korea’s Dolmen Culture.” Korean 21 (1): 16–21. Moranbong. 2013. “Tansume.” Accessed on YouTube video July 27, 2019. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUjqYfyvynQ Norton, Christopher J. 2007. “Sedentism, Territorial Circumscription, and the Increased Use of Plant Domesticates Across Neolithic‐Bronze Korea.” Asian Perspectives 46 (1): 133–165. Pai, Hyung Il. 1992. “Culture Contact and Culture Change: The Korean Peninsula and its Relations with the Han Dynasty Commandery of Lelang.” World Archaeology 23 (3): 306–319. Rhi, Juhyung. 2013. “Seeing Maitreya: Aspiration and Vision in an Image from Early Eighth‐century Silla.” In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryo˘, edited by Youn‐mi Kim, 73–122. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Rutt, Richard. 1961. “The Flower Boys of Silla (Hwarang).” Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch 38: 1–66. Shin, Gi‐wook and Michael Robinson, eds.1999. Colonial Modernity in Korea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Shultz, Edward J.2000. Generals and Scholars: Military Rule in Medieval Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Tikhonov, Vladimir. 1998. “Hwarang Organization and its Ethics.” Korea Journal 38 (2): 318–338. Vermeersch, Sem. 2008. The Power of the Buddhas: The Politics of Buddhism during the Koryo˘ Dynasty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Yi, So˘ng‐mi. 2015. Searching for Modernity: Western Influence and True‐View Landscape in Korean Painting of the Late Choso˘n Period. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Glossary Anapchi [Anapji] 雁鴨池 Cho˘ng So˘n [Jeong Seon] 鄭敾 Choso˘n [Joseon] 朝鮮 Chuch’e [Juche] 主體 han’gu˘l [hangeul] 한글 Hwabaek 和白 hwarang 花郎 Kaya [Gaya] 加耶, 伽耶, 伽倻 kayagu˘m [gayageum] 伽倻琴 Kim Hongdo 金弘道 Koguryo˘ [Goguryeo] 高句麗 kolp’um [ golpum] 骨品

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Koryo˘ [Goryeo] 高麗 Kwanggaet’o [Gwanggaeto] 廣開土 (大王) Kyo˘ngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Lelang [K. Nangnang] 樂浪 minjok 民族 Myoch’o˘ng [Myocheong] 妙淸 nobi 奴婢 Paekche [Baekje] 百濟 Parhae [Balhae] (C. Bohai) 渤海 Pulguksa [Bulguksa] 佛國寺 p’ungmul [pungmul] 風物 Puyo˘ [Buyeo] 扶餘 Samguk sagi 三國史記 Samguk yusa 三國遺事 Silla 新羅 Tan’gun [Dan’gun] 檀君 Yi 李 Yi Chagyo˘m [Yi Jagyeom] 李資謙

Part I

Ancient to Medieval Cultures on the Korean Peninsula

1

Early Paintings of Korea: Murals and Craft Decorations Minku Kim

Introduction As a brush‐based practice, painting in early Korea was essentially the result of interaction with China. Extant works display conspicuous connections to Chinese culture in terms of techniques, iconography, and style. But also notable are local characteristics, some of which were shared widely across Eurasia. Among an array of painted media, funerary murals have survived in the greatest number, and early ones have been found in the deltas of the Taedong and Chaeryŏng rivers. Koguryŏ, originally centered in the mid‐Yalu basin, adopted murals for their stone‐chamber tombs as well, and their repercussions are also clear and persistent in Paekche and the watershed of Naktong. Additionally, craftworks, especially lacquerwares, constitute another major archeological assemblage to accompany early paintings. Rare examples of painting on harnesses have been excavated from burials in Silla. Also noteworthy are the mural fragments discovered from the ruins of above‐ground buildings, presumably once part of Buddhist establishments.

Emergence of Painting on the Korean Peninsula This chapter investigates the evidence of the earliest known major painting projects on the Korean peninsula and in the adjacent regions of continental northeast Asia, generally known as Manchuria. The period under consideration ranges roughly from around the beginning of the Common Era to the seventh century, corresponding in large measure to the so‐called Three Kingdoms Period (trad. 57 BCE–668 CE), a

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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name deriving from historical sources of the much later Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) and referring to the kingdoms of Koguryŏ (trad. 37 BCE–668 CE), Paekche (trad. 18 BCE–660 CE), and Silla (trad. 57 BCE–935 CE). Throughout this period the first complex societies emerged in the given region, which grew into multiple substantial state‐level polities, including these foremost three. Presumably, given the complexity and quality of those early surviving projects, paintings were already being produced during the preceding era, but archeologists have yet to uncover physical evidence of such antecedents. In paving our way to the main matter, we nonetheless need to come to grips with two admittedly familiar yet slippery critical concepts: “Korea” and “painting.” What does this chapter mean by Korea? Setting aside the issue of English etymology, “Korea” is largely an arbitrary modern construct. In fact, its historiographical validity is questionable, if not entirely counterfactual, with regards to this period. There is no indisputable proof that an equivalent notion or otherwise was shared in the region throughout this period. Instead, the given historical experience, albeit in retrospect, can be at best understood as a process, whereby any attribute that is to be later labeled as Korean was eventually formulated. In the following I use the term for lack of a better alternative and for practical reasons of taxonomy (just as we do with “China” and “Japan”). Therefore, “Korea” will serve as an expedient geographic marker, even if its boundaries remain ambiguous and in constant flux. In addition, the region that will be investigated now hosts several modern nation states, including two Koreas and parts of China and Russia; here, the allusion to a certain, historical “pan‐Korean region” is only invoked theoretically, free from today’s nationalist or even territorial repercussions. Moreover, the term “Korea” fails effectively to indicate a specific people (or rather peoples). It is philology that would ever help us in pigeonholing them as some ethno‐linguistic category at least, but the study of proto‐Korean languages is exceedingly difficult (Lee and Ramsey 2011: 1–76). Scarce data suggest, elusively, a tantalizing variety of languages, many of which have gone extinct with or without apparent successors (Vovin 2010). In any case, these imagined masses of individuals may not constitute a homogenous monolith of cultural, social, or political identities— or, more specifically, a mono‐ethnicity, the dogmatic truism that has long been perpetrated, whether consciously or unconsciously, by a trend in modern scholarship that has been shaped by a presentist awareness of Korea (Pai 2000; Xu 2016). Admittedly, any trans‐nationalist approach might simply look like an implausible, sterile neutrality. Nevertheless, this approach of exploration outside of the prevailing mold of ethnocentric narratives should equip us with insight on the period that we will investigate. The word “painting” creates another set of difficulties―the burden of categorization among an analogous array of cultural undertakings. Following the custom of the field, the author defines painting as the purposeful execution of pictorial motifs by use of paint on a surface. Such a classification nonetheless has its limitations, curtailing line drawings or engravings. This inadequacy is only exacerbated by the fact that, seemingly during this period, the practice of painting, especially as the art form that we know from later periods, was not genuinely in place or was only being formed. More importantly, our understanding of such painting is tied intimately to the happenchance of archeology, which



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might distort our evidence while creating a false impression of coherence. We need to acknowledge the possibility that many works of painting on such soft surface as textiles or paper and on buildings have simply not survived. It is no accident that the painted materials examined below are largely such less perishable craftwork items as lacquer vessels and harnesses, and tomb murals. Alternatively, we might add a range of materials, such as petroglyphs and painted ­pottery, to the category of painting. Such materials are, despite our difficulties in dating, indigenous to prehistoric cultures that flourished earlier and are particularly important for their rich and manifold connections to various ecological and anthropological ­circumstances within the wider Eurasian context. Moreover, we can identify the persistence of some tradition in the succeeding period, and these materials were, to some extent, reused in later times. Take, for instance, most dramatically, the cliff‐face of Ch’ŏnjŏlli in Ulju (Ulsan), which possesses a large petroglyphic tableau (9.5 meters wide) of animals, f­igures, and geometric designs that runs parallel in the lower register to a number of lengthy inscriptions (as many as 800 total characters) carved in Idu (Chinese characters reproducing indigenous language) with a long date span ranging from 514 to 838. In addition, incised decorations occur on bone, pottery, and bronze artifacts, some of which are clearly pictorial and reminiscent of the themes and styles of petroglyphs, suggesting the endurance of certain artistic habits across different media. Most noteworthy among these is the palm‐sized, ring‐knobbed, bronze plaque (13.5 centimeters wide), acquired reputedly from Taejŏn by the National Museum of Korea in 1969 (Figure  1.1). This plaque has been dated to the third century BCE, based on its typological similarity to the assemblage scientifically excavated at the late Bronze to early Iron Age site of Koejŏngdong in Taejŏn. Though its lower part is largely missing, a unique microcosm of pinned drawings survives on both sides of the plaque. It is punctuated by six squarish holes on top, an indication of its role as some sort of

Figure 1.1  Plaque (back side) with scenes of farming. 3rd century BCE. Reputedly from Taejŏn, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Bronze. W. 12.8 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul (SSu 1794). (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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accessory the function of which is, however, unclear. Demarcated by short and long lines on the exterior and grid patterns at the center, each face is divided into two compartmentalized frames. The front side (indicated by a remaining knocker‐like appendage) features a Y‐shaped tree on each frame with two perched birds. The subject has been interpreted as sodo (C. sutu) or sottae, a special asylum‐like sanctuary centered by large tree poles for the worship of local deities, as described in the third‐century Chinese historical text Sanguozhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms) with respect to Mahan, a sub‐domain from which the plaque is said to have come (Byington 2009: 143). On its back side shown here, three more scenes are discernible. From the upper right to the bottom and then to the upper left, they comprise: (1) a figure with long two‐pronged tails behind his head tilling the ground with a plough while seemingly exposing his penis; (2) a bent figure with uplifted arms holding a scythe or hatchet; and (3) a latticed flask, perhaps a skeuomorphic design of pottery (or wickerwork), toward which the arms of a figure with a short pony tail (perhaps a topknot) are extended. Although the lower scene is lost, the original composition appears to render a cycle of events related to agriculture intriguingly set in sequential order from sowing to harvest and storage. With a remarkable succinctness, the plaque as a whole offers us a glimpse into a local life richly informed by a ritualized calendar, agricultural production, and theocratic constructs. Nevertheless, in spite of their informative value such objects have to be excluded from the category of painting proper. For one thing, neither qualifies by the parameters of painting: incised designs are hard engravings (although one cannot eliminate the possibility that some paint was once applied onto these carvings), and some swooshing pastes or other colorations alone are hardly pictorial enough. Perhaps more importantly, ­determined brushwork is critically missing from such works. That is to say, painting, at least for the purposes of our discussion, must be defined as a technique or even a paradigm reliant on brush skills, rather than being a merely elective practice. In fact, the arrival of the brush was the technological factor that caused a drastic rupture in the artistic continuum. It was the sophisticated tool that gave rise to the art of painting and that separates it from the reductive method of incision or the casual effect of coating to make a picture. This tool‐centered account naturally leads to the question of the instrument’s origin in the region—a story we are still piecing together today. Abundant and consistent archeological records nonetheless indicate that brushes were used much earlier and were more widespread in the neighboring Chinese sphere than on the Korean peninsula. It is likely that brushes were introduced through contact with that culture, especially, along with the scribal implementation—one of the binary consequences that one same tool was to bring. In this regard, the group of five lacquer‐coated brushes retrieved in 1988 from the mud‐bogged Tomb 1 at Taho‐ri in Ch’angwŏn, South Kyŏngsang Province, provides an exciting opportunity for theorizing (Figure  1.2). These brushes—the oldest excavated on the peninsula, dating to as early as the first century BCE—were accompanied by knives, each of whose pommel is in the shape of a ring; the latter looks like contemporary Chinese hand‐knives (xiaodao) used to condition wooden or bamboo slips (jiandu) for writing. Although no written text or painted object was found at the same burial site, these tools together suggest the ­material and instrumental basis for contemporary scribal practices of Chinese origin



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Figure 1.2  Brushes with bristles on both ends of shaft. 1st century BCE. Excavated from Taho‐ri Tomb 1 in Ch’angwŏn, South Kyŏngsang Province. Lacquer‐coated wood. L. 23 cm. The National Museum of Korea. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

and, by extension, suggest a plausible level of literacy at the local level. The tomb’s Chinese coins and other bronze items further point to active trade relations with the Han empire (206 BCE–220 CE) or its sub‐realms nearby, the so‐called Four Commanderies established by Western Han Emperor Wu Di (r. 141–87 BCE) upon his annexation of parts of the peninsula and Manchuria (Byington 2013). Nevertheless, these long‐stalked (up to 33 centimeters) brushes from Taho‐ri are, compared to their Chinese parallels, strikingly unorthodox; they have rough bristles encased on both ends of the wooden shaft, suggesting a local modus operandi. Whatever their exact function, in this important example we can see the equipment for brush painting was ready.

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Lelang It is no coincidence, then, that the earliest extant group of painted relics is found in Lelang (K: Nangnang), a Chinese commandery that centered in present‐day P’yŏngyang along the Taedong river basin. The nature and operation of these Chinese outposts may be reasoned by judicious analogy with the post‐Nan Yue (204–111 BCE) Red River Delta in present‐day Vietnam—or even Roman Londinium in Britain. First identified by colonial Japanese archeologists and later further excavated by North Korean researchers, the discovery of Lelang not only sheds light on the region but also, obliquely, on China proper. Until breakthroughs were made in China in recent decades, Lelang used to be one of the best‐known provenances of many important specimens of early paintings in the entirety of East Asia. Most noteworthy is a lacquer‐painted basket (39 centimeters long) uncovered from Tomb 116, a.k.a. the “Tomb of the Painted Basket,” at Namjŏng‐ri in P’yŏngyang and is now in the collection of the Korean Central History Museum in P’yŏngyang. Although found in a slightly flattened state at the time of excavation, the basket holds extraordinarily well‐preserved paintings of figural scenes on its removable lid and the exterior rim of its body. These ingeniously minute and skilled paintings, presented on the small compartmentalized panels that prop the coarse wickerwork itself, contain swirls, clouds, figures, and other pictorial elements in typical imperial Han manner. The figures (94 in total) are truly noteworthy. Staged under short‐curtained canopies and seen from various angles, the figures strike animated gestures and poses, whether standing or seated, and are depicted with a meticulous attention to facial and sartorial subtleties; some are immersed in interactive communication with each other. Several colophons also identify the figures: sage rulers, ancient worthies, loyal courtiers, filial sons, and exemplary women selected from the widely circulated moral paragons of Han China. As a whole, the theme, style, and fine quality of the lacquerwork, and the lid’s pinnacle with an ostentatious bronze quatrefoil of Han marque, all suggest that this basket was an import from China. In the absence of surviving local works, however, this kind of Chinese import would bespeak, to an extent, the then‐current character of paintings produced in Lelang. A number of Chinese lacquerwares unearthed in Lelang come with maker’s inscriptions. One of the most revealing is the circular “ramie‐cored dry‐lacquer” (jiazhu) tray excavated by the University of Tokyo’s Department of Archeology in 1925 from Tomb 205 at Sŏgam‐ri, the male occupant of which is identified as Wang Xu (K. Wang U) by a wooden seal engraved with his name. On the bottom of this tray, taking up most of the diameter (50.9 centimeters), runs a single column of brush inscription in clerical scripts (C. lishu, K. yesŏ), which identify the maker as the Western Workshop (C. Xigong) of the Shu Commandery (in present‐day Chengdu, Sichuan) in 69 CE. This case is not some singular instance. Lacquerware specimens with similar epigraphic formula and gracious calligraphy—sometimes inscribed by the State Workshop (C. Gongguan) of the Guanghan Commandery, another manufacturer in the same southwest frontier of the empire—occur plentifully in Lelang across time from Western to Eastern Han, even during the short interregnum of Xin (9–23 CE). As a result, we can surmise that a sophisticated supply chain was in operation to bring such



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high‐end commodities from the upper reaches of the Yangzi River to Lelang, overcoming a daunting distance of more than 2000 kilometers. Lelang, however, just lies on the eastern peripheral edge of a more vastly connected network of exchange under the diplomatic and economic maneuvering of the imperial regime. Parallel findings have also been located farther north in the elite Xiongnu burials of Noin Ula in Mongolia or even farther west in the Greco‐Bactrian ruins of Begram in Afghanistan, and so forth. On the obverse side of the tray we encounter a significant depiction of Xiwangmu or the Queen Mother of the West. Although it is curiously slanted towards the tray’s circumference with the center devoid of any design (presumably to make the open space practical enough to hold items), the Queen Mother is clearly wearing her characteristic sheng‐crown and is attended by an immortal companion. They are perched on the broad tabletop‐like sprout of Mount Kunlun, in a craggy, outlandish rise inhabited by a fantastic animal. Two other fantastic beasts, even more diminished in scale than the Queen Mother, are also posed at an irregular interval from each other along the tray’s rim. Of course, these minuscule illustrations are not a painterly accomplishment by, as it were, a Lelang craftsman as the maker’s inscription says. Even so, these are not some “foreign” intrusion irrelevant to our discussion; these classical imageries were also vital to, and inseparable from, the local culture. Having entered into Lelang as part of a larger acculturating repertoire, they offer a rare glimpse into a little known local religious milieu and worldview in transition. In visual art, they also served as a more direct and pervasive inspiration for the development of local painting, both morphologically and iconographically. In this regard, the mural art on the Tomb of the Painted Basket is of particular interest, although most of it is now lost and has been largely ignored by postwar scholars. Datable to the second or third century of the Common Era, fragmentary bits of mural remained on the wooden walls of the tomb’s antechamber, where the famous basket itself was also deposited. The antechamber is a spacious room with its ceiling reaching 2.4 meters above the floor. The tomb is composed of two wooden chambers of considerable size—in comparison to other Lelang burials in the environs of P’yŏngyang—with its full north‐south axis spanning at least 13 meters (even if the original entranceway was not clearly determined at the time of its survey in 1931). Due to the condition of the planked walls and the then contemporary limitations of photography, all that was documented for us is an artist’s impression made of the west wall by a member in the excavation team, Oba Tsunekichi (1878–1958), who during his prolific career in colonial Korea was assigned similar tasks at several other famous tombs. Oba here captured a vignette of an equestrian procession: two riders are followed by another rider (or a chariot—the image had been badly faded), and then by yet another rider and a figure standing on foot below (Figure  1.3). Although no contour outlining was used, only ink smears and shading, the muralist achieved convincingly the dynamic impression that the horses are galloping. Moreover, the palette of red (and possibly the addition of yellow and white) accentuates the complex arrangements of harnesses and the accoutrements of the human subjects. This mural is in large measure indistinguishable from those of contemporary China in its motifs, composition, and draftsmanship. Though all the other painted objects known in

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Figure 1.3  Murals showing equestrian procession (artist’s reconstruction by Oba Tsunekichi). West wall of the wooden antechamber, Tomb of the Painted Basket in P’yŏngyang. 2nd to 3rd century. Ink and colors. Source: Chōsen Koseki Kenkyūkai, ed. (1934), pl. 32. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Lelang were imports from China (or at least of contestable provenance), this remains a singular piece. The mural is in fact the earliest painting known to be made locally —because it was surely executed on site over the finished and primed wooden wall. The muralist’s ethno‐linguistic orientation, however, remains inscrutable.

Early Painted Stone‐chamber Tombs in the Taedong‐Chaeryŏng Deltas In the ensuing centuries, murals serve as a centerpiece to demonstrate the rapid growth of painting. The high rate of survival for these murals vis‐à‐vis their obscure forerunners on wooden media is in essence owing to a meta‐structural transition in the architecture of tombs toward the use of stone (especially boulders and slabs) as building material. With the adoption of a more lasting receptacle for murals, it is unsurprising that the number of surviving works increased exponentially. The hotbed for this crucial shift, like the related brief spell of meticulously built Chinese‐ style brick tombs, was located in the lower Taedong hydrosphere connected to the Chaeryŏng river basin. The intrusion of these stone‐chamber tombs and their accompanying murals reflect the region’s on‐going and intimate interactions with Chinese culture.



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The largest, most extravagantly constructed and painted tomb, and perhaps the oldest, in this new group lies on a small hillock in Yongsun, Anak (now in South Hwanghae Province), overlooking the otherwise flat delta meandered by small tributaries that drain into the Chaeryŏng. Now known as Anak Tomb 3, this monumental edifice, built of massive stones, was initially analyzed by the pioneering Vienna‐trained Korean archeologist Toh Yu‐ho (1905–1982) in 1946. Anak 3 is constructed on an ambitiously grand but asymmetrical plan compartmentalized by five rooms, each of which is surmounted by the so‐called “lantern ceiling,” a type of architecture originating in West Asia but also found widely in China. The five rooms are laid out along a long south‐north axis from the entryway, which is followed by a front chamber, a huge antechamber flanked by two “ear‐chambers” on either side, and the main burial chamber bounded by narrow galleries on its eastern and its northern ends. Prior to Toh Yu‐ho’s survey, however, the tomb had undergone some disturbance (like many other easily accessible burials of this type featuring a horizontal approach), though the lavish murals and a few inscriptions had been well preserved. Among these inscriptions, the lengthiest and most significant is the ink epitaph written above a door guardian standing on the left wall leading to the western ear‐ chamber from the foyer‐like antechamber (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pl. 6). This 68‐ character inscription evinces the new vogue for standard script (C. kaishu, K. haesŏ), though it still preserves a heavy residue of clerical script, and is the earliest foremost exemplar of ink calligraphy known on the Korean peninsula. What is even more eye‐ catching than the artistic ink writing is its content. As a funerary epitaph, it follows the then‐current Chinese formula for this specific type of writing, which remarks upon a certain Dong Shou (K. Tong Su, 289–357), apparently the main occupant of Anak 3 (Figure 1.4). It says that he was born in Pingguo Prefecture (present‐day Gaizhou in Liaoning), and therefore a native of Western Jin (265–316). This entombed “Dong Shou” may well then be identical to Tong Shou, a contemporary individual whose life is well recorded in standard Chinese texts of the historical tradition. Despite the fact that the latter’s name is recorded in a few slightly different ways (especially the forename with such variant as Tao or Dao), this individual is known to have defected to Koguryŏ from the dukedom of Murong, an exclave vassal in Liaodong of Xianbei ethnicity under Eastern Jin (317–420). In 336, an internecine turmoil broke out between Murong Huang (297–348), joined by his younger brother, and Tong Shou’s overlord, Murong Ren (d. 336). As the latter was killed, Tong Shou took refuge in Koguryŏ, located at a safer distance farther east along the Yalu (K. Amnok) river basin. In the wake of the upheaval, Murong Huang finalized his cessation from the Chinese imperial court at Jiankang (present‐day Nanjing) and proclaimed his independence as the ruler of a new state, the Former Yan (337–370). This unusual wealth of information about the entombed personality in Anak 3 has, however, led to controversy over the nature of the émigré Dong Shou/Tong Shou’s political relationship, if any, with the state of Koguryŏ—a debate that has also modern nationalist Korean implications, by which anything Koguryŏ is bolstered as “Korean” historical heritage, while the longue‐durée presence of “Chinese” political power on the peninsula is downplayed. The sheer magnificence of this new type of tomb was at that point unknown in Koguryŏ itself, whose capital was located more than 300 km

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Figure 1.4  Portrait of the deceased Dong Shou (289–357). Mid–4th century. Main wall of the western side chamber, Anak Tomb 3 in South Hwanghae Province. Ink and colors. Source: Chōsen Gahōsha (1985), pl. 2. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

away to the northeast in the middle reaches of the Yalu River. And the problem remains that the epitaph shows none of the servility or even compliance with this emerging polity. Instead it tediously enumerates the titles of various offices that the émigré held, including that of magistrate (xiang) of Lelang and the governor (taishou) of Changli (present‐day Jinzhou in Liaoning), Xuantu (K. Hyŏndo), one of the remnants of the initial Four Commanderies of Wu Di, and Daifang (K. Taebang), the younger commandery established on the peninsula in 204 by Gongsun Kang (d. 221), a warlord in alliance with Cao (155–220). These listed regions could not have been en bloc within the governance of Koguryŏ. It makes more sense, then, to see the Chinese immigrant’s militant autonomy from Koguryŏ in the locality of Daifang within the Chaeryŏng basin, where in fact he was splendidly buried. In addition, this epigraphic revelation not only undermines the tomb’s artistic provenance in Koguryŏ, but also clashes with a certain modern Korean tendency in scholarship on the fate of Daifang and other difficult issues in early Korean historiography. According to modern Korean academic orthodoxy (Lee Ki‐baik 1984: 20, 36), the Commandery of Daifang should have been conquered by King Mich’ŏn (r. 300–331) of Koguryŏ by 314. This epitaph, though, suggests otherwise: the region would remain as Dong Shou’s own satrapy as late as the mid‐fourth century. Scholars in the pro‐Koguryŏ camp have, as a result, worked hard to denounce the face value of the inscription by arguing: (1) that those plenipotentiary titles listed in the epitaph were not in actuality held by Dong Shou but were wishful fabrications; or (2) reversely but literally that Koguryŏ at that time controlled Changli too; or (3) that the epitaph does not belong



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to the tomb’s occupant at all but to the door guardian above whom this was written. To save the Koguryŏ hypothesis, one has to imagine that Dong Shou was a renegade, whether implicit or explicit, in the alleged sovereignty of Koguryŏ and this inscription was, along with the concealment of the tomb, never meant to be exposed to Koguryŏ eyes. This alternative, which interprets the tomb as that of a Koguryŏ king, is too challenging; the exceptionally built and furnished tomb would then merely present the name of the irrelevant retainer Dong Shou but not his alleged Koguryŏ master at rest. The premise that Koguryŏ might have controlled Daifang by the time of Dong Shou rests on a terse quotation from the History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi)—the solely transmitted account of early Korean history completed in 1145 — that King Mich’ŏn “attacked” (ch’im) Daifang in 314 (Shultz et al. 2012: 139). It is impossible from this slight reference to take for granted the annexation, once and for all, of Daifang to Koguryŏ. Moreover, within the text of History of the Three Kingdoms itself, the same phraseology of “attack” (ch’im) does not always mean a final conquest. For example, King Mich’ŏn also “attacked” (ch’im) Xuantu in 302. But Xuantu obviously survived the attack, so that the Koguryŏ king had to “assault and destroy” (kongp’a) it again in 315 (Shultz et al. 2012: 138–9). Moreover, regardless of its putative success in these campaigns against Chinese commanderies, Koguryŏ had barely subsisted through the mid‐fourth century. For instance, Murong Huang devastated Koguryŏ under the reign of King Kogugwŏn (r. 331–371) in 342, when the tomb of his father, King Mich’ŏn, was tragically violated: the exhumed corpse was kidnapped and taken to Former Yan as a hideous ransom, and in 355 the imperialized House of Murong enfeoffed the incumbent Koguryŏ king merely as the duke (gong) of Lelang (Shultz et al. 2012: 144–6). In any event, it is also noteworthy that the epitaph characterizes Dong Shou’s death as ducal (C. “hong,” K. “hung”), the same rank at which his coeval Koguryŏ kings were recognized in China. It is therefore all the more intriguing that at his deathbed in 357 Dong Shou adhered to the by then obsolete Eastern Jin regnal date (Yonghe) in his epitaph. Hardline pro‐Koguryŏ scholars continue to advocate against the purported ­truthfulness of the epitaph. A fuller consideration of the complicated diplomatic relations in continental East Asia at this time and also of Dong Shou’s own life, however, suggest that this is likely an accurate testament to the status quo of that historical moment. While remaining loyal to the ancien régime from which he ­expatriated and the official posts that were bestowed on him, whether ceremonially or not, Dong Shou resisted acknowledging the hegemony usurped by Murong Huang and his associates. In fact, Koguryŏ, as it was known to Dong Shou, might not yet have been a fully territorialized state but one of several regional competitors, whose influence from its original powerbase in the Yalu vicinities had only started to be felt in the Chaeryŏng basin. By basic art‐historical inference, it is also a stretch to call Anak 3 intrinsically Koguryŏ for several reasons. First, the making of such intricate stone chambers for burials was not indigenous to Koguryŏ, whose native custom was to pile up cairns which in exceptional cases evolved into megalithic ramifications of stepped pyramid‐ like masonry. Based on widely‐accepted chronologies (Kim and Ahn 1993: 48–57; Jeon 2006) of Koguryŏ tomb types, something like Anak 3 is not found in the then central location of Koguryŏ in the mid‐Yalu reaches prior to 357, the date of Dong

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Shou’s tomb. Conversely, it was in concert with a gradual Sinicization of Koguryŏ that the earlier cairn burials gave way to full‐fledged stone chambers, the transcultural tomb type derived from China. Second, indigenous Koguryŏ burials in their center on the northern banks of the Yalu are, even after the stone chambers were introduced, typically oriented to the southwest, in discrete contrast with the cardinal south‐north positioning of Anak 3 and other tombs of the greater Sinicized region of the Taedong‐Chaeryŏng hydrosphere in general (Park 2009: 30). This would suggest some deep‐rooted cultural differences in views of the afterlife, cosmology and other religious ideologies between the ruling classes in two distinct regions. Last but not least, when tombs are accompanied by murals, these two regions also display differing iconographic choices, underscoring further delicate distinctions in socio‐cultural or ritual undercurrents. The most striking case in point are the portraits of the deceased, the primary theme in tomb murals. In Anak 3, we see a strict frontal portrayal of a seated Dong Shou that takes up the entire main wall of the western ear‐chamber, the position that actually mirrors that of the epitaph located upon the entrance to the room (Figure 1.4). Also, perpendicular to his right, a three‐quarter view of a female sitter (his wife, presumably) is painted separately on the southern wall (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pl. 5). But this exact type of mortuary portraiture does not seem to have thrived in the Koguryŏ counterparts clustered in the mid‐Yalu heartland. While the format has its centuries‐old origin in the Chinese prototypes of Eastern Han or earlier, its analogs in Koguryŏ, if any, were adapted to a great extent conceivably in negotiation with local custom. One may not aver that Anak 3 is a Koguryŏ tomb. By the early fifth century, the former Chinese commanderies that existed much longer than the Han empire finally dissipated. As a result, the political climate in the confluence deltas of the Taedong and Chaeryŏng rivers took a definitive turn toward Koguryŏ. Despite this change in political power, the incorporation of continental Chinese culture continued. The most noteworthy monument to witness the new era is the painted stone‐chamber tomb with the inscribed date of 408, discovered in 1976 at Tŏkhŭng‐ri in Kangsŏ on the western banks of the Taedong River (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pl. 59). The inscription is an epitaph for the high‐ranking military official Zhen (K. Chin, 332– 408), whose lineage or family name (K. ssi, C. shi) is illegible due to the poor preservation of the ink. Though this inscription is similar to the calligraphy and epigraphic formula of Dong Shou’s epitaph, it also differs immensely in significant ways. First, it includes a Koguryŏ‐style official title and employs a Koguryŏ reign date, Yŏngnak (391–412), one of rare cases throughout history where a local date is known to have been in use on the peninsula instead of a Chinese reign date. Unfortunately, Korean historiography, represented by the problematic History of the Three Kingdoms (Best 2006: 3–62), is silent about such self‐determined regnal eras. Yŏngnak, however, belonged to the most illustrious king in Koguryŏ history, Kwanggaet’o the Great (r. 391–412), and is the earliest self‐issued era name known to any of the proto‐ Korean states. Importantly, the epitaph is the earlier of only two monuments that have withstood the amnesia of transmitted history; the other is the colossal stone stele (6.39 meters high) at Ji’an (Jilin) in commemoration of King Kwanggaet’o that was



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erected by his son, King Changsu (r. 412–491), in 414. As such, the epitaph affirms de jure the solidification of Koguryŏ’s rule over the Lelang territory. This site in Tŏkhŭng‐ri, then, may be regarded as the earliest dated Koguryŏ mural. Nonetheless, the occupant of the tomb was not a Koguryŏ native but, as in the case of Anak 3, an émigré from what is now northern China. The inscription for the deceased tells us that his birthplace was Xindu Prefecture (in present‐day southern Hebei Province), which around the time of his birth was under Later Zhao (319–351). His epitaph also includes his official, presumably erstwhile, posts, including regional inspector (cishi) of Youzhou (present‐day Beijing, Tianjin, and northern Hebei), a region over which Koguryŏ did not hold jurisdiction, as did consecutively Former Yan, Former Qin (351–394), and Later Yan (384–409). The inscription points again to the complex multi‐ethnic social matrix that shaped not only the tomb’s locale, but also Koguryŏ and northeast Asia as a whole during this vibrant period. Second, the epitaph mentions the deceased as a “disciple” (cheja) of the Buddha Śākyamuni. This statement of a lay practitioner’s support for this religion burgeoning in East Asia is the earliest mentioning of Buddhism known on the Korean peninsula. Buddhism, according to the History of the Three Kingdoms (Shultz et al. 2012: 148), was officially “introduced” to Koguryŏ in 372 by the emissaries whom the unifier‐to‐ be of north China, Fu Jian (r. 354–385) of Former Qin, dispatched, following his annihilation of Koguryŏ’s archenemy, Former Yan, in 370. Moreover, the History of the Three Kingdoms reports that, in 393, Kwanggaet’o the Great established nine Buddhist monasteries (sa) in P’yŏngyang. Nevertheless, the murals lack conspicuously Buddhist motifs. The murals of the Tŏnghŭng‐ri Tomb are once again replete with the aftertaste of classical Han Chinese elements, accented by such familiar themes as equestrian processions (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pls. 60–61), as seen in the Tomb of the Painted Basket (Figure 1.3). The portrait of the deceased also appears twice in this double‐ roomed tomb: once in the antechamber and again in the coffin chamber (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pls. 54, 77). Intriguingly, the mural on the latter chamber is an unfinished work, meant pro forma to receive a female partner who sits next to the male figure under a large curtained canopy. For some unknown reason, however, the deceased is painted alone on a solo dais with a conspicuous absence to his left. On the other hand, his portrayal on the mural of the antechamber is of a different nature in that he, wearing a bright red coat over a hefty triangular body‐mass and holding a whisked‐scepter (chumi), is receiving an official audience. It is a group of delegates— lined up in two rows and each meticulously identified by ink colophons— from the Thirteen Commanderies of Youzhou, where he, according to his epitaph, was the regional inspector (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pls. 55–57). This spectacular configuration is so unprecedented in scale that it pushes us back to the unsolved question of the émigré’s asserted career in Youzhou, which cannot be corroborated in spite of the wealth of Chinese historiography. Whatever the case, both the theme and its visual treatment are reminiscent of continental Chinese prototypes. Hunting is another frequent motif, similar to parallels found across Eurasia. Drawn on the tapered corbel ceiling wall above the antechamber, and different from Anak 3, whose low ceilings are not particularly conducive to complex murals, the “hunting

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scene” of Tŏkhŭng‐ri (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pls. 62–63) sets an important standard to gauge further examples of landscape art from other Koguryŏ tombs. The landscape at this stage is just a naïve theatrical backdrop for the human narrative with dwarf mountain peaks and tiny, sparsely planted trees bearing characteristically rolled‐up frond‐like branches. In contrast, the large frightened animals and the archers on horseback, some twisting their torsos backwards to shoot a parting shot at full gallop, are convincingly executed in lively postures.

The mid‐Yalu basin of Koguryŏ Tomb murals surrounding Kungnaesŏng (present‐day Ji’an), the capital of Koguryŏ from 3 to 427 CE, can be understood as a result of the crosscurrents of stimuli brought from the Liao River basins as well as the region of the Taedong‐Chaeryŏng deltas. The latter eventually fell under Koguryŏ rule by the late‐fourth century, and the state’s capital was permanently moved to P’yŏngyang in 427. With the increased and enduring contact with regions accustomed to stone‐chambered mural tombs, Koguryŏ, too, in its mid‐Yalu home ground began to supersede its earlier burial practice of using cairn mounds. The new stone‐chambered tombs occur alongside the cairns, densely concentrated on a few narrow fluvial strips that one may call the Koguryŏ “Valley of the Kings,” carved into the stunning terrain of the precipitous mountains. Here some thirty tombs with murals exist today, less than a half of their southern counterparts inventoried thus far in the Taedong‐Chaeryŏng River deltas. However, no single mural tomb here is known today with an internal record of absolute date. Consequently, several elaborate chronologies have been proposed, but ballpark estimates can vary as much as a couple of centuries from one scholar to another, covering from the fourth to seventh centuries. In any case, the murals of the Koguryŏ heartland are in general less complex and diverse in both theme and design than their southern counterparts in the Taedong‐Chaeryŏng deltas, impinging on the architectural precondition that tombs here were built simpler to house only one or two chambers at most. This overall tendency toward simplification is often understood as a sign of a later date than that of their southern counterparts. It was here that modern recognition of murals preceded with the groundbreaking Koguryŏ identification of the “Tomb of the Scattered Lotus Flowers” (JYM1893) in 1907 (Chavannes 1908: 259– 60). This was soon supplemented by more extensive fieldwork by Japanese archeologists, especially Sekino Tadashi (1868–1935) and Ikeuchi Hiroshi (1878–1952), made under the auspices of both governments of Imperial Japan and Manchukuo (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1915; Ikeuchi and Harada 1940). Since the Bamboo Curtain was hoisted in the 1990s, and with the rapid growth of local Chinese scholarship, the study of murals in this region has grown quickly, though their southern counterparts remain practically out of reach to non‐North Korean citizens. Among the celebrated murals in this Koguryŏ heartland, a few examples are worth particular attention. First, the pair of twin tombs at Yushan locality (JYM457 & 458) are noteworthy for their rich murals and are respectively known as the “Tomb of the Wrestlers” and the “Tomb of the Dancers” after the most distinctive scene in each



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tomb (Ikeuchi and Harada 1940: 5–20). A mix of callow draftsmanship yet mellow and svelte composition, the murals in both tombs epitomize a Koguryŏ reification of funerary art, perhaps of the fifth century. This formation of two tombs in tandem is rare for this type of Koguryŏ burial, which raises questions about the relationship between the tombs’ occupants, though definitive data eluded researchers when the site was first excavated in 1935. Although some scholars would date them differently on the style of the paintings, the twin tombs are almost identical in structure and size and feature a front and a main chamber; together, they make a gourd‐like plan connected by earthen‐mound tops. In keeping with older customs in this region, their separate, parallel entrances are oriented to the southwest. Furthermore, in comparison to Anak 3 or the Tŏkhŭng‐ri Tomb, some slight differences in “inner logic” can be seen here, the kinds of idiosyncrasies that one may call indigenous Koguryŏ characteristics. For example, the classical august rendering of the deceased is missing. Instead, the deceased portrayed on the main wall of the Tomb of the Dancers happily receives his visitors. They are depicted commensurate to the size of the tent under which they sit together (Ikeuchi and Harada 1940, pls. 2–5). It is also noteworthy that the two guests appear to be Buddhist monks with their head tonsured and wearing no hat, making this one of the earliest Buddhist‐themed paintings on the peninsula (Pak 1990). In particular, the latter scene presents its host and his guests ostensibly sitting on stool‐like chairs, making it one of the earliest artistic depictions of a chair in East Asia. This type of furniture is derived from the West. The recurrence of such ‘exotica’ in these Koguryŏ murals—which possibly signals an underlying connection with the nomadic Steppes that might not necessitate intermediaries in China—is fascinating and important. Such a trans‐Asiatic link immediately concerns the eponymous scene of a combatant grappling in the Tomb of the Wrestlers as well (Ikeuchi and Harada 1940, pls. 42–43). A similar depiction is visible in the Tomb of the Dancers (Ikeuchi and Harada 1940: 25) and in Anak 3 (Chōsen Gahōsha 1985, pl. 11), where each loinclothed strongman stands apart. But in the Tomb of the Wrestlers, the scene is monumentally enlarged to take up the entirety of the wall, and the wrestlers grapple, monitored by a referee on the left. A standing tree on the other side is executed in the manner, also current in then China, of featuring fern‐like branches ending in fiddlehead‐like fronds. The face of one competitor is noticeably characterized with a snub, aquiline nose, which presumably denotes a person of outlandish appearance. With this “foreign” look of the antagonist, some scholars argue that there was an actual presence of such people in Koguryŏ (Pak 1984). But the theme of wrestling, often under a tree, is widely distributed across Eurasia as a well‐established archaic iconographical model. We can find examples in the older, significant precedent in so‐called Scythian art, behind which some epic narrative is presupposed. In any case, it is difficult to pin down precisely the nature of these wrestlers, and to categorize the mural simply as a piece of genre painting. Even more puzzling is the grand scene in the Tomb of the Dancers (Figure 1.5). Here the protagonist on horseback, who shares the same attire as the deceased in the hosting scene, intrudes into the center of the scene. There is an aristocratically collared dog in the foreground and a small servant holding a long‐necked (musical) instrument to the rear. Behind him stand two gabled buildings, offering us gauche

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Figure 1.5  Murals. 5th century. East wall of the main chamber, Tomb of the Dancers in Ji’an (Jilin, China). Ink and colors. Source: Ikeuchi and Harada (1940), pl. 6.

glimpses of local above‐ground timber‐structured architecture, none of which survive today. From the open doors of the upper house a group of scullery servants carries individual dining tables neatly set with food. Enigmatically, this procession seems to be heading out of the pictorial frame, as if its destination were the adjoining wall (which is indeed where the deceased host of the tomb is depicted entertaining his two tonsured guests). If so, one might speculate about a continuous narrative spanning across the large contiguous sections of wall in the tomb. In any case, here local Koguryŏ customs and style seem to be a salient force, as exemplified by the peculiar type of dotted dress that many figures on this wall mural wear. The “Tomb of the Circular Patterns” at Xiajiefang (JXM33) is worth examining because it clearly underscores the major typological transition that Koguryŏ funerary murals had undergone through the fifth to sixth centuries (Ikeuchi and Harada 1940, pls. 99–102). As its name suggests, the main walls of this single stone‐chambered tomb are decorated with mysterious “circular patterns.” Appearing on the tomb’s interior walls as multiple colorful concentric bands, these sparsely‐painted circles seem to float strangely against a white plastered background. Under this skin, however, faint depictions of figures are discernible. This, in fact, is nothing more than an overcoat of whitewash that has obscured what is underneath. That is to say, at one point the room’s murals were planned under the old generic program with figures, conceivably one similar to the Tomb of the Wrestlers or to the Tomb of the Dancers, before someone intervened and annihilated the earlier efforts. It is unclear why this



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happened, but this cryptic act embodies a shift from earlier complex, figure‐based themes to the simple homogeneity of unified ornamentation in funerary murals, such as those in the Tomb of the Scattered Lotus Flowers (Chōsen Sōtokufu 1915, figs. 293–299). At any rate, this new artistic trend implies a significant change in elite Koguryŏ perceptions about the meanings of burial spaces in relation to the afterlife, accompanied by a parallel downsizing and simplification of the architecture of these very tombs. In other words, this change signals a waning of earlier religious thought. In its place, we find the newly blossoming ideology of Buddhism elsewhere. Finally, the “Tomb of the Four Spirits” in Yushan (JYM2112) deserves special attention. Unlike the general southwest orientation of Koguryŏ tombs in the region, this tomb and the neighboring ones in this particular locale open to the southeast. Perhaps this was determined by a topographic factor, but it still remains largely unresolved why Koguryŏ oriented their tombs to a certain direction. This single‐chambered tomb, likely datable to the sixth century according to stylistic criteria, was built from massive boulders and was principally decorated with the most prevalent theme under this new scheme, the Four Spirits (C. Sishen, K. Sasin), fantastic beasts correlated to the cardinal directions, i.e. the Green Dragon of the East, the White Tiger of the West, the Vermilion Bird of the South, and the Dark Warrior of the North (Ikeuchi and Harada 1940, pls. 70–75). With the Vermilion Bird appearing twice due to the puncture of the entranceway in the middle of the wall, the five creatures are emblazoned against a dense ornamental background of dazzling multicolored swirls and clouds. Done without primer, the pigment has been directly applied to the stone surface by a superbly nimble, gifted hand. The result is impeccable and flamboyant. The forcefully intertwined bodies of the creatures are captivating, a spectacle and visual delight in their muted roar. Draftsmanship, as some art historians have argued, reached its apogee in the mural art of Koguryŏ or even in the entirety of early medieval East Asia. Some scholars have contentiously read this emphasis on the Four Spirits mainly as a corollary to the emergence of “Daoism” in Koguryŏ. Yet, the theme of fantastic creatures is rather a generic one and evidence is thin to bespeak their specific connection to the spread of religious Daoism in Koguryŏ. The new trend dominated only by the Four Spirits is also found, outside of the mid‐Yalu reaches, in the late tombs of the Taedong‐Chaeryŏng deltas and even further south. But, once again, given the equivocal chronology, it is difficult to say precisely which of the two regions initiated this overarching shift in the iconographic program. Whatever the case, and whether Daoism was in place or not, this artistic reformation appears to be internally and thoroughly a Koguryŏ phenomenon.

Paekche Paekche initially centered along the lower Han River basin, but later grew to occupy the southwest of the peninsula. Though once debated, present‐day Seoul—more specifically, its eastern Kangnam (“south of the river”) side—was the site of the early capital of Paekche, known as Hansŏng. This fell to Koguryŏ in 475, and over the past decades an irreversible layer of urbanization has grown atop this settlement. Today,

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we know nothing about early Paekche painting. Nevertheless, transmitted history has allowed us to trace the elite class of Paekche and their ancestry from Koguryŏ and, through that association, eventually to Puyŏ (C. Fuyu), the upper Sunggari (a.k.a. Songhua) river‐based polity that had its capital in present‐day Jilin and that developed the first state‐level social organization in the pan‐Korean region (Byington 2016). Linguistic studies of Sino‐Paekche loanwords, especially toponyms, suggest Puyŏ‐ Koguryŏic ties (Beckwith 2004), and some Koguryŏ‐like burials—especially, the cairns fashioned like stepped pyramids and even the stone chambers mentioned earlier—can be found in the core area of Paekche, dominated by the enormous earthen‐ walled site of P’ungnap in Songp’a (now Seoul), and its satellite hinterlands in present‐day Kyŏnggi Province. Following the loss of Hansŏng, the Paekche retreated southward to the mid‐reaches of the Kǔm River, settling in Ungjin, which is present‐day Kongju, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. The new capital thereafter was the seat of four generations of kings until 538. The city, essentially a provisional post laid out in a time of emergency, offers few archeological yields today; even the location of the palatial headquarters remains ambiguous. The royal cemetery of Ungjin lies on the low rolling hills of Songsan‐ri, where Tomb 7 was left undisturbed until an excavation took place under unfortunate conditions during a monsoon in 1971. Nearly three thousand items were hastily salvaged from the tomb, among them stone epitaphs for King “Sama” i.e. Muryŏng (a.k.a. Munyŏng, r. 501–523), and his unnamed consort (d. 526), the only instance among early Korean tombs where the buried individual can be identified as a monarch (Whitfield and Goepper 1984: 61–64). The consort’s wooden head‐ and foot‐rests are particularly noteworthy, for both pieces of lacquerware retain delicate brush paintings drawn over a bright coat of cinnabar red. Of the two, the richer in hues and design is the headrest, and afloat within its tortoiseshell‐like gold‐foiled compartments are fantastic faunae, blooming florae, ethereal swirls, and possibly a celestial resident. This overall makes an exalted panorama of auspicious felicities. Several articles found in this tomb present strong cultural ties to China, especially to the lower Yangzi basin region. The ornate brickwork of the tomb itself with an unforeseen vaulted ceiling in Paekche is another indicator of Chinese ties. In fact, this tomb’s structural double, the nearby Tomb 6 of Songsan‐ri, yielded bricks that bear an inscription crediting Liang (502–557), the second to last of the Six Dynasties (222– 589) in China, as the direct source of such architectural innovation. This Paekche‐ Liang linkage is further evinced in King Muryŏng’s own epitaph, which begins with the title “East‐Pacifying General‐in‐Chief” (C. Ningdong dajiangjun) that he received from Emperor Wu (r. 502–549) of Liang in 521. On the other hand, Tomb 6 does show a bewildering departure from its almost identical twin, Tomb 7 (i.e., King Muryŏng’s tomb). Rough patches of earth were applied chaotically to the tidy brick walls, before being decorated with depictions of the Four Spirits (Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan 2015: 57–69). Why does this chaos intrude upon the otherwise organized stamped brickwork decorations? Perhaps the transplanted architectural episteme of Liang China did not satisfy the elites in Ungjin. In a way it also echoes the iconoclastic palimpsest of the Tomb of the Circular Patterns in Koguryŏ mentioned above.



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At any rate, it is noteworthy that the theme of the Four Spirits was also sweeping across tomb murals in Koguryŏ, strengthening the impression of strong Koguryŏ‐ Paekche ties. In addition to Tomb 6, there may have been more painted tombs in Songsan‐ri, especially those traditional (or Koguryŏ‐type) stone‐chambered ones, whose interior walls show plaster treatment. But no mural was discernible inside these tombs upon their discoveries in the 1920s and 1930s. Sabi, in present‐day Puyŏ (a city in South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, to be distinguished from the earlier polity located in present‐day Jilin), was the third and final capital of Paekche. Only some thirty kilometers down the Kǔm River from Ungjin, King Sŏng (r. 523–554) initiated the move. Most specifics of this interesting city seem still buried underground since its abrupt downfall by joint forces from Tang China (618–907) and Silla in the summer of 660. With Sabi as capital, Buddhism gained critical momentum and set out to reweave the cultural fabric of Paekche, although the religion is said to have “officially” entered Hansŏng much earlier in 384. To reflect the shift in patronage, the majority of archeological assemblages of Sabi today concerns sites and objects related to Buddhism. Nevertheless, the best‐ known painting comes from a traditional funerary monument, the so‐called “East Lower Tomb” (a.k.a. Tomb 1) at Nŭngsan‐ri. Possibly a royal burial, this stone‐ chambered tomb is like a long narrow box. Its plain slab ceiling was not engineered to be architecturally elaborate, but to be embellished with cloudy swirls and full‐ blown lotus flowers, symbolic of the firmament. Its walls as well hold murals of the Four Spirits theme, but they were already in an abject state by the time of excavation in 1917, led by the Japanese archeologist Tanii Saiichi (1880–1959). Obviously, these themes are all familiar from Koguryŏ tombs. Directly painted onto the stone, they technically are in the same stylistic manner as, for instance, the Tomb of the Four Spirits at Yushan. Beyond the tombs, the archeology of Sabi broadens our understanding of painting through fragments of murals drawn on actual buildings that once stood above ground in its town center and outskirts. Although the original timberwork structures perished long ago, these “soft paintings” are of paramount importance for what they tell us about not only Paekche but also East Asia in general because comparable findings in the contemporary Chinese metropolises are no less scarce. The fragments, uncovered in 1942 in the ruins of what was likely a Buddhist monastery within the precinct of the urban hillfort at Pusosan, most likely belonged to daubed walls, on which a thin coat of primer was applied to arrest the rich mineral‐based (generally copper and lead) colors. Although they have discolored through chemical decay, the elegant brushstrokes are noteworthy especially for having employed the painting method that depicts form without using contour lines. Also, on a microscopic scale, some daub particles of dirt contain traces of gold, an indication of the extraordinarily esteemed socio‐political status of these paintings and their host architectural structures in Sabi. The nature and function of these buildings are worth pursuing, especially if we work under the assumption that they could have been part of a Buddhist monastery. A variety of themes are present, including a figure and a bird, but their iconography is too generic to be described as definitively Buddhist.

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Figure 1.6  Mural fragment. 7th century. From an alleged Buddhist monastic site in Hyŏnbuk‐ri, Puyŏ, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Ink and colors. W: 9.5 cm. Puyŏ National Museum. Photo by the author; digitally processed by Edward Chan Yuen‐kwong. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Another fragment from a mural (Figure  1.6)—from a Buddhist monastic site (known expediently as Imgangsa) at Hyŏnbuk‐ri in the southern outskirts of Sabi— was discovered in 2009. This example is technically identical to those from Pusosan, but a new theme is present, a branch of tree or a bush. Stylistically, this small piece uses two rhythmically different types of stroke in its depiction of the leaves, thinner on one side and thicker on the other.

The Southeast: Silla and Kaya The southeastern part of the peninsula, which was largely subordinate to the drainage systems of the Naktong River, incubated a localized material culture that is distinct from those found in Koguryŏ and Paekche. For instance, Silla, based in present‐day Kyŏngju in North Kyŏngsang Province, impressively adopted kurgan‐like burial mounds with the late fourth‐century rise of the Kim clan as the main power of a previously oligarchical polity (Lee and Leidy 2013). The principal concentration of these imposing tumuli is clustered at the so‐called “Great Tomb Park” (Taerŭngwŏn) within the capital, and Tomb 125 or the “Phoenix Terrace” (Ponghwangdae) is the single biggest pre‐modern



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tomb on the peninsula with its current diameter of 82 meters. Luckily, these vast monuments were left mostly undisturbed. Their burial chambers, built using wooden planks, were shielded by a thick cover of gravel and then a heavy load of earth. These pristine chambers have offered us magnificent evidence through excavations. In terms of painting, two sites are particularly valuable. The first site, Tomb 98 or the “Great Tomb at Hwangnam” (Hwangnam Daechong), consists of two burial mounds connected together, with a bottom span of about 120 meters. Its northern mound, at 22.6 meters, is slightly higher than its southern one. In 1974, archeologists discovered a female occupant wearing a dazzling golden crown and belt along with other personal ornaments on its coffin floor. Among the thousands of items uncovered, several painted objects, such as stone spindles and lacquerware fragments, were found. The spindles contain simple multicolored zigzag lines, while the fragmentary lacquerwares possess more intricate designs ranging from decorative patterns to birds and animals. A fragment featuring strolling oxen is especially noteworthy in having raw brushstrokes in red that are drawn freehanded and audaciously (Ahn 1980: 40). The second site, Tomb 155 or the “Heavenly Horse Tomb” (Ch’ŏnmach’ong), yielded in its excavation in 1973 the namesake pair of painted animals drawn on the mudguard saddle flaps. Though some scholars have suggested that they are instead chimeras known in Chinese classics as kirin or qilin, these auspicious creatures are respiring forcefully at a supernatural stride with their manes and tails flowing in the wind. More striking is that their torsos are spotted with curves; these comma‐shaped designs are characteristic of the so‐called “Animal Style” of Scythian art (Kim and Ahn 1993: 113). This is not surprising, as the horse‐ riding lifestyle in Silla would have much in common with that of these nomads, just like the kurgan‐type burials have. The use of birch bark as a raw material might also indicate some relation to the nomadic or pastoralist zones of the northern part of the Eurasian continent. In any case, the craft involved in these flaps is remarkable with each piecemeal slice of white bark carefully quilted together and then painted with mineral colors and ink. Additionally, the same tomb provides us with another exceptional pair of birch‐bark paintings, belatedly rediscovered in the lab in 2009, thanks to advancements in optics and conservation (Kungnip Kyŏngju Pangmulgwan 2014: 126–31). Perhaps part of the harness, the two are in the shape of a ring, equally divided by eight panels (Figure 1.7). Although almost identical in size, the roundels are slightly different from each other. One has eight fantastic birds repeated on the obverse and ornamental vines on the reverse; the other possesses eight mounted archers on the obverse and flowers and buds on the reverse. Stylistically, they share something in common with Koguryŏ painting, but the drawings here are more casual or even cartoonish, seemingly less preoccupied with the spiritual weight symbolized by the motifs. Within the watershed of the Naktong River, outside the Kyŏngju domain, tombs are found with a more direct connection to Koguryŏ murals. Albeit rare, these tombs are stone chambers, and the murals therein can be understood to have resulted as an adaptation of Koguryŏ culture in the region. Two such tombs in Sunhŭng, Yŏngju (now in North Kyŏngsang Province), once the northwestern frontier of Silla until

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Figure 1.7  Painted Roundels (front and back). 5th century. From the Heavenly Horse Tomb in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Ink and colors on birch bark. D: 40 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Kyŏngju National Museum. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

around the mid‐sixth century, are worth noting. The first tomb, at T’aejang‐ri, at the time of excavation in 1971 contained fresco‐style murals that were already so deteriorated that little remained visible except an ambiguous door guardian and large lotus flowers on the ceiling. However, a short but elusive inscription in Idu was incised in intaglio on the door and dated to a year corresponding to either 535 or 595, if not 475. The second painted tomb, just downhill at Ŭ mnae‐ri, was discovered in 1985. Its frescos are better preserved, presenting a fuller scope of painted motifs, including landscape views and the curious iconography of a full‐bearded herculean man in a loincloth with his arms outstretched holding a long serpent above his head. A similar inscription, now in ink, also records the year, which has been proposed to correspond to 479, but 539 or 599 remains a possibility. Further down the Naktong River, on its western banks, lies another painted tomb at Koa‐dong in Koryŏng (now in North Kyŏngsang Province). This area is regarded as the last pivot of the Kaya Confederacy (trad. 42–562) until it fell to Silla (Byington 2012). The tomb is the only known monument with murals associated with Kaya. It is located along a mountain ridge, a typical formation for Kaya burials. This single‐ chambered stone tomb has a vault‐like ceiling, reminiscent of brick vaults found in Ungjin Paekche (Kim 1980: 137). Upon its excavation in 1963, fresco murals were visible only on the ceiling (Figure 1.8). They depict lotus blossoms and cloud swirls, similar to the themes and the styles of Koguryŏ and Paekche murals. All these murals indeed were to have far‐reaching repercussions on the painted chamber tombs of the Kofun‐period on the Japanese archipelago.



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Figure 1.8  Line drawing of painted murals. 6th century. Ceiling of the painted tomb at Koadong in Koryŏng, South Kyŏngsang Province. Source: Koryŏng Koadong pyŏkhwa kobun silch’ŭk chosa (1985), pl. 13.

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References Ahn Hwi‐joon. 1980. Han’guk hoehwasa [History of Korean painting]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Beckwith, Christopher I. 2004. Koguryŏ, The Language of Japan’s Continental Relatives: An Introduction to the Historical‐Comparative Study of the Japanese‐Koguryŏic Languages with A Preliminary Description of Archaic Northeastern Middle Chinese. Leiden: Brill. Best, Jonathan W. 2006. A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche: Together with an Annotated Translation of the Paekche Annals of the Samguk Sagi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Byington, Mark E., ed. 2009. The Samhan Period in Korean History. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Byington, Mark E. 2016. The Ancient State of Puyŏ in Northeast Asia: Archaeology and Historical Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Byington, Mark E., ed. 2012. The Rediscovery of Kaya in History and Archaeology. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Byington, Mark E., ed. 2013. The Han Commanderies in Early Korean History. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Chavannes, Édouard. 1908. “Les monuments de l’ancien royaume coréen de Kao‐keou‐li.” T’oung Pao. 2nd Ser. 9 (2): 236–265. Chōsen Gahōsha, ed. 1985. Kōkuri kofun hekiga [Tomb murals of Koguryŏ]. Tōkyō: Chōsen Gahōsha. Chōsen Koseki Kenkyūkai, ed. 1934. Rakuro ̄ Saikyoz̄ uka [Tomb of Painted Basket at Lelang]. Kyōto: Benridō. Chōsen Sōtokufu. 1915. Chos̄ en koseki zufu [Illustrated documentation of ancient Korean monuments]. Vol. 1. Keijō: Chōsen sōtokufu. Ikeuchi Hiroshi and Harada Jiro. 1940. T’ung‐kou. Vol. 2. Tokyo & Hsin‐ching: Nichi‐ Man bunka kyōkai. Jeon, Ho‐tae. 2006. “Artistic Creation, Borrowing and Assimilation in Koguryŏ Tomb Murals of the Fourth to Seventh Century.” Archives of Asian Art 56: 81–104. Kim Won‐yong. 1980. Han’guk pyŏkhwa kobun [Ancient painted tombs of Korea]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Kim Won‐yong and Ahn Hwi‐joon. 1993. Sinp’an Han’guk misulsa [Art history of Korea: New edition]. Seoul: Sŏul Taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu. Koryŏng Koadong pyŏkhwa kobun silch’ŭk chosa [Survey of the mural tomb at Koadong in Koryŏng]. 1985. Taegu: Kyemyŏng Taehakkyo Ch’ulp’anbu. Kungnip Kyŏngju Pangmulgwan. 2014. Ch’ŏnma, tasi nalda [May heavenly horses fly again]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju Pangmulgwan. Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan. 2015. Yuri kŏnp’an ŭrŭo ponŭn Paekche ŭi kobun [Ancient tombs of Paekche documented in gelatin dry plates]. Seoul: Kungnip Chungang Pangmulgwan. Kungnip Munhwajae Yŏn’guso. 2019. Namhan ŭi kobun pyo ̆khwa [Tomb murals in South Korea]. Taejŏn: Kungnip Munhwajae Yŏn’guso. Lee, Jung‐hee. 1992. “The Evolution of Koguryŏ Tomb Murals.” Korean Culture 13 (2) 12–44.



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Lee, Ki‐baik. 1984. A New History of Korea, translated by Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Shultz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lee, Ki‐moon and S. Robert Ramsey. 2011. A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, Soyoung and Denise Patry Leidy, eds. 2013. Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pai, Hyung Il. 2000. Constructing “Korean” Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State‐Formation Theories. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Pak, Youngsook. 1984. “Internationalism in Early Korean Art.” Orientations 15(1): 12–25. Pak, Youngsook. 1990. “Buddhist Themes in Koguryo Murals.” Asiatische Studien 44 (2): 177–204. Park, Ah‐rim. 2009. Koguryo Tomb Murals in the East Asian Funerary Art. Paju: Jimoondang. Shultz, Edward J., Hugh H.W. Kang, Kenneth H. J. Gardiner, and Daniel C. Kane, trans. 2012. The Koguryŏ Annals of the Samguk Sagi. Sŏngnam: Academy of Korean Studies Press. Vovin, Alexander. 2010. Koreo‐Japonica: A Re‐evaluation of A Common Genetic Origin. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Whitfield, Roderick, and Roger Goepper, eds. 1984. Treasures from Korea: Art through 5000 Years. London: British Museum Publications. Xu, Stella Yingzi. 2016. Reconstructing Ancient Korean History: The Formation of Korean‐ ness in the Shadow of History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Glossary Amnok (C. Yalu) 鴨綠(江) Anak 安岳 Cao Cao (C.) 曹操 Chaeryŏng [Jaeryeong] 載寧(江) Changli (C.) 昌黎 Changsu [Jangsu] 長壽(王) Ch’angwŏn [Changwon] 昌原 cheja [jeja] 弟子 Chengdu (C.) 成都 ch’im [chim] 侵 Chin [Jin] (C. Zhen) 鎭 Ch’ŏnmach’ong [Cheonmachong] 天馬塚 Ch’ungch’ŏng [Chungcheong] 忠淸(道) cishi (C.) 刺史 Fu Jian (C.) 苻堅 Gaizhou (C.) 蓋州 gong (C.) 公

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Gongguan (C.) 工官 Gongsun Kang (C.) 公孫康 Guanghan (C.) 廣漢 haesŏ [haeseo] (C. kaishu) 楷書 Han (C.) 漢 Hansŏng [Hanseong] 漢城 hung (C. hong) 薨 Hwangnam 皇南 Hwanghae 黃 海(道) Hyŏnbuk‐ri [Hyeonbuk‐ri] 縣北里 Hyŏndo [Hyeondo] (C. Xuantu) 玄菟 Idu 吏讀 Imgangsa 臨江寺 Ji’an (C.) 集安 jiandu (C.) 簡牘 Jiankang (C.) 建康 jiazhu (C.) 夾紵 Jin (C.) 晉 Jinzhou (C.) 錦州 Kangnam [Gangnam] 江南 Kangsŏ [Gangseo] 江西 Kaya [Gaya] 加耶, 伽耶, 伽倻 kirin [girin] (C. qilin) 麒麟 Koa‐dong [Goa‐dong] 古衙洞 Koejŏng-dong [Goejeong-dong] 槐亭洞 Kogugwŏn [Gogugwon] 故國原(王) Koguryŏ [Goguryeo] 高句麗 Kongju [Gongju] 公州 kongp’a [gongpa] 攻破 Koryŏng [Goryeong] 高靈 Kǔm [Geum] 錦 Kungnaesŏng [Gungnaeseong] 國內成 Kunlun (C.) 崑崙山 Kwanggaet’o [Gwanggaeto] 廣開土(大王) Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Kyŏngsang [Gyeongsang] 慶尙(道) Liang (C.) 梁 Liao (C.) 遼(江) Liaodong (C.) 遼東 Mahan 馬韓 Mich’ŏn [Micheon] 美川(王) Murong Huang (C.) 慕容皝 Muryŏng [Muryeong] 武寧(王) Naktong [Nakdong] 洛東 Namjŏng‐ri [Namjeong‐ri] 南井里



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Nangnang (C. Lelang) 樂浪 Nanjing (C.) 南京 Ningdong Dajiangjun (C.) 寧東大將軍 Nŭngsan‐ri [Neungsa‐ri] 陵山里 Paekche [Baekje] 百濟 Pingguo (C.) 平郭 Ponghwangdae [Bonghwangdae] 鳳凰臺 P’ungnap [Pungnap] 風納 Pusosan [Busosan] 夫蘇山 Puyŏ [Buyeo] (C. Fuyu) 扶餘 Qin (C.) 秦 sa 寺 Sabi 泗沘 Sama 斯麻(王) Samguk sagi 三國史記 Sanguozhi (C.) 三國志 Sasin (C. Sishen) 四神 sheng (C.) 勝 Shu (C.) 蜀 Silla 新羅 sodo (C. sutu) 蘇塗 Sŏgam‐ri [Seogam‐ri] 石巖里 Sŏng [Seong] 聖(王) Songhua (C.) 松花 Songp’a [Songpa] 松坡 Songsan‐ri 松山里 ssi (C. shi) 氏 Sunhŭng [Sunheung] 順興 Taebang [Daebang] (C. Daifang) 帶方 Taedong [Daedong] 大同(江) Taerŭngwŏn [Daereungwon] 大陵園 Taho‐ri [Daho‐ri] 茶戶里 taishou (C.) 太守 Tang (C.) 唐 T’aejang‐ri [Taejang‐ri] 台莊里 Tŏkhŭng‐ri [Deokheung‐ri] 德興里 Tong Shou (C.) 佟壽 (var. Tao/Dao 燾) Tong Su [Dong Su] (C. Dong Shou) 冬壽 Ulju 蔚州 Ŭ mnae‐ri [Eumnae‐ri] 邑內里 Ungjin 熊津 Wang U (C. Wang Xu) 王旴 Wu (C.) 武(帝) Xiajiefang (C.) 下解放 Xianbei (C.) 鮮卑

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xiang (C.) 相 xiaodao (C.) 削刀 Xigong (C.) 西工 Xin (C.) 新 Xindu (C.) 信都 Xiongnu (C.) 匈奴 Xiwangmu (C.) 西王母 Yan (C.) 燕 yeso ̆ [yeseo] (C. lishu) 隸書 Yonghe (C.) 永和 Yongsun 龍順 Yŏngju [Yeongju] 榮州 Yŏngnak [Yeongnak] 永樂 Youzhou (C.) 幽州 Yushan (C.) 禹山 Zhao (C.) 趙

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Sculptures of the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla Sunkyung Kim

Sculptures from early Korea typically have a religious dimension in one form or another. Whether as a primary image or a secondary feature, most denote the transcendental. While sculptures for tombs did not obviously serve a religious function, they were not entirely free from concern for the spiritual. With this exception, the vast majority of the remaining sculptures in Korea have Buddhist features. Yet despite the overwhelming presence of Buddhist art, the question of when Buddhism and its visual products became a prominent feature in early Korean society remains unanswered. We see tangible traces of the growth of Buddhist images starting in the sixth century, but stories and legends about the presence of Buddhism on the Korean peninsula extend even farther back. In Korea, Buddhism was introduced as part and parcel of Chinese culture. The story of Buddhism’s arrival in the Three Kingdoms is recorded in the two earliest surviving histories of early Korea: the History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi) from the twelfth century written by Kim Pusik (1075–1151) and the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa) from the thirteenth century compiled by Iryŏn (1206–1289). Despite the predictable risk of anachronistic interpretation, however, recent scholarship has increasingly proven their reliability in explaining the earlier period, based on the comparison with external/ internal texts, as well as epigraphical and archeological remains (Kim Youn‐mi 2013: 130–142). Still, the picture we have now for the arrival of Buddhism in this early period is limited, if not blurry. We know the names of a few missionary monks, although they do not appear in other Chinese or Korean documents. The first recorded contact with Buddhism occurred in Koguryŏ, a kingdom that occupied most of the land north of the Han River and extended into Manchuria. Shundao (K. Sundo), a Chinese Buddhist

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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monk accompanying an envoy from the court of the Former Qin (351–394), was welcomed by the Koguryŏ court in 372 when he arrived with Buddhist texts and images. Twelve years later, another monk, Maranant’a, presumably of Central Asian origin, travelled from Eastern Jin (317–420) to visit Paekche, a kingdom in the central and southwestern part of the Korean peninsula. The Paekche royal court provided a warm welcome and allowed him to dwell in the palace. After each of these monks arrived, a Buddhist temple was constructed, leading to the formation of the first monastic communities and the ordaining of local believers. Silla, relatively isolated given its location on the southeastern part of the peninsula, was the last kingdom to recognize Buddhism. During the fifth century, a Koguryŏ monk named Mukhoja visited Silla and introduced the Buddhist use of ritualistic implements such as incense. Considering that the name Mukhoja means “dark‐ skinned person from a barbarian country,” he might also have come from Central Asia. However, Buddhism, faced with strong resistance from conservative aristocrats armed with indigenous beliefs and practices, did not gain official recognition until the reign of King Pŏ phŭng (514–540), whose posthumous name means “Rise of the Buddhist Law.” From these accounts, we can tease out a few characteristics of the early history of Buddhism in Korea. First, the import of Buddhism to new areas was often accompanied by the transmission of images or ritual paraphernalia. Second, from the onset, the Buddhism transmitted to Korea was not a single set of religious practices, but a spectrum of diverse cultural elements, colored by its Central Asian or Indian origin as well as Chinese state sponsorship. Third, although the dates given for its formal introduction are no earlier than the late fourth century, it is reasonable to assume that knowledge of Buddhist teachings and images existed earlier as a result of interactions with traders, travelers, envoys, or even foreign monks. Last, the royal court of each kingdom had a similar rationale for their acceptance of Buddhism as a new ideology given that their respective sovereignties were being transformed to have more centralized powers equipped with more advanced belief systems, and thus it was appropriate to shed their earlier indigenous shamanistic practices. The fact that the first missionaries to the Three Kingdoms brought with them canonical texts and images matters. Two pivotal sites for establishing and maintaining the Buddhist faith and institution are indeed words and images; doctrines and devotions. In particular, mobile images, including portable drawings and statues, form the foundation of Buddhist visual culture. The ritualistic architecture and major icons that were made in China, Central Asia or India only reached Korean audiences by means of sketches, statuettes, or the traveler’s visual memory, if not directly transmitted by foreign craftsmen. Determining the visual culture of the early Buddhist circle in Korea is like threading a tenuous strand through sporadic dots of chance finds, and unfortunately these may not reveal a diachronic flow or a synchronic network. Here, with a few exceptions, more emphasis will thus be given to the later works of Unified Silla, which offer better circumstantial evidence. Notwithstanding such a disclaimer, each section presents a balanced selection of exemplary sculptures showing superb artistic achievement that simultaneously raises important questions for further inquiry under an overarching



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theme. Each represents a distinct stage of development, bearing different deities, styles, donors, settings, and contexts of use. A compilation of the discussion of each work should ultimately contribute to our imagining a fuller history of Buddhist sculpture.

Modest Beginning A master narrative of the process of making Buddhist images during the Three Kingdoms period starts with a few small less‐than‐captivating examples. Most show a seated Buddha produced in stone or gilt bronze and measuring 10 to 20 centimeters in height; one well‐known example comes from Ttuksŏ m. Often shown in a meditation pose with two hands held together in front of the belly, such a statuette probably served as part of a ritual setting at a modestly‐sized temple or at a personal shrine. It does not largely differ from early sculpture from China in terms of its overall form and surface treatment, which tells us of its presumed genealogy. The distinctive indicator that signifies these images represent the Buddha rather than an ordinary person is the cranial protuberance (uṣṇı s̄ ạ ) on top of each image’s head. Early Buddha images from Korea show either smooth hair or tight curls. The Buddha can also be recognized by a symbolic hand gesture (mudrā), which has a specific meaning in a prescribed system. The final indicator is a halo surrounding the head and a large mandorla around the body. Together, the three indicators explicitly prove that these are not images of ordinary humans. Deprived of any cultural context, however, other than the fact that some were excavated at a temple site, it is still hard to grasp the complete picture of the earliest examples of image making and their installment in Korea. The story gets more concrete, however, when we examine one peculiar statuette discovered in a pile of stones in Ŭ iryŏ ng, South Kyŏ ngsang Province. The Buddha image is skillfully cast in gilt bronze as a single piece together with a lotus‐petal pedestal and a leaf‐shaped mandorla (Figure 2.1). The Buddha raises his right hand with the palm facing out, indicating the gesture of reassurance, while his left hand is lowered in the boon‐granting gesture. This combination of mudrā was commonly seen in the early Buddha images of East Asia. The overall style shows a close affinity to that of sixth‐century Chinese sculpture, especially from the Northern Wei dynasty (386– 534), captured in the elongated face, slim body, diagonally placed inner garment, and flaring fishtail‐shaped drapery folds. This is the earliest image of the Buddha that can be dated with precision. The inscription engraved on the back of the mandorla informs us that it was made in the seventh year of the reign of Yŏ n’ga, which scholars mostly agree as corresponding to the year 539. The statuette was dedicated by the abbot, his disciple, and forty students at Tongsa (Eastern Temple) in a region called Lelang (K. Nangnang, present‐day P’yŏngyang) in Koguryŏ . The inscription also tells us that they made “One Thousand Buddhas (images)” and attempted to circulate them throughout the world, of which this is the twenty‐ninth. The visual motif of the Thousand Buddhas, usually serial images of seated Buddhas in multiple rows, was incorporated into cave temple murals and stele reliefs found in

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Figure 2.1  Standing Buddha. Koguryŏ, dated 539. From Ŭ iryŏng, South Kyŏngsang Province. Gilt bronze. H. 16.2 cm. National Treasure No. 119. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Central Asia and China. These images were associated with various devotional practices, such as the visualization and recitation of the names of the Buddhas (Abe 1990: 9–10). Here, however, we see a singled‐out image of one Buddha inscribed as “the twenty‐ninth Buddha among the Thousand Buddhas.” This could refer either to the fact that many individuals or groups each donated a single statue to each of the Thousand Buddhas or that this group of monks opted for the particular twenty‐ninth Buddha as an object of dedication for a reason unknown to us. During this early period, the most common image types include not only single Buddha statues but also triads consisting of a central Buddha and two attending deities. Examples of the latter type, in the form of small gilt bronze images of a triad standing in front of a large shared mandorla have been found, both in Korea as well as in China. Each of the Three Kingdom’s geographical and political considerations determined the Chinese regime with which they chose to maintain close diplomatic relations. Paekche mainly interacted with the states of the Southern Dynasties of China via sea routes whereas Koguryŏ had frequent interactions with China’s northern states. Since each of China’s Northern and Southern Dynasties (317–589) had distinct cultural characters, interaction between a particular Chinese state and a



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Korean kingdom accordingly impacted the artistic styles of Buddhist culture on the peninsula (Best 1998: 20–21). A clear route of possible interaction connects the closest Chinese province, Shandong, to the southwestern region of Korea. Research on the “triad on a single mandorla” image, found in both countries, as well as on recently excavated stone statues at Longxingsi in Shandong, sheds light on how certain iconographies were shared, adopted, and appropriated between the continent and the peninsula. Paekche, located along the route linking the two regions, was the most active in this transmission of icons and motifs during the Three Kingdoms period. In King Sŏ ng’s reign (523–554), this kingdom was also the first to send diplomatic envoys with Buddhist texts and statues to the Japanese court. This act in turn marked the turning point that brought about Japan’s interest and adoption of Buddhism despite dissension in the court and its aristocrats (Best 2003: 25–27).

Integral Localization Images of divine beings carved on the surface of living rocks are found in most cultures. Buddhists in Asia are no exception in utilizing the medium. They regarded a giant boulder as a source of immovable power and essence, and used its surface as an effective plane for artistic and devotional creations. Most rock carvings from the Three Kingdoms period take the form of a single deity or a triad, but they are distinct from their continental counterparts in both composition and style. The Buddha triad carved on the rock cliff on Mount Kaya in Sŏ san (in present‐day South Ch’ungch’ŏ ng Province), which was once Paekche territory, in particular, is the epitome of these localizing efforts (Figure  2.2). The welcoming smile of the main Buddha is even known as “the Paekche smile.” Denoting naturalness and friendliness, it contrasts with the more austere expression on the faces of Buddhist deities found in contemporaneous China and Japan. The triad shows a rather unusual combination of asymmetrical attending figures, each presenting a new type of bodhisattva image. The one on the right foresees the popularity of a deity in pensive pose, who possibly, but not exclusively, represents Maitreya in his heavenly abode awaiting his descent to earth. The one on the left presents Avalokiteśvara, deity of compassion, and his pose of holding a round object in front is a contemporaneous iconographic sign (Kim Lena 2007: 35). Arguably the most beloved deities of early Mahāyāna Buddhism, both Maitreya and Avalokitésvara enjoyed particular popularity in the Three Kingdoms. The way the designer/sculptor used this rock matrix shows perfect harmony between the manmade carving and the surrounding natural environment. The top of the cliff above the triad protrudes forward, while the boulder itself tilts 80 degrees downward, protecting the carving from heavy rain. The top of the carving is in high relief, which becomes shallower towards the bottom, thus incorporating the boulder’s natural shape and simultaneously emphasizing the most significant features of the deities: faces, haloes and hand gestures. The triad faces 30 degrees east‐southeast, and thus marks the direction of sunrise at the winter solstice and maximizes the light that shines on it during the winter. It is remarkable that Sŏ kkuram, constructed later, faces

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Figure 2.2  Buddha Triad. Paekche, early 7th century. Rock carving on Mount Kaya in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. H. 280 cm (main Buddha). National Treasure No. 84. Photo by Pak Ŭ nsŏ n. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the same direction, which confirms the knowledge and extreme care given to site selection and to thorough calculation of directionality in the construction of major monuments (Yu Hongjun 1997: 23). Carvings on rock cliffs first appeared in the late sixth and early seventh centuries and continued to flourish during the Unified Silla, as can be seen on Mount Nam in Kyŏ ngju, which marks the culmination of this sculptural style. The practice of this art form subsided later, with the exception of a few gigantic cliff carvings from the Koryŏ period (918–1392). In general, rare examples of early Buddhist sculpture outlived centuries of intentional harm and unintentional neglect—exposure to elements, natural disaster, wartime devastation, occasional fire, and local reuse of materials. The sculptures that did survive include carvings on stone cliffs that were far from bustling urban centers, and small votive objects that were consecrated or buried. In light of this observation, the fact that a group of nearly thirty sculptures of a pensive bodhisattva has managed to survive from the Three Kingdoms period is all the more startling. These freestanding three‐dimensional sculptures were made either in



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weighty stone or exquisite bronze. A few of them are almost life‐sized. Here we see the successful rendering of a contemplating figure that surely requires a thorough understanding of the movement and balance of the human body, since it retains a dignified frontality while maintaining a bent‐down posture but avoiding excessive drooping of the torso (Ō nishi 2003: 64). The abstract concept of “meditation” is tangible here, and it seems a fairly effective image for the time, given that a substantial number of such images were made during this short span of time in all three kingdoms (Kim Lena 1998: 267). This posture of meditation is found in early relief scenes of the Buddha’s life in India, followed by examples in Central Asia and China. When a princely figure in a pensive pose is placed in a narrative setting in India, Central Asia, or China, it represents the young Śākyamuni as Prince Siddhār tha, pondering the ultimate truth before his denouncement of worldly pursuits. Identification is trickier when this contextual clue is absent. It has been, however, convincingly argued that in the Three Kingdoms this posture is a common iconography from the sixth and seventh centuries, which represents Maitreya bodhisattva waiting in his heaven for his future descent (Lee 1993: 345; Ō nishi 2003: 55). Nevertheless, the specific reason for its short‐lived popularity is yet to be answered. One possible interpretation applies to a group of pensive bodhisattvas attributed to Silla. Scholars have long assumed that an association existed between the patriotic youth organization called Hwarang (Flower Youth) and the pensive bodhisattva (Lancaster 1988: 137; Lee 1993: 345). As a state‐sponsored corps of young aristocrats, hwarang played an important role during the time of territorial expansion by Silla and its unification war in the seventh century. While having military training, hwarang youth were also taught spiritual commandments, a mixture of Confucian ideals and Buddhist devotion, by Buddhist monks. Furthermore, the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms records stories that portray Silla hwarang as Maitreya incarnate, a view that supports our reading of pensive bodhisattvas as conflated depictions of Maitreya‐hwarang. Since the pensive bodhisattva is depicted as a princely/aristocratic figure wearing a crown and a sumptuous ornament often hanging to the waist, such association is visually supported. The two best‐known images of a pensive bodhisattva, often called by their serial numbers in the list of Korean National Treasures, No. 78 and No. 83 (Figure 2.3 and Figure 2.4), demonstrate the exceedingly delicate treatment of the posture and the immensely confident command of the medium. Produced by the “lost wax method,” they embody the pinnacle of bronze casting, with their lively and softly smiling faces, flawless poses, and bronze layer as thin as one centimeter or less. The appropriation of some foreign motifs is noteworthy. These motifs include a peculiar crown with a sun disc atop a crescent‐shaped moon (Figure 2.3), which can be traced back to Sasanian Persia and a hanging cloth decoration with a round jade ornament, similarly found in sculptures from Northern Qi, China (Ō nishi 2003: 63). The presence of exotic objects in other sites in Silla, for example, a silver repousse bowl, rhyta, glass vessels, and a golden dagger inlaid with garnet/glass, supports the premise of trade between the peninsula and foreign cultures as distant as the Mediterranean. Also, Northern Qi was one of the first Chinese states with which all three kingdoms had formal diplomatic relations via regular exchange of envoys. These

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Figure 2.3  Pensive Bodhisattva. Early 7th century. Gilt bronze. H. 83.2 cm. National Treasure No. 78. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

diplomatic exchanges might explain the close affinity between Korean sculptures of pensive bodhisattvas of the period and those of Northern Qi steles and statues, especially from Qingzhou in Shandong. Presumably the idea and motifs for adorning a prince or an aristocrat in different cultures became interfused with formulating pensive images in Korea. This suggests the multifaceted character of composing a specific deity’s iconography beyond geopolitical boundaries. Although rare, such an image seems to have also appealed to Buddhists in the Japanese archipelago as seen in the consecration of a pensive image in pinewood at Kōr yūji in Kyoto, which looks remarkably similar to Korea’s National Treasure No. 83. Most scholars now agree that this is of Silla origin. The unprecedented esteem granted to pensive bodhisattvas and the association of Maitreya with a young noble scion reveal that by the seventh century the Buddhist faith was deeply entrenched in Silla soil. Simply put, a deity capturing the futuristic vision of the descent to earth was cast as a real person in contemporary times, and his corporeality was established in a meditative pose. Given their considerable size and superlative quality, it is not overstretching to regard them as the primary statues used to signify devotion to Maitreya in a ritualistic setting or a similarly inspiring environment. However, their charm did not last long after the unification war.



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Figure 2.4  Pensive Bodhisattva. Early 7th century. Gilt bronze. H. 93.5 cm. National Treasure No. 83. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Communal Effort The Unified Silla period (668–935) was a most dynamic and fertile environment for the blossoming of Buddhist culture, as suggested by the oft‐quoted imprimatur “the golden age of Buddhist art.” Here it might be useful to remember that such a model of linear development and the organic analogy of “seed,” “embryo,” “blossom,” or “peak” are no longer considered appropriate ways to describe a cultural phenomenon. It is equally debatable whether any given historical period has its own specific genre of art, one that most intensely exhibits a symbiotic consolidation of condensed artistic energy, accumulated knowledge, and the finest technology. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that Buddhist art, particularly architecture and sculpture, rightfully embodies the prominent cultural achievements of Unified Silla. Temples of imposing size and splendor were built at the court’s expense in the capital Kyŏngju. Impressive statues with novel iconography in tandem with advanced monastic scholarship were enabled by government patronage and aristocratic support. Magnificent rituals were performed for the benefit of the state, often for defense against foreign invasions, for the welfare of the reign, and for the ­salvation of the royal family, nobles, as well as all sentient beings.

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During the unification war, Silla allied itself with Tang China (618–907), and defeated Paekche in 660 and then Koguryŏ in 668. Tang’s ultimate aim was to conquer the entire peninsula, whereas Silla’s goal was to unite it under its rule. Silla had several battles including those around the Han River region, the most critical strategic point, and eventually drove the Tang army back in 676. Not long after, however, Silla resumed its diplomatic relations with China, sending over a hundred official missions to the Tang court until 907 (Best 2003: 36). Due to the unparalleled continuity of the same lineages of rulers in East Asia during the late seventh through the ninth centuries, this period witnessed the invigorating expansion of trade and cultural interactions. The full‐fledged development of Buddhist doctrine, exegesis/translation of texts, and fervent construction of temples and images in Tang China stimulated Buddhist society in Unified Silla. Monks travelled to China to study, and even farther to India in search of the true teaching, while the home‐ grown monastic elite, influential thinker, and prolific writer, Wŏ nhyo (617–686) made an indelible mark on the intellectual and exegetic tradition. He provided profound theorization of Mahāyāna teaching, as exemplified in his Commentary on the Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna (Taesŭ ng kisillon so), and sought to popularize the faith by ardent grassroots proselytizing. It was during this time that a society of Buddhist devotees, consisting of both the ordained and laity, first appeared in Korea as a donor group to sponsor and dedicate images. The group of lay believers, joined by a few monks, gathered to pursue such meritorious activities as making Buddha images, constructing temples, and copying or reciting sūtras. The products they dedicated together in this period take the form of stone steles. As products of Buddhist appropriation of pre‐existing indigenous commemorative steles in China, Buddhist steles are intrinsically hybrids. The visual dialogue between two realms—the mortuary and the religious—underwent another twist when Buddhist steles first appeared in Korea in the seventh century. The carving on these steles display the usual Chinese component of prominent Buddhist deities along with the formulaic language of a dedicatory inscription, but they were made in the former territory of the defeated Paekche kingdom that came under the new administrative rule of Unified Silla. A total of seven stone steles with Buddhist images were discovered in the early 1960s in the vicinity of Yŏn’gi in South Ch’ungch’ŏ ng Province. Among them, the so‐called “Kyeyu Amitābha triad stele” has the best preserved inscription and image (Figure 2.5). The legible parts of the inscription, carved on all four of its sides inform us that: (1) it was made in the cyclical year of kyeyu (C. guiyou; ascribed to 673) in connection with a temple built a month earlier; (2) the temple was built for the sake of the king, high officials, forebears of seven generations, and all spirits; (3) construction costs were covered by donations from a group of people, undoubtedly Buddhists and/or government officials; and (4) the carving on the obverse includes an image of Amitābha Buddha with the two typical attendant bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta. The significance of the stele lies in the fact that it marks the earliest representation of the Amitābha triad with two principal bodhisattvas clearly identified as such in the



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Figure 2.5  Kyeyu Amitābha Triad Stele. Unified Silla, dated 673. From Piamsa in Yŏ n’gi, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Stone. H. 43 cm. National Treasure No. 106. Photo: courtesy of Ch’ŏngju National Museum. (See color plate section for color ­representation of this figure.)

accompanying inscription in Korea. Amitābha, the “Buddha of Limitless Light,” is believed to reside in the Western Pure Land, Sukhāvatī. The deity appeals to believers because he offers solace and salvation to suffering beings and has a concrete blueprint for the Pure Land, located in the west, the direction traditionally associated with death and the next life. As one of the most significant deities in East Asia, Amitābha Buddha and the Western Pure Land appeared on the peninsular cultural scene and flourished in the period encompassing unification in the second half of the seventh century. Meanwhile, there is no consensus regarding the identity of the king, the stated beneficiary of the merit transferred from the act of erecting this stele. The presence of surnames from the former Paekche people, together with the titles of Silla’s official ranks in the inscription, hampers a straightforward interpretation. If one reads it as a king of the defeated kingdom of Paekche, the stele is understood as a nostalgic monument, either on a practical level as a spur to Paekche’s restoration movement, or on an emotional level as a visual memento. The archaic rendering of the figures on the stele, reminiscent of the Paekche style—the soft modeling, the strict symmetry of the main

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figure’s garment, the delicate linear decoration, and the tranquil pose and expressions—supports such reading. Its crowded composition and the natural stances of its figures, similar to those found in Buddhist sculpture of Liang China (502–557), also bear stylistic retrospection. If, on the other hand, one reads it as referring to a king of the newly furbished Unified Silla, the stele may be read as a politico‐religious statement by former Paekche subjects living under the new regime. They were bestowed official Silla ranks in the same year as the stele’s construction, 673, as the result of King Munmu’s (r. 661– 681) administrative policy and campaign of incorporating aristocrats of conquered territories into his newly formed kingdom. Thus, it is reasonable to consider this stele as a visual manifesto that helped to secure their identity both in the Buddhist realm and in the state of Unified Silla (Kim Sunkyung 2009: 124). It helps to remember that a new form of cultural entity appears mainly because its very newness allows it to answer to a new social function, one not served by a preexisting form. The Buddhist steles first appeared in this region during the late seventh century. We need to ask then: What social meaning were such steles intended to express?; who benefited and in what way?; and why were so few made, and over only two decades? The ambiguity of the donors’ position—holding official ranks in a new kingdom and yet having limited access to central government positions in the capital—could very well contribute to their predilection for a new form of monument with novel iconography. The stele tells us about the fluctuating boundary between political entities, the social identity of the donors, and desired destinations of the devotees. Although “set in stone,” the stele never easily manifests a fixed reading of the visual messages embedded in it.

Distinctive Vision The issues of the designers/makers of Buddhist sculptures both in general and in Unified Silla are yet to be explored. Who chose the iconography, material, scale, form, and style of a certain work is unknown to us. But it is not difficult to imagine that it was a collaborative process of donor(s), monastic advisor(s), and sculptor(s). Briefly, the donor might initiate a project with a budget and the desired outcome in mind whereas the monk would ensure iconographic correctness. Then the sculptor or his workshop would execute the plan by referring to the models, sketches, or drafts that passed initial inspection. Granted, some of these steps or divisions of labor might be omitted or merged. There is no textual account of how craftsmen, such as sculptors, were treated. But considering the social structure of Silla with the strict bone‐rank system of hereditary status, and given what we know about how Chinese craftsmen were treated, it is reasonable to assume that they were technically similar to slaves, only with specialized skills. The sculptors presumably worked on orders from the government, aristocratic clients, or patrons with financial means. It helps to know that in China painters and sculptors were almost like slaves, but became similar to independent contractors beginning in the Tang period (618–907), with more freedom to deal with customers



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of any kind (Clunas 1997: 97). In Tang China, nevertheless, it was extremely rare to find the name or biographical account of any sculptor. In this sense, Yangji is the single most important name in the history of image making in Korea. He was both a sculptor and a revered monk listed in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms with other monastic elite such as Wŏ n’gwang (ca. mid‐5th century to mid‐6th century), Chajang (ac. 636–650), Wŏnhyo, and Ŭ isang (625–702). As a pious practitioner rather than a mere craftsman, he is known to have made terracotta images, often while in a meditative state. His extant works include the glazed terracotta plaques of guardians at Sach’ŏ nwangsa (Four Heavenly Kings Temple) and clay tiles at Sŏ kchangsa (Monk’s Staff Temple), both located in Kyŏ ngju. The Sach’ŏnwangsa plaques that adorned the pagoda pedestal, in particular, might suggest that Yangji was either from Central Asia or someone who knew this novel style that combined the exaggerated Tang Chinese expression of a naturalistic body and the Central Asian physiognomy of a fierce face with bulging eyes, big nose and moustache (Kim Youn‐mi 2013: 160). Yangji’s distinct approach to image making demonstrates the intercultural environment of the time, as well as his or his workshop’s unique place in the contemporaneous ­cultural scene. A specific individual’s uncommon vision, this time not from a sculptor but from a donor, made an indelible mark on the history of image making. A pair of massive stone statues from Kamsansa (Sweet Mountain Temple) in Kyŏ ngju is exemplary (Figure 2.6 and Figure 2.7). The prevalence of belief in both Maitreya bodhisattva and Amitābha Buddha finds its material corollary in these two works. Each is equipped with a rich inscription on the back of the statue, offering unparalleled explication of the conditions related to their creation and dedication. We are thus well informed about the donor, Kim Chisŏng (alternatively written Chijŏn), a government official of the rank chung ach’an (sixth of the seventeen official ranks) and holding the title of sirang (deputy minister). He reportedly had a deep understanding of Chinese classics as well as Buddhist philosophical treatises. According to the inscription, Kim Chisŏng donated his estate in 719 to build the temple Kamsansa and to fund the production of two sculptures in honor of his deceased parents and family as well as for the king and the prince. The Maitreya bodhisattva was presumably dedicated to his mother and the Amitābha Buddha to his father. The scale of the statues, measuring 252 and 275 centimeters respectively, including mandorlas and pedestals, suggests that they were enshrined in the main hall of a Buddhist temple. The juxtaposition of two deities, probably located in the same worship hall, seems intended not only to combine the most popular deities for devotion but also to express the desire for two potential destinations in rebirth, that is, Maitreya’s Tuṣita Heaven and Amitābha’s Western Pure Land. The Amitābha Buddha statue became a favored archetype for standing images in the years that followed. This style includes a full‐bodied figure, regularly spaced and pronounced snail‐shell curls on the head, a relatively high uṣṇı s̄ ạ , a clinging garment to create sensuous contours, evenly‐spaced U‐shaped folds in a repeated string‐like pattern, and symmetrical drapery folds on each leg. Reminiscent of the style of Indian sculptures made in the Mathura region during the Gupta period (from the 4th to the

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Figure 2.6  Standing Bodhisattva Maitreya. Unified Silla, dated 719. From Kamsansa in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Granite. H. 252 cm. National Treasure No. 81. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

5th century), these novel features suggest an active interaction between Unified Silla and the homeland of Buddhism, either directly or through Tang China. Two prominent trends appeared in Silla’s Buddhist circles. One was the consecration of Silla as a Buddha Land, believed to be presided over by Buddhas and protected by their sacred power. The Silla court presented itself as having a longstanding kinship with the Buddha. This can be seen, for instance, in royal family members taking their own names from those of Sā́ kyamuni’s family, as in the case of King Chinp’yŏng (r. 579–632), or from names in Buddhist texts, as in the case of Queen Sŏndŏk (r. 632–647). At the same time, locales in Silla’s territories were specifically identified as the sites where past Buddhas resided. This was a conspicuous effort to further localize Buddhism on their own soil and a legitimizing ideology that followed the unification. The other trend was a search for the authenticity of their religion by directly connecting with its birthplace, India. Adopting new styles from Indian sculpture can be understood under the rubric of such endeavor. We have records of Silla monks, thirteen in total, who went to India in the seventh and eighth centuries in search of sacred texts and



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Figure 2.7  Standing Buddha Amitābha. Unified Silla, dated 719. From Kamsansa in Kyŏ ngju, North Kyŏ ngsang Province. Granite. H. 275 cm. National Treasure No. 82. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

to pay homage to consecrated sites. Although only one of them is known to have returned to Silla, it is reasonable to speculate that there were other monks whose Indian travels have not been recorded. The growing interest in Indian Buddhism had a pressing impact on doctrinal discourse, monastic practices, and even more palpably on image making. These two trends were by no means separate from each other in the minds and motivations of Silla Buddhists. The idea of reconfiguring their land to make it more like a place associated with the Buddha is evidenced in this passage of the inscription on the Amitābha Buddha from Kamsansa. The origin started in the western regions, and the dharma lantern reached the land in the east. Thus, the shadow of the sun of the Buddha shed light on the land where the sun had been hidden, and the scriptures on palm leaves crossed the P’ae River and enlightened [the people in the east]. Dragon palaces soar, interlocking with one another, and pagodas spread like wild geese. The region of Śrāvastī is right here, and the land of Sukhāvatī is nearby (Rhi Juhyung 2013a: 120).

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Śrāvastī is an ancient Indian city where the Buddha spent the greater part of his monastic life and performed renowned miracles; Sukhāvatī is the Realm of Ultimate Bliss, namely Amitābha’s Pure Land. By emulating qualities of Śrāvastī and Sukhāvatī, Silla devotees reveal a certain confidence in the divine nature of the regime and in the flourishing of Buddhist culture, while acknowledging the religion’s roots in the west (India). Accordingly, the Amitābha Buddha statue, which bears visual features of the Indian style, supports this claim. The inscriptions on both Kamsansa statues furthermore repeatedly emphasize the benefactor’s devotion and reverence to a specific text, the Discourse on the Stages of Concentration Practice (Yogācārabhūmi s á ̄stra), which was recorded to have been miraculously transmitted by Maitreya bodhisattva. It has been argued that venerating and visualizing Maitreya occupied a special place in Kim Chisŏ ng’s faith, study, and aspirations (Rhi Juhyung 2013a: 86–92). The Maitreya statue is indeed unique in its form and style. The image is shown in a relaxed standing posture, which differs both from the cross‐ankled bodhisattva of earlier China and from the pensive bodhisattva of seventh‐century Korea. It also wears a lavishly ornamented garment and a headdress decorated with a small Buddha in the center, the iconographic sign of Avalokiteśvara rather than of Maitreya. Recent scholarship suggests that this peculiar form of Maitreya bodhisattva might be due to Kim Chisŏ ng’s distinct visionary encounter with the deity descending from his Tuṣita Heaven (Rhi Juhyung 2013a: 93–102). Here, we see a prime example of the close relationship between a specified devotion to a particular deity and its peculiar representation. In other words, the “style” of a sculpture or a painting not only follows visual trends or the artistic predilection of individual craftsmen, but also demonstrates the character of the faith and its ritualistic practice. A more fascinating aspect of both statues was brought to light from the recent discovery of an unusual hole on top of each deity’s head.1 The hole on the topmost part of the uṣṇı s̄ ạ was most likely intended to hold a relic of the Buddha or a jewel as a substitute for the relic, a practice which started from Gandhāra in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Installing relics into the top of a Buddhist statue’s head was deemed to be an effective means to advocate for and propagate the value of Buddhist images as opposed to proposing that they merely represented the physical likeness of the deities (Rhi Juhyung 2005: 203). It is remarkable that such a hole inside an uṣṇı s̄ ạ is found in sculptures that show strong stylistic affinities with Indian sculptures, or more accurately with the particular type of works from Gandhāra. So far, these Kamsansa sculptures are the only confirmed examples having this attribute in Korea. The prototype for Kim Chisŏ ng’s vision somehow had this direct reference to something “Indian/foreign” or a reference to a pristine essence from the deity’s homeland. The effort to emulate the original and worthy form of the deities in the most faithful manner is key to understanding these two works.   I am grateful to Shin Soyeon of the National Museum of Korea for directing my attention to these cavities in the head of the images during my research and RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) photo session with Dr. Bruce Zuckerman and Dr. Marilyn Lundberg in December 2012.

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Perfected Buddha World What would be the primary goal of filling a space with Buddhist deities? It is essentially about creating a sanctified and richly imagined space that is inhabited or ­governed by deities distinct from a secular realm. The practical motivation could stem from a need to make a ritualistic space. Fundamentally, however, producing and transferring “merit” has been a favored goal and benefit from dedicating Buddha images and creating Buddhist spaces. Such activity, however, is not only geared toward a devotee’s mental storage of merits, but has a public dimension: presenting the donors’ devotion, demonstrating their social status combined with wealth, and visibly securing the salvation of its beneficiaries. If such a consecrated space is located far from an urban center or a major temple by sitting in a desolate place with difficult access, what was the aspiration here? Was it meant to be talked about, if not to be seen? Who was the targeted audience: was it a limited coterie of devotees, the living or deceased members of the patron’s family, or even the heavenly beings represented inside? Arguably the most significant monument in Korean Buddhism and one of the most accomplished cultural products in Korean history, Sŏ kkuram adds q ­ uestions in this regard rather than answering them (Figure 2.8). In fact, virtually every aspect of

Figure 2.8  Sŏkkuram. Unified Silla, 8th century. Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Granite. H. 508.4 cm (main Buddha including pedestal). National Treasure No. 24. Photo by Han Studio. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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its construction and use—its iconographic program, figural style, architectural prototype, patrons, doctrinal foundation, devotional practice, and historical context—as well as its conservation history has been scrutinized by scholars. Here, while e­ xplaining its compositional features, I attempt to introduce some of the fascinating observations recently presented in the field: first regarding architectonic aspects; second, the ­conceptual frame. Sŏ kkuram was built atop Mount T’oham (elevation 745 meters) to the east of Kyŏ ngju. Its name means “Stone Grotto Sanctuary” or “Stone Cave Chapel” but its historical accuracy has been questioned. This name was first used in a travelogue titled Diaries in the Mountains (Sanjung ilgi) written in 1688 by a Chosŏ n‐period literatus, Chŏng Sihan (1625–1707). In contrast, the earliest surviving account of the monument comes from the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, where it was called Sŏ kpulsa, an equally generic name meaning “Stone Buddha Temple.” Yet this may be a specific appellation since even from the onset it was paired with another temple on the mountain, Pulguksa (Buddha Land Temple). The story in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms introduces a slave boy, named Taesŏng, who lived in the village of Moryang in Kyŏ ngju. He heard one day that if one eagerly offered a donation to a Buddhist temple, one would get heavenly deities’ protection as well as a long and comfortable life. He persuaded his mother to donate their tenanted farm to Hŭ ngnyunsa (Rise of the Dharma Wheel Temple). As a reward after his death, Taesŏng was re‐born as a precious son to Prime Minister Kim Munnyang (d. 711). This re‐born Kim Taesŏ ng became a prime minister himself and made his filial vows to create Pulguksa and Sŏ kpulsa (viz. Sŏ kkuram) for the benefit of his parents in both his current and previous lives respectively. This basic outline of Sŏkkuram’s patronage offers no further explanation of the puzzling aspects of its distinctive structure. Sŏ kkuram is an outlier in the history of monuments in East Asia. It is a masonry ensemble of: (1) a rectangular antechamber (now fronted by a wooden shrine), (2) a vaulted entryway, and (3) a domed circular rear‐chamber (Figure 2.9). It is not dug into a mountain cliff. Rather, it is built on the ground with interlocking granite blocks and slabs using minimal butterfly‐shaped lead pieces inserted into grooves of connecting stones. The principal Buddha is placed at the center rear of the main chamber. It is imposingly seated on a high lotus throne with an octagonal base. It is 3.5 meters high, and with its pedestal is 5 meters high. The Buddha’s right hand is in the earth‐touching mudrā, which represents the moment of Śākyamuni’s victory over the temptation by demons and his eventual attainment of enlightenment. Not only his gesture but also his dignified face and monumental body contribute to the overall triumphant atmosphere of conquering distractions and ignorance. His broad shoulders, expansive chest, slender waist, and widely crossed legs, are delicately covered by a diaphanous garment. Such features, together with hands and feet subtly imbued with the vitality of life, suggest a comparison with the high Tang Chinese sculptural style of volume and physical prowess permeated with spiritual attainment. The seated Buddha is the only freestanding statue inside. Other sculptures are all relief images carved on stone slabs that simultaneously work as architectural components to make the interior walls of the main rotunda, entryway, and antechamber.



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Figure 2.9  Sŏkkuram. Floor plan and section. Source: Kang Woo‐bang 2003:171, figs. 3, 4.

Surrounding the main Buddha on the lower walls are oblong panels carved with the eleven‐headed Avalokitesv́ ara, the Buddha’s ten disciples, two bodhisattvas (Mañjusŕ ī and Samantabhadra), and two heavenly deities originally incorporated from Indian myths (Brahmā and Indra). On the entablature are ten small open niches. They hold seated statues of Vimalakīrti and Mañjuśrī exchanging dialogue and a set of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas, two of which have gone missing. On the entryway walls are the Four Heavenly Guardians equipped with armor, each of whom is responsible for a cardinal direction. On the back walls of the antechamber are two muscular door guardians with bare torsos commonly called Vajrapāṇi (Vajra bearers), and on the side walls are another group of guardian deities of martial character called the Eight Kinds of Beings (K. p’albujung). In brief, the interior space

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is a pantheon of Buddhist deities symmetrically arranged in a strict hierarchical fashion constituting the microcosmic Buddha world. Given the interior’s extraordinary precision of the construction and the superb modeling of figural sculptures, the configuration of its exterior baffles us. Sŏ kkuram is hidden from the exterior: the roof, in particular, was completely covered and buried by a pile of earth and rubble. Whether there originally existed a wooden building in front of the antechamber is still open to question, but it is almost safe to say that Sŏkkuram’s exterior upper structure was not intended to be wholly noticeable. What was the reason behind concealing this marvelous architecture from outside view? A readily proposed answer lies in Sŏ kkuram’s presumed identity as an “artificial grotto.” In other words, many have assumed that the creator of Sŏ kkuram aspired to make a structure similar to the cave temples dug into stone cliffs and mountainsides in India, Central Asia, and China. Such understanding is double‐edged. While acknowledging that the spark for this work may have an external source, it quickly emphasizes Sŏ kkuram’s uniqueness as a manmade cave. Rather than excavating the natural rock, Sŏ kkuram instead stands above ground as surface architecture and has a completely novel layout and floor plan. Therefore, its innovative character is the focus of all ensuing discussion. Meanwhile, recent developments in the search for the foreign inspiration of Sŏ kkuram’s unusual conformation—a circular sanctuary with a domed ceiling— have yielded fruitful discussion. Based on a thorough probe into Indian and Central Asian monuments, an attempt has been made to point to the late Buddhist caves of Bamiyan in Afghanistan as a source for Sŏ kkuram’s architectonic design (Rhi Juhyung 2009: 164–166). Another attempt draws attention to domed buildings in Iran as its ultimate cognate, in that they explain not only the overall plan but also such details as the cornice‐like moldings, drum, and circumambulatory passage around the main Buddha.2 This foreign stimulus for the design and Silla’s creativity are not incompatible, as evinced in most other cultural adoption, modification, and re‐creation. The current discussion, therefore, is not really about which theory to choose but to enrich our understanding of this monument by comparing multiple plausible scenarios. For example, the presence of pilgrim monks such as Hyech’o, who visited the Bamiyan region and left a textual account (723–727), strengthens the Bamiyan connection. Although he was not able to return to Silla, it is reasonable to guess that there existed other monks who underwent similar experiences and brought their visual memories back to the Silla art scene. The familiar narrative of trade and transmission of people and objects from Central Asia is supported by other discoveries, including the lavishly ornamented golden dagger from a tomb in Kyŏ ngju that is exceedingly similar in form to one found at Borovoe in Kazakhstan, and depicted on wall paintings in Kumtura Gukou cave 17 and Kizil cave 69 in Xinjiang, China (Yoon 2013: 135–140).

  I thank Kim Minku for sharing his paper “The Sculpted Principal Icon under the Dome: Sŏ kkuram and Its Cognate in Kucha” presented at a Korean art history workshop “Infinite Interfusion: Buddhist Art in Korea” held at Harvard University in 2013.

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At the same time, Sŏkkuram subtly echoes remnants of the tumuli tradition. Such a mound, covered by a pile of earth and rubble, has the resonance of the exterior of a stone chamber tomb with a horizontal entrance, a tradition that continued from the mid‐sixth century until the end of Unified Silla. It is equally possible that Sŏkkuram’s structure may have benefited from other masonry construction such as city walls (Pae Chindal 2000: 147–148). Just as the terracotta armies from the First Emperor of Qin’s mausoleum complex in Xi’an, China, were thought to have been made by those skilled in manufacturing drainage pipes (Ledderose 2000: 69), Sŏ kkuram’s ashlar structure, made from large, rectangular cut stones, was probably made by the hands of workers who were familiar with cutting and assembling granite slabs rather than making wooden temple buildings or carving figural sculptures. In brief, we can infer that the monument is the product of a collaboration between aristocratic patrons, monastic advisors, masons with expertise in constructing tombs and city walls, and sculptors. The technical difficulty in making a domed ceiling and a capstone in lotus form is figuratively delineated in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms. During its construction, the capstone on the domed ceiling broke into three pieces. The patron, Kim Taesŏ ng, had a dream in which a heavenly deity repaired the capstone. When he awoke, he found the ceiling restored and whole. This tale reveals how challenging it was both mechanically and architecturally to make a perfect dome from a hard stone like granite. It simultaneously delivers a metaphor about the unification of the Three Kingdoms. The three broken pieces were meant to be together in the first place and were joyously restored into a whole, symbolically signifying that the divided Three Kingdoms had now become Unified Silla, the Buddha’s chosen land. The blind oculus carved in the shape of a full lotus with seeds and petals located at the center of the domed ceiling still preserves traces of broken lines. The story in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms is indeed a faithful testimony to the undesired incident of the broken capstone. The blueprint for the entire structure was governed by a meticulously calculated geometry. Based on an attempt at mathematical interpretation from the Japanese colonial period on how proportion was optimized using the Tang Chinese foot as the basis for measurement, it has been suggested that, in size, Sŏkkuram’s main icon precisely matches the image of a Buddha that used to exist at the Mahābodhi temple in Bodhgaya, India (Kang 2003: 171–175). It is likely that the designer of Sŏ kkuram first determined the size of the main icon, and subsequently determined the proportionate dimensions of the architectural plan and elevation. This argument is based on the travelogue Great Tang Record of the Western Regions (Da Tang xiyuji) by the renowned Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (602–664), who included a measurement of the image of the Mahābodhi temple. In fact, many pilgrims and envoys from China visited the temple. Among them Wang Xuance (ac. 7th century) was said to have had a professional artist, Song Fazhi (ac. 7th century) copy the holy image of the Buddha, which was again copied after he returned to China. Since the Mahābodhi temple was located where the historical Sā́ kyamuni actually reached enlightenment, its symbolic authority as the most significant image is echoed in its East Asian counterpart at Sŏ kkuram. The Mahābodhi image is long gone, but it was said to face east and take the earth‐touching mudrā as is true of Sŏkkuram’s Buddha.

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This close connection with the Mahābodhi statue leads us to conclude that the main Buddha at Sŏ kkuram is Śākyamuni. The interior panels of Śākyamuni’s Ten Great Disciples surrounding the main rotunda bolster such claim. Though disagreement exists with some identifying it as Amitābha or Vairocana (the Luminous One, Cosmic Buddha), most scholars seem to agree with the Śākyamuni theory for the main icon. The identification of the main Buddha inevitably connects to the search for the iconographic scheme of the sanctuary that consists of forty deities (currently thirty eight because two are missing). The most basic and long‐held theory is to read Sŏ kkuram as Śākyamuni Buddha’s assembly including the audience/worshippers for his sermon. More specific discussion of the program brings in diverse opinions and often leads to the attempt to discover a textual source, however futile that may be. One oft‐cited candidate as the doctrinal foundation is the Flower Garland Sūtra (Skt. Avataṃ saka‐sūtra, C. Huayanjing), which describes the cosmos of infinite realms that mutually contain each other in a harmonious and organic manner. It symbolically pictures the Lotus Treasury World, which is the world created through the vows and practices of Vairocana Buddha (Kang 2003: 168). Others suggest that the inspiration for the Sŏ kkuram came from the Sūtra on the Ocean of Samādhi for Visualizing the Buddha (C. Guanfo sanmei hai jing) where the Buddha is described as having manifested himself from within a stone inside a cave (Mun Myŏ ngdae 1988: 111–122; Mun Myŏ ngdae 2015: 32). Recently it has been argued that Sŏ kkuram is a material realization of the One Vehicle world theory taught by two renowned monks, Ŭ isang and his disciple P’yohun (ac. mid‐8th century). The fact that P’yohun taught Kim Taesŏng Buddhist doctrines contributes to the belief that the former had a role in designing the monument dedicated by the latter. The combination of Sŏ kkuram on top of the mountain, isolated from ordinary life, and Pulguksa at the foot of the same mountain, a place that is easily accessible both physically and spiritually, can be regarded as representing two worlds as a complementary set: the world of Śākyamuni Buddha, the essence; and the world of Samantabhadra bodhisattva, the phenomenon (Ch’oe Yŏ nsik 2015: 112). Going back to the account in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, Iryŏn’s additional remark has captured scholars’ attention. According to a “record existent in the temple” cited in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, the construction of Pulguksa was started by Prime Minister Kim Taesŏ ng in 751 and was not complete until his death in 774, so the state helped its completion. Since Pulguksa and Sŏ kkuram are introduced in this very chapter as a twin‐like pair dedicated by the same patron, the above record has been readily applied to Sŏ kkuram as well. This theory of a “state‐sponsored project” is the exact reason why a majority of scholars consider Sŏ kkuram to be the material manifestation of the so‐called “state‐protecting Buddhism”; they further emphasize the monument’s eastward direction as a sign that it was designed to watch for foreign invasions from the East Sea. Precisely speaking, however, only Pulguksa was completed by the state, not Sŏ kkuram. Whereas the two monuments are believed to share the same construction dates, the mid to late eighth century, the state’s direct involvement in the Sŏ kkuram project requires further proof.



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Recent scholarship, though with a different perspective, shares the idea that for Sŏkkuram, Kim Taesŏ ng’s devotional aspiration and personal plan, rather than the state’s, was central. Given that Mount T’oham, starting from the late seventh century, became a favored place for the construction of royal tombs and the burial of cinerary urns following the newly adopted custom of cremation, this suggests that Sŏ kkuram was a perfect site for the manifestation of Kim’s filial piety and merit‐making wish for his deceased parents from his previous life (Choi 2019: 178–181). Another interpretation suggests a more doctrinal underpinning. It reads Sŏ kkuram as a “Heavenly Palace” based on passages from the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms: “P’yohun stayed in Pulguksa, but went back and forth frequently to the Heavenly Palace” (Nam Tongsin 2014: 92–96). While there can be more than one candidate for what the “Heavenly Palace” means in eighth‐century Silla, the most plausible is the Heaven of Thirty‐three Gods (Trāyastriṃ̣ śa). Furthermore, it is argued that Sŏ kkuram’s Buddha represents Śākyamuni who went up to the Trāyastriṃ̣ s á to give a sermon to his deceased mother, Queen Maya. The fact that stone, among all materials that might have been used, was chosen as the material for Sŏ kkuram holds great significance in this light. No major architecture, with the exception of tombs or stone stupas, had been built solely from stone in Korea. Even what would have been the most important monument in Silla, the nine‐story pagoda of Hwangnyongsa (Imperial Dragon Temple), was made of wood, and even after several occurrences of destruction by lightning and fire, it was rebuilt in wood. Thus building Sŏkkuram entirely in stone was a revolutionary enterprise. According to the relevant sūtras, the place where Śākyamuni preached a sermon to his mother in Trāyastriṃs á was interestingly named “Treasure Stone Hall” and “Undefiled White Stone” (Nam Tongsin 2014: 107). The names of these two buildings unusually focus on the stone itself as a main ingredient in a recipe for this important venue. As for the Silla Buddhists’ use of the term “Heavenly Palace,” the epitaph of Sŏ n (C. Chan) master Sinhaeng (704–779) from the Tansoksa (Cutting the Mundane Temple) provides a marvelous reference. Written by Kim Hŏ njŏ ng in 813, it preserves in refined language, a description of the death and afterlife of this incredible monk: “He is finished here and finally reborn in the Heavenly Palace; he left his form at the hollow valley and took off his shadow on the cloudy peak.” It is noteworthy that the Heavenly Palace meant a desirable place for rebirth. All of these new perspectives bring to light the most fundamental aspect of Buddhist art: its location between religious devotion and artistic creativity. The religious devotion itself acts as a multifarious prism not only implemented by doctrinal and sectarian divergence but also by association with other venues such as a political arena or a mortuary space. The artistic creativity does not bear an unwavering teleological pursuit; rather it includes the process of negotiating the physical setting, the command of material, the patron’s public and personal desires, and the craftsman’s vision and skill. For example, one can ask what the mound‐like cover of the exterior means at Sŏkkuram. Was it a result of imitating a cave temple or appropriating the tumuli convention current at the time? Or was it a result of neglecting the exterior while focusing on the interior space so that it can only be appreciated by those who have access

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inside? Does it call for a paradigm shift from defining it as a “cave temple” to recognizing it as a uniquely hybrid monument? Can Sŏ kkuram be located under the rubric of both a Buddhist sanctuary and a memorial shrine for deceased parents? The structure of Sŏkkuram was not faithfully replicated in its entirety by later monuments. It stood as the one and only such monument. Unprecedented, unparalleled, and with no offspring, its perfected Buddha world remained inside. The main Buddha, however, was favored as a source of inspiration and as a prototype for seated Buddha statues in the years that followed (Im Namsu 2009: 677–678; Chŏ ng Ŭ nu 2017: 23–27). A great many sculptures from late Unified Silla and Koryŏ periods adopted the Sŏ kkuram Buddha’s sitting position, body contour, mudrā, and stylistic elements even down to the fan‐shaped drapery folds between his two legs. The main Buddha at Sŏkkuram became a canon of an idealized Buddha image.

Consecrated Mountain The Silla people, like people in other cultures, believed in the potency of sacred mountains. They identified an area known as the Three Major Mountains, where protective gods of the realm were thought to reside, and the Five Sacred Peaks. While recognizing Chinese precedents, Silla’s systemization of the Five Sacred Peaks in particular is a product of their conscious effort to incorporate territories acquired during the time of Silla’s unification war. These areas symbolize the four regions plus the center, all of which functioned as important posts in the state’s military defense. In addition, the Silla people formulated the Four Numinous Sites. Noteworthy is the fact that the Four Numinous Sites share one quality—that is, a large proportion of rocky hills and peaks—and thus represent the intermingling of the indigenous rock cult and Buddhist preferences (Rhi Ki‐yŏ ng 1988: 165–166). The rock cult was embedded in various facets of Silla culture, as captured by the legend of the rock where Kāsý apa Buddha of the past, is believed to have once sat down. Among these four sites, Mount Nam (Namsan or South mountain), located to Kyŏngju’s south, in particular, occupies a special position, because it was here that a major fortress and the first palace cloister in the pre‐unification Silla were constructed. Mount Nam was significant for its role in state administration at the time of Silla’s unification as well as for being a symbolically consecrated space. More importantly for the current discussion, Mount Nam indisputably became a Buddha mountain. Compared to all other sacred mountains, only Mount Nam has Buddhist monuments that date from the Unified Silla period in every peak and valley; to date, 147 temple sites, 107 sculptures, and 96 pagodas have been identified (Figure 2.10). Mount Nam was recorded in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms as an abode for specific Buddhist deities. During King Sinmun’s reign (681–692), Mañjuśrī appeared in the guise of a layperson (or a monk in ragged clothes) carrying a basket of dried fish and scolded the state elder Kyŏ nghŭ ng for riding a horse. He then, having abandoned the basket, disappeared in front of Munsusa (Mañjuśrī Temple) on Mount Nam. Another account states that Śākyamuni Buddha appeared as a mendicant monk residing at Pip’a‐am (Lute Rock) on Mount Nam. This monk visited the opening ceremony for



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Figure 2.10  Seated Bodhisattva. 8th century. Rock carving at Sinsŏnam on Mount Nam in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Treasure No. 199. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the Mangdŏksa (Aspiring Virtue Temple) in 697 in the presence of King Hyoso (r. 692–702). After speaking with the king, he miraculously flew into Samsŏnggok (Three Stars Gorge) on Mount Nam. The king had him chased, and founded two Buddhist temples at the place where the monk disappeared (Rhi Juhyung 2013b: 28). The plethora of rocks on the mountain and the vista of palaces and temples in the Kyŏ ngju basin below presumably inspired the Silla people’s imagination about the sacred presence of divinities and stimulated a profusion of image making. Mount Nam thus became an outdoor gallery for Buddhist sculptures spanning several hundred years from the seventh century as well as a spiritual focal point for the people of Silla from all walks of life. Sculptures of Buddhist deities on the living rock on Mount Nam include diverse formats of a single Buddha, a Buddha triad, a four‐sided Buddha, and a Buddhist assembly. Most of them are carved only on the surface. The geology of the mountains on the peninsula, long acknowledged by scholars, may have contributed to such phenomenon. The mountains are mostly granite, one of the hardest of rocks, and the difficulties presented in working such an unyielding surface also explains the lack of cave temples in Korea.

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* * * By recognizing several key early moments in the development of Buddhist art, here we have pondered what was at stake when devotees dedicated images of the divine, and what constituted compelling religious/visual messages in a given environment during this formative period. Some works testify to the defining component of early aristocratic Buddhist culture and others present the political and self‐referential emblems employed under a new regime. Still other sculptures brought out distinctive visions with particular forms of deities while there was communal endeavor for finding a common ground for ideal images. Buddhist art has been a new and viable arena of such dynamic interaction among believers of different status, interests and desires. The essential features and iconographic preferences in Unified Silla sculptures continued into the Koryŏ dynasty. The centers of Buddhist culture, however, spread from Kyŏngju to various other regions, from the royal court and central aristocrats to more diversified local lords in several regional hubs. Accordingly, the images of Buddhist deities became variegated to meet local patrons’ ritualistic needs and stylistic predilections.

References Abe, Stanley K. 1990. “Art and Practice in a Fifth‐Century Chinese Buddhist Cave Temple.” Ars Orientalis 20: 1–31. Best, Jonathan W. 1998. “Profile of the Korean Past.” In Arts of Korea, edited by Judith G. Smith, 14–38. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Best, Jonathan W. 2003. “The Transmission and Transformation of Early Buddhist Culture in Korea and Japan.” In Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan, edited by Washizuka Hiromitsu, Park Youngbok, and Kang Woo‐bang, 19–43. New York: Japan Society. Ch’oe Yŏnsik. 2015. “P’yohun ŭi ilsŭng segyeron kwa Pulguksa Sŏkkuram: 8 segi chungyŏp Silla hwaŏmhak ihae sŏsŏl” [P’yohun’s theory of the One Vehicle world, Pulguksa and Sŏkkuram: a prolegomena to the understanding of the Avataṃ saka doctrine in mid‐8th‐century Silla]. Pulgyo hakpo 70: 95–120. Choi, Sun‐ah. 2019. “Rethinking Patronage and Filial Piety at Sŏkkuram and Pulguksa in Kyŏngju, Korea.” In Refiguring East Asian Religious Art: Buddhist Devotion and Funerary Practice, edited by Wu Hung and Paul Copp, 163–186. Chicago: Art Media Resources, Inc. Chŏng Ŭ nu. 2017. “Ponghwa Ch’ŏngnyangsa kŏnch’il Yaksa yŏrae chwasang ŭi t’ŭkching kwa chejak sigi kŏmt’o” [Examination of the characteristics and date of a seated dry‐ lacquer image of Bhaiṣajyaguru at Ch’ŏngnyangsa in Ponghwa]. Misulsa yŏn’gu 32: 7–33. Clunas, Craig. 1997. Art in China. Oxford: Oxford University. Im Namsu. 2009. “Ch’ŏngnyangsa chŏn Yaksa yŏrae chwasang ko” [Study of a seated image of Bhaiṣajyaguru at Ch’ŏngnyangsa]. Minjok munhwa nonch’ong 43: 671–696. Kang, Woo‐bang. 2003. “The Art of Avataṃ saka Sūtra in the Unified Silla Period: The Sanctuary of Sŏkkuram and Hwaŏm‐kyŏng Pyŏnsangdo (Narrative Portrayal in the



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Avataṃ saka Sūtra).” In Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan, edited by Washizuka Hiromitsu, Park Youngbok, and Kang Woo‐ bang, 168–177. New York: Japan Society. Kim, Lena. 1998. “Tradition and Transformation in Korean Buddhist Sculpture.” In Arts of Korea, edited by Judith G. Smith, 250–293. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kim, Lena. 2003. “Early Korean Buddhist Sculptures and Related Japanese Examples: Iconographic and Stylistic Comparisons.” In Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan, edited by Washizuka Hiromitsu, Park Youngbok, and Kang Woo‐bang, 69–83. New York: Japan Society. Kim, Lena. 2007. Buddhist Sculpture of Korea. Seoul: Hollym. Kim, Sunkyung. 2009. “Contesting the Lost Land, New Land, and Pure Land: Buddhist Steles of Seventh‐Century Korea.” Archives of Asian Art 59: 105–133. Kim, Youn‐mi. 2013. “(Dis)assembling the National Canon: Seventh‐Century ‘Esoteric’ Buddhist Ritual, the Samguk yusa, and Sach’ŏnwang‐sa.” In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: from Silla to Koryŏ, edited by Youn‐mi Kim, 123–191. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Lancaster, Lewis. 1988. “Maitreya in Korea.” In Maitreya, the Future Buddha, edited by Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre, 135–153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ledderose, Lothar. 2000. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lee, Junghee. 1993. “The Origins and Development of the Pensive Bodhisattva Images of Asia.” Artibus Asiae 53, no. 3/4: 311–357. Mun Myŏngdae. 1988. “Kyŏngju Sŏkkuram ŭi chosŏng paegyŏng kwa sŏkkul ŭi kujo” [Construction circumstances and structure of Sŏkkuram in Kyŏngju]. Silla munhwaje haksul palp’yo nonmunjip 9: 103–139. Mun Myŏngdae. 2015. “Kyŏngju Sŏkkuram sŏkkul ŭi Yugajong chŏk chosŏng sasang kwa changyuk Sŏkka puljwasang mit hyŏpsi kunsang tŭl ŭi tosang haesŏkhak yŏn’gu” [Study of the doctrinal source for Sŏkkuram in Kyŏngju in light of the thought of the Yogācāra school and the iconology of the seated Śakyamuni and its subsidiary images]. Kangjwa misulsa 44: 11–36. Nam Tongsin. 2014. “Ch’ŏn’gung ŭrosŏŭi Sŏkkuram” [Sŏkkuram as a heavenly palace]. Misulsa wa sigak munhwa 13: 84–127. Ōnishi, Shūya. 2003. “The Monastery Kōryūji’s ‘Crowned Maitreya’ and the Stone Pensive Bodhisattva Excavated at Longxingsi.” In Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan, edited by Washizuka Hiromitsu, Park Youngbok, and Kang Woo‐bang, 55–65. New York: Japan Society. Pae Chindal. 2000. “Sŏkpulsa sŏkkul kujo ŭi wŏnhyŏng kwa yŏnwŏn” [Prototype and source of Sŏkpulsa cave’s structure]. Silla munhwaje haksul palp’yo nonmunjip 21: 141–197. Rhi, Juhyung. 2005. “Images, Relics, and Jewels: The Assimilation of Images in the Buddhist Relic Cult of Gandhāra—Or Vice Versa.” Artibus Asiae 65, no. 2: 169–211. Rhi, Juhyung. 2009. “De Bodhgaya à Kukkuṭesv́ ara: la grotte‐sanctuaire de Seokguram et les inspirations indiennes.” In Images et Imagination: Le bouddhisme en Asie, edited by Peter Skilling, 158–177. Paris: Musée Guimet.

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Rhi, Juhyung. 2013a. “Seeing Maitreya: Aspiration and Vision in an Image from Early Eighth‐Century Silla.” In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: from Silla to Koryŏ , edited by Youn‐mi Kim, 73–122. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Rhi, Juhyung. 2013b. “The Ancient City Gyeongju: Space and Monuments.” In Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom, edited by Soyoung Lee and Denise Patry Leidy, 13–29. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rhi, Ki‐yŏng. 1988. “Brief Remarks on the Buddha‐Land Ideology in Silla during the Seventh and Eighth Centuries.” In Tang China and Beyond: Studies on East Asia from the Seventh to the Tenth Century, edited by Antonino Forte, 163–179. Kyoto: Istituto Italiano di Cultura Scuola di Studi sull’Asia Orientale. Yoon, Sangdeok. 2013. “The Gyerim‐ro Dagger and the Riddle of Silla’s Foreign Trade.” In Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom, edited by Soyoung Lee and Denise Patry Leidy, 133–141. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yu Hongjun. 1997. Na ŭi munhwa yusan tapsagi [My exploration of cultural heritage], vol. 3. Seoul: Ch’angjak kwa pip’yŏngsa.

Glossary Amit’a [Amita] 阿彌陀 Chajang [Jajang] 慈藏 Chinp’yŏ ng [Jinpyeong] 真平(王) Chŏng Sihan [Jeong Sihan] 丁時翰 chung ach’an [jung achan] 重阿飡, 重阿喰 Da Tang xiyuji (C.) 大唐西域記 Guanfo sanmei hai jing (C.) 觀佛三昧海經 Hŭ ngnyunsa [Heungnyunsa] 興輪寺 Hwangnyongsa 皇龍寺 hwarang 花郎 Hyech’o [Hyecho] 慧超 Hyoso 孝昭(王) Iryŏn [Iryeon] 一然 Kamsansa [Gamsansa] 甘山寺 Kaya [Gaya] 伽倻(山) Kim Chisŏng (Chijŏ n) [Kim Jiseong (Jijeon)] 金志誠 (志全) Kim Hŏnjŏ ng [Kim Heonjeong] 金獻貞 Kim Munnyang 金文亮 Kim Pusik [Kim Busik] 金富軾 Kim Taesŏng [Kim Daeseong] 金大城 Kōr yūji (J.) 廣隆寺 kyeyu [gyeyu] 癸酉 Kyŏnghŭ ng [Gyeongheung] 憬興 Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Longxingsi (C.) 龍興寺 Mangdŏksa [Mangdeoksa] 望德寺



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Maranant’a [Marananta] 摩羅難陀 Mukhoja 墨胡子 Munmu 文武(王) Munsusa 文殊寺 Namsan 南山 p’albujung [palbujung] 八部衆 Pip’a‐am [Bipa‐am] 琵琶岩 Pŏphŭ ng [Beopheung] 法興(王) Pulguksa [Bulguksa] 佛國寺 P’yohun [Pyohun] 表訓 Qingzhou (C.) 青州 Sach’ŏnwangsa [Sacheonwangsa] 四天王寺 Samguk sagi 三國史記 Samguk yusa 三國遺事 Samsŏnggok [Samseonggok] 參星谷 Sanjung ilgi 山中日記 Shundao (C.) 順道 Sinhaeng 神行 Sinmun 神文(王) sirang 侍郎 Sŏkchangsa [Seokjangsa] 錫杖寺, 石丈寺 Sŏkkuram [Seokguram] 石窟庵 Sŏkpulsa [Seokbulsa] 石佛寺 Sŏn [Seon] (C. Chan; J. Zen) 禪 Sŏndŏk [Seondeok] 善德(女王) Sŏng [Seong] 聖(王) Song Fazhi (C.) 宋法智 Taesŭ ng kisillon so [Daeseung gisillon so] 大乘起信論疏 Tansoksa [Dansoksa] 斷俗寺 T’oham [Toham] 吐含(山) Tongsa [Dongsa] 東寺 Ttuksŏ m [Ttukseom] 뚝섬 Ŭ isang [Uisang] 義湘 Wang Xuance (C.) 王玄策 Wŏn’gwang [Wongwang] 圓光 Wŏnhyo [Wonhyo] 元曉 Xuanzang (C.) 玄奘 Yangji 良志 Yŏn’ga [Yeonga] 延嘉

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Buddhist Architecture, Politics, and Gender in the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla Youn‐mi Kim

Pagodas were multi‐storied or multi‐eaved Buddhist monuments that enshrined relics of the Buddha or a venerable monk. Whenever Buddhism was newly transmitted to a country in East Asia, missionary monks would usually bring relics of the Buddha as sacred objects to be venerated. When Buddhism was adopted, temples were built with pagodas that changed both the urban space and the skyline of a city. Because the construction of tall pagodas required cutting‐edge construction technology and financial support, countries competed with each other to erect higher pagodas to show off their power and prowess.

Introduction of Buddhist Architecture Buddhism reached Korea in the fourth century CE when the Korean peninsula was ruled by the Three Kingdoms. History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi), one of the two major sources on ancient Korean history, records that Buddhism was transmitted to Koguryŏ (37 BCE–668 CE) in 372 (Samguk sagi 18, “Koguryŏ pon’gi” 6). The Paekche kingdom (18 BCE–660 CE) also officially received Buddhism in 384. On the other hand, Buddhism met strong resistance in the Silla kingdom (57 BCE– 935 CE). Aristocrats of Silla, who were practicing indigenous shamanistic religions, were not receptive to the foreign religion. According to the second major source on Korean history, the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa), only after a young official named Ich’adon (506–527) voluntarily martyred himself in 527 did the Silla court finally accept Buddhism (Samguk yusa 3, “Prospering the Dharma”).

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Acceptance of Buddhism in the Three Kingdoms naturally accompanied the introduction of new types of religious art and architecture. The earliest Buddhist temples founded in the Korean peninsula were Ibullansa and Sŏngmunsa, built by order of King Sosurim (r. 371–384) of Koguryŏ in 375, just three years after the official transmission of Buddhism to the kingdom (Samguk yusa 3, “Prospering the Dharma”). These temples were probably constructed in present‐day Ji’an in Jilin Province, China, where the capital of Koguryŏ was located. Based on archaeological surveys, we know the typical layout of Koguryŏ temples. In the 1930s, Japanese archaeologists examined several temple sites from Koguryŏ and found that they usually featured an octagonal pagoda in the center surrounded by three halls to the north, west, and east respectively. Art historians call this type of temple layout “one‐pagoda‐three‐hall style.” In the 1970s, North Korean archaeologists excavated another large temple site known as Chŏngnŭngsa (Establishing Tomb Temple) in P’yŏngyang (Figure 3.1). The excavations found that the central part of this temple compound also featured an octagonal pagoda flanked by two halls in the main courtyard. Furthermore, because one more hall was located to the north of the courtyard, the overall layout resembled that of typical Koguryŏ temples. The temple site was found near a mausoleum propagandized as the tomb of King Tongmyŏng

Figure 3.1  Chŏngnŭngsa site in P’yŏngyang after excavation. Source: Tongmyŏngwangnŭng kwa kŭ pugŭn ŭi Koguryŏ yujŏk, 1976 (with modification).



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(58–19 BCE), the founder of Koguryŏ. The temple’s name and location indicate that Chŏngnŭngsa served as a temple to protect the tomb; however, it remains unclear whether this tomb, excavated and refurbished by the North Korean government, is truly the mausoleum of King Tongmyŏng (Portal 2005: 111–113). In the 1990s, new buildings were constructed in the central courtyard of Chŏngnŭngsa but ­unfortunately without respecting the findings of the excavations. For example, in order to make the temple more grandiose, they did not install a covered corridor that had divided the ­courtyard. They also chose to erect a somewhat modest stone pagoda instead of the wooden pagoda that originally occupied most of the central courtyard. The centrality of the original large wooden pagoda in this Koguryŏ temple suggests that the circumambulation of a pagoda was an important ritual practiced by Koguryŏ Buddhists. While archaeological remains of Koguryŏ, especially those in North Korea, are ­generally inaccessible to South Korean researchers due to political situation, those of Paekche in South Korea have been extensively excavated and studied. As Buddhism prospered in Paekche, numerous Buddhist temples were founded. Many temple sites remain in Kongju and Puyŏ in South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, the two cities that ­successively served as the capitals of Paekche during the sixth and seventh centuries. Archaeological excavations have revealed that most Paekche temples were planned with the main hall positioned behind the pagoda along a north‐south axis. Before Silla unified the peninsula in 676, Buddhist temples in Silla displayed a variety of layouts. Hwangnyongsa (Imperial Dragon Temple or Yellow Dragon Temple) in the capital city of Kyŏngju had the most ambitious layout. No wooden buildings have survived, but what remains of the stone foundations show that the temple complex was erected on sixteen acres of land. It had an impressive scale because it was ­originally intended to be the site of a palace. According to the History of the Three Kingdoms, King Chinhŭng (r. 540–576) in 553 ordered a new palace to be built to the east of his palace, but a golden dragon appeared at the construction site. Responding to this strange incident, the king changed his plan and instead built a Buddhist temple and named it Hwangnyong, or Imperial Dragon (Samguk sagi 4, 14th year of King Chinhŭng). The temple was completed in 569. The layout of the temple shows the addition of two side halls, a modification of the layout with one main hall and one pagoda as seen in the temples of Paekche. The Buddhist architecture of the Three Kingdoms spread to neighboring countries. When Buddhism was transmitted from Korea to Japan in the sixth century, the Three Kingdoms actively facilitated Japanese acceptance of the new religion by sending Buddhist monks, scriptures, and statues. In 588, according to the Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki), Paekche sent to Japan various artisans who could build temples, and make roof tiles and pagoda pinnacles. As a result, early Japanese temple layouts show similarities to those of Paekche and Koguryŏ. The shape of early Japanese temple roof tiles and building technology also demonstrate significant Korean features. The Buddhist architecture of the Three Kingdoms possibly spread also to northeast China. In Liao China (907–1125) many octagonal pagodas were built, probably under Koguryŏ influence. The northern part of Koguryŏ’s former territory fell to the Liao in 926, when Liao conquered Parhae (C. Bohai, 698–926), a kingdom founded by refugees from Koguryŏ. Because Liao rulers referred to the city plan of Parhae when designing their

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capital cities and had particular interest in the ancient Buddhist monuments of their conquered lands, there is a possibility that the sudden popularity of the octagonal pagoda in Liao may also have been due to the architectural tradition of Koguryŏ.

Pagodas, Political Power, and Gender Buddhist temples built with royal patronage also served as political monuments. One of the most magnificent Buddhist temples of Paekche was Mirŭksa (Maitreya Temple) located in Iksan. The typical old layout with a pagoda and a main hall aligned on a north‐south axis was creatively modified at this temple to make a grandiose temple complex of unprecedented size in Paekche. As modern archaeological excavations have revealed, Mirŭksa was comprised of three sections, as if three temple compounds were combined into one (Figure 3.2). Each section had its own pagoda and a main hall, so the entire precinct consists of three pagodas and three main halls. Behind these was a spacious courtyard with residential quarters for the monks on two sides and a big lecture hall in the north. The Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms records a legend related to this temple’s foundation. When King Mu (r. 600–641) of Paekche and his wife, Princess Sŏnhwa, were passing a lake near Mount Yonghwa, the future Buddha Maitreya and his two attendants rose from the water. Seeing this miracle, the queen asked the king to construct a temple on the spot, so they built one that represented the three assemblies that would be held by Maitreya when he attained enlightenment. The legend claims that King Mu was initially the son of a poor widow, but after marrying Princess Sŏnhwa, the third daughter of Silla King Chinp’yŏng (r. 579–632), he became the king of Paekche. However, in apparent contradiction to this legend, the same text has an interlinear note that cites another historical text recording King Mu as a son of King Pŏp (r. 599–600) (Samguk yusa 2, “Miracles and Oddities”). This conflicting historical record was finally resolved in 2009 when an inscription on a gold plate (Figure  3.3) was discovered in a stone pagoda (Figure  3.4) in the western precinct of the temple. The pagoda is the earliest surviving example in stone in Korea. The use of stone for pagodas is a distinctive feature that continued into later periods of Korean Buddhist architecture. In China, pagodas were usually made of timber or brick, while stone pagodas were rare. In Japan, timber was preferred for pagodas. Only on the Korean peninsula did stone become a primary material for pagodas. The remaining parts of the Mirŭksa pagoda show that it faithfully emulated the shape of timber pagodas in its joinery and pillars, suggesting that Paekche artisans built stone pagodas by translating the architectural forms of timber construction into stone. Later stone pagodas in Korea exhibit more simplified and abstracted forms, creating a pagoda style unique to Korea. Good examples are the twin pagodas at Kamŭnsa (Temple of Feeling Gratitude) and the three‐story pagoda at Pulguksa (Buddha Land Temple) (Figure 3.8). Returning to the Mirŭksa pagoda, only five stories are currently standing (Figure 3.4). According to records from the Chosŏn dynasty, the pagoda originally



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Figure 3.2  Ground plan of Mirŭksa in Iksan, North Chŏlla Province. Image: courtesy of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage.

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Figure 3.3  Inscription on the gold plate of the relic deposit. Paekche, dated 639. From the stone pagoda of the western precinct of Mirŭksa in Iksan. Iksan National Museum. Photo: courtesy of Iksan National Museum. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

had seven or nine stories, but its upper part toppled down sometime in the seventeenth century. In 1915, the Japanese architectural historian Sekino Tadashi (1868–1935), restored the remaining parts of the pagoda out of concern that it might completely fall apart. Unfortunately, this restoration used cement, which was viewed as a wonder of technology at the time. In 2001, the National Cultural Properties Research Institute of Korea decided to remove the cement and restore the stone pagoda. During its dismantling for the restoration in 2009, a relic deposit was discovered above the axial pillar of the first story. The relic deposit included a gold plate with an inscription describing the founding of the temple. According to the inscription, King Mu’s queen had indeed built the temple; however, this queen was not Princess Sŏnhwa from Silla but a daughter of a Paekche aristocrat named Sat’aek Chŏktŏk, who held the position of chwap’yŏng. The inscription also clarified that the pagoda had been erected in 639. Before elaborating on the queen’s founding of the temple and pagoda, the inscription speaks of the Śakyamuni Buddha, his relics, and the benefits gained from circumambulating them. Iksan, where the temple is located, is considered by some scholars as the place of a new capital founded by King Mu. During his reign, the kingdom underwent difficulties due to ensuing wars against Silla and a strained diplomatic relationship with Koguryŏ. Based on surviving historical and archeological evidence, Korean scholars have attempted to explore the political implications behind the construction of Mirŭksa during this time of political strife (Ch’oe Yŏnsik 2012: 135).



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Figure 3.4  Stone pagoda in the western precinct of Mirŭksa. Paekche, dated 639. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea and Iksan city. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

A nine‐story timber pagoda at Hwangnyongsa in Silla had clearer political objectives. It was clearly the most ambitious architecture venture at least in scale ever attempted in Silla (Figure 3.5). The pagoda was erected in 645—as many as seventy‐ six years after the completion of the central compound of the temple. Historical sources suggest that there was a debate in the court for many decades over whether they should build a nine‐story pagoda (Sin Yongch’ŏl 2007: 447–465) because such a project was unprecedented and required a huge amount of funds and labor. As a matter of fact, Silla had to invite an architect named Abiji from Paekche, which was apparently more advanced in building technology, to supervise the construction. Why did the Silla court finally decide to begin the long‐postponed project around the year 645 when the kingdom was undergoing such great political hardships? Queen Sŏndŏk (r. 632–647), enthroned in 632, was the first female ruler in the Silla history. Although she is known to have been a wise sovereign, it was not easy for her to assert strong political authority, partly due to the growing influence of Confucianism in East

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Figure 3.5  Diagram showing relative sizes of the buildings at Hwangnyongsa in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Image: courtesy of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage.

Asia, which strongly emphasized differentiated gender roles and a hierarchy between men and women. The difficulty caused by the sovereign’s gender is clearly demonstrated by the Tang emperor Taizong’s (r. 626–649) response to Silla’s request for military aid. In the ninth lunar month of 643. The Silla court sent an envoy to the Tang court and asked for protection from aggressions from neighboring kingdoms. The previous year, Silla had lost more than forty walled towns to Paekche (Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe 1998: 25–26). As recorded in the History of the Three Kingdoms, the envoy from Silla who was requesting military aid said to Emperor Taizong: “Koguryŏ and Paekche kingdoms have invaded our country many times and attacked dozens of walled towns. The two kingdoms are planning to ally their armies and conquer those towns. They plan to start a big military invasion this ninth lunar month. Our country won’t be able to survive.” Much to the dismay of Silla, the Chinese emperor replied, “Your country took a woman as king, which has caused neighboring countries to have contempt for your kingdom, weakened the authority of kingship, and invited in brigands. I will dispatch an imperial member to make a king for your country” (Samguk sagi 4, 9th lunar moth of 12th year of Queen Sŏndŏk). Needless to say, Tang Taizong’s suggestion of sending one of his male relatives to rule instead of Queen Sŏndŏk caused a commotion in the Silla court. As a matter of fact, constructing the monumental pagoda was an effective means for Queen Sŏndŏk to turn the tables. From the modern perspective, it might seem absurd to initiate the construction of an extravagant religious monument when the country was suffering due to ensuing battles. However, it was believed in Silla that the construction of the nine‐story pagoda would bring protection from invasions by neighboring kingdoms. A famous passage from a seventh‐century text written by the monk Anhong entitled the “Record of the Formation of Eastern Capital” (Tongdo sŏngnip ki), shows that the pagoda was expected to bring Silla the power to conquer neighboring countries and to subjugate nomadic peoples. The monk’s text has not



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survived, but the relevant passage from it was cited in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa 4, “Pagodas and Images”). In this passage, appealing the construction of the nine‐story pagoda, Anhong wrote: In the twenty‐seventh generation of Silla, a queen became the sovereign. The queen is virtuous but lacks authority. Because of this, nine neighboring countries or tribes invaded Silla. If we build a nine‐story pagoda at Hwangnyongsa to the south of Dragon Palace, disasters caused by neighboring countries will subdue. The first story of the pagoda will subdue Japan, the second story China, the third story the Wuyue kingdom, the fourth story T’angna Island, the fifth story Yingyou Island, the sixth story the Mohe people, the seventh story the Khitan people, the eighth story the Nüdi people, and the ninth story the Huimo people.

As this passage shows, the monk Anhong suggests that building a nine‐story pagoda at Hwangnyongsa would make Silla invincible through the divine protection of the Buddha. An inscription found inside Hwangnyongsa pagoda’s stone foundation confirms that the pagoda was believed to bring protection to the kingdom. This inscription came to light only in the 1960s. The wooden pagoda had been reduced to ashes in 1238 during a Mongol invasion, but its stone foundations remained, and the stone base that once supported the pagoda’s axial central pillar yielded a relic depository. Relics of the Buddha were often enshrined inside such central stone bases to ensure they could not be taken out without first moving the enormous pillar. In 1964, a group of looters discovered the relic depository hidden within the central stone base and removed the reliquaries and accompanying objects. Fortunately, the looters were caught two years later, and the stolen objects, which had been sold to a private collector, were sent to the National Museum of Korea. Among the retrieved objects were two nested gilt‐bronze caskets, which had formed part of the reliquary set of the pagoda. The smaller casket bears an inscription of seventy‐four lines entitled “Record of the Imperial Dragon Temple’s Axial Pillar” (Hwang Suyŏng 1973: 275–277). The inscription states that the reliquary was enshrined in 872 during the pagoda’s restoration conducted during the reign of King Kyŏngmun (861–875). According to the inscription, Queen Sŏndŏk initiated the construction in 645 following the advice of  monk Chajang (590–658). One of the most eminent monks in ancient Korean Buddhism, Chajang, persuaded the queen to build the pagoda by relaying to her the story of his miraculous encounter with a saintly figure during his stay in China. While Chajang was studying Buddhism there, he met a meditation master named Yuanxiang on Mount Zhongnan. The Chinese master told Chajang that building a nine‐story pagoda at Hwangnyongsa would make all other countries on the peninsula surrender to Silla. The inscription goes on to say that the pagoda was constructed out of a belief that it would help Silla’s territorial expansion. The inscription ends with the confirmation that the pagoda indeed brought peace to the kingdom after its completion, showing that the posterity of Silla indeed believed in the efficacy of the magnificent pagoda. When we consider the cultural and technological issues of the time, we can understand several rational bases for such belief. First, Buddhism in Silla was closely

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connected to ruling power and prospered in part by promising divine protection to the country. This type of Buddhism, commonly known as “state‐protecting Buddhism,” was widely practiced in East Asia. Hwangnyongsa was one of three major state‐protecting temples in Silla. In addition, because the Buddha’s relics were believed to possess the presence of the Buddha and miraculous power, a pagoda was often viewed as a monument that brought blessing and protection to its venerators. Given this socio‐religious context, it is understandable that the merit of erecting such a colossal multi‐story pagoda at Hwangnyongsa was expected to invoke divine protection for the Silla kingdom. Second, the successful construction of such a grandiose pagoda served as an efficacious way in seventh‐century East Asia to demonstrate the country’s power and technology during a time of domestic hardships. The height of the nine‐story pagoda at Hwangnyongsa would have been undoubtedly awe‐inspiring. The inscription from the pagoda’s relic casket mentions that the structure was 225 ch’ŏk (C. chi) tall, which equals over 80 meters. Even with today’s building technology, creating such a timber structure would be exceedingly difficult. East Asian timber‐frame architecture did not use nails in construction and structures were held together purely by wooden joinery. Moreover, as roof tiles were very heavy, erecting a multi‐story timber pagoda was no small task. The Korean government has been discussing a restoration project to rebuild the Hwangnyongsa complex. The reconstruction of the nine‐story timber pagoda using purely traditional carpentry will present a great challenge if enacted. In seventh‐century East Asia, constructing such a monumental pagoda solely out of timber required cutting‐edge technology. Even the Chinese timber pagodas that received imperial patronage in the Northern Wei and Sui dynasties did not exceed nine stories. As mentioned, the Silla kingdom initially had weaker military power and less sophisticated culture than Koguryŏ and Paekche. In addition, as implied by the emperor Taizong’s response, the rulers of those two kingdoms saw an opportunity to invade Silla after a female ruler was enthroned in 632. In such a context, successful construction of the monumental pagoda would have promoted the image of Silla as a strong and stable country with concentrated ruling power, and highly developed technology and culture. In 676, only thirty years after the completion of the pagoda, Silla indeed conquered its neighboring kingdoms and completed the unification the peninsula, bringing an end to the long Three Kingdoms period. As the inscription from the pagoda’s relic deposit confirms, the Silla people believed and ascribed their successful conquest of neighboring kingdoms to the divine power of their nine‐story pagoda. While most prominent in the case of Queen Sŏndŏk, it seems that construction of this monumental pagoda also played a role in enhancing the political authority of female rulers not only in Silla but also in other countries of East Asia. This argument cannot be generalized without further research, but it is noteworthy that in terms of technology and iconography, the most innovative pagodas in architectural history were generally sponsored by female patrons. A nine‐story pagoda at the temple Yongningsi constructed in 516 in Luoyang, China during the Norther Wei period, is one of the most famous and remarkable monuments in traditional Chinese



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architecture and well‐documented in historical sources. The Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang (Luoyang qielanji) written in 547 by Yang Xuanzhi informs us that the patron of this impressive pagoda was Empress Dowager Ling (d. 528), whose strong political ambitions rose to the extent of poisoning her own son, the emperor Xiaoming (r. 515–528), in order to retain power. Another important female patron of imperial pagodas was Wu Zetian (624–705) of Tang, the only woman in Chinese history to rule China not as regent but as emperor. Usurping the imperial throne, she founded a short‐lived dynasty named Zhou (690–705). As a founder of the new dynasty, she heavily sponsored Buddhism to gain political support and constructed numerous temples and pagodas. Empress Wu’s impact on the visual culture of Korean pagodas and reliquaries is noteworthy. In 704, she ordered the Tokharian monk Mituoshan (Skt. Mitraśānta) to translate a Buddhist scripture into Chinese, the Sūtra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ī (C. Wugoujingguang da tuoluoni jing). After the translation was completed, Empress Wu had one million copies of the scripture produced and distributed. The scripture recommended a new Buddhist practice whereby a copy of incantations from it was to be inserted into a miniature pagoda. Seventy‐seven or ninety‐nine of these scripture‐filled miniature pagodas were to be enshrined within an actual pagoda. Archaeological remains show that this instruction was most actively practiced in Korea, from as early as right after the scripture’s translation. The five‐story stone pagoda at Nawŏn‐ri in Kyŏngju, erected in the early eighth century, yielded an enshrined copy of the Sūtra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ī, written on paper. Metal and wooden miniature pagodas, created based on the contents of this sūtra, were also enshrined inside this pagoda. During the modern restoration of the pagoda in 1996, the scripture and the miniature wooden pagodas were found in fragments, ­ ilt‐bronze pagodas were found intact after enduring the longue but the miniature g durée of time (Figure 3.6). This shows that the translation of the scripture in China immediately engendered the new practice in Silla, demonstrating the amazing speed of the trans‐regional exchanges in seventh‐century East Asia as well as the significance of Empress Wu’s role in promoting the new cross‐cultural practice of enshrining incantations in miniature pagodas. Afterwards, the enshrinement of the Sūtra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ī—handwritten, printed on paper, or engraved on reliquaries—and miniature pagodas became one of the prominent features of Korean pagodas until the ninth century (Chu Kyŏngmi 2004: 164–196). This practice of creating miniature pagodas based on the Sūtra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ī seems to have been reimported to China after the founding of the Liao dynasty (907–1125) (Shen 2001: 294–297). The scripture played as significant a role in the creation of Liao pagodas as it did in Silla. Many Liao pagodas were named “Pure Light Pagoda” (C. Wuguo jingguang ta) because they enshrined incantations from this scripture. Miniature pagodas encasing this scripture’s incantations were also found in the White Pagoda of Qingzhou (1049), located in present‐day Inner Mongolia, the relic depositary of which was designed to be a ritual altar partly following the scripture’s instructions. It is notable that the construction of this famous pagoda was also sponsored by a woman, Empress Dowager Qin’ai (d. 1058), who ruled the Liao empire.

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Figure 3.6  Miniature pagodas. Unified Silla, 8th century. From the relic deposit of the five‐story stone pagoda in Nawŏn‐ri in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gilt‐ bronze. National Museum of Korea. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Buddhist Temples with Twin Pagodas in Unified Silla The most radical change in the Buddhist temple layout in Korea took place when Silla began to build twin pagodas in the mid‐seventh century. These twin pagodas—one in the east and the other in the west—usually stood in front of the main Buddha hall. As the pagoda enshrined the relics of the Buddha, it is viewed as the most sacred structure in a Buddhist temple precinct, thus erecting a twin of it in close proximity must have been considered a drastic modification of the temple layout. Earlier examples of twin pagodas existed in China, and thus they did not originate in Silla. In the seventh century, they suddenly became popular and spread throughout China, Korea, and Japan. While quite a few countries in East Asia built twin pagodas, no country favored them more than the Silla did. Between the mid‐seventh to ninth century, twin pagodas became the representative type of pagodas in Silla. While twin pagodas were transmitted from China to Korea, they came to have new meanings and ritual functions in Korea. Twin pagodas in China had functions that varied by locale, such as commemoration of an emperor’s deceased parents, or ordination of monks. The twin pagodas of Silla, however, became uniquely connected to the protection of the state, especially in the seventh century. This was because the first



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examples of twin pagodas in Korea were probably introduced to Silla in conjunction with a Buddhist ritual that was believed to bring her victory in the Silla‐Tang wars from 670 to 676. The first twin pagodas on the peninsula were erected at Sach’ŏnwangsa (Four Heavenly Kings Temple) around the time when Silla conquered her two rivals and emerged victorious as Unified Silla. As mentioned above, in the first half of the seventh century Silla was plagued by invasions from Paekche and Koguryŏ. In 648, Silla succeeded in forming an alliance with Tang China. Under the leadership of King Muyŏl (r. 654–661), Silla began the war for unification of the peninsula. In the third lunar month of 660, the combined forces of Silla and Tang advanced on Paekche and conquered it in the seventh month. In the following year, while the combined armies were battling Koguryŏ, the king suddenly passed away, but his son, King Munmu (r. 661–681), continued the campaign. After eight more years, Koguryŏ finally surrendered (Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe 1998: 31–56). The unification war, however, did not end with the fall of Paekche and Koguryŏ, because there arose a territorial dispute between Silla and Tang. When they formed their alliance in 648, the Tang had promised that in victory, Silla would take Paekche’s entire territory as well as Koguryŏ’s territory south of P’yŏngyang (Samguk sagi, 26th day of 7th lunar month of 11th year of King Munmu). After the conquest of the two kingdoms, however, Tang Taizong’s attitude changed and he attempted to bring the conquered territories under Chinese rule. Silla could not concede them because that would mean having waged nine years of war without any gain. This territorial dispute lead to war between Silla and Tang in 670. It seemed that Silla did not have much chance against Tang China, an invincible empire in Asia that was quickly expanding by conquering countries outside its borders. Miraculously, however, Silla won the war against that formidable empire. When the war began, besides designing a military response, the Silla king adopted a special strategy to invoke divine protection by Buddhist deities. According to the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, King Munmu of Silla sought help from the monk Myŏngnang when the war was just about to begin. Like the monk Chajang in the previous era, Myŏngnang had also studied in China. When summoned to the court, he suggested that the king build a temple by the name of Sach’ŏnwangsa and a ritual be performed known as “Munduru.” Due to insufficient time, the king had a temporary temple built of colorful silk in the Sinyu Forest, on the site that Myŏngnang had recommended for the new temple. Following the monk’s advice, statues of the Deities of the Five Directions were prepared in order to perform the Munduru ritual. Because there was not enough time to create wooden or metal statues, they were provisionally made out of grass. At this makeshift temple, Myŏngnang performed the Munduru ritual with twelve Yogācāra monks (Samguk yusa 2, “Miracles and Oddities”). After the war, the temporary structure of Sach’onwangsa was formally replaced by regular temple buildings in 679. Archaeological remains of Sach’ŏnwangsa, located in present‐day Paebandong in Kyŏngju, have drawn the attention of historians since the early twentieth century. The remains of the stone foundation prove that the temple had twin timber pagodas standing in front of the main Buddha hall. The remains of two unique installations, also of stone, of unknown function, were found behind the main

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Buddha hall, facing each other east to west. Chang Ch’ungsik suggests that they were ritual platforms used for the Munduru ritual as recorded in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms. Chang also argues that the twelve stones forms in each installation symbolize the twelve Yogācāra monks who performed the Munduru ritual at the temple (Chang Ch’ungsik 2002, 7–23). As recorded in the Consecration Sūtra (C. Guanding jing), the most important ritual objects for the Munduru ritual are thaumaturgic wooden seals, and the size of the wooden seals mentioned in the sūtra precisely match the holes in each of the twelve stones. “Munduru,” a transcription of the Sanskrit word mudrā, refers to these wooden seals in this ritual context. When practicing the ritual, these wooden seals were probably inserted into the holes (Kim Youn-mi 2013: 142–191). In addition to this special ritual, the name of the temple, Sach’ŏnwangsa, which means the “Temple of the Four Heavenly Kings,” also attests to this temple’s connection to state‐protecting Buddhism. The Four Heavenly Kings, the most important guardian deities in the Buddhist pantheon, are known to guard the Buddhist teaching in each cardinal direction. Except for the Vaiśravaṇa, the guardian of the north, who holds a miniature pagoda in one hand as his attribute, they each hold a weapon such as a sword or bow and arrow. According to Buddhist cosmology, halfway up the cosmic mountain of Mount Meru—in the center of the cosmos—is the abode of the Four Heavenly Kings, which these deities rule. After the translation of a Buddhist scripture Sūtra of Golden Light into Chinese (C. Jinguangming jing) in the fifth century, the Four Heavenly Kings came to be particularly associated with state‐protecting Buddhism in East Asia. According to the sūtra, they promised to protect countries where this scripture was venerated. The Munduru ritual was believed to have brought victory to Silla in the Silla‐Tang wars. The Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms records: Even before the Tang and Silla fought, a furious wind and waves sank all the Tang warships … Afterwards, in the year of sinmi (671 CE), Tang once more dispatched Zhao Xian as a general, and fifty thousand soldiers once again came to defeat Silla. [Silla] performed the Munduru ritual once again, and the warships sank as before” (Samguk yusa 2, “Miracles and Oddities”).

Because the first twin pagodas in Silla were built at the Sach’ŏnwangsa where the Munduru ritual was performed to protect the kingdom during the war, the twin pagoda form was particularly associated with state protection by Silla in subsequent centuries. Moreover, the twin pagodas of this temple had initially been adorned with terracotta reliefs of guardian deities (Figure  3.7). Im Yŏngae suggests that they ­represent the guardian deities often mentioned in the Consecration Sūtra (Im Yŏngae 2008: 7–37), which links the twin pagodas with state‐protecting Buddhism, as well as with the Munduru Ritual. An interesting episode suggests that Sach’ŏnwangsa continued to serve as a place for the state‐protection ritual even after the Tang were defeated. According to the History of the Three Kingdoms, the emperor Gaozong of Tang sent an envoy to Silla in 679 to inspect Sach’ŏnwangsa. On hearing of this, King Munmu of Silla ordered that a new temple be quickly built to show the Chinese envoy, in order to hide Sach’ŏnwangsa from Chinese inspection. When guided to the fake temple, the Chinese



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Figure 3.7  Restored relief image of a guardian deity. Unified Silla, ca. 679. From the twin pagodas of Sach’ŏnwangsa in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Glazed terracotta. Photo: courtesy of Kyŏngju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

envoy suspected that it was not the real one and declined to enter it. To appease the envoy, the Silla people bribed him with 1000 gold coins. As a result, the envoy returned to China and reported that Sach’ŏnwangsa was a place where Silla Buddhists prayed for the longevity of the Chinese emperor. The new temple, modeled on Sach’ŏnwangsa, was later named Mangdŏksa (Expecting Virtue Temple) (Samguk yusa 2, “Miracles and Oddities”). As this temple was a replica of Sach’ŏnwangsa, it also featured twin pagodas made of timber. After the Silla‐Tang wars, twin pagodas became a popular form of Buddhist architecture in Silla. No other country built twin pagodas more frequently than Unified Silla. Belief in the protective power of twin pagodas may have promoted their popularity in the Unified Silla in the latter half of the seventh century. The pagoda architecture in Silla reached its acme in a pair of pagodas of unique composition, the so‐called Śākyamuni pagoda (Sŏkkat’ap) and Prabhūtaratna pagoda (Tabot’ap) at Pulguksa in Kyŏngju (Figures 3.8 and 3.9). While the former is the typical three‐story pagoda of Silla in its monumentality of form, the latter, consisting of complex layers of square and octagonal forms, is a unique type that has no parallels in any other pagoda in Korea. The Prabhūtaratna pagoda has even been adopted for

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Figure 3.8  Three‐story stone pagoda at Pulguksa in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Unified Silla, 8th century. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the design of the obverse of the ten‐won coin in Korea since 1966. The Śākyamuni pagoda has received considerable attention due to a copy of the Sūtra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ī discovered inside its relic deposit in 1966. As the pagoda was founded in the mid‐eighth century, this copy of the sūtra is considered by Korean scholars to be the earliest extant example of wood‐block printing in history (Figure 3.10)—though it is debated whether the printed scripture was enshrined during the pagoda’s completion in the mid‐eighth century, or during its restoration in the eleventh century. Because of the commonly known names of these paired pagodas, many scholars assumed that their scriptural basis was the Lotus Sūtra. According to the “Witnessing the Treasure Pagoda” chapter of this sūtra, the pagoda of Prabhūtaratna Buddha miraculously rose up out of the earth during Śakyamuni Buddha’s preaching of the Lotus Sūtra. When the door of the pagoda opened, Prabhūtaratna Buddha who was inside asked Śakyamuni Buddha to take a seat next to him. Based on this chapter, a large number of



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Figure 3.9  Stone pagoda at Pulguksa. Unified Silla, 8th century. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Figure 3.10  Manuscript of the Sutra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ī. From the relic deposit of the three‐story stone pagoda at Pulguksa. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

twin Buddha images have been produced in China since the Northern Wei period. Even though twin Buddha images rarely appeared in the Buddhist art of Korea, art historians widely believed that the paired pagodas at Pulguksa were created based on this textual account. However, it has also been noted that the original names of the paired pagodas

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were not Śakyamuni and Prabhūtaratna. A restoration record from the eleventh century discovered inside the Śakyamuni pagoda simply refers to it as the “West Stone Pagoda” (Sŏsŏkt’ap) or the “Pure Light Pagoda” (Mugujŏnggwangt’ap). The earliest historical document to call its twin by the name “Prabhūtaratna,” dates to the eighteenth century (Pae Chindal 2007: 121–138). The meaning of these paired pagodas is still under debate, remaining open for further study.

References Ahn Hwi‐joon. 1998. “Koguryŏ kobun pyŏkhwa ŭi hŭrŭm” [Chronological development of Koguryŏ tomb murals]. Kangjwa misulsa 10: 73–103. Chang Ch’ungsik. 2002. “Silla Sach’ŏnwangsaji tansŏk ŭi koch’al” [Examination of the ritual platform at Sach’ŏnwangsa from Silla]. Pulgyo hakpo 39: 7–23. Ch’oe Yŏnsik. 2012. “Mirŭksa ch’anggŏn ŭi yŏksajŏk paegyŏng” [Historical background on the foundation of Mirŭksa]. Han’guksa yo˘n’gu 159: 1–35. Chu Kyŏngmi. 2004. “Han’guk pulsari changŏm e issŏsŏ Mugujo˘nggwang taedarani kyo˘ng ŭi ŭimi” [The meaning of the Pure Light Dhara ˉn·¯ı Sūtra in Korean reliquaries]. Pulgyo misulsahak 2: 164–196. Forte, Antonino. 1976. Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century. Naples: Istituto universitario orientale, Seminario di studi asiatici. Forte, Antonino. 1988. Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the History of the Astronomical Clock: The Tower, Statue, and Armillary Sphere Constructed by Empress Wu. Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente; Paris: Ecole française d’Extrême‐Orient. Han’guk kodae sahoe yŏn’guso, ed. 1992. Yok̆ chu Han’guk kodae kŭmso˘ngmun [Annotated translation of ancient Korean inscriptions]. 3 vols. Seoul: Karakkuk sajŏk kaebal yŏn’guwŏn. Hwang Suyŏng. 1972. “Silla Hwangnyongsa kuch’ŭngt’ap chi: Ch’alchu pon’gi e taehayŏ” [Report on the nine‐story Silla pagoda at Hwangnyongsa: Regarding the Record from the axial pillar]. Misulsahak yo˘n’gu 116: 275–277. Hwang Suyŏng. 1973. “Silla Hwangnyongsa kuch’ŭng mokt’ap ch’alchu pon’gi wa kŭ sarigu” [Record from the axial pillar of the nine‐story Silla pagoda at Hwangnyongsa and the pagoda’s reliquary]. Tongyanghak 3 (1973): 269–328. Hwangnyongsa pogwo˘n kibon kyehoek [The master plan for the reconstruction of Hwangnyongsa]. 2007. Taejŏn: Kungnip munhwajae yŏn’guso. Iksan Mirŭksaji ko˘nch’uk yugu pojon cho˘ ngbi kyehoek [The plan for the conservation and restoration of architectural remains at Mirŭksa]. 2017. Taejŏn: Kungnip munhwajae yŏn’guso. Im Yŏngae. 2008. “Sach’ŏnwangsaji sojosang ŭi chonmyŏng” [Names of the clay images from the Sach’ŏnwangsa site]. Misulsa nondan 27: 7–37. Kang Pongwŏn. 2002. “Paekche Muwang kwa ‘Sŏdong’ ŭi kwan’gye chae kŏmt’o” [Re‐ examination of the relationship between King Mu of Paekche and Sŏdong]. Paeksan hakpo 63: 131–164. Kim, Youn‐mi. 2013. “(Dis) assembling the National Canon: Seventh‐Century ‘Esoteric’ Buddhist Ritual, the Samguk Yusa, and Sach’onwang‐sa.” In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryo˘, edited by Youn‐mi Kim, 123–191. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University.



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Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe. 1998. T’ongil Silla [Unified Silla]. Kwach’ŏn: Kuksa p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe. Kungnip Kyŏngju munhwajae yŏn’guso. 2012. Sach’ŏnwangsa: Kŭmdangji palgul chosa pogoso˘ [Four Heavenly Kings Temple: the excavation report of the remains of the main hall]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju munhwajae yŏn’guso. Luoyang qielan ji [Record of Buddhist temples in Luoyang], composed by Yang Xuanzhi ˉ Daizo-kyo- [Taisho˘ revised tripiṭaka], vol. 51, no. 2092. (ac. 6th century). In Taisho- shinshu Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai. Pae Chindal. 2007. “Pulguksa sŏkt’ap e kuhyŏndoen hwaŏm yŏnhwajang segye: Sŏkkat’ap Tabot’ap ŭi myŏngch’ing kwa kwallyŏn hayŏ” [The Huayan Lotus Treasury World embodied in the Śakyamuni pagoda at Pulguksa in relation to the names of the Śakyamuni and Prabhūtaratna pagodas]. In Sigak munhwa u˘i cho˘nt’ong kwa haeso˘k: Cho˘ngjae Kim Rina kyosu cho˘ngnyo˘n t’oeim kinyo˘m misulsa nonmunjip [Traditional visual culture and its interpretations: Festschrift for Professor Lena Kim on the occasion of her retirement], edited by Chŏngjae Kim Rina kyosu chŏngnyŏn t’oeim kinyŏm misulsa nonmunjip kanhaeng wiwŏnhoe, 121–138. Seoul: Yegyŏng. Portal, Jane. 2005. Art under Control in North Korea. London: Reaktion Books. Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms), compiled by Kim Pusik (1075–1151). Reprinted 2011 as Yo˘kchu Samguk sagi [Annotation and vernacular translation of the Samguk sagi], edited by Han’gukhak chungang yŏn’guwŏn. Sŏngnam: Han’gukhak chungang yŏn’guwŏn ch’ulp’anbu. Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), compiled by Iryŏn (1206–1289). Reprinted 2003 as Yŏkchu Samguk yusa [Annotation and vernacular translation of the Samguk yusa], edited by Han’guk chŏngsin munhwa yŏn’guwŏn. Seoul: Ihoe Munhwasa. Shen, Hsueh‐man. 2001. “Realizing the Buddha’s Dharma Body during the Mofa Period: A Study of Liao Buddhist Relic Deposits,” Artibus Asiae 61 (2): 263–303. Sin Yongch’ŏl. 2007. “Ch’ogi Silla pult’ap kwan e taehan koch’al” [Study of ideas on early Silla pagodas]. Munhwasahak 27: 447–465. Strong, John. 2004. Relics of the Buddha. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tongmyo˘ngwangnŭng kwa kŭ pugŭn ŭi Koguryo˘ yujo˘k [King Tongmyong’s tomb and nearby Koguryo˘ sites]. 1976. P’yŏngyang: Kim Ilsŏng chonghap taehak ch’up’ansa.

Glossary Abiji 阿非知 Anhong 安弘 Chajang [Jajang] 慈藏 Chinhŭng [Jinheung] 眞興(王) Chŏlla [Jeolla] 全羅(道) Chongjuesi (C.) 沖覺寺 Chŏngnŭngsa [Jeongneungsa] 定陵寺 chwap’yŏng [jwapyeong] 佐平 Guanding jing (C.) 灌頂經 Hwangnyongsa 皇龍寺/黃龍寺

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Jinguangming jing (C.) 金光明經 Kamŭnsa [Gameunsa] 感恩寺 Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Kyŏngmun [Gyeongmun] 景文(王) Kyŏngsang [Gyeongsang] 慶尙(道) Mangdŏksa [Mangdeoksa] 望德寺 Maranant’a [Marananta] 摩羅難陀 Mirŭksa [Mireuksa] 彌勒寺 Mituoshan (C.) 彌陀山 Mu 武(王) Munduru 文豆婁 Munmu 文武(王) Muyŏl [Muyeol] 武烈(王) Myŏngnang [Myeongnang] 明朗 Nŭngsa [Neungsa] 陵寺 Pŏphŭng [Beopheung] 法興 Pulguksa [Bulguksa] 佛國寺 Qin’ai (C.) 欽哀 Sach’ŏnwangsa [Sacheonwangsa] 四天王寺 Sat’aek chŏktŏk [Sataek jeokdeok] 沙宅積德 Sekino Tadashi (J.) 關野貞 sinmi 辛未 Sŏkkat’ap [Seokgatap] 釋迦塔 Sŏndŏk [Seondeok] 善德(女王) Sŏngmunsa [Seongmunsa] 省門寺 Sŏnhwa [Seonhwa] 善花 Sosurim 小獸林(王) Tabot’ap [Dabotap] 多寶塔 T’angna [Tangna] 托羅 Tongdo sŏngnipki [Dongdo seongnipgi] 東都成立記 Tongmyŏng [Dongmyeong] 東明(王) Wugou jingguang ta (C.) 無垢淨光塔 Wugoujingguang da tuoluoni jing (C.) 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經 Xiaoming (C.) 孝明 Yang Xuanzhi (C.) 楊衒之 Yingyou (C.) 鷹遊 Yonghwa 龍華(山) Yongningsi (C.) 永寧寺 Yuan Yi (C.) 元懌 Yuanxiang (C.) 圓香 Zhongnan (C.) 終南(山)

4

Art and Artifacts of Three Kingdoms Tombs Hyunsook Kang

Tombs of the Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms period of Korea spans from the late third century CE, when the kingdoms of Koguryŏ, Paekche, and Silla were established as ancient states, to 668 CE when Silla’s consolidation of the other two kingdoms was finalized and unification achieved. According to the History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi), Silla was founded in 57 BCE, Koguryŏ in 38 BCE, and Paekche in 18 BCE. However, the presence of a powerful state cannot be observed in archeological evidence prior to the third century CE. Accordingly, Korean archeologists regard the period from the first century BCE to the third century CE as a time when the foundations of the ancient polities that would evolve into the Three Kingdoms were being established and refer it to as the “Proto‐Three Kingdoms” period. During the Three Kingdoms period in the more strict sense, in the southern region of the Korean peninsula there also existed the Kaya Confederacy, which was comprised of several polities yet to achieve statehood (Han’guk kogohakhoe 2010: 229–232). In each of the three kingdoms, grand tombs were built and furnished with various personal ornaments and prestige items as well as armor, horse trappings, weapons, vessels, and imported goods. The distinctive “tomb culture” of each of the three kingdoms helps to shed light on the process by which these ancient states developed as well as their interactions with the polities of central China, northeast China, and Japan. Therefore the Three Kingdoms period in Korea can be regarded as “the period of tombs.” In ancient society, the tomb was not merely a product of funerary behavior but was also a manifestation of the politics, economy, society, techniques, and ideas of the time. In particular, the massive scale of the tombs and the prestige items, which

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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represent a significant proportion of the grave goods deposited within these tombs, provide information on the political context of the times, as well as act as symbols demonstrating the identity of the Three Kingdoms. Furthermore, items obtained through long‐distance exchange with China, Japan, and Eurasia demonstrate the international nature of exchange relations maintained by the Three Kingdoms. In addition, the crafts objects made of gold, silver, gilt‐bronze, porcelain, and celadon, as well as those associated with Buddhism or Daoism, are as widely varied and ­entrancing as the tombs of the Three Kingdoms. The craftsmanship of Koguryŏ ­conveys an intense and dynamic spirit, whereas that of Paekche represents a delicate and sophisticated aesthetic. The crafts objects of Silla are magnificent in their ­opulence, and Kaya craftsmanship has a charm of its own, distinct from the delicateness of Paekche or the glamour of Silla. The ancient state of Koguryŏ was located in the northern region of the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. The characteristic tombs of Koguryŏ are the stone‐mounded tomb and the mural tomb, consisting of a stone chamber and an earthen mound. In the stone‐ mounded tomb the deceased was placed above the ground on a layer of stone and covered with a stone cairn. As such, it represents a distinctive type of burial architecture vis‐à‐vis the Chinese tombs which had burial chambers located below ground. In particular, the stair‐shaped stone‐mounded tombs, such as the Tomb of the ‘Great King’ (T’aewangnŭng) and the Tomb of the General (Changgunch’ong), are seen as well representing the grandeur of the Koguryŏ kings of the fourth and fifth century, who were given the name “T’aewang” meaning the “greatest of all kings.” The Tomb of the General, located at Jian in Jilin, China, is a stair‐shaped stone‐ mounded tomb, which was constructed using approximately 1100 pieces of well‐faced large stones. A surrounding fence structure was identified in the vicinity of the tomb, and two attached tombs were found in the inner area of the surrounding fence. The Tomb of the General is believed to have been the royal tomb of either King Kwanggaet’o or King Changsu (Jilinsheng wenwukaogu yanjiusuo 2004: 335–363). The Koguryŏ mural tombs have stone chamber walls featuring images of everyday life, the four guardian deities, and decorative motifs; the ceilings are decorated with the sun, moon, stars, clouds, and auspicious animals or images associated with Daoism or Buddhism. The high, truncated, pyramid‐shaped “lantern‐roof” ceilings of the tombs, which were meant to represent the heavens, were constructed using the corbelling technique, in which corbelled ceiling beams were used to form alternating squares that were 45 degrees offset and became successively smaller. It is this sophisticated method of construction that has made it possible for the mural tombs to be preserved to this day. Due to such superior construction techniques and artistic merit, the grand stone‐mounded tombs and mural tombs of Koguryŏ have been designated as World Heritage sites by UNESCO. Paekche was an ancient kingdom located in the central and southwestern regions of the Korean peninsula. Its capital was moved three times, from Hansŏng (present‐ day Seoul) to Ungjin (Kongju) to Sabi (Puyŏ). Each phase of the Paekche ­chronology is represented by a different capital, as well as a distinctive burial culture. Stone‐ mounded tombs were popular during the Hansŏng period, whereas stone‐chamber tombs with earthen mounds were used in the Ungjin and Sabi periods. The Ungjin



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period also witnessed the use of brick‐built tombs, the representative example being the Tomb of King Muryŏng. Epitaph plaques found within the tomb confirmed the identity of the deceased as King Muryŏng and his queen consort. Other grave goods from this tomb include a stone “tomb guardian” statue, Chinese Liang dynasty wushu coins, the personal ornaments of the queen, decorated swords, Chinese mirrors, and celadon vessels (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2014). These artifacts shed light on the nature of exchange that occurred between Paekche and the Southern Dynasties of China at the time. Silla was an ancient state located in the southeastern region of the Korean peninsula, which evolved out of Saro‐guk, one of the small polities of the Chinhan confederacy. It gradually developed into a strong kingdom, conquering the Kaya confederacy, Paekche, and Koguryŏ, and ultimately succeeded in unifying the three kingdoms. The wood‐chambered tomb with stone mound was typically used during the Silla period. It consists of a wooden burial chamber into which the deceased was interred; this wooden chamber was then covered with a layer of stones, followed by the addition of an earthen mound. The architectural structure of the wood‐chambered tomb with stone mound, which is similar to the kurgan burial mounds of the Eurasian Steppes, has not been identified elsewhere on the Korean peninsula nor in China or Manchuria. As such, the origins of this type of tomb, the distribution of which is limited to Kyŏngju and certain areas of the Kyŏngsang Province region, is an issue which requires further consideration. Many archeologists regard the largest and oldest, wood‐chambered tomb with stone mound in Silla to be the Hwangnam taech’ong (Great Tomb at Hwangnam), and believe it to be a royal tomb. Hwangnam taech’ong, currently located within the Great Tumuli complex in Kyŏngju, consists of two tombs connected along a north‐south axis. The tomb represented by the “south mound” was first built, and the tomb represented by the “north mound” was subsequently attached. In this process, a section of the earlier south mound was cut out. The deceased laid to rest in the south tomb was a man, and in the north tomb lies his consort. The deceased, who had been placed within a wooden coffin, was identified to have been fully dressed, accompanied by personal ornaments of fine metalwork, a large quantity of gold and silver objects, and metal and glass vessels. These artifacts suggest that an elaborate funeral had taken place (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 2010). The Kaya confederacy consisted of several territorial polities based in the southern regions of the Korean peninsula. Tombs covered by earthen mounds were used in each of these polities, but the type of burial chamber in which the deceased was laid to rest changed over time, from wooden chambers to stone chambers. The fourth‐century tombs of the Taesŏng‐dong burial ground, located in Kimhae, South Kyŏngsang Province, the center of Kŭmgwan Kaya, were found to be wood‐chambered tombs. The grave goods from these tombs illustrate the nature of exchange that took place with Han China, the horse‐riding groups of the Northern Steppes, and Japanese Wa (Taesŏngdong kobun pangmulgwan 2013). The tombs have also yielded evidence of burial customs involving human sacrifice. The center of Tae Kaya (Great Kaya) is located in Chisan‐dong in Koryŏng, North Kyŏngsang Province. The Chisan‐dong tombs were established along the ridge that connects to the lower part of the Chusan fortress. In the stone‐chambered tombs of the Chisan‐dong burial ground,

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dating to the fifth and sixth centuries, evidence of sacrificial burials has been found. The grave goods of the tombs consist of gilt‐bronze crowns, personal ornaments made of fine metalwork, decorated swords, various ornamental horse trappings, and armor. Chisan‐dong Tomb No. 44 and 45 are considered to be Tae Kaya royal tombs. The thirty‐two stone coffin burials associated with Tomb No. 44, which were arranged within a circular fence, are believed to be human sacrifice burials. Tomb No. 45 yielded personal ornaments such as gilt‐bronze crown decorations and gold earrings, pieces of horse gear decorated with gold work, and large swords decorated with silver. Among these grave goods, the decorated swords and personal ornaments made of fine metalwork are seen as illustrating the cultural exchange that took place between Kaya, Paekche, and the Japanese Wa (Han’guk kogohakhoe 2010: 398, 415).

Personal Ornaments of Fine Metalwork Personal ornaments of fine metalwork began to be placed in tombs as grave goods from the fourth century CE. Such personal ornaments are extremely varied, consisting of crowns, cap‐shaped crowns, crown ornaments, earrings, necklaces, chestlaces, bracelets, rings, belts, and shoes. They were also made using different kinds of precious metals, such as gold, silver, and gilt‐bronze. This differentiated use of materials would have acted to represent and maintain social and economic distinctions. The fine metalwork ornaments were manufactured by casting or hammering according to the type of metal used. They were decorated using techniques such as openwork, incision, filigree, chasing, and repoussé. These decorative effects were also enhanced by the addition of spangles, blue and red glass, and jewel beetle wings. Several of these techniques were used together to decorate the fine metalwork ornaments of the Three Kingdoms, which were used to adorn the deceased and to display his or her social status. Due to their exquisite and elaborate nature, the fine metalwork personal ornaments are regarded as craftworks of exceptionally high artistic merit.

Crowns, Cap‐shaped Crowns and Crown Ornaments The crowns of the Three Kingdoms generally consist of caps and crown ornaments. Figures appearing in Koguryŏ mural tombs have been identified as wearing conical caps, referred to as pyŏn (C. bian), decorated with feathers. The gold cylindrical cap and the bird wing‐shaped ornament from the Tomb of the ‘Great King’ (T’aewangnŭng) would have presented a similar sight when worn (Jilinsheng wenwukaogu yanjiusuo 2004, pl. 92). The gilt bronze ornament decorated with flame and honeysuckle patterns in openwork, which was excavated from the Ch’ŏngam‐ri earthen wall fortress in P’yŏngyang, has been interpreted as a crown ornament (Chosŏn yujŏk p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe 1990: 267). However, it is more likely to have been a crown worn by a bodhisattva statue. The central headband, decorated with patterns in openwork, features five flame‐shaped upright decorations, alternating with three pointy leaf‐shaped upright decorations. The hanging ornaments located at either end of the headband feature butterfly‐shaped bow ties. The



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use of such powerful and dynamic flame‐like motifs is characteristic of Koguryŏ fine metalwork craftsmanship. Two pairs of gold crown ornaments were found in the Paekche tomb of King Muryŏng, where the heads of the king and queen would have been placed. The ornaments were cut out from a sheet of gold, and each pair is symmetrical in shape. The king’s crown ornaments consist of palmette or honeysuckle patterns (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 1), and the queen’s crown ornaments seem to depict flowers as they would appear in a vase (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 11). A gold hairpin was also discovered in the area of the king’s head (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 3). It is in the shape of a sparrow in flight and features embossed flowers executed in the repoussé technique. This exquisite piece is symmetrical in form and is decorated with a delicate yet splendid design. Examples of branch‐and‐ blossom‐shaped crown ornaments made of silver plate have been excavated from the tombs of the Sabi period. It is recorded that the king wore a black silk crown decorated with golden flowers while officials of above the sixth rank wore crowns decorated with silver flowers. The crown ornaments found in the Paekche tombs can thus be regard as the actual examples of the recorded flowers. In addition, cap‐shaped crowns, which are triangular when seen from the side, were excavated from tombs of the Hansŏng period as well as in the regions of Kongju, Iksan, and Naju. A typical Silla crown ensemble consists of an outer headband crown, an inner cap‐ shaped crown, and crown ornaments. The cap‐shaped crown, adorned with ornaments, was placed on the wearer’s head, followed by the headband crown. Silla headband crowns feature vertical uprights with symmetrical branches and angled uprights with alternating branches (Figure 4.1). These uprights were attached to the base of the headband crown, and both the base and uprights were additionally embellished with curved jade beads and spangles. Silla headband crowns were also decorated with long, hanging ornaments. Due to the distinctive shape of the uprights that resemble the Chinese character chu (出), this type of the Silla headband crown is referred to as a “ch’ul (the Korean pronunciation of chu)‐shaped crown.” A gold headband crown excavated from Sŏbongch’ong (Auspicious Phoenix Tomb) is of this type, with both the base and uprights festooned with curved jade beads and spangles (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 26–27). The form of the gold headband crown from Auspicious Phoenix Tomb is similar to the one from the north mound of the Great Tomb at Hwangnam, known as Kŭmgwanch’ong (Gold Crown Tomb), and to the one from the Ch’ŏnmach’ong (Heavenly Horse Tomb). However, it also characteristically features an inner cap, made by crossing two long and narrow gold plates, which is further embellished with three tree branches and three phoenixes on the top. Silla cap‐shaped crowns, which are triangular in shape when seen from the side, were made by piecing together gilt‐bronze sheets decorated with openwork patterns (Figure 4.2). Various motifs can be observed in the openwork patterns, such as trefoil leaves, dragons, and T‐like shapes. Crown ornaments in the shape of a bird or butterfly with wings spread were attached to these cap‐shaped crowns (Figure 4.3). The wings of these ornaments are adorned with round spangles, and with abstracted patterns of dragons or semi‐circles executed in openwork The cap‐shaped crown from

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Figure 4.1  Headband crown. Silla, 5th century. From Kŭmgwanch’ong in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gold with jade decoration. H. 27.7 cm. National Treasure No. 87. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Kŭmgwanch’ong was made by piecing together several plates of openwork in heart‐ shaped, diamond‐shaped, and T‐shaped patterns To the frontal part of cap‐shaped crowns were often attached decorations in the shape of a bird or butterfly with wings spread (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 54–55). The frontal decorations attached to Koguryŏ and Silla crowns have been found to be similar. They feature dragon‐shaped or semi‐circular openwork patterns and spangles. The frontal decoration of the cap‐shaped crown from Ch’ŏnmach’ong is in the form of a pair of powerful bird’s wings. The wings are embellished with abstracted dragons in openwork, and over 400 round spangles have been attached to the surface with gold thread (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 51). Kaya crowns excavated at the Chisan‐dong burial ground in Koryŏng consist of gilt‐ bronze headbands to which semi‐circular gilt‐bronze plates or upright ornaments in the shape of plants and flowers were attached. Compared with the Silla crowns, they are very simple in shape. The plant‐ and flower‐shaped uprights feature spangles and green curved jade pieces. In the case of the crown excavated at Chisan‐ dong Tomb No. 32, the branches that spread out from the center of the semi‐circular



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Figure 4.2  Cap‐shaped crown. Silla, 5th century. From Kŭmgwanch’ong in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gold. H. 17.6 cm. National Treasure No. 87. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

plate have lotus bud‐shaped ends. The border of the semi‐circular plate is decorated with a pair of dotted lines and incised wave patterns in the space between the dotted lines (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 274). Three additional lines, which cross over one another, run along the bottom, middle and upper sections of the semi‐ circular plate, enhancing the beauty of this golden section. A gilt‐bronze crown similar to that from Chisan‐dong Tomb No. 32 and decorated with semi‐circular plates was discovered at the Nihonmatsuyama kofun in Kyushu, Japan, thereby suggesting the existence of exchanges between Kaya and Japanese Wa.

Earrings A typical earring of the Three Kingdoms consists of a main ring, which is attached to the earlobe, and ornaments that hung from this ring. There are two types of main ring: the thick type and the thin type. Paekche and Kaya earrings feature thin rings, but some of the Koguryŏ and Silla earrings have been found to have thick rings as well as thin rings. The king and queen buried in the tomb of King Muryŏng both appear to have been laid to rest wearing earrings. Each of the king’s earrings consists of a thin main ring, to which two hanging ornaments were attached (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan

Figure 4.3  Ornament of cap‐shaped crown. Silla, 5th century. From Kŭmgwanch’ong in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gold. H. 40.8 cm. National Treasure No. 87. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Figure 4.4  Pair of earrings of King Muryŏng. Paekche, 6th century. From King Muryŏng’s Tomb, Kongju, South Ch’ungchŏng Province. Gold with jade decoration. L. 8.3 cm. National Treasure No. 156. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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2011, pl. 2). One of the hanging ornaments features a curved jade, and the other a double heart‐shaped decoration (Figure 4.4). Each of the queen’s earrings was also adorned with two hanging ornaments, one featuring a triangular decoration that resembles a gardenia fruit (Gardenia jasminoides), and the other a bullet‐shaped decoration (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pls. 12–13). The use of gardenia fruit‐shaped and bullet‐shaped decorations has also been observed in Kaya earrings. Such Kaya earrings have mainly been excavated in the Tae Kaya area. The use of a hanging ornament in the form of an empty ball can be commonly observed in the earrings of the Three Kingdoms, but heart‐shaped and cone‐shaped hanging ornaments are characteristically shared by the earrings of Chisan‐dong Tomb No. 45 and by those of Paekche. The earrings excavated from Chisan‐dong Tomb No. 45 each feature two hanging ornaments, one of which is an empty ball‐shaped ornament located below the main ring, and the other a cone‐shaped ornament (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2001: 281). Hanging from the empty ball‐shaped ornament is a tiny ball connected by a ring, and the cone‐shaped hanging ornament features a flower‐shaped decoration which has round gold granulation attached to the center of the flower. Koguryŏ and Silla earrings commonly consist of a ring that was attached to the ear lobe, a ball‐shaped middle ornament formed by linking small rings, and a hanging ornament with pendulum or heart‐shaped decorations. However, Silla earrings were additionally embellished with spangles of various shapes and gold granulation or glass pieces, thereby enhancing their grandeur to the utmost. The earrings from a double burial tomb of Pomun‐dong in Kyŏngju feature thick rings made by manipulating hollow tubes of gold plate into their current doughnut‐shaped forms (Figure  4.5; Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 88–89). Each thick ring is decorated with a continuous pattern of hexagons; within each hexagon is a single trefoil‐shaped flower, all of which are expressed using gold granulation. The thinner connector ring below the main ring is also decorated with hexagons and flowers, and is also fashioned with gold granulation. The hanging ornament below the connector ring consists of three tiers, and the upper two tiers are adorned with small heart‐shaped elements edged with gold granulation, while from the bottommost tier hangs a single large heart‐shaped pendant, all which not only enhance the splendid nature of the earrings but also act to display the pinnacle of Silla’s fine metalwork craftsmanship.

Necklaces It was in Silla that necklaces were greatly favored as a form of personal ornamentation. Silla necklaces were at times worn with chestlaces, which hung low, past the wearer’s chest. The necklaces and chestlaces were splendid pieces, embellished with beads made of gold, jade, and amethyst. The necklace from a tomb at Noseo‐dong features hollow gold “beads,” made by connecting numerous small rings, which were additionally decorated with heart‐shaped spangles and threaded onto a gold chain. A curved jade bead was added to one end of the necklace, with the blue of the jade and gold of the necklace presenting a harmony pleasing to the eye (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 39). At Ch’ŏnmach’ong, a chestlace consisting of thousands of glass and gold beads were found in situ, presumably hanging from the neck to the

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Figure 4.5  Pair of earrings. Silla, early 6th century. From the double burial tomb of Pomun‐dong in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gold. L. 8.6 cm. National Treasure No. 90. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

chest of the deceased (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 144). The necklace from a tomb in the King Mich’u district of Kyŏngju consists of red agate and blue jade beads which support a central pendant comprised of a mosaic glass bead, a clear crystal pendant, and a red curved jade pendant. The mosaic glass bead, which has a diameter of approximately 1.6 centimeters, is decorated with an inlaid image of a human face and a bird (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 231). The exotic features of the face depicted on the glass bead suggest that it was not indigenously manufactured in Silla but rather came from a foreign workshop, possibly in West Asia or the Mediterranean region or the Indo‐Pacific region, and found its way to Silla via trade routes. Actual examples of Koguryŏ necklaces have yet to be discovered. The characteristics of Paekche necklaces, on the other hand, can be identified from two examples discovered in the tomb of King Muryŏng (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pls. 15–16). These necklaces consist, respectively, of seven and nine cylindrical segments. Each segment is faceted (hexagonal in cross section) and thickest at the center. The ends of each segment were extended into long wires that were first bent to form rings (which were used to connect the segments) and then wrapped around the ends of the segment. Overall these necklaces are simple in form, yet display a sophisticated beauty.



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Belts The belts of the Three Kingdoms differed in shape and material according to the social status of the wearer. While the core of the belt, made of organic material such as leather or silk, is rarely preserved, the decorations in gold, silver, or gilt‐bronze that were once attached to it have been discovered when excavating tombs. Such belt decorations consist of decorative plaques, belt end decorations, connecting hooks, and pendants that hung from the belt. The use of hanging belt pendants is also a feature the belts of nomadic Northern Steppes peoples, and is not observed in Chinese belts. Completely preserved Koguryŏ belts have yet to be found, but based on the ­decorative metal plaques and the hanging pendants identified thus far, it is possible to ­ascertain that Koguryŏ belts were similar to Silla examples in their form. Koguryŏ belts have mostly been excavated from the tombs of Jian in Jilin, China. What remains of the belts consist of rectangular plaques made of gilt‐bronze or silver and decorated with ­openwork abstracted dragon patterns or trefoil leaf motifs, and additionally affixed with inverted heart‐shaped pieces. The long hanging pendants of the belt consist of linked oval‐shaped pieces (Jilinsheng wenwukaogu yanjiusuo 2010, pl. 107). The ends of belt pendants discovered in Silla tombs feature various hanging charms, such as a whetstone, pincers, hand knife, medicine bottle, incense pouch, fish, and curved jades (Figure 4.6). The whetstone and pincers both symbolize iron production, the medicine bottle the healing of illnesses, the curved jade the sanctity of life, and the fish fecundity. The belt from the south mound of the Great Tomb at

Figure 4.6  Belt. Silla, 5th century. From Kŭmgwanch’ong in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gold with jade and glass decoration. L. 109 cm. National Treasure No. 88. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Hwangnam consists of square plaques, below which heart‐shaped pieces are attached (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 172–173). The square plaques are decorated with trefoil leaf motifs in openwork, and the openwork of their inverted heart‐ shaped pieces is also leaf‐like. The end of the belt consists of a rectangular gold plaque, which has a triangular plate that was once fastened onto the now perished organic belt band. Seventeen hanging pendants are attached close to one another along the entire belt. They pendants feature ovular alternating with square pieces, as well as charms such as a fish made from gold sheet, an openwork fish, a gold‐capped curved jade, and a chisel. The belt from the tomb of King Muryŏng, discovered in the area of the king’s waist, was made using both gold and silver (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 5). The belt buckle is mushroom‐shaped and the belt plaques consist of alternating large and small oval pieces made of silver, which rise up in the center and are embellished with gold spangles along the top and bottom. The sole hanging pendant also consists of large and small oval plaques. The large plaques, made of silver, are decorated with animal‐face motifs in openwork, whereas the small plaques, made of gold, are left undecorated. The uppermost ornament of the pendant features an image of a toad in openwork, and the lowermost ornament is a silver rectangular plaque with images of the White Tiger and the Red Phoenix. Overall, the decorative images of this hanging pendant present a left‐right symmetry. Although less opulent than the examples from Silla, this Paekche belt demonstrates a simple yet sophisticated beauty. There are not many examples of Kaya belts. The belt plaques of the belt excavated from Okchŏn Tomb No. M1 in Hapch’ŏn, North Kyŏngsang Province (Kungnip Kyŏngsangdaehakkyo pangmulgwan 1992, pl. 6), decorated with an openwork bifoliate pattern, is similar to the plaques from the belt found in the south mound of Great Tomb at Hwangnam. The buckle from Okchŏn Tomb No. M11, on the other hand, is similar to the buckle from the Paekche tomb of King Muryŏng (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pls. 6–7).

Bracelets and Rings Bracelets have a long history of use in the Korean peninsula, and the bracelets of the Three Kingdoms differ only slightly each other in their form. Koguryŏ and Silla bracelets are generally alike, but the decorative technique of making notches or rounded ridges on the surface was more popularly used in Silla bracelets. The pair of gold bracelets from a tomb in Noseo‐dong 215, in Kyŏngju, was made using rods that are square in cross‐section, which were bent into the shape to form round bracelets (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 147). The outer surface of the bracelets was decorated with rounded ridges and the sides were embellished with a dynamic pattern consisting of the raised images of dragons with entangled tails. At the Paekche tomb of King Muryŏng, a pair of silver bracelets and four pairs of anklets were found, respectively, in the areas of the queen’s hands and feet. Each of the bracelets was decorated with three raised dragons on its outer surface. The inner surface contains an inscription which records that the bracelets were made for the queen by a craftsperson by the name of Tari in the second month of 520 (Figure  4.7; Kungnip Kongju



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Figure 4.7  Bracelet of Queen Muryŏng. By Tari. Paekche, early 6th century. Silver. D. 8.0 cm. National Treasure No. 160. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 20). At present, Tari is the oldest example of a Paekche craftsperson whose name is known. The rings discovered in tombs were worn by the deceased or were placed along with the deceased as grave goods. Interestingly enough, in the case of Silla tombs, rings are more often found in a way that indicates they were placed on top of the separate grave goods box or compartment. The rings can be simple pieces made by bending gold, silver or gilt‐bronze rods that are round in cross‐section into a circle, or they can be more elaborate items of diverse appearance that are embellished with various decorations. The more elaborate rings are generally made of gold. A gold ring from the south mound of the Great Tomb at Hwangnam has a rhombus‐shaped head that is decorated with leaf patterns using gold granules interspersed with glass beads (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 164). The rhombus‐shaped head of a ring from Ch’ŏnmach’ong has been left undecorated whereas a ring from Kŭmryŏngch’ong (Gold Earrings Tomb) features a rhombus‐shaped head consisting of an incised pattern and glass inserts (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 164–165). The wide rhombus or flower petal‐shaped ring head is a raised section that has been added to the body of the ring using gold plates. Embellished with gold granulation and the addition of blue or green glass inserts, they are a characteristic feature of Silla rings, which are known for their opulence.

Shoes The soles of the gilt‐bronze shoes found in the tombs of the Three Kingdoms feature spikes. The spikes can have nail‐shaped or rounded tips. Shoes with the former were worn by the Koguryŏ armored warrior depicted in the mural of T’onggu (Tonggou) Tomb No. 12, and actual examples have also been discovered at the Paekche tomb of King Muryŏng and the north mound of Great Tomb at Hwangnam, which is a Silla

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tomb. Shoes with rounded spikes, on the other hand, have been discovered at Koguryŏ’s Tomb of the General and Silla’s Kŭmryŏngch’ong. Some Silla shoes have also been found to be embellished with affixed spangles. Gilt‐bronze shoes with spiked soles were found near the feet of the king and queen at the tomb of King Muryŏng. The decoration on the upper and side sections of the king’s shoes feature an openwork pattern of hexagons containing lotus and phoenix motifs (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 8). The queen’s shoes contain phoenix and honeysuckle arabesque patterns, likewise rendered in openwork (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 23). Gilt‐bronze spiked shoes evidencing a similar mode of manufacture were also excavated from Ipchŏm‐ri Tomb No. 1 in Iksan. The soles of the spiked shoes, from Pogam‐ri Tomb No. 3 in Naju, were adorned with fish‐shaped gilt‐bronze spangles. The entire surface of the pair of shoes excavated from the grave goods area of the south mound at the Great Tomb at Hwangnam is covered with a pattern of T‐shape motifs, expressed in openwork. Each shoe is further adorned with round spangles (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 208). The pair of shoes from Singnich’ong (Ornamental Shoes Tomb) is renowned for its splendid decoration (Figure  4.8; Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2001: 211–212). The edge of each sole is bordered

Figure 4.8  Pair of shoes. Silla, 5th century. From Singnich’ong in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Gilt‐bronze. L. 32 cm. Treasure No. 635. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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by two lines of granulation and a band of flame patterns. The main pictorial field of each sole is decorated in a tortoiseshell‐like pattern of hexagons. The central row of hexagons is filled with alternating images of monster faces and paired birds. In the pictorial space between the border of the shoe and the central row of hexagons are images of a kalaviṅka (a mythic bird with the body of a bird and a human face), a giraffe, and other winged animals. The plates forming the sides of the shoes are likewise decorated with images of auspicious animals within hexagonal frames, such as a bird with the head of a different animal, a tortoise with a serpent’s head, and a giraffe. Such decorative motifs are said to have been also popular in Sasanian Persia during the fifth and sixth centuries.

Vessels Vessels made from a wide variety of materials were used in the Three Kingdoms period. They include ceramic vessels, metal vessels (made of gold, silver, gilt‐bronze, bronze, or iron), and glass vessels. Vessels serving various functions, such as food preparation, eating and drinking, and storage, have been discovered in the tombs of the Three Kingdoms. These vessels are a testament to the then prevailing belief that the deceased would require sustenance in the afterlife. Of these vessels, those of gold, silver, gilt‐bronze, and glass have been discovered only in large‐scale tombs, thereby attesting to their use as prestige items.

Ceramic Vessels The ceramic vessels of the Three Kingdoms generally consist of hard pottery made of fine clay, thrown on a potter’s wheel, and fired in a closed kiln. As such, they represent a significant technological development vis‐à‐vis the pottery produced prior to the establishment of the Three Kingdoms. Some of the vessels were fired at temperatures of above 1100–1200° Centigrade and produce a metallic sound when struck. These examples are referred to as “stoneware.” Each of the Three Kingdoms developed a distinctive pottery culture according to their respective natural environment and way of life. The pottery traditions of the Three Kingdoms came to be maintained and transformed into the ceramic traditions of the Koryŏ and Chosŏn dynasties. Koguryŏ pottery, which is generally gray, yellow or black in color, is characterized by the general absence or very limited nature of surface decoration. The clay material of its pottery is relatively soft, compared to that of Paekche, Silla, and Kaya. Food preparation vessels consist of ceramic cooking ovens, cooking pots, and steamers; storage vessels consist of deep bowls and long‐necked jars with elongated bodies; eating and drinking vessels consist of cups with handles and small bowls. The long‐ necked jar with handles and elongated body is a type of pottery distinctive to Koguryŏ. As such, its presence at the Mongch’on earthen wall fortress in Seoul, for example, has been regarded as evidence of Koguryŏ expansion into the Han River region of Paekche. The form of this pottery type came to be adopted by the long‐necked jars of the Parhae (C. Bohai) kingdom, thereby demonstrating a continuation between Koguryŏ and Parhae.

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Paekche pottery is made of a harder clay material than Koguryŏ pottery. The vessels found in tombs are generally greyish white or white in color and consist of various types, including jars, tripods, deep bowls, and vessel stands. The black burnished jar with a short straight neck and rounded shoulders from Karak‐dong Tomb No. 1 is believed to have been made in imitation of lacquerware (Hansŏng Paekche pangmulgwan 2013, pl. 60). As this vessel type is distinctive to the Hansŏng‐period of Paekche, its distribution is regarded as an archeological marker of Paekche territory during the Hansŏng period. The pottery stand from one of the tombs at the Songsan‐ri burial ground in Kongju resembles the mouth of a trumpet (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 82), presenting a contrast to the pottery stands of Silla or Kaya. Its gentle curves and elegant profile are characteristic of the Paekche aesthetic. Paekche pottery also comprises foreign ceramic types reinterpreted by Paekche potters. An example of this is the tiger‐shaped chamber pot (C. huzi) discovered at the Kunsu‐ri temple site in Puyŏ. This vessel type was widely popular in China (Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan 1997: 59). Silla and Kaya pottery was fired at temperatures of above 1100° Centigrade, resulting in vitrification of the vessel surface. The main vessel types are the long‐necked jar and the mounted dish. They are accompanied by a diverse range of other vessels, such as jars, variously shaped cups, and ceramic vessels of various sculptural forms (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 1997: 39–80). As well as serving everyday needs, Silla and Kaya pottery was actively used as grave goods. Indeed, there have been examples in which a single tomb has yielded dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of ceramic vessels. Of those, many examples portray great beauty of form as well as artistic merit. Mounted dishes are similar in form to the Chinese tou‐type of ceremonial vessel, and the remains of fish, chicken, shellfish found within them indicate that they were used in food offering rituals. Tall pedestals feature perforations which served both a practical and a decorative function. The perforations would have helped to prevent the pedestal from cracking during firing, and their presence on the upper and lower sections of the pedestal also act to enhance the beauty of their form. Silla pedestals tend to have straight flaring silhouettes and offset square perforations, whereas Kaya pedestals have silhouettes with curved flares and square perforations that are aligned. Interestingly enough, the pedestals of Ara Kaya, one of the Kaya kingdoms, feature flame‐shaped perforations. The long‐necked jar has a rounded body and a long neck, allowing liquids to be easily poured out. The Silla long‐necked jar has a straight neck which meets the shoulder of the vessel at an angle. The neck and shoulder sections of long‐necked jars are at times decorated with heart‐shaped attachments and figurines; some jars also feature legs. The long‐necked jar with clay appliqué figurines from Kyerim‐ro Tomb No. 30 in Kyŏngju illustrates well the everyday lives and humor of the Silla people (Figure 4.9; Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 1997: 85). The Kaya long‐necked jar, on the other hand, has a curved neck with a mouth featuring a gallery, on which the lid would have rested. The area of the vessel where the neck and shoulder join also forms a gentle curve. Kaya long‐necked jars have been found on top of vessel stands which consist of a base, body, and a dish‐like section to support the weight of the jar when put into place. The body and base sections of the stands feature



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Figure 4.9  Long‐necked jar with figurines. Silla, 5th century. From Kyerim‐ro Tomb No. 30 in Kyŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Stoneware. H. 34 cm. National Treasure No. 195. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

geometrically‐shaped perforations or attached decorations, resulting in aesthetically pleasing forms. Kaya pottery is also believed to have influenced Japanese sueki, a bluish‐gray, high‐fired pottery of the Kofun period. The forms and characteristics of Kaya pottery are thereby seen to provide insights into the nature of interactions that took place between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. Several horn‐shaped ceramic vessels have been discovered in the tombs of Silla and Kaya (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan1997: 162–166). The pointed ends of these drinking vessels were at times decorated with horse heads. In other cases, the vessels were made so that the horn appears to be attached to the back of a deer. These horn‐ shaped ceramic vessels have also been identified as having been found placed atop stands. These vessels are similar in form to ancient Greek rhytons and are also identical to the drinking horns that were widely used throughout Eurasia. As such, they ­provide evidence of the cultural exchange between Eurasia and Silla as well as Kaya. Pottery made in the form of various animals and objects, such as houses, wagons, boats, and chige (traditional A‐frame back carriers), have also been found in Silla and Kaya tombs. A ceramic vessel in the shape of an imaginary animal, with the body of a tortoise and the head and tail of a dragon, to which spangle‐shaped decorations were attached, was found at a tomb within the area of King Mich’u’s Tomb, in Kyŏngju (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2002: 149). A pair of vessels

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in the form of mounted horsemen, which appear to depict a master and servant, was discovered at Kŭmryŏngch’ong (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 1997: 137). The horses and horse trappings of these vessels were rendered in great detail. It is thought that the vessels were placed within the tomb as a manifestation of the belief that they would guide the spirit of the deceased to the afterlife.

Metal Vessels Metal vessels were made from a wide range of materials, including gold, silver, gilt‐ bronze, bronze, and iron. Gold and silver vessels were made by hammering; gilt‐ bronze, bronze, and iron vessels were cast. The types of metal vessels that have been identified also widely vary. They comprise types also observed in Silla pottery, such as mounted dishes and long‐necked jars, as well as steamers, cauldrons, spoons, and ladles. Foreign vessel types, including tripods of the Chinese ding type, tripod cauldrons with handle, basins (used to wash hands during ritual ceremonies), bronze bowls with lid, cups, and vessels of the fu type have also been found. While the rest were Chinese vessel types, the fu was an everyday vessel used by the tribes of the Northern Steppes, and similar examples have been discovered in Fuyu and Xianbei tombs of Manchuria. This indicates that the vessels of the Three Kingdoms were also influenced by the vessels of both the agrarian communities of China and the pastoral communities of the Northern Steppes. Koguryŏ vessels in metal were solely made of bronze and their types are also limited, consisting of a tripod cauldron with handle, basin, steamer, and cauldron (Jilinsheng bowuguan 1992, pls. 25–27). However, lidded metal bowls of Koguryŏ have also been identified, albeit in later Silla tombs, providing insights into the nature of exchange between Koguryŏ and Silla. The Auspicious Phoenix Tomb (Sŏbongch’ong) yielded a silver bowl covered with a lid and featuring a cross‐shaped knob (Pak Chinil and Sim Suyŏn 2015: 24–25), and a bronze bowl with a lid was discovered at the Houch’ong, named after the hou‐ (C. huwu‐) type bowl (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 1991, pls. 54–55). Both examples contained inscriptions recording that they had been manufactured in Koguryŏ. Magnificent vessels that illustrate the superior quality of Silla’s fine metalworking tradition have been discovered in its tombs. The silver cup from the north mound of Hwangnam taech’ong consists of three horizontal sections that respectively feature decoration expressed using the repousse technique. The mouth and base sections are decorated with a band of lotus flowers. In the main decorative section are two continuous bands of hexagons, each hexagon filled with the image of an imaginary animal. The bottom of the cup features an image of a lotus, with a phoenix placed in the center. The decorative motifs of this silver cup are characteristic of the art of West Asia. The tripod cauldron with handle from Kŭmgwanch’ong is a work of high quality, featuring three animal‐shaped legs, a dragon‐head spout, a lotus‐shaped lid, and honeysuckle arabesque patterns decorating the end of the handle (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2002: 139). Used to heat liquids, this vessel is believed to have been influenced by Chinese ritual bronzes rather than having served a practical function.



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The silver cup, which was discovered along with bronze dishes, bowls, plates, spoons and chopsticks in the tomb of King Muryŏng exemplifies the exquisite beauty of the Paekche craft tradition. The saucer that accompanies the cup is made of bronze, and the silver lid of the cup is topped with a golden knob (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 26). The saucer is shaped like a plate, and the cup and lid are decorated with finely incised images of flowers and grasses blowing in the wind. The lower part of the lid is decorated with a continuous pattern of incised mountain peaks and alternating with flowers. The upper part of the lid features an incised lotus flower, which surrounds the raised golden lotus support of the bud‐shaped knob.

Glass Vessels Glass beads were produced in the workshops of the Three Kingdoms and glass vessels, albeit manufactured outside the Korean peninsula, have also been identified in the tombs of the Three Kingdoms period. But glass vessels have yet to be been found in Koguryŏ and Paekche tombs, It is only in the tombs of Silla (mostly the grand “royal‐ scale” tombs) that glass vessels have been found. These imported vessels are varied, consisting of glass cups decorated with wave, woodgrain, dot, and tortoiseshell‐like patterns, glass cups of dark blue color, and glass jugs with phoenix‐shaped mouths (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 1991, pl. 58). The glass ewer with a phoenix‐ shaped mouth from the south mound of Hwangnam taech’ong bears a fractured handle that was repaired with tightly wound gold thread (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 2010: 107). This evidence of repair demonstrates that glass vessels were highly valued. A glass cup decorated with a tortoiseshell pattern was discovered at Kŭmryŏngch’ong and a similar example was found at a Kaya tomb in Okchŏn. These glass vessels are similar in form and production method to Roman glass vessels found in southern Russia, the Mediterranean, and the Near East, making it highly likely that they had travelled across the Eurasian continent before finding their way to Silla.

Imported Porcelain and Celadon Vessels Examples of Chinese porcelain and celadon vessels have been excavated from Paekche sites dating as far back as the Hansŏng period. They consist of celadon vessels and porcelain vessels covered with a blackish brown glaze and attributed to the Western Qin and Eastern Qin dynasties of China. The main vessel types include jars with four handles, bottles, ink stones, ram‐shaped vessels, ewers with rooster head‐shaped spout, and cups. The form and glaze color of the vessels demonstrate that the pieces are of exceptional quality. The ewer with rooster head‐shaped spout and blackish brown glaze from a tomb in Yongwŏn‐ri, Ch’ŏnan, features a realistically depicted beak and comb, which is characteristic of the celadon from the Eastern Qin kiln of Yuezhou (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan and Namgyŏng‐si pangmulgwan. 2011: 91). In addition, an Eastern Qin green celadon jar with dish‐shaped mouth was discovered in a Koguryŏ tomb, and the north mound of Silla’s Great Tomb at Hwangnam yielded a small blackish brown glazed bottle, both of which provide evidence of the exchange that took place at the time between China and the Korean Peninsula.

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Decorated Weapons and Horse Gear A key feature of the tombs of the Three Kingdoms is the use of objects associated with cavalry warfare as grave goods from the fourth century CE. The decorated swords with gold and silver ornaments and pieces of horse gear placed in the tombs would have symbolized the authority of the kings who had established the foundations of the ancient states. The decorated swords feature ornamented pommels, consisting of three connected rings or a ring containing a dragon or phoenix or trefoil leaf decoration within. Decorated swords with trefoil leaf‐shaped pommels have been found in the tombs of all the kingdoms of the Three Kingdoms period, but the other types of pommel‐end ornaments appear to have been selectively used in each of the kingdoms. The Paekche tomb of King Muryŏng yielded a highly ornate and elaborate sword, which hung from the left‐side of the king’s waist. It has a ring‐shaped pommel which features a dragon head in the open center (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pls. 5–7). The ring itself is decorated with a coiled dragon in relief. A decorative rectangular panel can be found at the top and the bottom of the sword grip. Each panel features a tortoiseshell‐like pattern of hexagons framing phoenixes with their wings spread and arabesque scrolls. The middle of the sword grip is alternately wound with gold and silver wire. Paekche swords typically feature such pommels with dragons or phoenixes or both, and similar examples have been found in the tombs of Kaya and Japanese Wa, thereby demonstrating the exchange of relations which existed among Paekche, Kaya, and the Wa. The tombs of Silla have yielded various decorated swords, including swords with three‐ringed pommels, which have only been discovered in Silla tombs. An example of this type of sword comes from the south mound of the Great Tomb at Hwangnam, which has gold sheet‐covered pieces located at the top and bottom of the sword grip (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 2010, pl. 196). The grip itself is covered with silver sheet in a fish‐scale pattern. Located at the end of the pommel are relatively thin silver rings. Six miniature swords were attached to the scabbard of this sword. Kyerim‐ro Tomb No. 14, in Kyŏngju, which is a small‐scale wood‐chambered tomb with stone mound, was found to contain a golden scabbard that measures 36 centimeters in length (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2010, pls. 1–2). The scabbard, which would have held a small dagger, is decorated with a golden plate featuring wave, leaf, circle, and yin‐yang motifs and additionally embellished with red garnets and blue glass. The spaces separating the inset garnets from the glass pieces are filled with gold granulation. This type of scabbard, which is different in form from those of the decorated swords found in the tombs of the Three Kingdoms, is similar to examples found in the regions between the Black Sea and Central Asia. The scabbard is therefore indicative of the various exchange routes that were utilized by the Silla kingdom. Fine metalwork horse gear began to be buried in the tombs of the Three Kingdoms from the fourth century. This horse gear consists of horse bits, used to control the horse, the saddle and stirrups, which ensured stability in riding, and ornaments used to decorate the horse. These pieces were embellished with gold, silver, and gilt‐bronze



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decorations. The saddle from the south mound of the Great Tomb at Hwangnam is an elaborate piece of work, consisting of a wooden base covered with birch bark to which jewel beetle wings were added (Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan 2010, pl. 208). Covering this is a gold sheet with openwork dragon patterns. A saddle flap made of birch bark was discovered at Ch’ŏnmach’ong. Used to protect the rider’s legs from mud, the saddle flap is decorated with a painting of a white heavenly horse with its mane and tail flying dynamically in the wind (Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan 2014: 112–125). This image of the heavenly horse represents the only example of Silla painting to date.

Ritual Objects A wide range of objects with ritual associations have been found in the tombs of the Three Kingdoms. Of these, there are several examples that demonstrate the high quality of the fine metalworking and lacquerware traditions of the Three Kingdoms. Firstly, there is the coffin or other types of facilities used to lay the dead to rest. An example of this is the gilt‐bronze decorative panel with openwork design from Chinp’a‐ri Tomb No. 7 in P’yŏngyang. It features the image of a three‐legged crow in flight, symbolizing the sun, within a centrally placed circle (Chosŏn yujŏk yumul togam p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe 1990: 170–171). The circle is surrounded by an openwork pattern of flames intertwined with the images of dragons and phoenixes, which acts to imbue this piece with an auspicious ambience. This artifact is seen to express well the dynamic vigor of the Koguryŏ spirit. The presence of small nail holes alongside the perimeter of this gilt‐bronze artifact indicates that it was originally used to decorate the side‐end of the deceased’s headrest. The headrests and footrests from the tomb of King Muryŏng, which were made of wood, lacquered and decorated with gold, exemplify the high quality of the Paekche lacquerware tradition. The headrests feature a tortoiseshell pattern of hexagons delineated in gold, each of which contains decoration. The hexagons of the king’s headrest are decorated with flowers cutouts made from sheet gold (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 9), whereas the queen’s headrest is decorated with delineations of flying deva, bird, fish and dragon, and lotus flower (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 24). Both sides of the queen’s headrest are additionally adorned with a pair of gilt finials in the shape of confronting phoenix heads. The footrests, which are wooden blocks with deep W‐shaped cuts into their centers, are likewise lacquered and decorated with a tortoiseshell pattern of hexagons made of gold. The king’s footrest is lacquered in black and has lotus‐flower cutouts affixed to the middle of each hexagon, as well as where the corners of the hexagons meet (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pls. 9–10). The lotus flowers are additionally adorned with gold spangles. The queen’s footrest is lacquered in red (Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan 2011, pl. 25). Her footrest is edged in gold, enclosing a pictorial space decorated with images of lotus flowers and floating clouds painted in black ink. Flanking each side of the deep W‐shaped cut is a pair of iron poles adorned with affixed gold spangles, simulating the appearance of trees.

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Ritual objects such as the barb pod (yujaigi) of Kaya and the so‐called “Seven‐ Branched Sword” (Ch’iljido) of Paekche have also been identified. The barb pod is a long, rectangular steel plate made of iron with bird‐shaped or barbed decoration on both sides (Kungnip Kimhae pangmulgwan 2004: 108–113). Found in comparatively large, early Kaya tombs at burial grounds in the regions of Kimhae, Pusan, Haman, and Hapch’ŏn, they are believed to have been ritual items possessed by a ruler. Curled barbs and bird motifs were key decorative elements used in the ritual items of the Bronze Age, and in the Proto‐Three Kingdoms period. It was believed that the bird acted to guide the soul of the deceased into the afterlife. As such, the barb pod may have been used as a symbol of the ruler’s authority at funerary ceremonies. The Paekche Ch’iljido is a sword shaped like a tree with seven branches (prongs) in total, three on each side of the central trunk (blade), which forms the seventh branch (prong) (Hansŏng Paekche pangmulgwan 2012: 224–225). The Ch’iljido was a holy sword sent by Paekche to the Wa of Japan. At present, it is preserved at the Isonokami Shrine in Nara, Japan. On the front and rear of the central blade are 61 characters inlaid in gold. The inscription on the front documents that the Paekche kingdom bestows the Ch’iljido to the succeeding king so that the king may repel a hundred enemy soldiers. The inscription on the rear records that just as the kings of Paekche have performed virtuous acts from generation to generation, the king of Japan should also preserve the Ch’iljido for generations. The Ch’ijido, with its mysterious inscription, is a metal artifact that illustrates the high‐level of the Paekche iron manufacturing technique. Lastly, there are various Buddhist craft items that deserve mention. Paekche gilt‐ bronze incense burners and reliquaries have been identified, albeit at temple sites in Puyŏ (where the last Paekche capital was once located) rather than in tombs. Incense burners were used for purification during ritual ceremonies. The lidded gilt‐bronze incense burner from a temple site at Nŭngsan‐ri, Puyŏ, is quite large in size, measuring 64 centimeters in height. Overall, it is shaped like a lotus bud (Figure 4.10). The lid features seventy‐four mountain peaks which overlap like the petals of a flower. The cast images of Daoist hermits and animals, such as tigers, monkeys, elephants, and deer appear in the spaces between mountain peaks. The lid also has holes through which the incense smoke could escape. Atop the highest peak is a free‐standing phoenix with its wings spread, and located directly below it are five musicians playing transverse flute, vertically blown xiao flute, pipa lute, zither with six strings (kŏmun’go), and drum. The bowl of the burner, which contained the incense, forms the calyx of the flower and is decorated on the outside with the cast images of Daoist hermits, flying fish, deer, and other animals. The stand of the incense burner is in the form of a dynamic free‐standing dragon whose head faces upwards to bite the bottom of the burner. The imagery observed in the incense burner was used in Han China to symbolically express the world of Daoist immortals. However, it has been suggested that the form of the incense burner and the composition of the images are far superior to that of Chinese examples, making this artifact a key example of the high artistry of Paekche craftsmanship as well as the Paekche aesthetic in the seventh century. Another notable example is a reliquary discovered at the Wanghŭngsa temple site in Puyŏ. Wanghŭngsa was established by King Widŏk in 577 and its reliquary represents the oldest example of Buddhist reliquaries from the Three Kingdoms. The reliquary consist of a gold bottle placed inside a silver jar, and the cylindrical bronze



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Figure 4.10  Incense burner. Paekche, 6th century. From a temple site of Nŭngsan‐ri in Puyŏ, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Gilt‐bronze. H. 61.8 cm. National Treasure No. 287. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

container that held both (Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan 2008). The cylindrical bronze container has a cover that features a lotus bud‐shaped knob, and a twenty‐nine character inscription of six lines engraved around its exterior. The inscription records that King Ch’ang had a temple built in commemoration of his dead young prince in 577. The reason for the temple’s founding is supplemented by information on the date of the reliquary’s manufacture. The silver jar has a slender neck, and it was manufactured separately from the body so that gold bottle could be placed inside it. Decorating the lid area below the lotus bud‐shaped knob are lotus flowers in full blossom. The reliquary contained offerings of gold and glass beads. The reliquary set and offerings demonstrate the excellent technique and formal beauty of Paekche craft traditions.

References Chosŏn yujŏk yumul togam p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe.1990. Chosŏn yujŏk yumul togam: Koguryŏ 2 [Illustrations of sites and artifacts in Korea: Koguryŏ 2], vol. 4. P’yŏngyang: Waegukmun chonghap culp’ansa insoe kongjang.

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Han’guk kogohakhoe. 2010. Han’guk kogohak kangŭi [Lectures on Korean archaeology]. 2nd edition. Seoul: Sahoe p’yŏngnon. Hansŏng Paekche pangmulgwan. 2012. Sŏul Paekche pangmulgwan [Seoul Paekche Museum]. Seoul: Hansŏng Paekche pangmulgwan. Hansŏng Paekche pangmulgwan. 2013. Paekche Mahan kwa hana toeda [Paekche unification with Mahan]. Seoul: Hansŏng Paekche pangmulgwan. Hong Sŏnp’yo et al. 2009. Han’guk misulsa [Korean art history]. Seoul: Mijinsa. Jilinsheng bowuguan. 1992. Jilinsheng bowuguan [Jilin Provincial Museum]. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. Jilinsheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo. 2004. Ji’an gaojuli wangling [Koguryŏ royal tombs in Ji’an]. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. Jilinsheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo. 2010. Ji’an chutu gaojuli wenwu jicui [Collection of artifacts from Koguryŏ in Ji’an]. Beijing: Kexue chubanshe. Joo, Kyeongmi. 2013. “The Golden Jewelry of Ancient Silla: Syncretism of Northern and Southern Asian Cultures.” In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: from Silla to Koryŏ, edited by Youn‐mi Kim, 243–302. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan. 1997. Han’guk Kodae ŭi t’ogi [Ancient Korean pottery]. Seoul: Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan. Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan. 2010. Hwanggŭm ŭi nara Silla Hwangnam taech’ong [Great tomb at Hwangnam; A royal Silla tomb in a land of gold]. Seoul: Kunngnip Chungang pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kimhae pangmulgwan. 2004. Yŏnghon ŭi chŏndalcha sae p’ungyo sungbae. [Messengers of the soul; Birds and fertility worship]. Kimhae: Kungnip Kimhae pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan. 2011. Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan [Kongju National Museum]. Kongju: Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan. 2014. Muryŏngwang sidae ŭi tong asia segye [East Asia in the period of King Muryŏng]. Kongju: Kungnip Kongju Pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan and Namgyŏng‐si pangmulgwan. 2011. Chungguk yukcho ŭi toja [Ceramics of the Six Dynasties of China]. Kongju: Kungnip Kongju pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. 1991. Kyŏngju iyagi [Story of Kyŏngju]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. 2001. Silla hwanggŭm: sinbihan hwanggŭm ŭi nara [Golden Silla: Mysterious land of gold]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. 2002. Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan kogogwan. [Kyŏngju National Museum’s hall of archeology]. Seoul: T’ongch’ŏn munhwasa Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. 2010. Kyŏngju kyerimno 14 homyo [Kyerim‐ro Tomb No.14 in Kyŏngju]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. 2011. Kyŏngju Pomundong hapchangbun [Double burial tomb of Pomun‐dong, Kyŏngju]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan. 2014. Ch’ŏnma tasi nalda [Heavenly horse flies again]. Kyŏngju: Kungnip Kyŏngju pangmulgwan.



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Kungnip kyŏngsangdaehakkyo pangmulgwan. 1992. Hapch’ŏn okchŏn kobun’gun III, No.  M1, M2 [Hapch’ŏn okchŏn Tomb III, No. M1, M2.] Chinju: Kungnip kyŏngsangdaehakkyo pangmulgwan. Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan. 1997. Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan [Puyŏ National Museum]. Puyŏ: Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan. Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan. 2008. Paekche Wanghŭngsa [Wanhŭngsa of Paekche]. Puyŏ: Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan. Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan. 2013. Hanŭl e ollinŭn yŏmwŏn: Paekche kŭmdong taehyangno [Devotional prayer to heaven: Gilt‐bronze incense burner of Paekche]: Puyŏ: Kungnip Puyŏ pangmulgwan. Pak Chinil and Sim Suyŏn. 2015. Kwahakŭro p’urŏ ponŭn Sŏbongch’ong [New scientific exploration of the golden crown from Sŏbongch’ong]. Seoul: Kungnip Chungang pangmulgwan. Lee, Soyoung and Denise P. Leidy, eds. 2013. Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Taesŏngdong kobun pangmulgwan. 2013. 10 chunyŏn kinyŏm t’ŭkpyŏlchŏn Taesŏngdong Kobun Pangmulgwan [Special 10th anniversary exhibition of the Tasŏng‐dong tombs]. Kimhae: Taesŏngdong kobun pangmulgwan. Yu Hongjun. 2000. Han’guk misulsa kangŭi [Lectures on Korean art history], vol. 1. Seoul: Nulwa.

Glossary Ara Kaya [Ara Gaya] 阿羅伽倻 Ch’ang [Chang] 昌(王) Changgunch’ong [Janggunchong] 將軍塚 Changsu [Jangsu] 長壽(王) chige 지게 Ch’iljido [Chiljido] 七支刀 Chinp’a‐ri [Jinpa‐ri] 眞坡里 Chisan‐dong [Jisan‐dong] 池山洞 Ch’ŏngam‐ri [Cheongam‐ri] 靑岩里 Ch’ŏnmach’ong [Cheonmachong] 天馬塚 fu (C.) 鍑 Han 漢(江) hou 壺杅 Houch’ong [Houchong] 壺杅塚 Hwangnam taech’ong [Hwangnam daechong] 皇南大塚 Ipchŏm‐ri [Ipjeom‐ri] 笠店里 Isonokami jingū (J.) 石上 神宮 Karak‐dong [Garak‐dong] 可樂洞 Kŭmgwan Kaya [Geumgwan Gaya] 金官伽倻 Kŭmgwanch’ong [Geumgwanchong] 金冠塚

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Kŭmnyŏngch’ong [Geumnyeongchong] 金鈴塚 Kunsu‐ri [Gunsu‐ri] 軍守里 Kwanggaet’o [Gwanggaeto] 廣開土(大王) Kyerim‐ro [Gyerim‐ro] 鷄林路 Mich’u [Michu] 味鄒(王) Mongch’on [Mongchon] 夢村 Muryŏng [Muryeong] 武寧(王) Nihonmatsuyama kofun (J.) 二本松山古墳 Nosŏ‐dong [Noseo‐dong] 路西洞 Nŭngsan‐ri [Neungsan‐ri] 陵山里 Okchŏn [Okjeon] 玉田 Parhae [Balhae] (C. Bohai) 渤海 Pogam‐ri [Bogam‐ri] 伏岩里 Pomun‐dong [Bomun‐dong] 普門洞 Sabi 泗沘 Saro‐guk 斯盧國 Singnich’ong [Singnichong] 飾履塚 Sŏbongch’ong [Seobongchong] 瑞鳳塚 Songsan‐ri 宋山里 Taesŏng‐dong [Daeseong‐dong] 大成洞 T’aewangnŭng [Taewangneung] 太王陵 Tari [Dari] 多利 T’onggu (C. Tongguo) 通溝 tou (C.) 豆 Ungjin 熊津 Wanghŭngsa [Wangheungsa] 王興寺 Widŏk [Wideok] 威德(王) Yongwŏn‐ri [Yongwon‐ri] 龍原里 yujaigi 有刺利器

Part II

The Koryŏ Dynasty

5

Introduction and Development of Koryŏ Celadon Namwon Jang

The Beginnings of Celadon Celadon wares are not only representative of the ceramic culture of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1391) but, since they are most frequently seen in Western collections, are the most well‐known objects of Korean art history. The word ’celadon’ derives from a greenish color of the robe worn by Céladon, a hero of a French Baroque theater play by Honoré d’Urfé, L’Astrée (1627). This poetic term is now commonly used for referring to Chinese and Korean stoneware with glazes of grey‐green to bluish‐green hues. However, celadon is often also used for ceramics with a glaze that turned brownish in color as a result of firing under oxidization. Celadon, produced for 500 years, started out on the basis of an imported technique. However, it was soon established as an embodiment of the aesthetic sensibilities of Koryŏ. The techniques required for celadon production, exclusive to China until at least the ninth century, were introduced to the Korean peninsula at some point around the tenth century when the Koryŏ dynasty was founded. Full‐scale production of celadon in Korea, where imported Chinese celadon had already circulated before the establishment of Koryŏ, denotes a change and an expansion of East Asia’s culture of using celadon beyond making simple technical improvements. Celadon wares were used not only for daily and ceremonial purposes, but also as funerary wares, such as burial urns. As a case in point, a set of celadon urns was excavated in the vicinity of the Samnŭng area in Paedong, Kyŏngju. The outer jar is stoneware, presumed to have been made in the first half of the ninth century on the Korean peninsula, while the inner urn consists of pieces from two different Chinese regions. Probably a product of the Changsha kilns located in Hunan Province, the inner

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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celadon jar is combined with an inverted Yue ware tea bowl from Zhejiang Province that is used as a lid. Another celadon urn, discovered in Sŏkchang‐dong in Kyŏngju, also features a tea‐bowl lid of Yue celadon which was interestingly cut to the size of the mouth of the urn. Celadon and white wares popular in China have been excavated from the Kyŏngju region, home to the royal palaces and villas of the Silla kingdom (57 BCE–668), and also at the site of Mirŭksa, a large monastery of the Paekche kingdom (18 BCE–660). These examples attest to the fact that such highly sophisticated ceramics were enjoyed on the peninsula long before the Koryŏ dynasty. Production of ch’ŏngja (‘blue‐green’ wares), as celadon is called in Korean, began in the tenth century when Korea was undergoing a political, social, and cultural transition. During this period of upheaval, the Unified Silla Kingdom (668–935) collapsed, the Later Three Kingdoms (892–936) were established, and the Koryŏ dynasty took over the peninsula. These rapid changes had weakened royal authority and led to the disintegration of aristocratic society, thus resulting in the emergence of a local elite class known as “powerful lineages” (hojok), which independently accumulated political, military, and economic power. The powerful lineages, led by local village chiefs, military generals, and maritime strongmen, amassed wealth through trade with China in the western coastal area. Wang Kŏn (877–943), the founder of the Koryŏ dynasty, was a powerful lineage descendant who grew rich by trading in the regions of present‐ day Kaesŏng, which he chose for his capital, Kaegyŏng. He augmented his power, centered on the midwestern coast of the peninsula, in Kyŏnggi, Kangwŏn, and Hwanghae provinces. Powerful lineages not only accumulated wealth through political and commercial exchanges with China, but also embraced its advanced culture and technology. Moreover, they learned about and actively imported celadon and white ware, ceramics that were entirely different from the earthenware they had been using thus far. Their interest eventually led to domestic celadon production in Koryŏ (Yi Chŏngmin 2003: 51–75). Meanwhile, in China, the Tang dynasty (618–907) was replaced by the Five Dynasties (907–960), which were later succeeded by the Song dynasty (960–1279), while at the same time in the northern part of the continent, the Khitan empire (aka the Liao dynasty, 907–1125) sought to expand its sphere of influence. All of these dynasties maintained political, economic, and cultural relations with the states of the Korean peninsula. In the eighth century, at the end of the Unified Silla period, monks who had gone to study in Tang China brought back with them Chan (K: Sŏn) Buddhism. Along with Chan Buddhism, tea culture, which played a significant role in meditation practice, was introduced to Korea and became popular. The growing popularity of tea‐drinking culture led to an increasing demand for tea utensils made of celadon and white ware. Chinese Yue ware and Xing ware (from present‐day Zhejiang and Hebei provinces) were highly esteemed during the Unified Silla period. They have been discovered at historic sites related to the royal court and large Buddhist temples in present‐day Kyŏngju, the capital of Unified Silla, as well as in the remains of the hubs of maritime forces, giving evidence that monks and the upper class used these items. From the early Koryŏ dynasty onward, celadon and white ware began to be manufactured on the peninsula, and interestingly most of the ceramics produced in the tenth century were tea utensils. While the introduction of



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China’s advanced technology enabled Koryŏ to produce celadon, its success and high quality was also based on the Korean potters’ already well‐established understanding of the characteristics of the clay material and the firing process and their highly developed artistic skills. In other words, the production of Koryŏ celadon was triggered by a growing demand for domestically made ceramic utensils, using traditional Korean ceramic production techniques and the newly introduced technology (Jang 2007: 129–131).

Celadon Technology and the Development of Shapes in Early Koryŏ Comprehending the structure of a kiln that fires celadon is of the greatest importance for understanding the origin and development of the production technology of early Koryŏ celadon. The production method and facilities of a celadon kiln tell us how Koryŏ succeeded in producing celadon and where the technology being used originated. Early celadon kilns of the Koryŏ dynasty are divided into two types according to the materials with which they were constructed: the brick kiln (chŏnch’ugyo) and the mud kiln (t’och’ugyo). Brick kilns were first used in the areas near the Koryŏ capital of Kaegyŏng, and most of the earliest celadon and white ware were fired in those brick kilns. Both celadon and white ware were produced in the same large‐scale kilns, using diverse kiln tools. On the other hand, mud kilns, that is kilns built from lumps of clay, which had already been used for firing earthenware before the Koryŏ period, were smaller and had simpler kiln tools. Furthermore, mud kilns started to produce celadons later than brick kilns. Why did these two types of kilns show such differences? It, in fact, resulted from the marked dissimilarities in their technical origins. Whereas brick kilns were based on China’s celadon technology, and more specifically the technology of the Yue ware of Zhejiang Province, mud kilns seem to have been built relying on Korea’s traditional ceramic expertise to which new Chinese kiln technology was adopted. The brick kilns of the early stages which have been investigated during excavations appear to have been built in standard sizes. Early brick kilns measure about 40 meters in length and their chambers were 200 centimeters wide. Moreover, kilns built in different areas showed similarities in their size and operation. Such standardization suggests that a systemized organization provided technical support in managing the ceramic industry during the early Koryŏ period. These two ceramic technologies were introduced at different times. In the early Koryŏ period, celadon and white ware was fired successfully for the first time in the brick kilns in the vicinity of the capital. In these brick kilns a variety of products were created, including bowls, cups, dishes, bottles, jars, lidded boxes, lids, cup stands, hourglass‐shaped long drums (changgo), large bowls, spittoons, ink stones, incense burners, ritual vessels, and ewers. Among these, tea utensils were the dominant products, amounting to forty percent of the total production. The excavation of a representative brick kiln in Wŏnsalli, Paech’ŏn, Hwanghae Province revealed that royal court utensils used in ancestral rites had been produced there (Yi Chŏngmin 2003: 51–75).

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Apart from the overall form of a vessel, the shape of the foot is important for judging its origin and style. Among the earliest Koryŏ celadons are bowls with a foot shaped like a ring in the manner of the Five Dynasties and bowls with a foot shaped like a disk, known in Korean as ‘halo‐shaped foot’ (haemurigup) and in Chinese as ‘jade bi‐disc foot’ (yubidi), in the style of the late Tang period (Figure 5.1). In chronological sequence, celadon bowls in the ninth‐ and tenth‐ century Chinese style appeared first, followed by those in an eighth‐ and ninth‐ century Chinese style. This phenomenon, reciprocal to the evolution that originally occurred in China, gives an idea of the sequence of the introduction of the technology. While at the time of Koryŏ’s founding the contemporaneous Chinese celadon style was emulated, later we see a revival of bowls in the earlier Tang style (Jang 2009: 7–38; Jang 2013: 193–242). Mud kilns, on the other hand, had initially produced earthenware and began firing celadon from around the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth century onward. Although small and simple, mud kilns were better suited than brick kilns to Koryŏ, which had a lesser demand for celadon than China.

Figure 5.1  Bowl with halo‐shaped foot. 11th century. Celadon. H. 6.5 cm, D.16.4 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Haegang Ceramics Museum, Ich’ŏn. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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The production of ritual celadon ware for the royal court in the region around Kaesŏng implies a close relationship between the royal court and the manufacture and supply of celadon. The aforementioned Wŏnsalli kiln site in Hwanghae Province provides a good example. The Institute of Archeology of the North Korean Academy of Social Science conducted excavations at the site and discovered three kilns that manufactured celadon and one kiln that fired earthenware, along with miscellaneous relics. The kilns uncovered were typical brick kilns that resemble Yue models in terms of their furnishings, including saggars (earthenware containers protecting fine vessels from flying ash), saggar supports, and ring‐shaped tools. Furthermore, the ceramics unearthed at the Wŏnsalli kiln site were quite similar to Yue wares in terms of their clay, form, type, and decoration. Some relics from this site bear inscriptions with production dates. For example, a type of a flat covered bowl on a long stem, called tu in Korean, was used to contain various seasoned vegetables, boiled food, and meat during rituals. On the bottom of one such bowl is an inscription indicating that it was made in 992 (the eleventh year of the reign of King Sŏngjong, r. 981–997) as a ritual vessel to be placed in the fourth hall of the T’aemyo, the Grand Ancestral Shrine (Yi Chŏngmin 2003: 51–75). A celadon jar with a most relevant inscription can be found in the collection of the Ewha Womans University Museum. The bottom of this large jar covered by a light brown celadon glaze bears the inscription “Made by the potter Ch’oe Kirhoe as a ritual vessel for the first hall of T’aemyo in the kyesa year, the fourth year of the Sunhwa era (993).” This confirms that the jar was created in 993 to be used in the hall where an ancestral tablet of Koryŏ’s founder Wang Kŏn, posthumously known as King T’aejo, was placed. Such inscriptions clearly indicate that the brick kilns near Kaesŏng produced ritual vessels for the court (Figure 5.2). Due to local tradition Koryŏ people were accustomed to using mud kilns and thus were able to easily control the kiln fire. Accordingly, after the eleventh century most Koryŏ celadon was fired in small kilns built with lumps of clay. As the demand for celadon increased, a number of small mud kilns were built to boost efficiency. Kilns located around Kangjin and Puan in Chŏlla Province produced high‐quality celadon in great quantity from the eleventh century until the end of the Koryŏ dynasty. In sum, early Koryŏ celadon first implemented new celadon technology from China, but gradually adopted local traditional techniques due to an increased demand, resulting in the rapid development of Korean ceramics. After the eleventh century, due to the weakening of the Song dynasty, the northern trade routes connecting with the Khitan empire became increasingly important and kilns near Kaesŏng began to produce, alongside celadon, white ware which was a special product of the northern regions of China. Several kilns in the northern areas of the continent also continued the Song tradition of producing white ware until the end of the [Jurchen] Jin dynasty (1115–1234). When the [Khitan] Liao dynasty (907–1125) controlled the northern regions, the use of white ware increased and led kilns within this territory to focus on this type of ceramics. It thus seems highly probable that diverse types of white ware were created in the northern regions during the Liao dynasty due to the technological dissemination of ceramics known as Ding and Xing wares, which maintained a strong tradition of making bowls with a halo‐shaped foot.

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Figure 5.2  Jar. 993. Celadon. H. 35.2 cm. National Treasure No. 326. Photo: courtesy of the Ewha Womans University Museum, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

In this process, Koryŏ kilns revived wares with a foot once prevalent in the Tang dynasty, as did the kilns in the territory of the Liao dynasty.

Introduction of Tea Culture and the Development of Celadon Tea production in the Song dynasty reportedly saw a roughly six‐fold increase over the previous period. Once it became a cultivated popular crop, tea experienced both an increase in production and the development of all sorts of related industries. The Northern Song dynasty allowed anyone regardless of status to enjoy teahouses in its capital Kaifeng. These teahouses functioned not only as a space in which to drink tea, but also as social and entertainment centers. The tradition of drinking tea influenced the production of various tea utensils and accessories, including ceramic tea bottles, ewers, and bowls. In other words, tea‐drinking customs promoted the development of the ceramic industry. With the spread of the tea‐drinking culture, its consumption expanded rapidly, which in turn resulted in large‐scale production and consumption of powdered tea through a governmental monopoly over this special product during the Yuanfeng era (1078–1085) of the



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Northern Song dynasty. In addition to this monopoly system, “official tea” (C: guancha) controlled by the government and “tribute tea” (C: gongcha) sent to the emperor appear to have had a considerable impact on the development and trade of tea utensils that were considered indispensable for consumption (Jang 2007: 129–131). One of the principle factors leading to the development of celadon during the Koryŏ dynasty thus was the introduction of tea and the spread of tea culture. According to the History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa), written in the fifteenth century, tea together with medicine and incense served as imperial gifts and ritual goods, and a special tea bureau (Tabang, “Tea Chamber”) was in charge of court tea ceremonies, royal tours by the king, and ceremonies he attended at temples. The Tea Chamber would, for instance, prepare a brazier and tea for ceremonies during the king’s and officials’ outings. Sŏnggyun’gwan, the foremost educational institution of Koryŏ, also performed tea ceremonies, and even in the process of trying felons, tea was served to the king and government officials before the king gave his final verdict. Tea was also served to envoys of the Liao and Jin dynasties during their visits to the Koryŏ kings. The king would greet them as they presented him with a list of tributary gifts, and once the tributary gifts were delivered, he would treat them to tea, wine, and food. According to protocol, the king and the envoy would serve each other the first cup of tea, bow twice to each other, sit, and drink another cup of tea. Afterwards, both parties stood up, bowed, and returned to their seats. Banquets held by the crown prince for his vassals would also follow this procedure. The Tea Chamber also arranged and performed a tea ceremony during the ritual to celebrate the New Year, which proceeded in the order of musical performance and serving tea and then wine. A tea ceremony was further included in the celebrations for the birth of the king’s first son and in banquets for officials at Taegwan Hall in the royal palace. Moreover, the court would perform tea ceremonies as part of the investiture ceremony for princes and princesses, and Buddhist rituals hosted by the royal household, such as the Festival of the Eight Vows (P’algwanhoe) and the Lotus Lantern Festival (Yŏndŭnghoe). Thus, all major court events included the consumption of tea and wine, harmoniously arranged with music and dance. From the early Koryŏ period onward, tea was granted as a royal gift to soldiers, commoners, diplomatic envoys, and Buddhist monks. The forty‐volume Illustrated Record of the Xuanhe Embassy to Koryŏ (C: Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing) written by the Song envoy Xu Jing (1091–1153) in 1123, documents the terminology of tea utensils used in the royal court and their context. For instance, the book records a banquet held by the Koryŏ king for emissaries who had returned from China. At this banquet, the king brewed some Chinese tea that the emissaries had brought back from China, and used bowls (wan), cups (ku), and wine cups (t’angjan). According to Xu Jing, some of these tea utensils included jade‐green Koryŏ celadon (Gompertz 1960: 62). Numerous celadon items, which appear to have been used for drinking tea, were unearthed at the royal palace site in Kaesŏng, the site of an official lodging house called Hyeŭmwŏn in P’aju, and the ruins of the castle on Kanghwa Island that was temporarily used by the king during the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century. Besides the Koryŏ royal court, Buddhist temples also consumed large amounts of tea. The regulations for practitioners in Sŏn Buddhist temples indicate everyday tea

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consumption and tea drinking during Buddhist rituals, suggesting that devotees were obliged to drink tea. Consequently, large quantities of celadon have been discovered at temple sites. In addition, teahouses (tajŏm) were established in Kaesŏng and tea‐producing and supplying districts (taso) arose in South Chŏlla Province. In excavations of early Koryŏ celadon kiln sites, a large portion of the unearthed celadon wares consisted of tea utensils, primarily tea bowls. Recently, a sampling survey on waste sediment layers was completed at the celadon and white ware kilns in Kyŏnggi Province around the former Koryŏ capital. According to the results of this survey, tea bowls accounted for more than fifty percent of the total production of celadon and white ware. However, from the mid‐Koryŏ period, the proportion of the type of tea bowls that had been used in the early period significantly declined. Instead, larger bowls with increased capacity replaced the earlier type, possibly because of a change in tea products and drinking conventions, as well as a diversification of food culture. Tea also worked as an important medium of cultural exchange and socialization among the Koryŏ elite. They seem to have drunk tea using various kinds of tea utensils when performing scholarly and educational tasks, during leisure time, and when holding literati gatherings. The famous Koryŏ scholar‐official Yi Kyubo (1168–1241) is known to have owned The Classic of Tea (C: Chajing), the earliest known monograph on tea, published in Tang China. He also frequently brewed tea and drank it from a celadon cup. Koryŏ literati enjoyed and appreciated not only the taste of tea but also the designs and color of celadon paired with the tea’s color, taste, and fragrance. Tea utensils made of celadon included bowls, cups, cup stands, ewers, spittoons, cylindrical cups, and hourglass‐shaped drums. Although ewers and cups were also used for wine, Chinese examples inform us that bowls, such as medium‐sized bowls (wan) or large bowls (taejŏp), functioned as tea utensils. In addition, ewers for pouring water and crushing rollers (tayŏn) for grinding tea leaves appear to have been related to tea drinking and tea production. The Tang dynasty painting A Palace Concert and murals of the Liao dynasty in Xuanhua, Hebei Province, depict ceramic tea utensils similar to those of Koryŏ, and thus provide clues to the Koryŏ people’s tea culture.

Celadon Buried in Tombs Most of the extant celadon ceramics were found in Koryŏ dynasty tombs. Stone‐ chambered tombs (sŏksilmyo), stone‐lined tombs (sŏkkwakmyo), and stone cist tombs (sŏkkwanmyo) were used to inter the bodies of members of the royal family, aristocracy, and local gentry or the cremated remains of Buddhist priests, whereas wealthy commoners, including rich farmers, were generally buried in grave pits (t’ogwangmyo). Objects found inside these tombs include celadon ware fired in Koryŏ kilns, but also white ware (porcelain) or black‐glazed ware imported from China. As tomb furnishings increased after the eleventh and twelfth centuries, more diverse items were buried. In Koryŏ, tomb types and the quality and quantity of tomb



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furnishings were decided by social status and economic power, although they all typically contained metal ware, ceramics, textiles, ironware, and metal coins. Particularly, celadon and white ware vessels, such as bowls, bottles, jars, and dishes, show associations with everyday eating and tea drinking habits. According to studies of Koryŏ tombs on the peninsula, the major burial accessories were celadon, white ware, earthenware, and metal ware—specifically ceramic bowls, dishes, and bottles, and metal chopsticks and bottles. Research on the detailed attributes of tombs in Kyŏnggi, Ch’ungchŏng, Chŏlla, Kyŏngsang, and Kangwŏn provinces has revealed that the ceramic wares among the burial goods generally included all the types fired at various kilns. For instance, finds from the excavations of the royal tomb of King Injong (r. 1122–1146) of Koryŏ, included among stone and copper boxes, a celadon stackable side‐dish box set, celadon boxes decorated with chrysanthemum petals, celadon covered bowls, and a melon‐shaped celadon bottle (Figure 5.3). These types of ceramics have also been discovered in other royal tombs, including those of King Hŭijong (r.  1204–1211) and King Myŏngjong (r. 1170–1197), as well as in the tombs of people without royal background. Such vessels for drinking, eating, and storage were

Figure 5.3  Bottle from the tomb of King Injong. Before 1146. Celadon. H. 22.6 cm. National Treasure No. 94. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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also buried in Chinese tombs. In addition, Koryŏ sets typically consisting of bowls, dishes, and bottles, have been found not only in Chinese tombs but also in tombs of the succeeding Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). It is difficult to ascertain whether or not buried ceramic wares were actually used during the funeral ceremony. Nevertheless, these ceramics of various kinds seem to have represented the tea ceremony by implication. From the tombs of the late thirteenth century onward, however, more bronzewares were unearthed alongside celadon. As documented in several records, bronzeware gained popularity throughout Koryŏ particularly during the period of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Some scholars have argued that this preference for bronzeware during Koryŏ stemmed from the Yuan dynasty’s adoption of a silver standard for currency instead of bronze coins, allowing other items to be made of bronze. Indeed, the Mongols who dominated China as its new ruling class followed their nomadic tradition of preferring metal ware to ceramics, thus likely impacting Koryŏ.

Manufacturing Techniques of Koryŏ Pisaek‐Colored Celadon In the twelfth century, Koryŏ began to make celadon with a jade‐green hue. Koryŏ people referred to this color as pisaek (jade‐green color), and its reputation reached China. In order to produce the stable color of jade‐green glaze, Koryŏ adopted a two‐stage firing — biscuit and glaze firing. Furthermore, a range of kiln tools, such as saggers (cylindrical ceramic containers), was used to protect the precious ceramics from any damage inside the kiln. The aforementioned Illustrated Record of the Chinese Embassy to the Koryŏ Court during the Xuanhe Era recorded “Koryŏ pisaek” in detail. Xu Jing wrote this originally illustrated account after visiting Koryŏ as a member of an embassy that Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126) of the Northern Song dispatched in 1123 (Xuanhe 5) to pay respects to King Yejong (r. 1105–1122), who had passed away in 1122, and to deliver an edict to the newly enthroned King Injong. Unfortunately, the illustrations to the book were lost right after its completion during a war against the Jin dynasty. Koryŏ vessels are comprehensively documented in chapters one, two, and three of “Vessels” in volumes 30, 31, and 32 (Vermeersch 2016). The “Vessels” chapters have a section on ceramic wine jars (or large wine bottles) known as tojun and describe “pisaek” as follows: “People of Koryŏ have green ceramics which they call pisaek (jade‐green color). Those recently made show excellent craftsmanship and much improved color.”

This indicates that the Koryŏ term for celadon was “pisaek.” In the early twelfth century, the manufacturing technique of celadon seems to have become more precise with an improvement in glaze coloring. Xu Jing also states that a jade‐green incense burner decorated with a lion was particularly outstanding and similar to new products of Ru ware of the Northern Song dynasty. It might have resembled the



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Celadon Incense Burner with Lion‐shaped Cover (National Treasure No. 60) in the collection of the National Museum of Korea (Figure 5.4). Koryŏ celadon must have fascinated the Chinese imperial official Xu Jing, who was also a scholar skilled at calligraphy and painting. In a similar vein, Brocade in the Sleeve (Xiuzhongjin), compiled by a Southern Song author known only by his sobriquet, Taiping Laoren (Old Man of Great Peace), also mentions Koryŏ celadon. Particularly, the “First under Heaven” chapter of this book recounts a variety of goods considered in China to be the finest at the time: “… flowers from Luoyang, tea from Jianzhou, silk from Shu, white ware from the Ding kilns, lacquerware from Zhejiang … the ‘secret color’ (C: mise, K: pisaek) [celadon] from Koryŏ … are the first under heaven, and these are incomparable to any.”

“Secret color,” also pronounced pisaek in Korean but written with different Chinese characters, is a term used in China for the mysterious color of celadon from the Yue kilns but also describes the “jade‐green color” of Koryŏ celadon in Taiping Laoren’s text. Most of this high‐quality celadon produced using advanced techniques has been

Figure 5.4  Incense burner with lion‐shaped cover. 12th–13th century. Celadon. H. 21.2 cm, D. 11.1 cm. National Treasure No. 60. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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excavated from sites related to the Koryŏ royal court, from royal tombs and palace buildings. Large quantities of Koryŏ celadon wares of excellent quality have, however, also been unearthed in Hangzhou, former capital of the Southern Song dynasty, and Ningbo, the most important Chinese seaport for foreign trade. Chinese people thus evaluated Koryŏ celadon to be equal to ceramics produced in Chinese official kilns. Moreover, Koryŏ celadon shards inscribed with the names of palaces or people of the Southern Song have been discovered in ruins related to the imperial household. The white ware from the Ding kilns and lacquerware from Zhejiang mentioned in Taiping Laoren’s text have remained representative craftworks of their regions to this day. Even though diverse and beautiful celadons were being produced at famous kilns in northern and southern China, the “secret color” Koryŏ celadon, was regarded “first under Heaven” in China at the time. So, when did Koryŏ celadon first appear? When and where did it begin to be produced on a larger scale? What made celadon production possible? As already mentioned, in mid‐western Korea where celadon first started to be made in the mid‐tenth century, large‐scale brick kilns were used. The production methods, tools, and celadon of these kilns resembled those of the Chinese ware from Yue kilns of the Five Dynasties. In the eleventh century, Koryŏ began producing celadon in southern areas such as Kangjin in South Chŏlla Province and Puan in North Chŏlla. From then on, breaking away from the Yue ware‐style manufacturing technique and shapes, Koryŏ‐ made celadon with its distinctive green hue was made in traditional mud kilns. The main technical difference between this period and the previous one was the use of two‐staged firing. While earlier ceramics were only fired once (similar to the technique of the Yue kilns), now, after the first (biscuit) firing of the unglazed wares, the ceramics were glazed and then fired for a second time. The fire was easily controlled, which made firing under reduction of oxygen possible because the flow of oxygen was interrupted due to the sealing of the mud kilns. Firing with reduced flames extracted oxygen from the copper components of the thickly applied glaze and thus produced the special color that led to the successful production of a celadon ware greener than that of the preceding period. (Under oxidation, when oxygen from outside is allowed to feed the flames, the same glaze would turn brownish or ocher.) Because the diplomatic relationship between Koryŏ and Song was restored at the end of the eleventh century it is presumed that contemporaneous Chinese culture and administrative systems were introduced during the reign of King Yejong in the early twelfth century. Meanwhile, the Khitans and the Jurchens were confronting each other in the northern region of the continent and Koryŏ had to prepare for Jurchen invasions. In addition, during the reign of King Injong, the royal authority was strongly challenged by the coup of Yi Chagyŏm in 1126, the rebellion of Myoch’ŏng in 1135, and the burning of the royal palace. Thus, in order to strengthen his authority, King Injong quickly carried out reforms which also affected celadon production. During this period, various blue‐green celadons and white porcelains from northern and southern China had already been imported through private trade and were used by the royal family and the elite. By reforming the state ritual, selectively introducing ceremonial containers from Northern Song, and modifying the sets of items used for rituals, the king must have tried to strengthen the new



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order and demonstrate his authority. It appears that this situation provided the opportunity for newly producing the much admired jade‐green celadon, similar in quality to that from Northern Song official kilns (Jang 2009: 13–16). Some Koryŏ celadon wares discovered recently at building sites, and in the vicinity of the imperial palace in Hangzhou, are examples of top‐quality Koryŏ celadon. They seem to provide evidence for Koryŏ surpassing Song China in celadon production techniques about a century after the introduction of the technology.

Diverse Decorative Methods Celadon was decorated in many different ways. The methods of decoration can be largely divided into three types: the carving technique of engraving the clay body using a knife or impressing a decorative element onto the body via a mold; the inlay technique (sanggam) of engraving motifs into the clay body and filling the carved space with black or white slip; and the painting technique of applying pigments to the clay body using a brush. These methods can be subdivided according to different types of carving, clay, and pigment. There are two typical carving techniques, and they were the most commonly used methods for decorating celadon: incising and sgraffito. Incising involves carving thin lines of designs on the body. Yue ware of Zhejiang Province, among others, distinguishes itself by its fine decoration in this technique, incised with a variety of patterns, including parrots. Koryŏ celadon wares also show similarities to those made in Ru kilns in terms of the incising technique and the decoration with a pair of parrots. Parrot motifs first emerged when jade‐green celadon began to be made extensively, around the twelfth century (Figure 5.5). They predominantly appeared on bowls and dishes, and mostly in a pair facing each other surrounded by small clouds. Some celadon wares have designs incised with beveled edges. The Celadon Prunus Vase with Incised Lotus and Scroll Design (National Treasure No. 97) in the collection of the National Museum of Korea has the outer contours of the lotus scrolls thickly and deeply carved, giving a sense of volume to the overall pattern, and the veins of lotus petals and vine leaves were elaborately incised. This technique of carving patterns in different depths and delicately incising details was used at several Chinese kilns, including those producing Ding ware in Hebei Province. The similarity in incising techniques used on Koryŏ celadon and Ding, Yue, and Ru ware indicates that Koryŏ potters used inspirations from both northern and southern China for creating their own distinctive shapes and styles. Depending on the modes of applying motifs on the body, there are two techniques resulting in raised designs carving the background of the motif with a knife (sgraffito) and mold‐impressing. Sgraffito is a technique whereby designs are created by carving out the surrounding plane surface. The most widely used raised design on celadon ware is the lotus petal. Double‐layered or triple‐layered lotus petals often appeared on bowls, cups, dishes, water droppers, and ewers. The bowls decorated with many tiers of lotus petals, mostly on the exterior walls, look like a lotus flower. The other technique for raised design is mold‐impressing motifs on

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Figure 5.5  Bowl with incised parrot and crane design. 12th century. Celadon. H. 7.5 cm, D. 16.6 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the interior or exterior walls of a vessel. A good example is an incense burner imitating the shape and complicated design of bronzeware on its outer walls (Figure  5.6). Using molds, numerous ceramics of uniform size, shape, and design can be made without difficulty. Since they did not require skilled potters to mass produce ceramics with intricate relief patterns, the mold‐impressing technique came to be used extensively after the mid‐Koryŏ period. Molded design was also used on the inside of bowls with wide, open mouths. When the kilns around Kangjin became the center of creating the best celadon and served as the standard for kilns in other regions, a preference for celadons with molded design can be observed. It appears that the craft‐like characteristic of this type enabled potters who were not as capable as the Kangjin and Puan potters to use the same standard design mold and thus to produce similar decorative effects. In order to save space, bowls were often stacked in the kiln during firing and kept apart by small ceramic spurs so that they would not stick together as the glaze melted. This resulted in spur marks on the foot of the upper bowl and the interior of the lower bowl. Celadons with molded design on the inside, however, were placed on top of stacks. Therefore, the wares were able to maintain a higher quality than other kiln products. The mold‐impressing technique was mainly applied in northern Chinese kilns, including those producing Yaozhou ware in Shaanxi Province during the Northern Song dynasty. A major product of these kilns was dark green celadon, the interior and exterior of which were decorated with lavish floral scroll designs. Such Yaozhou celadon seems to have inspired the types and shapes of designs and decorating trends used in Koryŏ celadon. As a case in point, Koryŏ celadon wares decorated  in relief with flowers with inter‐layered petals, such as chrysanthemums (C: baoxianghua), were manufactured using the mold‐impressing technique.



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Figure 5.6  Incense burner with molded decoration. 12th–13th century. Celadon. H. 11.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Sanggam refers to a decorative inlaying technique of engraving a pattern and then placing a different material into the engraved space. In the case of Koryŏ dynasty inlaid celadon the engraved motifs were filled with black or white slip. Besides ceramics, the inlay technique was applied also in other Koryŏ crafts. In the case of metalwork, designs or their borders were carved, and different gems or metal wire would be placed into the engraving (see Figure 9.1 in essay by Charlotte Horlyck). Lacquer objects also employed the same technique by engraving the body and filling in the carved space with diverse materials, such as wood of a different color, tortoiseshell, seashell, and metal (see Figure 9.9 in essay by Charlotte Horlyck). Koryŏ potters made ceramics using the inlay technique from early on, as confirmed by their presence in a tenth‐century kiln. However, it was after the mid‐ to late twelfth century that this technique was extensively used on Koryŏ celadon. Although the inlay technique was not the most widely utilized mode of decoration, it is interesting to note that a larger number of inlaid celadon wares than ceramics done in other techniques have been found in the kilns producing superior celadons, namely the kilns of Kangjin and Puan (Figure 5.7). The exact origin of the technique is unknown; however, it seems to have been associated with silver inlay, mother‐of‐pearl inlay on lacquerware, and a northern Chinese pottery technique called tiancai (carving the surface in various ways and filling in the space with clays of different colors). Silver and mother‐of‐pearl inlay techniques had been employed in other Koryŏ crafts, while the tiancai technique that emerged in the tenth century, during the Five Dynasties and early Northern Song periods, became greatly popular in twelfth‐century Chinese ceramics.

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Figure 5.7  “Prunus” bottle inlaid with clouds and cranes. 13th century. Celadon. H. 42.1 cm. National Treasure No. 68. Photo: courtesy of the Kansong Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Aside from these practices of incising or impressing the décor and of the inlay technique, another decorative method is to paint or apply other types of pigmentation to the clay body with a brush. Variations of this method include underglaze iron‐brown (ch’ŏrhwa) using oxidized iron, the paste‐on‐paste (t’oehwa or paekhwa) technique using white clay, underglaze copper‐red (tonghwa) using oxidized copper, and the technique of painting in gold on the glaze (hwagŭm). The underglaze iron technique began to be used in the early Koryŏ dynasty, but it was not regarded as an advanced practice since patterns painted with iron often spread or lumped together during firing. The first Koryŏ ceramics featuring designs in underglaze iron‐brown include hourglass‐shaped drums and pillows, made in early celadon kilns in the mid‐western regions of the Korean peninsula. Full‐scale production of celadons with underglaze iron designs started in the kilns of Haenam, South Chŏlla Province. The coarse clay used at these kilns produced yellow‐brown or yellow‐green low‐grade celadon, ranging from iron‐painted common household items, including long drums, prunus vases, and long‐necked bottles, to larger products. Simple designs in underglaze iron were sometimes painted with a paste‐on‐paste technique, which uses white slip to highlight the designs, usually by making dots. This



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method of painting black or white decorative designs on the clay body with a brush was widespread in northern China. This was done chiefly at the Cizhou kilns in Hebei Province, where ceramics were decorated by first covering their entire body with white slip making them appear like white ware, and then painting them with designs in black. Koryŏ ceramics painted with underglaze iron‐brown resemble Cizhou wares in terms of design and shape and thus have a close relationship with ceramics using the paste‐on‐paste techniques from those kilns. Some Koryŏ celadon wares were decorated using only the paste‐on‐paste technique. In general, however, this technique was used in conjunction with other techniques. For example, the main design is rendered in underglaze iron and surrounded by dots and lines painted with white slip (Figure  5.8). The tradition of painting in black and white pigments with a brush already existed in the early Koryŏ period, and coexisted with the kilns of northern China. The paste‐on‐paste technique differs from the previously discussed inlay technique in that the inlay technique is to fill a carved body with black or white clay, while the paste‐on‐paste technique is to paint or dot on the body with black and white clay. However, both techniques seem to have been used in the same period as they visually resemble each other and exhibit similar patterns. The underglaze copper technique involves painting ceramics with an oxidized copper pigment. As copper turns red in a reduction atmosphere during firing, the hue produced with this technique adds another color to the spectrum of celadon decoration. In contrast to other decorative techniques, underglaze copper‐red applied to celadon wares was the sole invention of Koryŏ potters, without any Chinese precursors. Because copper is a rare material, and is also temperamental during firing, easily turning green, celadon wares decorated with underglaze copper are very rare. Existing examples are the Celadon Gourd Shaped Ewer (National Treasure No. 133) housed at

Figure 5.8  Bowl with lid. 13th century. Celadon with underglaze iron and white slip decoration. H.2.7 cm, D.7.3 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art; the Celadon Prunus Vase with a Peony Flower Pattern in Underglaze Copper (Treasure No. 346) in the collection of the National Museum of Korea; and the Celadon Bowl with Peony and Scroll Design in Underglaze Copper in the British Museum. Although very few in number, celadon wares painted in gold are also extant today. They are supreme quality celadon wares, inlaid with designs on the interior and exterior walls and covered with a high‐quality glaze. The gold is applied onto the glaze as a finishing touch after firing, thereby adding splendor to the celadon. The section on Cho In’gyu (1237–1308) in the biographies chapter of the History of Koryŏ records that in the late thirteenth century, Koryŏ presented such a gold‐painted celadon as gift to the Yuan emperor (Horlyck 2012). Moreover, differences of color in the clay material can also be used decoratively. When common gray clay with a high iron content (which turns dark under firing) and white kaolin‐containing clay are mixed, it produces a marble‐like surface with black and white veins after being formed on a wheel. The vessels are then covered with a transparent celadon glaze, gaining a light green color after firing. Such pieces are very fine and extremely rare. In addition to the techniques discussed above, various other methods were utilized to decorate celadon. Often decorative techniques, such as incising, engraving in relief, openwork, and inlay are combined. Moreover, tiny sculptured flowers or animals are appliquéd onto the top of a lid or the handle of a ewer. Some celadon wares, especially water droppers used by literati painters for adding small amounts of water to their ink, are entirely sculpted, resembling human figures, animals, or plants. This technique was mainly used to produce incense burners (Figure 5.4), ewers, and elegant utensils for the desks of the educated elite, featuring sculpted pieces of waterfowl, monkeys, lions, or dragons. As already mentioned, in his travelogue of 1123, Xu Jing particularly praises a Koryŏ celadon incense burner in the shape of a lion.

Transportation and Circulation of Ceramics On the west coast of the Korean peninsula, shipwrecks of Koryŏ date are still found and salvaged. Most artifacts excavated from these trade ships are Koryŏ celadons, which were shipped to various destinations along with other ceramics, metalwork, grain, and food. These salvaged artifacts have raised various questions. What were the destinations of such a large amount of celadon ware? How was it transported, and when did such transport begin? Why has overwhelmingly more Koryŏ celadon than Chosŏn porcelain been recovered from shipwrecks? Ceramics were generally transported by river and sea. Indeed, countless number of ceramics have been excavated along the sea routes of Korea, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa. In Korea, underwater excavations have been conducted and marine geological surveys carried out on about ten shipwrecks, including that of the famous early fourteenth‐ century Chinese ship that sank off the cost of Sinan, southwest of the Korean peninsula. Ceramics were transported along coastal routes most actively during the Koryŏ period. Tens of thousands of Koryŏ ceramics recovered from shipwrecks off Korea’s



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west and south coasts since the mid‐twentieth century have provided new information about the history of Korean ceramics. Moreover, metalwork and wooden tags (mokkan) excavated together with ceramics have offered many details about the kinds and shapes of ceramics produced, their circulation, and life aboard the ships. Intriguingly, other Koryŏ craft items and agricultural products were also transported to major consumer markets in Kaesŏng and Namgyŏng, the “Southern Capital”, ­present‐day Seoul, via sea and river routes. It appears that smooth supply and distribution of celadon through maritime routes were important since the production areas of high‐quality celadon were concentrated in the southern regions, distant from the capital at Kaesŏng. Around the tenth century, kilns located in Kaesŏng and in the central and northern provinces of Hwanghae, P’yŏngan, Kyŏnggi, and South Ch’ungchŏng gradually expanded and moved to the west and south coasts. This relocation of kilns and the creation of new kilns was driven not only by accessibility to consumer markets and availability of material such as fine clay and firewood, but also by the fact that goods could be more easily transported via waterways than overland (Figure 5.9). In addition, after the late tenth century Koryŏ had regularized its circulation system and its system of taxation on payment for goods. Koryŏ society, whose economy was not based on a monetary system, relied on the transportation of goods by sea or water routes instead of land routes because the rice, grains, cotton, and hemp paid as taxes were voluminous and heavy. While systemizing

Figure 5.9  Celadon bowls found in T’aean shipwreck on the seafloor off Taesŏm Island in T’aean, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province (reconstruction). 12th century. Photo: courtesy of the National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage, Mokp’o. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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the administration of county governments, Koryŏ had already established warehouses, the so‐called “watercourse storehouses” (choch’ang), on the west and south coasts and on major inland rivers at the end of the tenth century to store regional products and grain, given as tax payment, before their transportation by ship. Koryŏ thus systematically controlled transportation vessels, waterways, and warehouses, because they served as significant sources for the royal family’s finances and the state budget. The goods gathered from local regions through taxation, such as grain, were collected from each county, transported to these watercourse storehouses, and then by the following spring season, to Kaesŏng. Heavy and fragile ceramics, including celadon, seem to have been primarily transported via waterways and sea routes. The artifacts from a celadon‐carrying ship recently excavated near T’aean off the west coast included several Koryŏ wooden tags, among which were found inventories of goods to be widely distributed in Kaesŏng. Some deciphered inventories indicate the names of the consignor and consignee, and the type and quantity of the goods. Therefore, it appears that a ceramic industry developed along the seacoast so that a large quantity of ceramics could be produced and supplied. The gradual expansion of the production of celadon and white ware from Kaesŏng to the west and south coasts thus seems to have stemmed from a close correlation between taxation and state administration and the production and transportation of celadon (Jang 2008: 171–174). On the other hand, in a few cases Koryŏ celadon is also found outside the country. When the Jin dynasty dominated the north of China, the cultural exchange of Koryŏ with the Southern Song dynasty was conducted by passing through Jin territory. After the invasion of the peninsula by the Mongols, a new form of ceramics began to appear following new preferences, while new styles also infiltrated from China. Under the rule of Khublai Khan (r. 1260–1294), the Yuan dynasty elite had an increased commercial interest in Koryŏ celadon, and high tariffs were imposed on the trade with Koryŏ celadon in the southern region of Zhejiang. In addition, Koryŏ made a new attempt to meet the Yuan taste, for instance, by manufacturing gold‐painted celadon (Kim Yunjŏng 2006: 163–205; Horlyck 2012). After the Khublai Khan era, due to the development of better transport in China, the traditional northern land route from Kaesŏng to the Liaodong peninsula was reactivated, and the culture of Yuan spread directly to various regions on the peninsula. Furthermore, after Khublai Khan accessed the throne, Koryŏ surrendered to Yuan. As a result, Khublai Khan provided an opportunity to transition from a hostile relationship to a peaceful one. In fact, in the History of Koryŏ the documentation of the exchange of ceramics as gifts between the two countries is more concentrated in the Khublai Khan era. Furthermore, the late Koryŏ celadon that has been unearthed in northern China, including Hebei, Shanxi, and Inner Mongolia, is associated with the transformation of style and technology in ceramics from this era. Although these changes did not appear immediately, they indicate an increasing exchange of ceramics and a new recognition between Koryŏ and the Mongol empire of Khublai Khan in the late thirteenth century. The vast transportation network of the Yuan empire promoted the influx of Koryŏ ceramics into China by land and sea from the late thirteenth to the early fourteenth



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century. This is proven by excavations in the northern and southern parts of China where Koryŏ ceramics were found together with Chinese ceramics of the highest quality. In addition, Koryŏ celadon ware is also repeatedly mentioned in many records since the Yuan dynasty, including Cao Zhao’s Essential Criteria of Antiquities (Gegu yaolun) published in 1388. Most of the Koryŏ ceramics found in China are of inlaid celadon; similarly, a large quantity of inlaid celadon was found among the relics recovered from the Sinan shipwreck. This indicates that there must have been certain selection criteria for the trade of Koryŏ celadon to China. In addition to inlaid celadon, sculpted celadon was found at Jininglu, an ancient city road that is now part of Ulan Chab in Inner Mongolia, and in the Sinan shipwreck. If compared with trends in domestic consumption, as shown by the percentage of decorative techniques discerned in shards excavated from Koryŏ kilns, it appears that Chinese preferences for the consumption of Koryŏ celadon were different from those in Koryŏ itself (Han Sŏnguk 2008: 441–475). On the other hand, in Kaesŏng and at large temples, Yuan ceramics were found along with Koryŏ celadon and white porcelain, which was produced in smaller quantities than celadon. From the latter part of the Koryŏ period to the early Chosŏn period, production of celadon began to change in some aspects. The large production centers changed to building kilns using both brick and mud as construction material, and smaller regional kilns were established. Consequently, regional characteristics became predominant. Decorative patterns became simpler, repetitive, and less delicate.

References Gompertz, Godfrey St. George Montague. 1960–62. “Hsü Ching’s Visit to Korea in 1123.” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 33: 1–21. Han Sŏnguk. 2008. “Ilbon Kyoto ch’ult’o Koryŏ ch’ŏngja ŭi hyŏnhwang kwa sŏnggyŏk” [Current status and characteristics of Koryŏ celadon excavated in Kyoto]. Han’guk chungsesa yŏn’gu 25: 441–475. Hong, Sunpyo, Jang Namwon, Oh Jin Kyeong, Kim Myung Sook, and Moon Sukhee. 2011. Understanding Korean Art: From the Prehistoric through the Modern Day. Seoul: Jimoondang. Horlyck, Charlotte. 2012. “Gilded Celadon Wares of the Koryŏ Kingdom (918–1392 CE).” Artibus Asiae 72: 91–121. Itoh, Ikutaro. 2000. Korean Ceramics from the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, edited by Judith G. Smith. Exh. cat. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jang Namwon. 2007. “Koryŏ sidae ch’amunhwa wa ch’ŏngja” [Tea, celadons, and celadon tea utensils of the Koryŏ period]. Misulsa nondan 24: 129–162. Jang Namwon. 2008. “Choun kwa toja saengsan, kŭrigo yut’ong” [Concerning marine transportation for taxation, ceramic industry, and circulation]. Misulsa yŏn’gu 22: 169–198. Jang Namwon. 2009. “10‐12 segi Koryŏ wa Yo·Kŭm toja ŭi kyoryu” [Ceramic relationships between Koryŏ and the Liao and Jin dynasties from the 10th–12th centuries]. Misulsahak 23: 7–38.

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Jang, Namwon. 2011. “Ceramics Exchange between Northern China and Early Goryeo.” Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology 5: 90–104. Jang, Namwon. 2013. "The Development of Koryŏ Porcelain and the Chinese Ceramic Industry in the Tenth Century." In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: From Silla to Koryŏ, edited by Kim Youn‐mi. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. 193–242. Kang, Kyung‐sook. 2008. Korean Ceramics. Translated by Cho Yoon‐jung. Seoul: Korea Foundation. Kim, Kumja Paik. 2003. Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of Enlightenment, 918–1392. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum–Chong‐Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture in cooperation with the National Museum of Korea and the Nara National Museum. Kim Yunjŏng. 2006. “Koryŏ hugi sanggam ch’ŏngja e poinŭn Wŏn‐dae chagi ŭi yŏnghyang” [Influence of Yuan wares on inlaid celadons of the late Koryŏ]. Misulsahak yŏn’gu 249: 163–205. Pak, Youngsook, and Roderick Whitfield. 2003. Earthenware and Celadon: Handbook of Korean Art. London: Laurence King. Vermeersch, Sem. 2016. A Chinese Traveler in Medieval Korea: Xu Jing’s Illustrated Account of the Xuanhe Embassy to Koryŏ. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Yi Chŏngmin. 2003. “Han’guk ch’ogi ch’ŏngja ŭi hyŏngsŏng kwa chŏnp’a” [Formation and Expansion of Early Korean Celadons]. Misulsahak yŏn’gu 240: 51–75. Yi Chŏngmin. 2011. “Koryŏ ch’o ch’ŏngja saengsan chungsimji ŭi yidong kwajŏng yŏn’gu” [Study on relocating celadon production to a central district during the early Koryŏ]. Yŏksa wa tamnon 58: 273–307. Yi Chŏngmin. 2012. “Han’guk ch’ogi ch’ŏngja saengsan yoji ŭi punp’o wa sŏnggyŏk” [Distribution and production sites of early Koryŏ celadons]. Yŏksa wa tamnon 63: 151–184. Yun, Yong‐i. 2006. Korean Art from the Gompertz and Other Collections in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: A Complete Catalogue, edited by Regina Krahl. Translated by Pak Youngsook and Roderick Whitfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Glossary baoxianghua (C.) 寶相華 Chajing (C.) 茶經 Chan (C.) (K. Sŏn [Seon]; J. Zen) 禪 changgo [janggo] 長鼓 Changsha (C.) 長沙 Cho In’gyu [Jo In’gyu] 趙仁規 choch’ang [jochang] 漕倉 chŏnch’ugyo [jeonchugyo] 塼築窯 ch’ŏngja [cheongja] 靑磁/靑瓷 ch’ŏrhwa [cheolhwa] 鐵畵 Ch’ungch’ŏng [Chungcheong] 忠淸(道) Cizhou (C.) 磁州



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Ding (C.) 定 Gegu yaolun (C.) 格古要論 gongcha (C.) 貢茶 guancha (C.) 官茶 haemurigup 해무리굽 hojok 豪族 Hŭijong [Huijong] 熙宗 Huizong (C.) 徽宗 hwagŭm [hwageum] 畵金 Hwanghae 黃海(道) Hyeŭmwŏn [Hyeeumwon] 惠蔭院 Injong 仁宗 Jianzhou (C.) 建州 Jin (C.) 金 Jininglu (C.) 集寧路 Kaegyŏng [Gaegyeong] 開京 Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kaifeng (C.) 開封 Koryŏsa [Goryeosa] 高麗史 Kyŏnggi [Gyeonggi] 慶基(殿) ku [gu] 甌 Liao (C.) 遼 Luoyang (C.) 洛陽 mise (C.) 秘色 mokkan [mokgan] 木簡 Myoch’ŏng [Myocheong] 妙淸 Myŏngjong [Myeongjong] 明宗 Namgyŏng [Namgyeong] 南京 Paekche [Baekje] 百濟 P’algwanhoe [Palgwanhoe] 八關會 Pangsan‐dong [Bangsan‐dong] 方山洞 pisaek [bisaek] 翡色 pisaek [bisaek] 秘色 P’yŏngan [Pyeongan] 平安(道) Ru (C.) 汝 sanggam 象嵌 Silla 新羅 sŏkkwangmyo [seokgwagmyo] 石槨墓 sŏkkwanmyo [seokgwanmyo] 石棺墓 sŏksilmyo [seoksilmyo] 石室墓 Song (C.) 宋 Sŏnggyun’gwan [Seonggyun’gwan] 成均館 Tabang [Dabang] 茶房 Taegwan [Daegwan] 大觀(殿) taejŏp [daejeop] 大楪

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T’aemyo [Taemyo] 太廟 Taiping Laoren (C.) 太平老人 tajŏm [dajeom] 茶店 t’angjan [tangjan] 湯盞 taso [daso] 茶所 tayŏn [dayeon] 茶碾 t’och’ugyo [tochugyo] 土築窯 t’oehwa [toehwa] 堆花 t’ogwangmyo [togwangmyo] 土壙墓 tojun [dojun] 陶尊 tonghwa [donghwa] 銅畵 tiancai (C.) 塡彩 tu 豆 wan 盌 Wang Kŏn [Wang Geon] 王建 Xing (C.) 邢(窯) Xiuzhongjin (C.) 袖中錦 Xu Jing (C.) 徐兢 Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing (C.) 宣和奉使高麗圖經 Xuanhua (C.) 宣化 Yaozhou (C.) 耀州 Yejong 睿宗 Yi Chagyŏm [Yi Jagyeom] 李資謙 Yi Kyubo [Yi Gyubo] 李奎報 Yŏndŭnghoe [Yeondeunghoe] 燃燈會 Yuanfeng (C.) 元豊 yubidi (C.) 玉璧底 Yue (C.) 越

6

Koryŏ Buddhist Sculpture: Issues and History Sun‐ah Choi

Buddhist art flourished as much during the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) as it had during the Unified Silla period. The ruling class supported Buddhism wholeheartedly, as is shown in the “Ten Injunctions for the Descendants,” or simply the “Ten Injunctions” (Hunyo shipcho) of King T’aejo (r. 918–943). Believing that the unification of the peninsula had been made possible because of aid from the Buddha, T’aejo, the founder of the dynasty, recounted the first injunction as follows: “The great task of our country should be based on the protecting power of the Buddha. Therefore, build monasteries for Sŏn (meditation) and Kyo (doctrine) sects, send out teachers of different levels, and let them carry out their work.” Under such circumstances, Buddhist activities of various types continued throughout the dynasty, even during periods when the kingdom was in turmoil. It is well known that Koryŏ kings offered prayers to overcome incursions from Khitans and Mongols by carving woodblocks for printing a whole set of the Buddhist tripiṭaka. Buddhist images in diverse forms and styles were constantly produced, both under the auspices of royal and aristocratic patrons as well as commoners. Although many of these images are now lost, the vitality of Koryŏ Buddhist visual culture is vividly described in a number of textual sources, including the History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa) and the Selected Writings of the East (Tongmunsŏn) (Kim Lena 1985: 35; Lee Junghee 2003: 140). Buddhist sculptures of the Koryŏ dynasty distinguish themselves from those of the previous era in several respects. First, a great deal of regional diversity is witnessed. In fact, the regional diversity had already emerged, as can be seen in sculptures from the late Silla period. With the rise of powerful local clans, several places far from the Silla capital of Kyŏngju emerged as centers for creating Buddhist sculptures. The rise of such provincial centers continued during the Koryŏ dynasty. In addition to old local

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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regions, new locations in the middle and eastern parts of the peninsula came to be productive places for the creation of Buddhist images. The center of culture also shifted during this time. After Kaegyŏng (present-day Kaesŏng) was chosen as the capital of the new dynasty, Kyŏngju lost its glorious position and fell back to simply being a local region. Absorbing diverse inspirations from neighboring regions and leading the dynasty’s cultural movement, Kaegyŏng took over the role that had been played by Kyŏngju (Vermeersch 2004: 7–34). Second, unprecedented dynamic variations in style and form are found in Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture. Although old traditions from the previous dynasty were maintained, Buddhist images in novel forms emerged in many regional centers. At the same time, inspiration from neighboring states such as Wu Yue (907–978), Liao (916–1125), Jin (1115–1234), Northern Song (960–1127) and Southern Song (1127–1279), and Yuan (1271–1368) led to innovations in the Buddhist sculpture of Koryŏ. Based on the stylistic and formal changes, scholars usually divide the history of Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture into two or three phases (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 2013: 9; Kim Lena et al. 2011: 72). In this tripartite model, the period of the tenth to eleventh centuries (918–ca. 1070) is the early phase, during which a unique style developed with mild influence from Liao and Northern Song. The middle phase includes the twelfth to thirteenth centuries (ca. 1070–1270), a time when various elements of Northern and Southern Song Buddhist images were introduced and assimilated. The late phase includes the late thirteenth to fourteenth centuries (1270–1392), during which novel elements originating from Sino‐Tibetan Buddhist art appeared in Buddhist images as a result of the Mongol occupation of Koryŏ, but the styles and forms of the two previous phases still prevailed. Discussions here will follow this three‐phase model. However, it should be noted that a tendency to retain previous traditions never ceased during subsequent phases, even though the emergence of new styles, often inspired from outside, announced the beginning of a new era. Last, new techniques for decorating Buddhist images were transmitted from China and widely assimilated by Koryŏ Buddhists. One example, the precedent of which is found in Liao Buddhist statues, involves inlaying black stones or rock crystals to form the eyes of a statue. Another example, based on a technique found in Southern Song Buddhist statues, involves using different materials to render necklaces and crowns on wooden bodhisattva images. What do these techniques tell us about the ways in which Koryŏ Buddhists conceived the meaning and function of their sacred images? Related to this issue is an intriguing practice called pokchang in Korean. Literally meaning “concealing [something] inside the belly,” pokchang is the practice of installing objects such as relics of the Buddha, Buddhist scriptures, and many other sacred items in the cavity of a wooden or metal statue. In recent years, not a small number of Buddhist statues dated to the late Koryŏ period have been identified as having been stuffed with such materials. Although the practice itself was prevalent in contemporary China and Japan, materials enshrined in the body of Koryŏ Buddhist statues display significant differences from their counterparts in China and Japan and thus raise questions about their origin and meaning. In the following sections, I will discuss the characteristics of Koryŏ Buddhist statues focusing on the aspects sketched out above. We should keep in mind that our current

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knowledge of Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture is only partial in scope, mostly due to the lack of information about extant pieces from Kaegyŏng and other areas in North Korea. Although some northern sculptures have been introduced through publications, many of them still await systematic survey, as well as detailed comparative study with extant materials in South Korea. Accordingly, this chapter will limit its discussion mostly to Koryŏ Buddhist images in southern Korea.

Retaining Traditions and Regional Diversities One of the notable characteristics of Buddhist sculptures produced during the early phase of the Koryŏ dynasty is the continuation of earlier traditions. Particular iconographic and stylistics types that had once prevailed in Unified Silla were favored in the new era—such as seated Buddha images in bhūmispars ́a mudrā and bodhyagrı ̄ mudrā, as well as standing Buddha images whose drapery unfolds in a way similar to that seen in a Buddha from Kamsansa (Sweet Mountain Temple) in Silla that is datable to the eighth century. One of the legacies of the preceding period is observed in the choice of materials used to produce sculpture. Iron, in particular, was frequently used for Buddha images during the tenth and eleventh centuries. While in the ninth century iron was often used for Buddha images in bodhyagrı ̄ mudrā, in the following period it was extensively employed for Buddha images in bhūmispars ́a mudrā as well. One of the most representative examples is a large iron seated Buddha, commonly called the “Kwangju Iron Buddha,” excavated in Kwangju, Kyŏnggi Province (Figure 6.1). Now on display in the National Museum in Seoul, the statue boasts an enormous scale. Measuring 2.88 meters in height, it is the largest extant iron Buddha statue in Korea. Although it is smaller in size and more slender than the Sŏkkuram (Stone Cave Chapel) Buddha, it is apparent that the Kwangju Iron Buddha closely resembles the latter in pose, hand gestures, clothing, and drapery. Although the Kwangju Iron Buddha lacks contextual information such as its patron, exact date of production, or monastic affiliation, it is certain that the artisan(s) who made the image tried to pursue the idealized form embodied in the Sŏkkuram Buddha, but using a different material (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 2013: 59–84). The idealism exemplified in the Kwangju Iron Buddha contrasts with the idiosyncratic nature of another iron Buddha of the same type (Figure 6.2). Also on display in the National Museum in Seoul (opposite the Kwangju Iron Buddha), this Buddha was originally brought from the site of Powŏnsa in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. It is also a large statue, measuring 2.63 meters high. Unlike the Kwangju image, there is a possibility that this iron statue is documented in an epigraphical source. A stele inscription from 978, which commemorates a National Preceptor from early Koryŏ, T’anmun (900–975), who resided and died at Powŏnsa (Universal Vow Temple), describes his commission of Buddhist images, which included a Śākyamuni triad in 949, the year of Kwangjong’s (r. 949–975) accession to the throne. Due to the statue’s uncommon size, the Powŏnsa Buddha is generally identified as the central image of the Śākyamuni triad commissioned by T’anmun. T’anmun had a special relationship with the royal family, as he is known to have led prayers for Queen Yu

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Figure 6.1  Seated Buddha. 10th century. From the Hasach’ang‐dong temple site in Hanam (formerly Kwangju), Kyŏnggi Province. Iron. H. 2.8 meters. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

when she was pregnant with Kwangjong. Considering these circumstances of the image and the person who commissioned it, the Buddha may have been created to commemorate Kwangjong’s enthronement (Kang Ubang 1988: 1–31). Despite this presumed royal patronage, it is stylistically quite unusual. The specific features of this sculpture, including narrow shoulders, slit eyes, small lips, square face, prominent cheekbones, and thick jaw, collectively exhibit a great distance from the idealistic form shown in the Sŏkkuram Buddha. It is interesting to note in relation to its source that similar features are typically shown in a number of iron Buddhas produced in Wŏnju, Kangwŏn Province. For instance, three iron Buddhas in bhūmispars ́a mudrā excavated in Wŏnju share formal features with the Powŏnsa Buddha (Figure 6.3). The distinct line between forehead and hair and the unique shape of the lips and chin are also common. Drapery is rendered in a simple form with a few incised lines. Due to these similarities, it has been suggested that the Powŏnsa Buddha was also made in Wŏnju and relocated to Sŏsan or that artisans from Wŏnju undertook the creation of the Powŏnsa Buddha. In any case, the common features between the Powŏnsa Buddha and the Buddhas from Wŏnju indicate the presence of artisan groups who worked in diverse locales with

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Figure 6.2  Seated Buddha. 11th century. From the Powŏnsa site in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Iron. H. 2.63 meters. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

distinctive styles and techniques (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 2013: 107–112). Located on the South Han River, Wŏnju was a major transportation hub that connected Ch’ungju, a town famous for its iron production in the south, to Kaegyŏng, the Koryŏ capital, in the far west. Wŏnju’s significance also lies in its political status, having once been the northern capital of Unified Silla. With this background, Buddhism flourished in the area during the Unified Silla and Koryŏ periods. Eminent monks frequently visited and resided in Wŏnju, a fact that is well documented not only by historical records but also through the presence of grandiose temple sites such as Kŏdonsa (Abiding‐in‐ Suddenness Temple) and Hŭngbŏpsa (Reviving the Law Temple). Although the wooden temple buildings were all burnt to the ground during the Mongol and Japanese invasions, stone objects such as the enormous pedestal (2 meters high) of a Buddha statue (now lost) at Kŏdonsa and the memorial stupa of the national preceptor Chigwang (984–1067) from Hŭngbŏpsa, have survived to prove the unrivaled level of visual culture that unfolded in Wŏnju. All these circumstances raise the possibility of the presence of a group of skillful artisans in Wŏnju, and their influence on the creation of iron Buddha images in other regions.

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Figure 6.3  Seated Buddha. 10th to 11th century. From Wŏnju, Kangwŏn Province. Iron. H. 94 cm. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

In addition to Wŏnju, regional styles in iron Buddha statues are found in other areas of the peninsula. Ch’ungju is one such region, where almost identical iron Buddha statues datable to the twelfth century remain extant, one at Taewŏnsa (Great Perfection Temple) and the other at Tanhosa (Crimson Lake Temple). The statues, although slightly different in size, display stylistic homogeneity in the rendition of countenance, garments, and schematized rendering of drapery folds, indicating that they were produced by the same artisan(s) or in the same workshop. Once the central capital of Unified Silla, Ch’ungju was, as mentioned, one of the major iron‐producing sites in Korea. It was also the residence of a powerful local clan, the Yu family. The Buddhist images just reviewed inform us that the traditions of the previous dynasty were still favored in the early Koryŏ, and that artisans of the period assiduously renovated features of their images. Considering the regional historical and cultural context, it is evident that the support of local powerful clans or influential monastic figures provided the firm base upon which sculptural artists established regional styles. The same can be said in the case of contemporary stone Buddha statues made in the Myŏngju area (present‐day Kangnŭng) of Kangwŏn Province. Located in the mid‐eastern part of the peninsula, Myŏngju had long been the residence

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of the descendants of Kim Chuwŏn, a renowned member of the Silla royal family. During the early Koryŏ period, the region produced several Buddhist statues of distinctive style, such as a marble image of a bodhisattva from Hansongsa (Winter Pine Temple), which has a plump chin, neat and tidy body, and intimate countenance with slight smile. Similar stylistic features are found in bodhisattva images at the Sinboksa (Divine Fortune Temple) site and at Wŏlchŏngsa (Moon Essence Temple), although they have different poses and mudrā from the Hansongsa image. In terms of type, these images do not follow any traditional form, but the stylistic features shared by them indicate the presence of a local aesthetic pursued by the artisans or patrons of the Myŏngju region (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 1980: 56–78). Such regional styles are also detected in later phases of Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture, on the basis of the images’ homogeneous stylistic features and geographical proximity.

Rise of a New Aesthetic While earlier traditions were maintained, a totally novel style emerged at the turn of the tenth century to become one of the major trends in Buddhist imagery of the Koryŏ dynasty. The emergence of the new style, as will be detailed shortly, was not a seamless departure from the idealistic mode of the Sŏkkuram Buddha, but rather a sudden change, which can be described as avant‐garde. The most representative work of this new trend is a stone statue at Kwanch’oksa (Accumulated Illumination Temple) in Nonsan, South Ch’ungchŏng Province (Figure 6.4). Installed at the rear part of the temple, the lone standing image, even at a glance, overpowers the viewer. The overwhelming impression comes, most of all, from its size. Measuring 18.1 meters high, it is the largest extant freestanding stone Buddhist image on the Korean peninsula. The visual impact of the image, however, does not just come from its gigantic size, but is maximized by its unusual proportions. The disproportionately large head occupies a quarter of the entire body. A tall and large crown, which is composed of a cylindrical hat, octagonal pillar, and two layers of square stone slabs, also disturbs proportion and balance. At the same time, the unprecedented modeling of the body contributes to the simplicity, if not crudeness, of the image. A few lines are simply incised on the surface of the statue to represent drapery folds. Very little sculptural effort has been taken to make the body round or three‐dimensional. Due to its idiosyncratic nature, the image has long been regarded as representative of the decline of Korean Buddhist sculpture. Kim Wŏnyong, for instance, describes the statue: “This is an unplanned work, or an work of resignation, [made by an artisan] who had no idea of how to deal with an enormous stone…The unbalanced proportions of head and body, exaggerated facial expressions, and narrow shoulders hardly render it as a well‐made piece. The glorious tradition established by the Sŏkkuram Buddha finally arrived at the last stop with this Kwanch’oksa statue” (Kim Wŏnyong 1980: 84–89). Indeed, the image, as Kim has described, does not embody the idealism of the Sŏkkuram Buddha. The oversized eyes, big nose, and thick lips in the face of the former cannot be compared with the delicate and serene countenance of the latter.

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Figure 6.4  Standing Bodhisattva. 2nd half of the 10th century. Kwanch’oksa in Nonsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Stone. H. 18.1 meters. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

However, a younger generation of scholars have been reconsidering the image’s artistic value through new perspectives. Ch’oe Sŏnju, for instance, has pointed out that several parts of the statue are carved with delicacy (Ch’oe Sŏnju 2000: 4). Recently, Cho Sujin articulated the formal value of the statue thusly: “Although the statue looks simple and massive, it still has a sense of volume. The drapery lines are extremely schematized, but they are elastic. The unusual emphasis on the face and hands leads the viewer to feel the mystic power of the image. These characteristics cannot be explained with the biological model for formal art historical analysis held by previous scholars. Rather, I think that the stylistic features of the Kwanch’oksa statue may reflect the particular milieu of the period” (Cho Sujin 2001: 90–96). Yu Hongjun also defended the unusual form of the image: “It is problematic to reduce the image’s value by comparing it to the Sŏkkuram Buddha. The artisan of the Kwanch’oksa statue must have made his image this way not because he did not know how to make a well‐proportioned statue. He must have had a particular intention … The Buddha is an absolute being, and each period has its own ideal image of him. Those who made Sŏkkuram pursued harmonious idealism with perfect order. Those who lived in the Ch’ungch’ŏng region [where the Kwanch’oksa statue stands] during the early Koryŏ

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period may not have wanted the stifling order [of the Sŏkkuram Buddha] but a destructive power against it. They must have envisioned a Buddha who has a superhuman nature and mystical strength” (Yu Hongjun 2011: 440). As these statements indicate, the formal features of the Kwanch’oksa image can be discussed from several different angles. They are even regarded by some scholars as an expression of zeitgeist, or the spirit of the age, of the early Koryŏ period. A closer examination of the detailing on the image leads us to consider other aspects of the image. The curvy hairs encircling the ears, lotus petals carved on the lower part of the stone slap, and the waving hem lines of the skirt are naturally rendered, making an interesting contrast with the otherwise abstracted forms of the overall body. The coexistence of both natural and abstract elements in one image means that the styles were deliberately chosen by the artisan(s). The unbalanced and exaggerated features of the Kwanch’oksa statue assisted in the pursuit of creating an image with a totally different aesthetic from that of earlier periods (Choi Sun-ah 2014: 86). Why, then, did the artisan(s) create a stone Buddha image in such an idiosyncratic style? This question cannot be completely answered, as little is known about the image’s background. No contemporary record exists on the statue, and some scholars even speculate that the image was commissioned by local clans of the region to boost their powers against the central government (Kim Kirung 1980: 152–154). Others suggest that King Kwangjong commissioned and placed the statue at Kwanchoksa as a way of expressing his authority over local families (Chŏng Sŏnggwŏn 2007: 590– 593). This opinion is based on later records compiled in the Newly Enlarged (Edition of) the Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea (Sinjŭng tongguk yŏji sŭngnam, 1530; hereafter Newly Enlarged Geography of Korea) and the Temple Records of Kwanch’oksa (Kwanch’oksa sachŏk ki, 1743). Both mention that the statue was made during Kwangjong’s reign after an enormous stone miraculously soared up from the earth. The latter even elaborates that the stone emerged in the nineteenth year of Kwangjong’s reign (968) and the artisan Hyemyŏng was dispatched by the court to make a Buddha statue with one hundred assistants; the work began in 968 and took thirty‐seven years to complete. The particular shape of the image’s hat, which resembles an imperial crown known as myŏllyugwan, further leads scholars to believe that the image is linked to royal authority. At any rate, it is evident that the statue had a profound impact on the creation of Buddhist statues in nearby regions thereafter. The most immediate contemporary reception is confirmed in a stone statue at Taejosa (Great Bird Temple) in Puyŏ, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province (Figure 6.5). Measuring 10 meters high, this image resembles the Kwanch’oksa image in many aspects—including a square face, distinctive crown, and pillar‐like modeling of the body. The formal similarity implies that the Taejosa image is a close imitation of the Kwanch’oksa image, but at the same time the awkward modeling of the hands of the former indicates that the artisan(s) failed to adequately capture the hand gestures of the latter (Choi Sun-ah 2014: 88). The intensification of simplicity is found in many other images created in the central regions of the peninsula, such as a stone statue of Mirŭk taewŏn in Ch’ungju (10.6 meters high), and the twin statues at Kodori in Iksan. They all share, in addition to the pillar‐like form, a four‐ or eight‐sided flat stone cover on top of the head.

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Figure 6.5  Standing Bodhisattva. 10th to 11th century. Taejosa in Puyŏ, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Stone. H. 10 meters. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Some scholars believe that the stylistic features of the Kwanch’oksa image had already been manifested in a Buddha triad at Kaet’aesa (Opening Prosperity Temple) in Nonsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. The triad is dated to 940, when T’aejo commissioned the temple with praise for the Buddha and the mountain spirit that helped him unify the ­peninsula following the hard‐fought battle over Later Paekche. It is significant that the town where the temple is located was the military base of Later Paekche, a site that resisted Koryŏ to the end. Measuring 4.15 meters in height, the central Buddha, together with the attending bodhisattvas, is distinctive in its diminution of detail. The minimal rendering of the body and the large scale of the Kaet’aesa triad is regarded as representative of a local style in the Ch’ungch’ŏng area, and explains why stone statues in a similar style were in vogue in the region during the early Koryŏ period (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 2013: 40–44). While the emergence of the idiosyncratic style epitomized by the Kwanch’oksa image reflects a unique trend in Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture of the early phase, it is also true that the details and formal features of the images, which were new for the period, can be attributed to external sources. Using black stone inserts to render the eyes of the Kwanch’oksa image, for instance, was a new technique, unprecedented in Buddhist statues created in the peninsula. However, it was a technique common to Liao dynasty

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stone statues, frequently found in Buddha images created or repaired during the Liao period at the Yungang Caves in China (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2013: 51). The tall and quasi‐ cylindrical crowns of bodhisattva images extant in the Myŏngju region of Kangwŏn Province also recall some precedents in Chinese sculpture, such as a bodhisattva at Xia Huayansi or the “Lower Huayan Temple” in Datong dated to around 1038 (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 1997: 47–62). Though these elements constitute only small parts of the whole picture, we can witness external sources playing a more active role during the middle and late phases of stone sculpture during the Koryŏ dynasty.

Sophistication The new features witnessed in Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture of the late phase are often referred to as the “refined style” (tana yangsik). A representative example is the gilt‐ bronze statue of Buddha Bhaiṣajyaguru (Medicine Buddha) at Changgoksa (Long Valley Temple) in Ch’ŏngyang, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province (Figure 6.6). Dated to 1346, the image has balanced bodily proportions, naturally rendered drapery folds, and a calm and dignified countenance with half‐closed eyes. Similar features are found in contemporary bodhisattva images such as a gilt‐bronze Avalokiteśvara now at Kannonji temple in Nagasaki, Japan, which has been dated to 1330 and was apparently taken from Pusŏksa (Floating Stone Temple) in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. With these images, Mun Myŏngdae proposes the name “refined style” to mark the revival of the classical tradition that culminated in eighth‐century Silla Buddhist sculptures such as the Sŏkkuram Buddha. In addition, he connects the images’ sophisticated and elegant appearance to the royal and aristocratic taste of the period (Mun Myŏngdae 2003: 206–210). Recently, however, it has become clear that the novel features that dominated in fourteenth‐century images can also be traced back to the more recent twelfth century, as can be seen in several Buddhist images, which had long been regarded as later works but are now recognized as dating no later than the thirteenth century through the identification of new evidence from literary sources. Wooden Buddha statues at Kaesimsa (Opening the Mind Temple) and Kaeunsa (Unfolding Destiny Temple) are examples of such new identification. The Kaesimsa statue used to be considered as a work of the early Chosŏn period, but an inscription in ink on the bottom cover of the image, as was reported in 2007, reveals that the statue was repaired in 1280. The Kaeunsa statue (Figure 6.7) was also thought to be a fourteenth‐century work, but votive inscriptions written on the paper found inside the cavity of the image in 1996 state that the statue was re‐gilded in 1274. In the similar vein, a wooden bodhisattva image at Pongjŏngsa (Phoenix Abiding or Phoenix Perch Temple), which had been regarded as a work of the fourteenth century, now has been identified as dating to 1199, thanks to the discovery of an inscription on a wooden plaque in the temple (Figure 6.8) (Ch’oe Sŏngŭn 2013: 267–317). These newly dated images look more massive than their fourteenth‐century counterparts, but their overall form is almost identical to that characterized as the “refined style” in terms of clothing, facial characteristics, and many other details.

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Figure 6.6  Seated Bhaiṣajyaguru Buddha. 1346. Changgoksa in Ch’ŏngyang, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Gilt‐bronze. H. 88 cm. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Although the suggestion is that the “refined style” is but the resurgence of the classical style of the Unified Silla sculptures, scholars also point to several stylistic details that have their origins outside the peninsula, especially from Buddhist images of the Liao and Song dynasties (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2013: 41–59). A metal ornament attached to the inner garment at the left shoulder is one stylistic element that is distinctively seen in Buddha images of the Liao, such as the one dated to 1038 from the Lower Huayansi (Xia Huayansi) in Datong, Shanxi Province. The technique of rendering the hair and necklace of wooden statues in a different material is also new, but found in Buddhist statues of the Southern Song dynasty, including the bodhisattva image currently enshrined at the temple Sennyūji in Kyoto, Japan. The exact components of the material for the hair and necklace are unknown, but the yellow residue that remains where it was appliquéd onto the statue suggests that it is composed of wax, pine resin, and other substances. A close analysis reveals that the material is applied to a base consisting of pieces of hemp cloth, which are then attached to the surface of the statue. Fine lines are incised onto the hair form to denote individual strands of hair, and gems are inserted into the necklace form to simulate real jewelry. As they are separately affixed to the surface of the wooden statue, some of these appliqués have come detached from the image and disappeared. But X‐ray photos

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Figure 6.7  Seated Amitābha Buddha. Before 1274. Kaeunsa in Anam‐dong, Seoul. Wood. H. 118 cm. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

often reveal the presence of the strips of cloth used to affix the material onto the surface of the statues. Inserting rock crystals into the eye sockets of wooden statues is another technique often observed in wooden statues of the period. The earliest surviving example from Koryŏ is the Pongjŏngsa bodhisattva dated to 1199, which recalls the style of bodhisattva images of the Southern Song. The techniques of simulating the hair and jewels with different materials and using glass stones for the eyes of an image have the effect of enhancing reality. In the case of bodhisattva images, crowns were also made separately and placed on top of the head. All these practices, which had been in use in China, were vigorously applied to the production of Koryŏ Buddhist statues during the middle and late phases. It is also interesting to note that the techniques were also prevalent in contemporary Japan during the Kamakura period. Another widespread practice during this period in East Asia is the depositing of sacred objects inside the body of a Buddhist image (K. pokchang; J. zōnai nōnyū hin). Literary sources suggest that it was quite prevalent in Koryŏ prior to the thirteenth century. For instance, Yi Kyubo (1168–1241) reports in his Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country (Tongguk Yi sangguk chip) that the pokchang materials deposited inside an Avalokiteśvara image at Naksansa (Potalaka Mountain Temple)

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Figure 6.8  Seated Bodhisattva. 1199. Pongjŏngsa in Yech’ŏn, North Kyŏngsang Province. Wood. H. 104 cm. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

were stolen during the Mongol invasion. Thus, two “heart‐circle” mirrors, five kinds of incense, five kinds of medicines, colored threads, and silk pouches had to be newly prepared and installed inside the image. Attesting to the validity of this record, actual pokchang materials have been found in Buddhist statues of Koryŏ made during the middle and late phases. Among them, those found inside a gilt‐bronze statue at Munsusa (Mañjuśrī Temple) in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province are noteworthy, not just because they are more extensive than any items found in other Koryŏ Buddhist images, but also because they were preserved fully intact and thus we know the original placement of each item inside the image at the time of enshrinement (Kang In’gu 1975: 1–18). Made public in 1973, the deposited items comprised of a small bronze bell (Figure  6.9-1) placed in the throat of the image, a wooden casket with a lid (Figure 6.9-2) placed in the chest, and various documents, including three pieces of paper with votive inscriptions dated to 1346 and copies of Buddhist sutras placed in the belly area of the statue. In the cavity at the bottom of the image were placed pieces of textiles and sheets of paper, either blank or printed with dhāraṇī. Also worth noting is the presence of a document titled “Record listing deposited pokchang items of Amitābha” (Mit’a pokchang immulsaek ki), by which we can deduce the names of

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the items found in the image’s cavity (Figure 6.9-3). The list of thirty different objects begins with specific names of five kinds of incense, grain, treasures, and medicines. These are probably the substances inside the silk pouches contained in the wooden caskets. The list also names various other objects such as a throat bell (huryŏng), a relic container (saridong), an eight‐petal container (paryŏptong), and a yellow cloth wrapper (hwangp’okja), all corresponding to the materials found in the cavity. The throat bell refers to the bronze bell found inside the throat of the image, the relic container to the reliquary found in the wooden casket, and the eight‐petal container to the wooden casket on which an eight‐petal lotus is drawn in red ink. The yellow cloth wrapper refers to the cloth wrapped around a wooden casket. The pokchang items found in other Buddhist images of the Koryŏ period display a similar pattern of ­selection as those preserved inside the Munsusa statue. The Koryŏ practice of pokchang continued into the Chosŏn period with a few modifications, and the list of items inventoried on the “Record listing deposited pokchang items of Amitābha” have ­significant affinities with those recorded in the Scripture on Making Images (Chosang kyŏng), a composite ritual manual compiled in the late Chosŏn period for the consecration of Buddhist images (Lee Seonyong 2013: 60–75). As mentioned, the practice of enshrining sacred objects inside Buddhist images was prevalent in China and Japan as well. However, the kinds of items deposited differ significantly. Although more research is needed, the majority of items deposited in Chinese Buddhist images appear to be mock human organs fashioned from cloth or metal. The best‐known example is a set of items found inside a Śakyamuni Buddha

Figure 6.9-1  Throat Bell. Ca. 14th century. From the pokchang deposit of a seated Amitābha at Munsusa in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Bronze. D. 2.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of Sudŏksa Museum, Yesan. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Figure 6.9-2  Casket. Ca. 14th century. From the pokchang deposit of a seated Amitābha at Munsusa in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Wood. H. 7.0 cm. Photo: courtesy of Sudŏksa Museum, Yesan. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Figure 6.9-3  Record listing items deposited as pokchang. 1346. From the pokchang deposit of a seated Amitābha at Munsusa in Sŏsan, South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. Ink on paper. 35.1 × 35.9 cm. Photo: courtesy of Sudŏksa Museum, Yesan. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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statue at Seiryōji in Kyoto, Japan. Commissioned by the Japanese pilgrim‐monk Chōnen (938–1016) in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, and brought back to Japan in 985, the statue was opened in 1954 for repairs, and discovered to be stuffed with diverse materials. The most distinctive item was, without doubt, a set of replica human organs made of silk, which was evidently intended to make the image appear more life‐like. Such mock organs have never been found inside Korean Buddhist statues. Instead, the pokchang items of Korean Buddhist statues are generally the pentad grouping of various materials such as the five kinds of grain, incense, treasures, and vases, all wrapped in silk pouches of five different colors which correspond to the “five treasure bottles” (obobyŏng) mentioned in the Scripture on Making Images, and enshrined in the eight‐ petal container called the “throat‐bell container” (huryŏngt’ong). With no precedent in China, it has been suggested that the notion of pentad grouping was derived from the esoteric Buddhist context, particularly the ideas described in such esoteric scriptures as the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtra (C. Tuoluoni ji jing) or the Vajras ́eka Sūtra (C. Jingangding jing), all translated into Chinese during the Tang dynasty (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2015: 31–58; Lee Seonyong 2016: 93–120). It has also been suggested that the core of the Koryŏ pokchang practice was formed by appropriating an important esoteric ritual called abhiṣeka (consecration), which changes the inner body of an icon to become part of a larger cosmic order (Lee Seunghye 2013: 284–291; Lee Seunghye 2015: 71–100). So far, more than a dozen sets of pokchang deposits from the Koryŏ period have been reported, but the number will certainly increase as more statues are examined (Chŏng Ŭ nu and Sin Ŭ nje 2017: 14–29). Tracing the origin and meaning of Korean pokchang practice is a topic undergoing intense study and helps us understand how Koryŏ Buddhists conceived the ontological status of Buddhist images.

Introduction of the Exotic: Sino‐Tibetan Styles While the so‐called “refined style” also prevailed into the late phase, Buddhist images of a totally new style appeared during the fourteenth century. A gilt‐bronze Avalokiteśvara image reportedly found at Mount Kŭmgang and now in the National Museum in Seoul is such an example (Figure  6.10). Seated on a lotus throne, the image wears a high crown with five points, round earrings with flower decoration, and intricately jeweled necklaces that hang over the chest. Narrow scarves cover the almost naked upper body, and the curved line of the waist is distinctive. All these formal features indicate that this image belongs to a different lineage from those discussed above. An almost identical image exists in the Musée Guimet in Paris, suggesting that they once formed a pair. In addition, small‐sized gilt bronze bodhisattva statues with similar stylistic features exist in several Korean collections, such as the Horim Museum in Seoul and the national museums in Chŏnju and Taegu. Slightly different in detailing, they all wear lavishly embellished high crowns and large earrings, with intricate necklaces hanging down to the torso. These images are often compared with bodhisattva images made in Yuan China during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as the one at the Feilaifeng grottos in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province dated to 1292, or the gilt‐bronze one in the Palace Museum in Beijing dated to 1309 (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2007: 115, 197). The formal and stylistic features of these Chinese images originated, in

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Figure 6.10  Seated Bodhisattva. 14th century. Gilt‐bronze. H. 18.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

turn, from bodhisattva images in Tibet and Nepal. Such images were embraced in China as part of the Yuan court’s adoption of Tibetan Buddhism as the state religion. Some of the Korean bodhisattvas under discussion had been regarded as works of the early Chosŏn period when the Sino‐Tibetan style was in vogue due to interaction with Ming China (Mun Hyŏnsun 1999: 119–152; Yi Ŭ nsu 2000: 47–76). However, the special political relationship between the Koryŏ and Yuan courts during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have now led scholars to believe that the exotic elements were transmitted earlier to Korea during the Koryŏ period and made no small impact on the creation of Buddhist images. As is well known, Koryŏ came under the dominance of Mongol Yuan from 1270 onward following almost forty years of warfare. Koryŏ kings had to send their crown princes to the Yuan capital of Beijing as hostages until it was time for them to assume the kingship. They also had to send their princesses to the Yuan imperial family as primary consorts. The intermarriage between the two courts contributed to the spread of Yuan Chinese styles to Koryŏ. Tibetan Buddhism as practiced in Yuan China gradually reached Koryŏ society through visits by Buddhist monks and through the transmission of scriptures and the arrival of artisans. The visits of Yuan artisans and their participation in the making of Buddhist visual objects in Koryŏ are recorded in literary sources. For instance, it is recorded that a bronze bell at Yŏnboksa (Practicing the Merit Temple) was made by Yuan artisans who

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had been called to Kaegyŏng in 1346 by King Ch’ungmok (r. 1344–1348) and his mother, the Yuan princess Tŏngnyŏng. The foreigners were preparing to return home after finishing their work at Mount Kŭmgang (Yang et al. 1992: 19). The renovation of Changansa (Everlasting Peace Temple) at Mount Kŭmgang from 1343 to 1345, as commissioned by Empress Ki of Yuan, a former princess of Koryŏ, is also noteworthy. Married to Emperor Shun (r. 1333–1368) of Yuan, Empress Ki presented donations to a Buddhist temple in Koryŏ and commissioned a number of Buddhist images to pray for the longevity of her husband and the newly‐born crown prince. It is recorded that the Buddhist halls and images at Changansa were all created by artisans from Yuan (Newly Enlarged Geography of Korea, vol. 47). The same text also reports that Yuan artisans were recruited to construct a ten‐story pagoda for Kyŏngch’ŏnsa (Respecting the Heaven Temple) on Mount Puso in the outskirts of Kaegyŏng in 1346. The Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda, which originally stood on Mount Puso, has been on display at the National Museum in Seoul since 2005. It was installed there after a convoluted history involving its illegal shipment to Japan in 1907, its return to Seoul in 1918, its restoration at the Kyŏngbok Palace in 1960, and eventual dismantling for repair in 1995. On the pagoda is carved a long inscription that tells of its construction in 1348 as a commission by Kang Yung and Ko Yongbong, powerful pro‐Yuan figures and influential financial officers in charge of disbursing funds to Empress Ki. Made of white marble, the pagoda is distinctive in many aspects, combining Sino‐Tibetan and traditional Korean styles. Aside from the uniqueness of the overall structure, it is also notable that each side of the pagoda is richly embellished with relief carvings of various religious themes and figures. They include depictions of episodes from the Journey to the West (C. Xiyou ji), a famous popular Chinese novel of the pilgrim Xuanzang’s (ca. 602–664) journey to India with a monkey and other animals, on the base, and depictions of the assemblies of various Buddhas with their attendant bodhisattvas and guardians as described in Buddhist scriptures. Depictions of episodes of the Journey to the West are found in China such as those at Feilaifeng in Hangzhou, while depictions of Buddhist assemblies are found carved on pagodas in both China and Korea. However, the combination of these two thematic groups in one pagoda is unknown. It has often been pointed out that while the relief carvings on the pagoda of the Kyŏngch’onsa retain traditional Koryŏ elements, they also present new decorative motifs in the halos worn by the Buddha or the jewelry worn by bodhisattvas. In addition to the evident inspiration from Yuan China, the ways in which the images of the pagoda were carved—in terms of their clothing, facial countenance, and overall stylistic characteristics—are closer to the native Koryŏ tradition than to the Tibetan style that was in vogue in the Yuan court (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2007: 238–278). Accordingly, the multi‐faceted nature of the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda raises many questions concerning the extent of Yuan influence on the formation of the Sino‐Tibetan style in Koryŏ visual culture.

Further Issues Buddhist art of the Koryŏ period provided inspiration to the following Chosŏn period, just as the firm artistic base of Unified Silla had previously provided for Koryŏ. A number of significant issues have been studied over the past decades to elucidate the

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characteristics of Koryŏ Buddhist art, but many issues still remain to better achieve understanding of the period. One of the issues is the relationship between Buddhist painting and Buddhist sculpture in the period. It has often been suggested that a great deal of iconography and style were shared between the two media. We need to closely look into the two in terms of how they related to each other both thematically and stylistically, and in what ways they provide information to fill in the blank pages of Koryŏ Buddhist art history, both in the capital and in provincial areas. Elements of Esoteric Buddhism in Koryŏ Buddhist art is another issue that waits further study. Among Buddhist statues not treated in this study are thousand‐arm bodhisattva statues made during the late phase such as those in the Museé Guimet in Paris and the National Museum in Seoul. Besides, not a small number of Esoteric Buddhist ritual implements were made and used during the Koryŏ period. Esoteric Buddhist elements in the pokchang practice have also been emphasized in recent years and actively studied (Lee Seunghye 2015: 71–100; Lee Seonyong 2016: 93–120). It is anticipated that a more comprehensible picture of Koryŏ Buddhist art will develop with the study of these issues (Sørensen 2011: 597–615). Finally, it is also intriguing to note that a number of Buddhist statues as well as paintings made in Koryŏ were taken to Japan and enshrined in Japanese Buddhist temples as objects for worship (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2007: 205–237). Replicas of them were subsequently made by Japanese artisans and thus have impacted the creation of Japanese Buddhist art. Korean Buddhist works preserved in Japan have recently been assiduously researched, and this will cast further light on the reception of Koryŏ Buddhist art in Japan (Pak Ŭ n’gyŏng and Chŏng Ŭ nu 2008).

References Cho Sujin. 2001. “Ch’ungnam chiyŏk kŏsŏkpul e kwanhan koch’al” [Study on monumental stone Buddha statues of the South Ch’ungch’ŏng region]. Pulgyo kogohak 1: 79–106. Ch’oe Sŏngŭn. 1980. “Myŏngju chiyŏk ŭi Koryŏ sidae sŏkcho posalsang e taehan yŏn’gu” [Study on the stone bodhisattva images of the Myŏngju region during the Koryŏ period]. Pulgyo misul 5: 56–78. Ch’oe Sŏngŭn. 1997. “Tangmal Odae wa Yodae ŭi wŏnt’onghyŏng kogwan posalsang e taehan il koch’al—Koryŏ ch’ogi kogwanhyŏng posalsang kwa kwallyŏnhayŏ” [Research on the bodhisattva images wearing tall and quasi‐cylindrical crowns of the late Tang, Five Dynasties, and Liao: in relation to early Koryŏ bodhisattva images wearing tall crowns]. Kangjwa misulsa 9: 47–62. Ch’oe Sŏngŭn. 2013. Koryŏ sidae pulgyo chogak yŏn’gu [Study of Buddhist sculptures of the Koryŏ dynasty]. Seoul: Ilchogak. Ch’oe Sŏnju. 2000. “Koryŏ ch’ogi Kwanch’oksa sŏkcho posal ipsang e taehan yŏn’gu” [Study on the early Koryŏ standing stone bodhisattva statue at Kwanch’oksa]. Misulsa yŏn’gu 14: 3–33. Choi Sun‐ah. 2014. “Tit’e’il ŭi mihak: Koryŏ chŏn’gi taehyŏng sŏkpul chaego” [The aesthetics of details: Rethinking early Koryŏ monumental stone Buddhist statues]. In Semilham ŭro ingnŭn han’guk misul, edited by Leeum, Samsung Museum, 78–93. Seoul: Leeum, Samsung Museum.

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Chŏng Sŏnggwŏn. 2007. “Koryŏ Kwangjong tae sŏkpul ŭi t’ŭksŏng kwa yŏnghyang” [Characteristics and influences of Koryŏ stone Buddhist statues from Kwangjong’s reign]. Munhwa sahak 27: 579–600. Chŏng Ŭ nu. 2007. Koryŏ hugi pulgyo chogak yŏn’gu [Study on late Koryŏ Buddhist sculptures]. Seoul: Munye ch’ulp’ansa. Chong Ŭ nu. 2013. “Mid‐Goryeo Buddhist Sculpture and the Influence of Song‐Dynasty China.” Journal of Korean Art & Archaeology 7: 41–59. Chŏng Ŭ nu. 2015. “Koryŏ sidae pul pokchang ŭi t’ŭkching kwa hyŏngsŏng paegyŏng” [Characteristics and formative background of sacred objects stored in Buddhist images of the Koryŏ dynasty]. Misulsahak yŏn’gu 286: 31–58. Chŏng ŭnu and Sin Ŭ nje. 2017. Koryŏ ŭi sŏngmul: pulpokchang [Koryŏ’s sacred objects: Buddhist pokchang]. Seoul: Kyŏngin munhwasa. Kang In’gu. 1975. “Sŏsan Munsusa kŭmdong yŏrae chwasang pokchang yumul” [Pokchang remains from the seated gilt‐bronze Buddha statue at Munsusa in Sŏsan]. Misul charyo 18: 1–18. Kang Ubang. 1988. “T’ongil Silla ch’ŏlbul kwa Koryŏ ch’ŏlbul ŭi p’yŏnnyŏn siron” [Chronology of iron Buddha statues of the Unified Silla and Koryŏ dynasties]. Misul charyo 41: 1–31. Kim Kirung. 1980. “Koryŏ kŏsŏkpul chosŏng e kwanhan koch’al” [Study on the creation of monumental stone Buddhist statues during the Koryŏ]. In Cho’u Hwang Suyŏng paksa kohŭi kinyŏm misulsahak nonch’ong [Festschrift essays on art history in honor of Dr. Hwang Suyŏng’s 70th birthday], 149–168. Seoul: T’ongmun’gwan. Kim Lena. 1985. “Koryŏ sidae sŏkcho pulsang yŏn’gu” [Study on stone Buddhist statues of the Koryŏ period]. Kogo misul 166/167: 36–55. Kim, Lena. 2005. Buddhist Sculpture of Korea. Elizabeth, NJ and Seoul: Hollym. Kim Lena, Chŏng Ǔnu, Yi Sŭnghŭi et  al. 2011. Han’guk pulgyo misulsa [History of Korean Buddhist art]. Seoul: Mijinsa. Kim Wŏnyong. 1980. Han’guk komisul ŭi ihae [Understanding ancient Korean art]. Seoul: Seoul National University. Lee, Junghee. 2003. “Goryeo Buddhist Sculpture.” In Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of Enlightenment 918‐1392, edited by Kumja Paik Kim, 140–165. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum. Lee, Seonyong. 2013. “History of the Bokjang Tradition in Korea.” Journal of Korean Art & Archaeology 7: 60–75. Lee Seonyong. 2016. “Uri nara pulpokchang ŭi t’ŭkching” [Characteristics of Korean Buddhist pokchang]. Misulsahak yŏn’gu 289: 93–120. Lee, Seunghye. 2013. “Framing and Framed: Relics, Reliquaries, and Relic Shrines in Chinese and Korean Buddhist Art from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Centuries.” PhD diss., University of Chicago. Lee Seunghye. 2015. “Koryŏ sidae pulpokchang ŭi hyŏngsŏng kwa ŭimi” [Formation and meaning of Buddhist pokchang of the Koryŏ dynasty]. Misulsahak yŏn’gu 285: 71–100. Mun Hyŏnsun. 1999. “Myŏng ch’ogi T’ibet’ŭ sik pulsang ŭi t’ŭkching kwa yŏnghyang” [Characteristics and influence of Tibetan‐style Buddhist images during the early Ming]. Misulsa yŏn’gu 13: 119–152.

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Mun Myŏngdae. 2003[1983]. “Koryŏ hugi tana yangsik (sin kojŏnjŏk yangsik) pulsang ŭi sŏngnip kwa chŏn’gae” [Establishment and development of late Koryŏ refined‐style Buddhist images]. Komunhwa 22: 33–71. Reprinted 2003 in Han’guk ŭi pulsang chogak 4 [Buddhist sculpture of Korea, vol. 4], 206–242. Seoul: Yekyong. Pak Ŭ n’gyŏng and Chŏng Ŭ nu. 2008. Sŏ Ilbon chiyŏk Han’guk ŭi pulsang kwa pulhwa [Korean Buddhist statues and paintings remaining in western Japan]. Pusan: Minjok munhwa. Sørensen, Henrik H. 2011. “Esoteric Buddhism under the Koryŏ.” In Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia, edited by Charles D. Orzech, Henrik H. Sørensen, and Richard K. Payne, 597–615. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Vermeersch, Sem. 2004. “Buddhism at the Center: The Temples of Kaesŏng and Their Socio‐Political Role.” Acta Koreana 7 (2): 7–34. Yang, Han‐sung, Kyung‐bo Seo, and Charles Goodwin. 1992. Yonboksa Bell in Kaesong, Korea. Seoul: Po Chin Chai Ltd. Yi Ŭ nsu. 2000. “Chosŏn ch’ogi kŭmdong pulsang e nat’ananŭn Myŏngdae Lama pulsang yangsik ŭi yŏnghyang” [Influence of Tibetan Buddhist images of the Ming dynasty on early Chosŏn gilt‐bronze statues]. Kangjwa misulsa 15: 47–76. Yu Hongjun. 2011. Na ŭi munhwa yusan tapsa ki [My exploration of cultural heritage], vol. 6. P’aju: Ch’angbi.

Glossary Changansa [Jangansa] 長安寺 Changgoksa [Janggoksa] 長谷寺 Chigwang [Jigwang] 智光 Chōnen (J.) 奝然 Ch’ŏngyang [Cheongyang] 靑陽 Chŏnju [Jeonju] 全州 Chosang kyŏng [Josang gyeong] 造像經 Ch’ungju [Chungju] 忠州 Ch’ungmok [Chungmok] 忠穆(王) Feilaifeng (C.) 飛來峯 Han 漢(江) Hansongsa 寒松寺 Hŭngbŏpsa [Heungbeopsa] 興法寺 Hunyo sipcho [Hunyo sipjo] 訓要十條 huryŏng [huryeong] 喉鈴 huryŏngt’ong [huryeongtong] 喉鈴筒 hwangp’okcha [hwangpokja] 黃幅子 Hyemyŏng [Hyemyeong] 慧明 Iksan 益山 Jingangding jing (C.) 金剛頂經 Kaegyŏng [Gaegyeong] 開京 Kaesimsa [Gaesimsa] 開心寺

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Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kaet’aesa [Gaetaesa] 開泰寺 Kaeunsa [Gaeunsa] 開運寺 Kang Yung [Gang Yung] 姜融 Kangnŭng [Gangneung] 江陵 Kannonji (J.) 觀音寺 Ki [Gi] 奇 Kim Chuwŏn [Kim Juwon] 金周元 Ko Yongbong [Go Yongbong] 高龍鳳 Kŏdonsa [Geodonsa] 居頓寺 Kodo‐ri [Godo‐ri] 古都里 Koryŏsa [Goryeosa] 高麗史 Kŭmgang [Geumgang] 金剛(山) Kwanch’oksa [Gwanchoksa] 灌燭寺 Kwanch’oksa sachŏk ki [Gwanchoksa sajeok gi] 灌燭寺史蹟記 Kwangjong [Gwangjong] 光宗 Kwangju [Gwangju] 廣州 Kyo [Gyo] 敎 Kyŏngbok [Gyeongbok] 景福(宮) Kyŏngch’ŏnsa [Gyeongcheonsa] 敬天寺 Mirŭk taewŏn [Mireuk daewon] 彌勒大院 Mit’a pokchang immulsaek ki [Mita bokjang immulsaek gi] 彌陀腹藏入物色記 Munsusa 文殊寺 myŏllyugwan [myeollyugwan] 冕旒冠 Myŏngju [Myeongju] 溟州 Naksansa 洛山寺 Nonsan 論山 obobyŏng [obobyeong] 五寶甁 paryŏptong [paryeopdong] 八葉同 pokchang [bokjang] 腹藏 Pongchŏngsa [Bongjeongsa] 鳳停寺 Powŏnsa [Bowonsa] 普願寺 Puso [Buso] 扶蘇(山) Pusŏksa [Buseoksa] 浮石寺 saridong [saridong] 舍利同 Seiryōji (J.) 淸凉寺 Sennyū ji (J.) 泉涌寺 Shun (C.) 順 Sinboksa 神福寺 Sinjŭng tongguk yŏji sŭngnam [Sinjeung dongguk yeoji seungnam] 新增東國輿地勝覽 Sŏn [Seon] (C. Chan; J. Zen) 禪 Sŏsan [Seosan] 瑞山 T’aejo [Taejo] 太祖 Taejosa [Daejosa] 大鳥寺 Taewŏnsa [Daewonsa] 大圓寺

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tana yangsik [dana yangsik] 端雅樣式 Tanhosa [Danhosa] 丹湖寺 T’anmun [Tanmun] 坦文 Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip [Dongguk Yi Sangguk jip] 東國李相國集 Tongmunsŏn [Dongmunseon] 東文選 Tŏngnyŏng [Deongnyeong] 德寧 Tuoluoni ji jing (C.) 陀羅尼集經 Wŏlchŏngsa [Woljeongsa] 月精寺 Wŏnju [Wonju] 原州 Xia Huayansi (C.) 下華嚴寺 Xiyou ji (C.) 西遊記 Yi Kyubo [Yi Gyubo] 李奎報 Yŏnboksa [Yeonboksa] 演福寺 Yungang (C.) 雲岡 zōnai nōnyū hin (J.) 像內納入品

7

The Art of Salvation: New Approaches to Koryŏ Buddhist Painting Yoonjung Seo

Introduction “Koryŏ Buddhist Painting” collectively refers to a group of paintings created on the Korean peninsula around the thirteenth to fourteenth century, which depict Buddhist icons, typically in the format of large hanging scrolls. As Buddhism was the official religion during the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) various Buddhist paintings were produced under royal patronage and used for state‐sponsored ceremonies and funerary rituals. These paintings reflect not only the beliefs, but the taste and refinement of Koryŏ royalty and aristocrats. This essay will explore Koryŏ Buddhist paintings from two distinct but non‐exclusive perspectives by unveiling their artistic characteristics and their religious background. It will also address pivotal issues of materiality, secularity, and the controversies related to them. The first part is devoted to a review of previous studies of Koryŏ Buddhist painting, whose accomplishments lie in the identification of formal characteristics and iconographical features, in the understanding of stylistic development, in theological underpinnings, and in art patronage. The second half explores specific practices, the role of material qualities, and secular imagery in these Buddhist paintings, as well as the interregional connectedness embedded in them. From these inquiries the following questions arise: did the quest for merit and religious salvation suffice as reason to commission sumptuous images for Buddhists who were supposed to renounce material value? How were Buddhist paintings and other religious objects experienced, handled, perceived, and conceptualized by the people who produced and used them? And more broadly, how did the network of relationships and values that religious objects and images produced affect the society and the belief system?

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Approximately 160 Koryŏ Buddhist paintings have nowadays been identified, most of which are currently housed in Japanese collections. With the exception of a few examples, all surviving paintings were produced under the reigns of kings Ch’ungnyŏl (r. 1274–1298, 1299– 1308) and Ch’ŭngsŏn (r. 1298, 1308–1313) during a period of powerful political intervention and oppression from the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Both the stylistic features and doctrinal backgrounds that these works share reveal unique features distinguishing them from contemporaneous Chinese and Japanese works. Yet, their formal elements and iconographic features also evidence the transcultural interactions among China, Korea, and Japan. In particular, close affinities with Buddhist art in central Asia offer interesting insights into the spread of Buddhist iconography and texts throughout Asia. Mindful of the significance of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings as transportable objects, this study concentrates not only on the moment of production, but also on the social trajectory of works of art. Moreover, thirty of these paintings bear dated inscriptions and only twenty‐three works carry the name of patrons and artists. Thus, archival research on the votive texts and inscriptions has uncovered different groups of patrons: royalty, aristocrats, Buddhist priests, and local communities (Kim Junghee 2010: 30–61). In fact, religion cannot exist without things, places, or bodies, nor may it operate without intervention from the mundane world. It is thus necessary to not only consider the materiality of Buddhist art, but also the interrelations and cross‐inspiration of secular and sacred images, and the social function of objects in relation to their audience or users. Therefore, critical concepts and methodologies from the disciplines of art history, religious studies, material culture, and cultural anthropology will be employed to explore the shifting relationships among paintings, people, and rituals.

Koryŏ Buddhist Painting: Rediscovered Treasures The study of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings was inaugurated by Japanese scholars in the early twentieth century. Kumagai Nobuo introduced seventy‐five Korean scrolls, including twenty‐four Koryŏ Buddhist paintings, and thereby started art historical research on Koryŏ Buddhist paintings in Japanese collections. Bringing together fifty‐ two scrolls and seventeen illuminated sutras, the special exhibition, Korean Buddhist Paintings of the Koryŏ Dynasty, held in the Yamato Bunkakan Museum in 1978, demonstrated the unique artistic and historical value of Buddhist art of the Koryŏ dynasty and aroused intense scholarly interest in diverse aspects of these works. In the 1980s the publication of catalogues by Japanese and Korean scholars, including Yoshida Hiroshi, Kikutake Jun’ichi, and Yi Tongju then provided the foundation for further research on their defining characteristics during the following decades. In addition, newly discovered works became known to the public and academia through exhibitions in Japan and Korea. Based on a review of accumulated research materials, Chung Woothak and Ide Seinosuke have described the pictorial and iconographical characteristics of Koryŏ Buddhist painting, such as the application of a scheme of unmixed primary colors, consisting of red, green, and blue with accentuations in gold pigment, and of



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lotus‐arabesque roundel patterns on garments. In addition, compositions overly emphasizing the main deity, with the auspicious swastika symbol on the icon’s chest and chakras on both palms, an overall lack of figural movement, minimal interest in illusionistic space, and attention to intricate details were defined as main characteristics (Chung 2010: 12–29; Ide 2003: 34–47). These characteristics help to distinguish Koryŏ Buddhist painting from similar works produced in neighboring countries. For instance, the use of a restricted color scheme in Koryŏ Buddhist painting contrasts with the discernible color variation and gradation of Song Buddhist art, while the flatness of the figures and the space distinguishes Koryŏ paintings from Japanese examples, which use various colors and shading techniques. The strong tendency of Chinese and Japanese works to represent volume, to give a sensuous depiction of the icons, and to use pronounced outlines is replaced in Koryŏ Buddhist painting with decorative surfaces restraining three‐dimensional representation, and with the subtle use of very thin lines. Lavish use of gold pigment to delineate decorative patterns and to adorn ritual utensils contrast with the delicacy of Chinese and Japanese paintings. Different patterns consisting of arabesques, lotus and other floral motifs, often enclosed in medallions, together with a tortoiseshell pattern and the so‐called “seven treasures” pattern are frequently used in the decoration of garments. Such highly decorative qualities of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings are thought to be due to the fact that most of the extant works are court commissions from the latter half of the dynasty.

Icons and Iconography The extant body of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings exhibits a limited variation of iconography and subjects, which are deeply rooted in the teaching of the Flower Garland Sutra (Skt. Avataṃ saka sūtra, K. Hwaŏmgyŏng) and of Pure Land Buddhism, and thereby represent the main currents of Buddhist practice in the Koryŏ dynasty. Of the 160 presently known paintings, sixty paintings center on the Buddha Amitābha, forty‐six on the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, and twenty‐six on the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha. It is thus no exaggeration to say that these three deities constitute the major corpus of extant Koryŏ Buddhist paintings. To give a rough profile of the iconographical conventions, the representative features of these three deities may be outlined with a particular emphasis on several unique distinguishing elements. Avalokiteśvara is known as a compassionate and benevolent bodhisattva who helps suffering sentient beings. In Koryŏ paintings, the so‐called Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara (Figure 7.1) is more frequently depicted than any other type of Avalokiteśvara image. The deity is presented seated on a rocky outcrop protruding from the sea, and holds a rosary, or in some cases, willow branches. On the rock table at his side, a kuṇḍikā, a bronze or ceramic flask used in Buddhist rituals, with willow branches is placed. In the lower register of the painting, the boy pilgrim Sudhana, who visits the bodhisattva to seek enlightenment and wisdom, appears in a pose of adoration. His encounter with the deity is recounted in the chapter “Entering the Dharma Realm” (Skt. Dharmadhātu, K. Ip pŏpkyep’um) of the

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Figure 7.1  Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara. 1st half of the 14th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 201.6 × 71.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Flower Garland Sūtra. In addition, the iconography of this painting is based the “Universal Gate of Avalokiteśvara” (Kwanseŭm posal pomunp’um) or Avalokiteśvara chapter of the Lotus Sūtra (Skt. Saddharma Puṇḍarīka sūtra, K. Pŏphwagyŏng), in which the deity is described as one of the thirty‐three manifestations of Avalokiteśvara. In some paintings, a diminutive moon, from which the title, “Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara” originates, is depicted at the top. Sumptuous bouquets with lotus flowers in full bloom, lotus buds, and corals are arranged in the water. Two stalks of bamboo are depicted behind the rock cave where Avalokiteśvara is seated. Historical records indicate that the Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara, encircled by a full moon and seated in a bamboo grove, was painted by the famous Tang painter Zhou Fang (ac. mid‐9th century). The earliest extant examples of this subject were discovered in Dunhuang in Gansu Province, as seen in a tenth‐century painting of Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara now in the collection of the Musée Guimet, Paris. Amitābha, the focus of worship in Pure Land Buddhism, is a deity dispatched to the world for the purpose of leading the dead to Buddha’s Western Paradise. Amitābha



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Buddha is easily accessible, responsive, and keen to communicate with ordinary people—devotees are already guaranteed entry to paradise by just reciting his name. The deity is either depicted alone, or accompanied by his usual attendant bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara and Mahāsthāmaprāpta, or the Eight Great Bodhisattvas. When forming such “Amitābha Triad” or “The Trinity of Western Paradise,” the practice was to depict the main deity frontally in a seated pose (Figure  7.2). Mahāsthāmaprāpta, holding a seal, wears a jeweled crown with a kuṇḍīka. Avalokiteśvara, adorned with a small image of Amitābha in his crown, also carries iconographic attributes, such as a kuṇḍīka or a willow branch in his hands. Amitābha is sometimes accompanied by Avalokiteśvara and Kṣitigarbha as seen in the Descent of Amitābha in the collection of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (Figure 7.3). The standing Amitābha Buddha slightly bends his body and holds his right hand down in the wish‐granting gesture or mudra. This pose and gesture allude to the sincerity and goodness of dwellers of the Western Paradise, which encourages a devotee to reach the Western Paradise without being afraid of suffering.

Figure 7.2  Amitābha Triad. 13th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 114.9 × 59.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Figure 7.3  Descent of Amitābha. 14th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 110.7 × 51.0 cm. Photo: courtesy of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

The iconographic tradition of portraying Amitābha with the Eight Great Bodhisattvas became popular in Korea during the Koryŏ dynasty. The Sūtra of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas Maṇḍalas Preached by the Buddha (Skt. Aṣṭamaṇḍalaka sūtra, K. Pal taebosal mandara kyŏng) translated by Amoghavajra (705–774), and the chapter “Samantabhadra’s Vows of the Introduction to the Realm of Inconceivable Liberation” (Skt. Bhadracaryāpra idhānarāja, K. Pohyŏn posal haengwŏn ch’an) from the Flower Garland Sūtra served as the textual sources for the combination of Amitābha and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas. In Koryŏ Buddhist paintings of Amitābha and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas theme, two different types of bodhisattva groupings are presented. One version includes the eight bodhisattvas described in Amoghavajra’s translation while the other one has Mahāsthāmaprāpta in place of one of the bodhisattvas listed in the sūtra. The bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha is a leading deity responsible for the salvation of all sentient beings in the Buddha‐less time between the nirvāṇa of Sā́ kyamuni, the



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historical Buddha, and the advent of Maitreya, the future Buddha yet to be born. As a primary bodhisattva in the Six Paths of Incarnation, into which a sentient being would be reborn according to the merit (karma) it has accumulated (becoming a denizen of hell, hungry ghost, animal, human, titanic demon, or god), Kṣitigarbha is also popularly been called “Lord of the Underworld” and has long been worshipped in East Asia. Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha’s ability to rescue people who had been sent to hell and thus to ensure the well‐being of deceased relatives and oneself after leaving this world was greatly appealing to the public. Therefore, this deity became one of the most frequently painted Buddhist icons of the late Koryŏ period. Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva (Figure 7.4) is portrayed as a monk with a shaved head, or wearing a headscarf. He is clad in a formal robe (saṃghāti) and is adorned with ­jewelry, including a necklace and wrist band or bangles, just like other bodhisattvas. In most Koryŏ paintings he is shown holding a cintāmaṇi, a wish‐granting crystal ball, and/or a monk’s staff. Kṣitigarbha appears in various compositions: as a single figure, as part of a triad, or accompanied by heavenly beings and the Ten Kings of Hell.

Figure 7.4  Kṣitigarbha. 1st half of the 14th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 84.5 × 36.8 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Among these, the most frequent arrangement is of the bodhisattva standing alone, as if looking directly at the devotee. Another recurrent iconographic type consists of Kṣitigarbha flanked by other deities and figures (Pak 1977). When the bodhisattva appears in a group, he is prominently seated on a lotus throne, flanked by the legendary figure Wudu Guiwang (Demon King of No Poison) and the Monk Daoming. Also in the assembly are the Ten Kings of Hell as well as the Guardians of the Four Directions (Lokapālas), and Indra and Brahmā (Figure 7.5). The Ten Kings of Hell were also depicted as a series of ten separate paintings, passing judgement on the sins of the dead. The deceased appears before a different king each week for seven weeks, totaling forty‐nine days and seven kings. On the hundredth day, the deceased appears before the eighth king after one year, before the ninth king; and after three years, before the tenth and final king when a judgement is made as to where in the Six Paths of karmic reincarnation the deceased will be reborn. Each of the ten paintings represents one of the Ten Kings in the official dress of a bureaucrat, sitting on a chair behind a desk while servants of the underworld present the deceased for examination.

Figure 7.5  Kṣitigarbha and the Ten Kings of Hell. 14th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 109.0 cm × 56.8 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Asian Art Museum, Berlin State Museums, Germany. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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Materiality and Secular Elements Recently scholars have increasingly acknowledged secular elements within Koryŏ Buddhism. The important thing to notice here is that not all pictorial elements were related to the contents of a sutra, yet they served to enhance the spiritual or religious value of the icon. Countless miracles performed by Buddha images themselves such as crying, talking, bleeding, sweating, bearing śarı̄ra (Buddhist relics), moving and walking, changing their color and emitting light were recorded in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa) by the monk Iryŏn (1206–1289) and other literature of the Koryŏ period. In most instances, the power of images and efficacy of the deity were experienced and expressed without knowledge of scriptural content; several episodes actually show that ignorance of Buddhist doctrines was no obstacle to performing religious acts. Motifs from indigenous myths, miraculous stories, folklore, and the everyday world were incorporated into the realm of Buddhism to highlight the deities’ efficacy and spiritual power. For instance, a blue bird, the dragon king and a pair of bamboo stalks included in paintings of the Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara theme are believed to originate from popular stories. In a legend of Naksan Temple, the famous Silla monk ŭisang (625–702) encountered Avalokiteśvara at Naksan on the east coast of Korea. The name Naksan is an abbreviation of Potarakasan, referring to Mount Potalaka in India, which is believed to be the holy abode of Avalokiteśvara. Seven days before ŭisang’s meeting with the deity, a crystal rosary was given to him from Heaven and a dragon king of the East Sea brought him a cintāmaṇi. The deity told him to build a temple on the mountain at a spot where bamboo grew. ŭisang followed Avalokiteśvara’s command and enshrined a carved image of the bodhisattva, together with the cintāmaṇi and the rosary in the temple. Another story relates that the great monk Wŏnhyo (617–686) of the Later Silla period met two women and, not realizing that they were manifestations of Avalokiteśvara, behaved carelessly but was then warned by a blue bird. In addition, miscellaneous motifs not exposited in the sutras, such as textiles, rocks and mountains, and shapes of utensils, are less restrained by iconographic stipulation and thus provided room to insert secular elements as expressions of the artist’s creativity and the donor’s intention. It is not certain when or why the willow and the moon were inserted into Koryŏ Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara paintings. Scholars have pointed out that the former symbolizes the cleansing and healing power of the deity and some features of these paintings are closely related to Buddhist paintings of the Western Xia dynasty (1038– 1227). A hare pounding the elixir of immortality under a laurel tree in the moonlight, a Daoist motif frequently found in tombs of the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and the Koguryŏ kingdom (37 BCE–668 CE), also appears in Koryŏ Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara paintings (Figure 7.1). This is an interesting example of how a myth predating Buddhism was incorporated in Buddhist painting without particular textual references, blurring boundaries between folklore and sacred content in Koryŏ art. Holding the kundīka, a flask used for ceremonies and a willow branch are considered primary attributes of the Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara. However, the shapes of the kundīka and the transparent crystal bowl containing the kundīka varied and were most likely a matter of the artist’s discretion. For instance, a vase depicted in a

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painting at the temple Hase‐dera in Kamakura, Japan, resembles a celadon melon‐ shaped bottle with peony and chrysanthemum designs. The celadon bottle, which was originally a profane, everyday object for the royal household and aristocratic families, is transformed here into a sacred object. In Koryŏ Buddhist paintings secular or mythical figures mostly appear in the form of worshippers or patrons, as an audience for the Buddha’s sermon, as witnesses of the heavenly realm, and as participants in rituals. They are mostly royalty and aristocrats (possibly donors of the paintings) wearing elegant court dress and elaborate hairdos decorated with jewels and gold. Clothing and headgear of the royal members and nobles usually follows the official dress of the Song dynasty. It is interesting to note that the costume of the contemporary Chinese Yuan dynasty scarcely appears in Koryŏ paintings. In the Water‐Moon Avalokites ́vara and the Descent of Amitābha scrolls the worshippers are sometimes depicted in the lower corner of the painting, kneeling and holding their hands together in a gesture of courtesy (Figure 7.6). Despite their small scale, these figures play an important role in the painting as well as in the ritual context. They act as intermediaries between the secular and sacred worlds and invite the viewer to the scene. The viewer‐worshippers can project themselves into the paintings, thus transgressing the boundary between their world and that of the painting, and engage in the ritual performance or consider themselves listening to the Buddha’s preaching. In some examples, the invitation to transgress the boundary is made more obvious by the deities welcoming gestures and the lotus pedestal prepared for the deceased. The Descent of Amitābha (Figure 7.3) is a case in point, where the deity directly communicates with the worshippers shown in the lower register. In addition to aristocrat and royal patron‐worshippers, commoners’ lives and their labor are also depicted. Farmers plowing a field with oxen and harvesting crops in Illustration of the Sutra on the Descent of Maitreya of 1350 at the Sinnoin temple in Wakayama Prefecture (Figures 7.7 and 7.8) and people suffering from calamities in Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara at the Tanzan‐jinja shrine in Nara Prefecture appear as episodic narratives to demonstrate the contents of the sutra. Drawn in fine golden lines, the array of people being chased by snakes or tigers, robbed by bandits, meeting with disaster at sea, being trapped in a burning house or bedridden is based on chapter twenty‐five, the “Universal Gate of Avalokiteshvara,” of the Lotus Sutra. The Sinnoin scroll depicts the peaceful and prosperous world under the mercy of Maitreya while the Tanzan‐jinja example demonstrates how people in troubled situations may be saved thanks to the compassionate and benevolent aid of Avalokiteśvara. Such narrative elements not only visualize the sutra but also enhance the didactic function of these paintings. Beyond the imposing image of the deity and its heavenly realm, the presence of human beings seeking salvation and enjoying a serene life under the protection of the deity shows the dual nature of Koryŏ Buddhist painting as both icon and a didactic tool. Due to the paucity of earlier examples of Koryŏ Buddhist painting, it is difficult to know when and why these worldly images were first depicted in Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara paintings. However, this is probably related to the popularity of miraculous stories about Buddhist sutras in the fourteenth century. It is noteworthy, however, that the Miraculous Stories about the Lotus Sutra



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Figure 7.6  Detail of Figure 7.1. Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara. 1st half of the 14th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 201.6 × 71.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

(K. Pŏphwa yŏnghŏm chŏn) was compiled just before 1337 and widely circulated in Koryŏ society. This book gathers not only stories from the Tang and Song dynasties in China, but also, in its last two sections, miraculous stories that took place on the peninsula. The popularity of Buddhist narratives and miraculous stories in the fourteenth century enriched the repertoire of pictorial images and such images were then presumably incorporated into the iconography of Buddhist art. According to recent research on materiality in the study of religion, the significance of religious belief lies in human encounters with things, while extensive knowledge of doctrine or symbolism is largely unnecessary to the religious experience or its efficacy (Hutchings and McKenzie 2017: 3–13). By focusing on objects such as images, ritual accouterment, textiles, or architecture, we are able to collect primary evidence where textual documents are lacking. In addition, the study of materiality in a religious context allows us to explore a complex network of relationships among patron, artist, recipient and audience, as well as the awe, fear, and aspirations generated through interactions between human beings and objects. In order to understand an object and its place in material culture, we begin with the questions such as how it was made, what it is made of, and how it has been rendered. The production of paintings always involves physical, intellectual, and ritual labor: the  procurement of materials, drawing and coloring, eye‐opening ceremonies, enshrinement and preservation of images. Since all these labors were highly specialized

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Figure 7.7  Illustration of the Sutra on the Descent of Maitreya. 1350. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 178.2 × 90.3 cm. Shinnoin temple in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. Source: Kikutake Junichi and Chung Woothak (1996). (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

and often required precious materials, they also involved wealth and social prestige. Their cost, prestige, and virtuosity made these objects highly valuable artifacts, whose sacredness was represented and enhanced by the economic value invested in them and the authority of their donor (Rambelli 2007: 108–109). If we apply this approach to the example of the Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara in the Kagami jinja (Figure  7.9), we find that this painting was commissioned by a royal concubine, Sukpi, in 1310 to wish for the peaceful afterlife and well‐being of the royal family, a case that will be discussed further below. The extraordinary large piece of silk—approximately 250 centimeters in width—was specially made for this work by the government organ affiliated with the Office of Eunuchs (K. Aekchŏngguk), which was responsible for weaving special types of textiles at court. The painting was rendered by four court painters, including Kim U, a low‐ranking official associated with the office (Park Eunkyung 2010: 69–71). Considerations of the painting’s manufacture would include a discussion of the textile production technique, use of pigments, and



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Figure 7.8  Detail of Figure 7.7. Illustration of the Sutra on the Descent of Maitreya. 1350. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 178.2 × 90.3 cm. Shinnoin temple in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. Source: Kikutake Junichi and Chung Woothak (1996). (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

painting skills. In particular, its delicate depiction of transparent veils and textile patterns, as well as the application of gold pigment illustrate the technical accomplishments of Koryŏ court artists. Religious objects and images became activated through practice and their functions were fully recognized in their interactions with humans, institutions, and communities. In a Buddhist context, there has been a long controversy over giving form to the formless. Even though buddhas and bodhisattvas are originally formless, their virtues can be experienced via “visualization” accompanied by a complex system of ritual (Rambelli 2007: 81–87). The use of paintings such as Descent of Amitābha (Figure 7.3) in deathbed rituals of the Koryŏ dynasty is one such case. This painting depicts Amitābha descending to lead the deceased to the Western Paradise. Buddhist paintings were put into place during deathbed rituals to relieve suffering and fear and to assist the dying in visualizing Buddha’s paradise, where they would be reborn. Deathbed rituals and funeral rites were conducted by Buddhist priests and often in Buddhist temples, where Buddhist sculptures and paintings were used as ritual paraphernalia. It is known that in China Buddhist paintings were displayed on special feast days and during the funeral services of wealthy donors. On such occasions, the scrolls were hung on special altars. Incense, flowers, various kinds of fruits, food, and tea were presented while a monk recited sutras and led the mourners in prayer. As noted in earlier studies, paintings often not only depict the ritual scene but also a mentally envisioned world that participants and audiences could ascend to through

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Figure 7.9  Kim U et al. Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara. 1310. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 419.5 × 254.2 cm. Kagami shrine, Saga Prefecture, Japan. Source: Kikutake Junichi and Chung Woothak (1996). (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

contemplation. The multi‐sensory space created by the sound of sutra recitation, the scent of incense and flowers, and the action of worship allows participants to transcend earthly boundaries and experience divine space (Bloom 2017: 82–114). Likewise, the Descent of Amitābha was mostly used for worship in a ritual setting. Amitābha, who moves toward an un‐depicted worshipper in the lower left corner, is actively inviting the worshipper (viewer) to a virtual experience of his Western Pure Land. Last but not least, the socio‐economic context of the monk‐patron of Buddhist painting needs to be addressed. Buddhist teachings are replete with the refusal of worldly pleasure and renouncement of material abundance. However, there are a number of examples in Koryŏ history of Buddhist priests who commissioned sumptuous Buddhist paintings and sculptures. For instance, inscriptions tell us that Illustration of the Sutra on the Descent of Maitreya of 1296 at the Myomanji temple in Kyoto, Illustration of the Sixteen Contemplations of the Sutra of 1323 at the Chionin temple



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in Kyoto, and Buddha Amitābha with the Eight Great Bodhisattvas of 1320 at the Matsuo‐dera temple in Nara were all sponsored by Buddhist priests (Kim Junghee 2010: 30–61). These works were executed on a relatively large scale, measuring 120 to 200 centimeters in width and include numerous deities elaborately rendered with gold pigment. They required exquisite craftsmanship and costly materials, and thus conspicuous economic expenditure. Here, we encounter the problematic and contrasting attitude toward materiality in Buddhist society. How were individual monks able to amass personal wealth to afford such expensive products? The question of how a devout group of ascetic men could have amassed such extravagant artifacts has been asked by Gregory Schopen (Schopen 2004: 19– 44). In the case of Koryŏ society the answer lies in how the official examinations for Buddhist priesthood were managed by the state, and in temple farmlands granted by the court. Buddhism was incorporated into the state’s bureaucratic system and thus Buddhist priests established close ties with high officials and members of the royal family. In addition, temple farmland, like the monastic estate, became a financial resource for the Buddhist community, while forestalling criticism regarding monks’ pursuit of material accumulation. The ascetic life rejecting all wealth and social privilege operated on an ideal plane, but the materiality of ritual objects was emphasized on a practical level (Pak Kyŏngjun 2012: 324–326). Simplicity and restraints were not appropriate for Buddhist art, but rather spectacular magnificence and beauty were called for to elicit awe and inspiration from the intended audience. Precious objects such as jewels, corals, gold, and rare plants depicted in Buddhist painting were used as a lure or a reward for worshippers (Kieschnick 2003: 7–10). Most ritual objects have symbolic meanings and functions. Yet, in some cases their decorative value and delicacy surpasses their functional and symbolic value. The choice of textile patterns, decoration of ritual utensils, and color of clothes is not restricted to scriptural explanations, but rather reflects the material culture at a particular time. A hand‐held incense burner, ritual vessels, furniture, and architecture are all reflective of the sumptuous life of aristocrats and the mundane world. Some ritual objects excavated at the site of Tobong Academy in Seoul in 2012—gilt‐bronze vajra, bell, utensils—reveal the material aspect of Buddhist rituals during the Koryŏ dynasty. In addition, close affinities between these excavated objects and motifs depicted in the Sakyamuni Triad and Sixteen Arhats in the collection of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art are of interest.

Moving Images and Shifting Positions: Koryŏ Buddhist Paintings in Japan Approximately 130 of the nearly 160 extant Koryŏ Buddhist paintings are preserved in Japanese collections and most of the Koryŏ Buddhist paintings currently in Western and Korean collections were purchased from Japanese collectors. This naturally raises questions. Why were so many paintings transmitted to the Japanese archipelago and preserved there? How and when were the surviving paintings removed from Korea? Although little textual evidence remains to trace the specific

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circumstances in which the paintings left the Korean peninsula, it has been alleged that the invasions of the Japanese army under the command of the warlord Hideyoshi in the Imjin War (1592–98) caused an extensive relocation of Korean Buddhist paintings and other artifacts to Japan. However, scores of extant Koryŏ Buddhist paintings were deposited in Japan before the invasions, as early as the late fourteenth century, as evidenced by the Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara at the Kagami jinja (Figure 7.9), which was enshrined there in 1391. It bears inscriptions explaining the historical context surrounding the painting’s production at the Koryŏ court and the provenance of this painting in Japan. The painting was commissioned by a royal concubine, Sukpi, to wish for the peaceful afterlife of the late King Ch’ungnyŏl (r. 1274–1308) and to comfort King Ch’ungsŏn (r. 1308– 1313), who was sent to the Yuan capital as hostage at the time, and to pray for the repose of the dead crown prince. This painting was most likely placed in a royal temple, such as Minch’ŏnsa or Hŭngch’ŏnsa, near the capital city of Kaegyŏng (modern‐day Kaesŏng). Both temples were established under royal patronage and functioned as ancestral shrines for the kings, their Mongolian queens, and the imperial family of the Yuan dynasty. More recent research suggests that this painting was enshrined in the temple Sinhyosa, where King Ch’ungnyŏl passed away, and also that it was produced to commemorate the third anniversary of the king’s death. The second inscription describes how the monk Ryōkaku (ac. 14th century) obtained this painting, which had circulated on the market, and later how the monk Ryōken (ac. late 14th century) wrote an inscription to explain its placement into the Kagami jinja in 1391. This means that the painting was transferred to the archipelago sometime between 1310 and 1391, and that there was a market for Korean Buddhist paintings by the fourteenth century. However, the Kagami jinja’s Avalokiteśvara may not have been imported to Japan through maritime trade or diplomatic exchange. It is hard to imagine that a painting commissioned by a member of royal household and preciously treasured at the royal ancestral shrine was given as a diplomatic gift or offered for sale on the market at that time. Rather, the painting appears to have been the booty of Japanese pirates who occasionally attacked and vigorously raided the Korean peninsula since the early thirteenth century, or a looted object by people espousing a strong pro‐Ming stance during the transition from Yuan to Ming. The former hypothesis is evidenced by a historical record, which states that looting and pillaging became a serious concern for the Korean court from the mid‐fourteenth to the early fifteenth centuries. The History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa) records that marauding pirates invaded the temple Hŭngch’ŏnsa and despoiled it of portraits of King Ch’ungsŏn and Princess Han’guk (d.1315) in 1357. The second assumption is related to anti‐Yuan sentiment among the pro‐Ming faction in the fourteenth century, which resulted in the destruction or damage of properties or relics of pro‐Yuan aristocrats. The temples Minch’ŏnsa and Hŭngch’ŏnsa were established and supported by pro‐Yuan members of the royal family and thus these probably became targets for vandalism by the pro‐Ming faction. Due to the lack of documentation, however, it is not possible to trace the provenance of the Kagami jinja painting before its arrival in Japan. Yet, it suffices to say that the painting was removed by force from its original place, a Koryŏ royal temple, found its way to Japan, and circulated as a commodity there in the fourteenth century.



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Although the activities of Japanese pirates and militant forces may have been responsible for the widespread removal of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings to Japan, importation of Korean artifacts through international diplomacy and peaceful maritime trade also contributed to the circulation of Buddhist icons in East Asia. The Koryŏ Tripitaka, a famous and comprehensive collection of Buddhist texts, and Korean iron bells were frequently given by Koryŏ and Chosŏn monarchs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to shoguns and lords of regional domains (J. daimyō) of the Japanese archipelago upon request. The fourth Shogun of Ashikaga, Yoshimochi (1386–1428), even referred to the envoy he dispatched to Korea as the “Sutra Requesting Envoy,” and was eager to have him procure Korean Buddhist scriptures, well‐known for their delicate quality and superb craftsmanship (Lippit 2008: 194– 199). According to the Veritable Records of the Chosŏn dynasty (Chosŏn wangjo sillok), not only Buddhist scriptural canons and large iron temple bells, but also paintings, such as portraits of the Koryŏ Monk Na’ong, or the Buddha and Avalokiteśvara, and ceremonial paraphernalia were released to Japan as royal gifts. In fact, after Neo‐ Confucianism became the dominant ideology at the beginning of the new Chosŏn dynasty and Buddhism became severely suppressed, government officials departed quite easily with Koryŏ Buddhist icons (Robinson 2009: 71–101). Once Koryŏ Buddhist paintings were relocated to Japan, what may have happened to the identities of these works? How were these foreign cultural artifacts perceived? How did they shape and influence the aesthetic, religious practice, and cultural discourse in the recipient culture? And who played a role in the process of transmission of artifacts and in the shift of their meaning and function? Many Buddhist paintings in Japanese collections, now identified as Koryŏ products based on their inscriptions, had conventionally been attributed to Chinese masters of Buddhist painting before the twentieth century. The names of two Chinese painters in particular appear far more frequently than most—Wu Daozi (ca. 680–740) of the Tang dynasty and Zhang Sigong (fl. 13th century) of the Southern Song dynasty. For example, paintings of the Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara at the Sen‐oku Hakukokan museum, at the Daitokuji temple, and the Sensōji temple were thought to be works by Wu Daozi until the 1970s. Two of these paintings, the Avalokiteśvara in the Sen‐oku Hakukokan and the Sensōji, bear Koryŏ inscriptions, and the latter clearly states: “[made by] the monk‐ painter Hyehŏ from Haedong,” referring to the Korean peninsula. Nevertheless, these paintings were mistakenly recognized as Chinese works under the name of Wu Daozi until recently. The other frequently mentioned painter in relation to Koryŏ Buddhist paintings in Japanese collections is Zhang Sigong. Recently, it has been suggested that Zhang was a professional Chinese artist who worked on commission at a local temple affiliated with the Tiantai Pure Land sect in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, as well as producing paintings for export (Ide 2010: 98). However, the name has long been an enigma, even to the point of questioning whether Zhang Sigong was a real historical figure and whether he was a professional artist from Korea. He is only recorded in Japanese sources; the earliest of these is the Manual of the Shogunal Attendant (Kundaikan sōchōki). There Zhang Sigong is recorded as a painter of the Song dynasty, who excelled in figural subjects and representations of the Buddha, particularly Amitābha, and adhered to the highest standards of painterly excellence. There are also a number

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of early records on Zhang Sigong’s paintings compiled from the time of the Southern and Northern Courts (1336–1392) to the Muromachi era (1336–1573). These records provide information on Zhang Sigong’s Buddhist paintings used for interior display at the shogun’s mansion and for social gatherings of monks and aristocrats from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. While the paintings were ascribed to Zhang Sigong based on short texts attached to the paintings or to the wooden boxes in which the scrolls were preserved, a second category consists of a number of anonymous religious paintings that were at one time or another attributed to the artist. Almost all of them have now been reassigned to the Koryŏ dynasty because they share certain stylistic elements: decorative details, a limited color palette consisting of primary colors, floral medallions, generous use of gold pigment, compositions that overemphasize the main deity, and idiosyncratic iconography. All of these contrast with contemporaneous Chinese or Japanese counterparts, which feature more sensitive color variations and employ shading techniques (Lippit 2008: 199–292). An Amitābha scroll of 1286, in the former collection of the Shimazu family, is now considered one of the few securely dated Koryŏ Buddhist paintings, due to a dedicatory inscription by a Koryŏ retainer named Yŏm Sŭngik (d. 1302) that had been wrongly attributed to Zhang Sigong until the 1970s. Likewise, many Amitābha Triad paintings bearing inscriptions with the names of patrons and painters from the Koryŏ dynasty have also been mistakenly ascribed to this painter. Yet, in spite of the fact that a number of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings were labeled “Chinese things” (karamono), there was an awareness in Japan of Korean painting and a Koryŏ Buddhist style of painting. On the back of an Avalokiteśvara Triad at the temple Kakurinji there is an inscription stating that it was painted by a Koryŏ master. The temple Risshōji owned an Eleven‐headed Avalokiteśvara dated to 1484, which was referred to as a “Koryŏ painting” (Kōrai‐e). The Record of Treasure of the East Temple (Tōbōki), an inventory of imported objects housed at the Tōji temple in Kyoto, describes six paintings of Avalokiteśvara, which were rendered in the Koryŏ style. The nineteenth‐century record, Reference for Old Paintings (Koga bikō), compiled by Asaoka Okisada (1800–1856) with the participation of the literatus painter Tani Bunchō (1760–1841), includes a chapter on “Painting and Calligraphy from Chosŏn” (Chōsen shoga den), which offers information on Korean paintings and artists known in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1868). The aforementioned White‐Robed Avalokiteśvara by the Koryŏ monk Hyehŏ is recorded therein, accompanied by a sketch of the painting and its inscription. This work still survives and is treasured at the Sensōji temple in Tokyo. It is clear that the compiler was aware of the scroll’s Korean origin. He added a commentary reading, “Without the [Koryŏ] inscription, this painting could be ascribed to a painter from the [Japanese] Kose clan.” This note implies that the likeness between Koryŏ and Kamakura Buddhist paintings produced by Kose painters is so remarkable that it can be misleading. Where and in what context were early Korean Buddhist works placed after being relocated to the archipelago? By whom were they collected, appreciated, and viewed? Koryŏ Buddhist images were oftentimes donated by warlords or daimyō families, who brought them back from the peninsula as war booty or had purchased them at an art



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market in Japan, as prayers for the prosperity of the donor’s family and personal wishes for their relatives’ rebirth in paradise. The paintings were worshipped as a main deity of the temple hall and used for Buddhist ceremonies. Apart from shoguns and feudal lords, priests such as Ryōkaku and Ryōken obtained Koryŏ icons and offered them to temples. As indicated by the records in the Manual of the Shogunal Attendant, and in inventories of shogunal collections from the Muromachi period, Koryŏ Buddhist paintings were often mistakenly classified as works by Zhang Sigong and collected and displayed as “Chinese Things” (karamono), or imported Chinese luxury objects, at the shogun’s residence. The display of karamono as a means to show off material wealth and to legitimize political authority developed in the late Muromachi period and came to a high point around 1430 in the Higashiyama culture of Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436– 1490) (Lippit 2008: 120–130). The fondness for karamono prevalent in this period offers interesting insights into the Japanese epistemology of the binary structure of the two realms of “Kara” (Tang/China) and “Yamato” (Japan). “Kara,” which lexically means the Tang empire of China, does not simply refer to the historical entity but to a larger category. This is apparent in the Japanese insistence on using the appellation “Kara” in reference to paintings (kara‐e) and things (kara‐mono) imported from the continent, even after the fall of the Tang dynasty. Even the Korean states on the peninsula were recognized as being “Kara.” As a result, many cultural artifacts of Korean origin were perceived as Chinese objects. In the same vein, Koryŏ Buddhist paintings fall into the category of kara‐e and were thus collected, displayed, and appreciated as belonging to the aesthetic realm of imported foreign objects. It was not uncommon for Japanese painters to copy paintings imported from China and Korea borrowing the brushwork of revered masters from the past. During the Edo period painters of the Kano School of Painting venerated conservative Chinese painting styles from the remote past and copied ancient Chinese masterpieces housed in shoguns’ collections and temples. Kano painters’ appropriation of Chinese painting models in their creations is exemplified by many of Kano Tan’yū’s (1602–1674) reduced‐size copies of ancient paintings. The paradigm that established the legacy of Ashikaga’s collection of karamono was solidified during this era, resulting in the creation of a Japanized canon of Chinese painting (Lippit 2012:105–130).

Conclusion The cultural biography of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings in Japanese collections tells us how these Buddhist icons have been relocated and reassigned over time. It provokes a need to question modern scholars’ concern with the nationality of artists, which is often motivated by the desire to search for a national style and to formulate a cohesive narrative within the frame of modern statehood. The investigation of textual resources suggests that nationality was not a primary concern to Koryŏ patrons and artist, nor to Japanese beholders in the pre‐modern period; what mattered was establishing the cultural legacy, genealogy, or tradition through which they heightened their religious, cultural, and political prestige. However, this does not mean that the distinctive forms

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of Koryŏ images did not matter to audiences, or that recognition of the foreign provenance of an image was not actually significant. In fact, the peculiar visual features of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings, which could be differentiated from the indigenous Japanese tradition and linked to continental origins, have been of the utmost importance and been well recognized by the audience (Lippit 2008: 201). Understanding the fluid mobility of Koryŏ Buddhist paintings is important to investigating the complexity in iconography and synthesis of diverse styles originating from different regional and temporal contexts, and the interregional connectedness which they reflect. Literary evidence to prove such exchanges is found scattered throughout Koryŏ history. In 1074, Kim Yanggam visited Song China and purchased about 300 paintings and pieces of calligraphy there, while in 1076, a number of Koryŏ painters were sent to China to copy the murals of the temple Xiangguosi (Chung 2013: 62–63). The Sino‐Korean diplomatic and cultural exchanges reached their apogee during the Yuan intervention (1270–1368) in Koryŏ; royal portraits painted by Yuan artists were presented to the Koryŏ court, while Koryŏ Buddhist paintings were transmitted and Koryŏ monks were dispatched to China as scribes. It is also well known that Noguk (d.1365), a Mongolian princess who became the queen of King Kongmin (r. 1351–1374), brought a number of paintings and calligraphic works with her when she came to Koryŏ in 1351. In sum, Buddhist art and artifacts should be understood as embodiments of human interactions and interesting mixtures of diverse elements of religious doctrine, social practice, and material and visual culture. The connection between devotees and the divine is constructed, enacted, and encountered through material objects whose context constantly changed as they travelled across geographical and cultural boundaries. Buddhas and bodhisattvas are formless, and their teachings and virtues cannot be captured by human effort. It might be deemed meaningless to give form to formless entities. However, what matters here are the ritual practices associated with these objects, the encounter with human actors, and the miracles and efficacy that the audience comes to appreciate though the experience of images. In this sense, images are more than mere illustrations of the contents of sutras; they function as ritual objects and powerful symbols.

References Bloom, Phillip E. 2017. “Visualizing Ritual in Southern Song Buddhist Painting.” In Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China, edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Shih‐shan Susan Huang, 82–112. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Chung, Woothak. 2010. “Identity of Goryeo Buddhist Painting.” The International Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology 4: 12–29. Chung, Woothak. 2013. “Iconography, Technique, and Context in Koryŏ Buddhist Painting.” In New Perspectives on Early Korean Art: from Silla to Koryŏ, edited by Youn‐ mi Kim, 11–72. Cambridge, MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University. Hutchings, Tim and Joanne McKenzie. 2017. Materiality and the Study of Religion: The Stuff of the Sacred. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.



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Ide, Seinosuke. 2003. “The World of Goryeo Buddhist Painting.” In Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of Enlightenment, 918–1392, edited by Kumja Paik Kim, 34–47. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum. Ide, Seinosuke. 2010. “Buddhist Paintings from the Song and the Yuan Dynasties: Visual Representations in the Paintings of Devotional Deities.” The International Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology 4: 92–115. Kieschnick, John. 2003. The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kikutake , Junichi and Chung, Woothak. 1996. Koryŏ sidae ŭi purhwa [Buddhist paintings of the Koryŏ Dynasty]. Seoul: Sigongsa. Kim, Junghee. 2010. “The Patrons of Goryeo Buddhist Painting.” The International Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology 4: 30–61. Lippit, Yukio. 2008. “Goryeo Buddhist Painting in an Interregional Context.” Ars Orientalis. 35: 192–232. Lippit, Yukio. 2012. Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in 17th‐century Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Pak, Young-sook. 1977. “Ksitigarbha as Supreme Lord of the Underworld: A Korean Buddhist Painting in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunstgeschichte in Berlin.” Oriental Art 23(1): 96–104. Park, Eunkyung. 2010. “On the Periphery of Goryeo Buddhist Painting: Preliminary Study of the Silk Weave, Width of the Silk and Enshrinement of Works.” The International Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology 4: 62–91. Pak, Kyŏngjun. 2012. “Kyŏngjaehak eso pon Han’guk pulkyo” [A consideration of the economic aspect of Korean Buddhism]. Pulgyo happo 63: 309–337. Rambelli, Fabio. 2007. Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Robinson, Kenneth R. 2009. “A Japanese Trade Mission to Joseon Korea, 1573–1540: The  Sonkai tokai nikki  and the Korean Tribute System.” In  Tools of Culture: Japan’s Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East Asia, 1000–1500s, edited by Andrew Edmund Goble, Kenneth R. Robinson, and Haruko Wakabayashi, 71–101. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies. Schopen, Gregory. 2004. Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Glossary Aekchŏngguk [Aekjeongguk] 掖庭局 Ashikaga Yoshimasa (J.) 足利義政 Ashikaga Yoshimochi (J.) 足利義持 Asaoka Okisada (J.) 朝岡興禎 Chōsen shoga den (J.) 朝鮮書畵傳 Chosŏn wangjo sillok [Joseon wangjo sillok] 朝鮮王朝實錄 Ch’ungnyŏl [Chungnyeol] 忠烈(王) Ch’ungsŏn [Chungseon] 忠宣(王)

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daimyō (J.) 大名 Hŭngch’ŏnsa [Heungcheonsa] 興天寺 Hwaŏmgyŏng [Hwaeomgyeong] (C. Huayan jing) 華嚴經 Iryŏn [Iryeon] 一然 Kaegyŏng [Gaegyeong] 開京 Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kano Tan’yū (J.) 狩野探幽 karamono (J.) 唐物 Kim U 金祐 Koga bikō (J.) 古畵備考 Kongmin [Gongmin] 恭愍(王) Kōrai‐e (J.) 高麗繪 Koryŏsa [Goryeosa] 高麗史 Kose (J.) 巨勢 Kundaikan sōchōki (J.) 君台観左右帳記 Kwanseŭm posal pomunp’um [Gwanse’eum bosal bomunpum] 觀世音菩薩普門品 Minch’ŏnsa [Mincheonsa] 旻天寺 Noguk 魯國(公主) Pal taebosal mandara kyŏng [Pal daebosal mandara gyeong] 八大菩薩曼茶羅經 Pohyŏn posal haengwŏn ch’an [Bohyeon bosal haengwon chan] 普賢菩薩行願讚 Han’guk 韓國 (公主) Pŏphwa yŏnghŏm chŏn [Beophwa yeongheom jeon] 法華靈驗傳 Pŏphwagyŏng [Beophwagyeong] (C. Fahua jing) 法華經 Ryōkaku (J.) 良覺 Ryōken (J.) 良賢 Samguk yusa 三國遺事 Sinhyosa 神孝寺 Sukpi [Sukbi] 淑妃 Tani Bunchō (J.) 谷文晁 Tōbōki (J.) 東宝記 Wŏnhyo [Wonhyo] 元曉 Wu Daozi (C.) 吳道子 Xiangguosi (C.) 相國寺 Yŏm Sŭngik [Yeom Seungik] 廉承益 Zhang Sigong (C.) 張思恭 Zhou Fang (C.) 周昉

8

Establishing a New Tradition: Koryŏ Buddhist Architecture Seunghye Lee

The Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) was a period of intense religious fervor and artistic achievement. The ruling class ardently supported Buddhism, mainly because the fortune of the state was widely believed to depend upon the power of the Buddha. Throughout this period, many Buddhist temples were built in Kaegyŏng, the dynasty’s “Inaugration Capital” and today’s Kaesŏng in North Korea, under the auspices of the royal court. Ten temples were built by the dynastic founder, Wang Kŏn, who ruled as King T’aejo (r. 918–943), and successive monarchs of Koryŏ faithfully followed in his footsteps in constructing Buddhist edifices. Temples of various forms and sizes were also constructed beyond the capital city, and old temples were maintained and renovated in the southern parts of the kingdom. Unfortunately, very few historical Buddhist temples remain in Korea as most of the architecture from this period was built of wood and thus could not withstand the ravages of time. The relatively inaccessible location of Kaesŏng has made it difficult for scholars to study the archaeologically excavated materials, whereas extant temples founded or developed in the southern part of the Korean peninsula under the Koryŏ dynasty underwent substantial changes of layout during the Chosŏn (1392–1910) and modern periods. Undoubtedly, the Koryŏ period marks an important stage in the history of Korean architecture in several respects. Korean Buddhist architecture began to take a new shape under Koryŏ rule, departing from ancient norms and establishing a new tradition later inherited by the Chosŏn dynasty. First of all, Buddhism, architecture, and geomancy were all tightly intertwined during the Koryŏ. Buddhist architecture was considered a crucial part of the landscape and was thought to influence the land. The construction of edifices with religious significance, such as temple buildings and pagodas, was perhaps the most visible manifestation of these efforts (Breuker 2013: A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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53). This belief was deeply rooted in the theory of geomancy (p’ungsu, C. fengshui), which was first systemized and practiced in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) of ancient China. Geomantic theory argues that cosmic forces of duality in correlation with the five phases generate a movable vital force, which can be either beneficial or harmful to the earth. Although geomancy was widely practiced at the end of the Silla kingdom (57 BCE–935 CE) (Choi 1989: 66), it was not until the Koryŏ that it was employed in the planning of a capital city. Second, notable changes are found in the layout of Koryŏ Buddhist temples. Up until the Silla period, most Buddhist temples were composed of a single precinct with pagoda(s) and a main hall, where the objects of worship were enshrined. This earlier tradition of temple layout was maintained in the capital’s great temples, which were mostly affiliated with Kyo, a doctrinally oriented tradition of Korean Buddhism. Although the spatial focus was still on the main hall, such temples began to include multiple complexes within the precinct in order to meet the diverse religious needs of the devotees. Another important change, however, is related to the rise of Buddhist monastic centers affiliated with the newly emergent Sŏn (C. Chan) tradition of Buddhism in the mountainous regions. The Sŏn establishments were conceptually closer to a monastery, where a complex of buildings was inhabited by a community of monks in seclusion. The location of the monastic edifices influenced their architectural forms, as the irregular topography of mountainous areas seems to have led the builders to deviate from the geometrical norms that governed temple design in urban centers. The theory of geomancy, in this respect, provided a useful architectural and theoretical framework for interpreting and adapting to the complex topography of the land on which Sŏn monasteries were built. Third, extant Koryŏ wooden halls not only show diverse methods of timber‐frame construction but also demonstrate significant changes in the interior space. In fact, Koryŏ is the earliest moment in Korean history that we can discuss development of timber‐framing architecture based not merely on archaeological remains or pictorial images but on actual wooden halls. On the one hand, extant Koryŏ wooden halls of Buddhist temples, though few in number, display the use of distinctive techniques in constructing columns, platforms, and plinths to achieve structural and visual stability. The system of bracket sets (kongp’o, C. dougong) atop the columns, designed to support the weight of the roof frame, grew far more sophisticated in the Koryŏ. On the other hand, the plan and interior configuration of these halls foreshadow features that later appeared in the Chosŏn dynasty. In temple architecture, the main hall is generally divided into the inner sanctum, where the main icon is installed, and the outer sanctum, the area accessible to worshippers. Some examples of Koryŏ wooden halls showcase technical and artistic changes in the configuration of the inner and outer sanctums, deviating from the traditional layout of strictly two chambers. Such changes in turn impacted worshippers’ reception of the Buddha image and the functional use of the worship space. This chapter examines the characteristics of Koryŏ Buddhist architecture outlined above, focusing on key concepts, monuments, and moments in its long history. We begin with an examination of the building of Kaegyŏng during the early Koryŏ period (918–1170). The chapter then analyzes the two major types of Buddhist monastic

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establishments constructed during the early and middle Koryŏ (1170–1270) in terms of their contrasting spatial layouts, sectarian affiliations, sociopolitical roles, and patterns of patronage. Next, we proceed to examine the architectural forms and interior configurations of extant wooden halls from the late Koryŏ (1270–1392). The chapter ends with a discussion of pagoda architecture during the late Koryŏ with a focus on the new formal features introduced from the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) of China.

Buddhism, Geomancy, and Urban Planning of Kaegyŏng The ninth and early tenth centuries witnessed the rise of local factions that expanded their influence throughout various regions of the peninsula. Wang Kŏn was one of the regional strongmen who utilized Buddhism and geomancy to solidify and justify their political goals. Tradition credits Tosŏn (827–898), a Sŏn monk and geomancer, as his ideologue. The geomancer‐monk is said to have reformulated the Chinese theory of fengshui in a way that was more compatible with the natural features of the Korean peninsula. Tosŏn is known to have named Sŏgyŏng (the “Western Capital,” and today’s P’yŏngyang in North Korea) and Kaegyŏng, both located in the middle of the peninsula, as new centers for the kingdom instead of Kyŏngju, which lies to the south. Connections between Buddhism, geomancy, and architecture in the eyes of the state feature prominently as the second directive of King T’aejo’ s “Ten Injunctions” (Hunyo sipcho), in which Tosŏn’s geomantic insight is presented as a pretext for forbidding the unauthorized construction of Buddhist temples (Vermeersch 2007: 80). Silla’s downfall, as clearly stated in the second injunction, was attributed to its loss of control over the excessive construction of temples. This decline was mainly because large monastic complexes, as a rule, were sustained on the basis of land officially granted by the state or privately donated by the upper echelon of society. Interestingly, Tosŏn’s ideas were employed not only as a rationale to limit the ­construction of temples but also as the very foundation for building temples to avert harmful influences. In other words, the construction of temples was thought to be capable of “assisting and supplementing” (pibo) or remedying the landscape. This ­theory—one of Tosŏn’s major geomantic ideas as well as a key feature distinguishing Korean p’ungsu from Chinese fengshui—argues for remedying locations with inauspicious forms or weak channels of good energy by constructing temples or pagodas based on the flow of mountains and water (Vermeersch 2008: 108–112). For instance, when King T’aejo selected ten sites for temples in the new capital, two were chosen based on the geomantic examination of the landforms (Kim Dong‐uk 2013: 127). Successive kings of Koryŏ faithfully upheld the dynastic founder’s will, establishing the Bureau of Landscape Remediation (Sanch’ŏn pibo togam) in 1198. For Koryŏ ruling elites, the landscape was politically potent, far from a mere physical presence. The Annals of the State Preceptor Tosŏn (Tosŏn kuksa sillok), compiled in 1743 under the following Chosŏn dynasty, illustrates the geopolitical thinking that was current around Tosŏn. He is said to have likened the topography of the Korean peninsula to a sailing ship and designated sites on which Buddhist temples should be built to alter unfavorable topographical conditions of the land. Buddhist structures were considered ballast

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to keep the ship even‐keeled. Although it is difficult to ascertain how far back this view of the peninsula as an organic whole dates, it was powerful even in the minds of late Chosŏn Koreans (Vermeersch 2007: 79). In what ways were these concepts put into practice in the planning of the capital city? In geomantic terms, Kaegyŏng was surrounded by protective mountains: Mount Songak (480 meters high) lay to the north, and Mount Yongsu and Mount Ogong bordered the regions to the south and west, respectively (Figure 8.1). The area was further encircled by guardian mountains, Mount Ogwan (1000 meters high) standing beyond Mount Songak to the north and Mount Chinbong to the south. Streams flowed from the north and west down to the flatlands in the southeastern quadrant of the capital. The walled city of Kaegyŏng, built in basins surrounded by mountain ranges, had an irregular shape since it blended into the topography of the site (Kim

Figure 8.1  Road system of Kaegyŏng (Kaesŏng) in the Koryŏ dynasty. Source: Chŏn Ryongch’ŏl (1980) (with modification). (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Dong‐uk 2013: 130–132). Geomantic thought left a powerful imprint, from the placement of government offices and facilities to the composition of major roads that traversed the city. In the early period, Kaegyŏng had three concentric walls that had been constructed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The innermost encircled the palace, where the king resided. This, in turn, was surrounded by the imperial city wall, within which various government offices, residences of royal relatives, Buddhist temples, a pond, and an observatory were located. The imperial city wall is said to have contained twenty gates, eleven of which have been identified. The outermost city wall was 23 kilometers long; it was constructed of packed earth around the entire city for protection at the time of the Khitan invasion in 1010. To demarcate the capital city and to express its symbolic significance, the mighty wall took an uneven form that followed the rise and fall of the land, running from the top of Mount Songak across Mount Ogong to the top of Mount Yongsu. There were, in total, twenty‐five gates on the outermost city wall, four of them being located in the cardinal directions. The west gate, Sŏnŭimun (Declaring Righteousness Gate), was most splendidly decorated to greet Chinese envoys, whereas Sunginmun (Worshipping Humanity Gate) in the east had the largest traffic as it was most commonly used by the city’s residents. The principal east‐west route connecting Sunginmun and Sŏnŭimun was intersected by the secondary north‐south route, which led to the main gate of the palace. From Kwanghwamun (Broad Transformation Gate) in the imperial city wall to the north, this route extended to the south gate of the outermost wall, Hoebinmun (Meeting Guests Gate). The i­ntersection of the two major routes was called Sipchaga (Cross‐shaped Street), the bustling city center. Radiating from Sipchaga, streets offering various shops branched off from the major east‐west and north‐south routes. The streets of Kaegyŏng were not built along clearly defined vertical and horizontal axes, as all roads conformed to the natural terrain, with some even following the banks of winding streams. The streets eventually divided the city into administrative units of five districts (pu, C. bu), each of which was further subdivided into thirty‐five wards (pang, C. fang), ­consisting of 344 residential blocks (ri, C. li) after re‐planning on several occasions (Park 1998: 92−99). Each residential block had separate walls and a gate, which was closed at night. The urban structure of Kaegyŏng differed greatly from other East Asian cities modeled after the Chinese ideal of the capital city. The most representative example of such is Chang’an (present‐day Xi’an), the capital of the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907) dynasties, which was built upon the principles prescribed in the “Record of the Investigation of Crafts” (Kaogongji) from the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli), compiled in the second century BCE. The “Record of the Investigation of Crafts” prescribes building a square city wall with several gates on each side and passageways for the emperor (Xiong 2000: 40−43). In Tang Chang’an, the roads crisscrossed the city, dividing residential areas symmetrically into a rectangular grid of streets known as wards. Each ward was surrounded by earthen walls, which was advantageous for defending against invaders. The palace was located toward the north end of the city along the north‐south axis. The Tang capital provided a model for the capitals of Korea and Japan during the seventh and eighth centuries to varying degrees. The city’s neat gridiron framework became a hallmark of these capital cities located on

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flatlands. The existing structures and the natural terrain of Kyŏngju required the people of Silla to adapt the Tang‐style city plan in a more flexible way. The wards of Kyŏngju were less standardized in form and far smaller than those constructed in Chang’an (Rhi 2013: 16–17). In Japan, the Tang model was faithfully adopted in the constructions of Fujiwara‐kyō and Heijō‐kyō (present‐day Nara prefecture) completed in 694 and 710, respectively. Parhae (C. Bohai; 698–926), a multi‐ethnic state that ruled the region encompassing the northern end of the Korean peninsula and parts of today’s northeast China after the fall of Koguryŏ (37 BCE–668), also based the plan of one of its five capitals, Sanggyŏng (in today’s Heilongjiang Province of China), on Chang’an. At Sanggyŏng, or the “Supreme Capital,” the palace was located at the farthest end of the north‐south axis that divided the city into eastern and western sections. The streets further divided the city into clearly defined rectangular wards (Heilongjiang sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 2009: 14–22). In contrast, the wards and ­neighborhoods of Kaegyŏng were not precisely demarcated into a rectangular grid as they conformed to the irregular topography of the basins in which the city was nestled, with varied geographical forms and winding roads. Likewise, due to geographical constraints, the royal palace of Koryŏ, later known as Manwŏltae (Full Moon Palace), did not adopt the more typical location and composition of the palace in East Asia with the main axis running north‐south. It was situated considerably off‐center to the northwest of the city, encircled by mountains, such as Mount Songak to the north.

Temples in the Capital In the capital city, Buddhist temples were a defining feature of the architectural landscape. Not long after the founding of the dynasty, large‐scale temples and pagodas were erected in Kaegyŏng in hopes for ensuring peace and the prosperity of the royal court. By the eleventh century, the outskirts of the capital gave rise to numerous temples that came to serve various functions for the royal family, aristocrats, and commoners. An early Chosŏn dynasty traveler once complained that “in the Koryŏ capital, just as in the Silla capital before, temples were more numerous than people’s houses and that for each palace and major residence there was a temple” (Vermeersch 2004: 8). Buddhist temples in the capital functioned as memorial temples for royal ancestral worship, spaces for rituals, headquarters of diverse sects, and sociopolitical centers throughout the Koryŏ. Although few archaeological remains enable us to estimate the scale and layout of the temples inside the capital during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, textual sources and excavated materials allow us to consider various important aspects of the royal memorial temples (wŏnch’al or wŏndang), the most prominent type of temple inside the capital. Pongŭnsa (Upholding Kindness Temple) was constructed in memory of King T’aejo in 951 by his immediate successor, King Kwangjong (r. 949−975) in spite of King T’aejo’s warning his successors against the construction of personal memorial temples. Among more than fifty memorial temples subsequently built in the capital area, Pongŭnsa held the foremost importance as the first royal memorial temple and

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the shrine for the dynastic founder. The temple was situated in the southwestern part of the city, near the National Academy (Ko Yusŏp 2007[1946]: 140−141). According to the History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa), successive rulers of Koryŏ regularly visited Pongŭnsa on the anniversary of King T’aejo’s death and during the Lotus Lantern Festival on the fourteenth and fifteenth day of the second lunar month as well as in times of distress when a need was felt to pray before the founder’s image. The practice of lighting lanterns, an act symbolizing a religious offering to the Buddha, became a large‐scale communal celebration in the Koryŏ. On the first day of the two‐day Lantern Festival, the royal procession left the palace through the south gate of the imperial city, took the main road south, passed Sipchaga, and proceeded to Pongŭnsa. The same route was taken for the return trip (An Chiwŏn 2011: 69). On that night, the main road was decorated with silk parasols and lanterns, and the return procession was received by civil and military officials accompanied by dancers and musicians. It must have been a visual and political spectacle in which the king and his subjects were all present. Despite frequent mention of Pongŭnsa in the History of Koryŏ, nothing is known about its scale or layout since no excavation has been conducted to date. We do know, however, that the temple had a hall called Chinjŏn (True Likeness Hall), which enshrined a sculpted portrait of King T’aejo. A life‐size bronze statue, unearthed in 1992 near King T’aejo’s tomb in Kaegyŏng, has been identified as this very statue for its iconographical features, artistic exquisiteness, and perfect condition of preservation (Figure 8.2). The statue was most likely transferred from the Chinjŏn in Pongŭnsa and buried near his tomb during the early Chosŏn (No Myŏngho 2012: 212–214). This naked figure sits with his hands clasped beneath his chest, wearing imperial headgear called the “coronet of the heavenly communicator” (t’ongch’ŏn’gwan) instead of the usual royal ceremonial crown. Both the pose and the coronet are similar to those depicted in a painted portrait of Emperor Xuanzu, the father of the first emperor of the Song dynasty, in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei (Vermeersch 2004: 15; Ebrey 1997: 81). Closer comparison of these two portraits suggests that the bronze sculpture may have held a similar tablet in its hands and worn a robe and shoes made of cloth. The coronet is further decorated with emblematic designs of the sun, moon, and water like those adorning the costumes of bodhisattvas; and its neck is marked by three horizontal rings, one of the iconographical conventions for a Buddha statue (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2013: 218−223). Taken together, the statue showcases an intriguing combination of the two disparate visual conventions—the imperial ­portrait and the Buddha image. Purilsa (Buddha‐Sun Temple), also founded by King Kwangjong in 951 in memory of King T’aejo’s principal queen, helps us examine the spatial organization of a royal memorial temple (Figure 8.3). A partial archaeological survey reveals that the temple, located on higher land, was composed of central, western and eastern sections along the east‐west axis. What is noteworthy at the site of Purilsa is an independent section of the rectangular plan outside the southern edge of the west temple area. This ­section, surrounded by corridors, is referred to as the “relic altar” in the archaeological report (Chŏn Chunong 1963: 206–216). The central section had a gate, a stone pagoda, a main hall, and a lecture hall along the north‐south axis, all of which were enveloped by corridors. The western section, built lower than the central section,

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Figure 8.2  Seated image of Wang Kŏn. Ca. 10th century. Bronze. H. 135.8 cm. Koryŏ Museum, Kaesŏng. Photo by Park Jongjin. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

contained a square building of three bays by three bays in the front, which was connected by a corridor to a rectangular building in the rear. Few architectural remains were found in the eastern section. The site of Purilsa demonstrates that the temple compound was divided into what modern scholars have referred to as “multiple complexes.” The pluralistic layout of early Koryŏ temples in the capital like Purilsa set them apart from temples of earlier periods, where a focal pagoda and the main hall were surrounded by covered walkways, forming a single complex. Good examples include the sites of Kŭmgangsa (Vajra Temple) founded in 498 during the Koguryŏ period in P’yŏngyang, and Chŏngnimsa (Establishing Forest Temple), built in Puyŏ in the seventh century under the Paekche (18 BCE–660 CE). Granted, temples with more than one enclosure or courtyard had already appeared in the seventh and eighth centuries as is exemplified by the site of Mirŭksa (Maitreya Temple, founded in 639) and that of Hwangnyongsa (Imperial Dragon Temple, founded in 553), the most prominent temples in Paekche and Silla respectively during the Three Kingdoms period (Steinhardt 2014: 297–305, 311). Each complex was presumably equipped with its own main building, monks’ quarters and sometimes symbolic architectural landmarks such as pagodas, as at the temple site of Purilsa. The multi‐centered layout

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Figure 8.3  Plan of Purilsa site (after excavation). Source: Chŏn Chunong 1963.

allowed the monks and laity to perform various Buddhist rituals and worship Buddhist deities of their choice within a single temple precinct. It gained wide currency across the country, as is attested by Kŭmsansa (Golden Mountain Temple), a regional temple that was divided into three separate areas after extensive restoration in the eleventh century (Kim Dong‐uk 2013: 145−146). A similar spatial composition is also found on a grandiose scale at the site of Hŭngwangsa (Reviving the King Temple), which was constructed from 1056 to 1059 under the rule of King Munjong (r. 1046−1075) despite severe objections from civil officials who lamented the expenditure. The History of Koryŏ records that its buildings occupied a space of 2,800 bays (approximately 10,000 square meters) and that a special Lantern Festival was held for five days to celebrate its completion in 1067. The road from the palace to the temple was lined with tents, and the lanterns made the

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night as bright as day. More construction activities after the completion of Hŭngwangsa are recorded in the History of Koryŏ. The king ordered the building of a magnificent three‐story Chassijŏn (Maitreya Hall) in 1069, and ramparts surrounding the temple edifice in 1070. In 1078 he also commissioned a golden pagoda, the silver frame of which was reported to weigh 427 jin, while the gold used in gilding its surface weighed 144 jin (one jin being equivalent to approximately 600 grams). Two years later, a stone pagoda was completed to enshrine the golden one although the specific method of enshrinement remains unknown (Vermeersch 2004: 17). The History of Koryŏ mentions several other examples of miniature pagodas commissioned by the ruling elites of the time. Representative examples include a thirteen‐story golden pagoda installed within the principal palace hall, Hoegyŏngjŏn (Gathering Felicity Hall) in 1089 and another thirteen‐story pagoda of pure gold enshrined at Hŭngwangsa in 1223 under the patronage of the military government leader. Enshrined within the palatial and temple halls, these miniature pagodas seem to have functioned as indoor reliquaries, receiving worship from the faithful (Kim Yunjŏng 2011: 212−216). Their location distinguishes them from earlier and contemporaneous miniature pagodas, most of which found their way to the inner recesses of free‐standing pagodas that became inaccessible to worshippers. Given the amount of silver used in the Hŭngwangsa pagoda, it must have created a splendid visual spectacle of monumental scale. A cast gilt‐bronze miniature pagoda, stylistically datable to the tenth or eleventh century and held in the collection of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, allows us to fathom how the now‐lost pagoda of Hŭngwangsa might have looked (Figure 8.4). The Leeum piece shows a structure composed of a double platform, a main body with five stories, and a finial; however, it is thought to have originally consisted of nine stories. The miniature pagoda closely follows a wooden architectural structure with the bracket sets rendered in detail on the first story and the verandas surrounding each story. The splendor of Hŭngwangsa, detailed in the History of Koryŏ, came to light only partially through a survey of the site conducted in 1948 (Hwang Suyŏng 1959: 1116−1128). Located in the center of the vast plains southeast of the city, the large temple compound was composed of three sections facing south on a high terrace, with subsidiary building compounds on the surrounding middle and lower terraces. The temple’s three main sections, each surrounded by corridors, seem to have been devoted to the worship of different Buddhas and deities in order to meet the diverse religious needs. The central section stood at the site one level higher than the two flanking ­sections. Once visitors entered the central gate from the south, they must have encountered two octagonal wooden pagodas in the east and west, respectively; they then would have been led to the main hall, passing a stone lantern standing on the north‐south axis. Located behind the main hall to the north was a lecture hall of great size.

Mountain Monasteries The rule of military officials, which lasted from 1170 to 1270, stripped the Koryŏ kings of their power while dismantling the centralized civil government. The ruling military’s relationship with powerful Buddhist temples in the capital was troublesome

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Figure 8.4  Miniature pagoda. 10th or 11th century. Gilt bronze. H. 1.55 meters. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. National Treasure No. 213. Photo: courtesy of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

from the outset. Until the twelfth century, major temples in the capital were financially supported by and maintained close ties with the royal court. As their vested interests eroded, the Buddhist elite at prominent capital temples such as Hŭngwangsa frequently revolted in the early years of military rule. Consequently, the military aligned themselves with Sŏn monasteries where monks focused on their meditative practice in the mountains instead of the temples of the capital, which formerly held grand ceremonies and rituals under the aegis of the royal court or notable civilian families (Shultz 2000: 131−147). Moving from the capital to the mountains meant more than just a change of location. The distinctive features of the Buddhism that Sŏn monks practiced are clearly discernible in the layout of their mountain monasteries. Most Sŏn monasteries had asymmetrical plans, for they were sited in harmony with the mountainous topography of their locale. Corridors, a common feature of earlier temples, including the grand temples in the capital, were replaced by a series of gates and pavilions. In addition, greater emphasis was placed on the monks’ living quarters and meditation rooms even though there still was a main hall for worship. The

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emergence of the mountain monastery style was a pivotal moment in the history of Korean monastic architecture, as it became accepted as part of the mainstream of Korean Buddhist architecture (Kim Sung‐woo 2007: 21−22). Representative of this change is Susŏnsa (Cultivating Sŏn Society), now known as Songgwangsa (Piney Expanse Monastery), which was established by the eminent Sŏn master Chinul (1158−1210) and sponsored by the military leaders of the time, the Ch’oe family (Shultz 2000: 139−141). Chinul sought to establish a new community of disciplined and pure‐minded practitioners deep in the mountains, which he called Chŏnghye kyŏlsa (Concentration and Wisdom Society). Chinul and his community took up residence in a ruined temple on Mount Chogye in today’s South Chŏlla Province and renovated it extensively from 1197 to 1205. King Hŭijong (r. 1204– 1211) renamed it Susŏnsa in 1208 in commemoration of the expansion of the monastic complex. The spatial composition and characteristics of this Sŏn monastery during the early thirteenth century can be gleaned from a manuscript known as the “Census Register of Susŏnsa” (Susŏnsa hyŏngji an), which is still kept in the archives of Songgwangsa. This document seems to have been compiled in 1230 when the military leader of the time commanded the governors of five provinces to draw up a list of all temples belonging to both the Kyo and the Sŏn traditions, specifying the dates of their establishment and their condition (Ch’oe Yŏnsik 2013: 170−171). The first part of the document contains a detailed inventory of the monastery’s structure, including buildings with their images, pagodas and steles with their inscriptions, monks in residence, and assets (No Myŏn ̆ gho et al. 2000: 374−391). The compiler first describes the size of each building and then proceeds to identify the “master of the hall” (tangju), a common term used in reference to the principal icon, if any; otherwise, the compiler simply records the building’s size and orientation or ancillary facilities. Although the compiler did not go beyond the inventory of the buildings and their physical properties, we can still infer the spatial layout of the monastery since the order in which the buildings were recorded most likely reflects their spatial arrangement to some extent (Ch’oe Yŏnsik 2013: 182−184). A thirteenth‐century visitor would have crossed a bridge topped with a loft‐building over a mountain stream before reaching the monastery proper. Three gates—an outer multi‐story gate, a monastery gate, and an inner multi‐story gate—divided the monastery into three functional as well as symbolic spaces from the outside to the inside: the space for daily living, the space for administration, and the space for worship and practice. Situated between the outer multi‐story gate and the monastery gate were eleven buildings, the vast majority of which housed facilities for the daily life of the 143 monks and other monastery residents present at the time of the inventory’s completion. Included were a kitchen, a refectory that enshrined a gilt‐bronze image of the seated Maitreya Buddha, a water‐house for storing water needed in the kitchen, a mill, a bathhouse, a toilet, and so on. Between the inner multi‐story gate and the monastery gate were four buildings for administrative uses. The inner multi‐story gate seems to have functioned as an important spatial divider separating the heart of the monastery from the rest. Located within the inner multi‐ story gate were buildings where daily worship and practice took place. These included the main hall, the monastic hall, the patriarch hall, and the dharma hall. The last three

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halls held the foremost importance in the Sŏn monasteries and are featured prominently in the Chinese text entitled Monastic Codes of Chan Monasteries (Chanyuan qinggui, comp. 1103), a book of regulations for Chan/Sŏn monasteries that was influential across East Asia. The monastic codes not only regulate the everyday life of the monastic community but also provide basic rules for the layout of buildings and the activities—both ritualized and daily—performed inside them. Given that Chinul wrote the first such Korean code by drawing on Song precedents, his knowledge of monastic codes may have been reflected in the spatial structure of Susŏnsa. The monastic hall is, according to the Monastic Codes of Chan Monasteries, a place where monks not only meditate and receive the abbot’s regular sermons but also take their two meals and sleep (Foulk 1993: 183). The patriarch hall usually housed the images and remains of a monastery’s founder or the monks who were instrumental in teaching the way of the monastery. It became an indispensable component in a Sŏn monastery, since Sŏn Buddhism placed great emphasis on the direct transmission of dharma from a teacher to a disciple, exemplified by the famous phrase, “special transmission outside of the doctrine that does not rely on words and letters.” The patriarch hall of Susŏnsa seems to have initially enshrined a portrait of Chinul, yet it later came to house portraits of the successive leaders of the monastery, as well. Equivalent to the fatang mentioned in the Monastic Codes of Chan Monasteries, the dharma hall was the site of several different activities: small classes for instruction outside of regular services, lectures on the scriptures, deathbed rituals of the abbot, and the major convocation during which all of the monastery’s residents gather to hear the sermon of the abbot, who sat in the highest seat. The “master of the hall” was understood not as the Buddha but as the abbot speaking in the capacity of a flesh‐and‐blood Buddha (Foulk 1993: 177). In Korean Sŏn monasteries, the dharma hall was often established on the site of a pre‐existing lecture hall behind the main hall (Lee 2013: 91). This was the case with Susŏnsa. The higher location of the dharma hall—where the current Sŏlbŏpchŏn (Sermon Hall) looked down the main hall—attests to its symbolic significance at Susŏnsa, just like the Chan monasteries of China during the Song period. A passage in the “Stele Inscription of the State Preceptor Pojo,” composed immediately after Chinul’s death and transcribed in the “Census Register of Susŏnsa,” aptly demonstrates the usage and importance of the hall in the thirteenth century. Seated on the dharma seat in the dharma hall, Chinul is said to have passed away after a debate with members of the society (No Myŏngho et al. 2000: 396–397). Thus, the Susŏnsa site had numerous buildings that essentially served as a small town for the religious community. A series of halls provided space for worship and practice, multiple monks’ quarters accommodated a large number of monks who held different monastic offices and duties, and various facilities for preparing and storing food existed within the monastic precinct. In other words, a Sŏn monastery was a self‐sustaining community. Making the best use of the irregular natural topography, the builders of Susŏnsa seem to have constructed only those buildings that were deemed most essential rather than altering the natural terrain to make room for more buildings. Sŏn monasteries of Koryŏ, including Susŏnsa, typically display an irregular, asymmetric and meandering layout that conforms to the natural terrain of the landscape. It was not until the thirteenth century that this tendency to situate

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buildings in accordance with the mountainous terrain was fully manifested, although it had already appeared in rural temples that had close ties with Sŏn Buddhism, at the end of Silla.

Architectural Forms of Koryŏ Wooden Halls As in other parts of East Asia, the form of Korean temple and palatial buildings derived from the timber frame supporting the building’s roof and upper body. Although the tradition of classical Korean wooden architecture reaches further back in time, only a handful of individual temple buildings datable to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has survived. Examples in the southern part of Korea include the Kŭngnakchŏn (Sukhāvatī Hall or Paradise Hall, built in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century) of Pongjŏngsa (Phoenix Abiding Temple) in Andong, the Muryangsujŏn (Amitāyus Hall or Eternal Life Hall, reconstructed in the thirteenth century and repaired in 1376) and Chosadang (Patriarch’s Hall, built in 1377) of Pusŏksa (Floating Rock Temple) in Yŏngju, the Taeungjŏn (Mahāvīra Hall, the main hall meant usually for the worship of Śākyamuni, built in 1308) of Sudŏksa (Cultivating Virtue Temple) in Yesan, and the Yŏngsanjŏn (Vulture Peak Hall, built in 1375) of Kŏjoam (Patriach’s Hermitage), an affiliate of Ŭ nhaesa (Silvery Sea Temple) in Yŏngch’ŏn. Compared with temple halls of the Chosŏn period, late Koryŏ examples reveal noteworthy differences in the form of their windows and doors, the location of their altars, and the finish of their floors and ceilings. Inscriptional evidence found during the restoration of the Kŭngnakchŏn of Pongjŏngsa in 1972 revealed that its roof had been repaired in 1363. Given that the roof of a wooden hall was typically repaired every 100 to 150 years, scholars have suggested that the Kŭngnakchŏn had likely been built by the late twelfth or early thirteenth century (Munhwajae yŏn’guso 1992: 43, 52–53). Modifications to the building in subsequent periods were removed during the repairs, and the building was restored to its original state in 1975. Its form seems to be based on a Chinese‐style wooden prototype from the eighth century. The significance of the Kŭngnakchŏn of Pongjŏngsa does not solely stem from its iconic status as the oldest extant Korean wooden building. Various features of the hall situate it at a juncture between Silla and Chosŏn Buddhist architecture. Currently, the rectangular three‐bay by four‐bay structure, which is seven meters deep stands on a stone foundation (Figure 8.5). The building features bracket sets only atop the capitals of columns, a type called “column‐head bracketing” (chusimp’o) in modern scholarship, and is crowned with an overhanging gable roof. Column‐head bracketing was used prevalently throughout the Koryŏ period. Other examples of column‐head bracketing are found in the Muryangsujŏn and Chosadang of Pusŏksa, the Taeungjŏn of Sudŏksa, and the Yŏngsanjŏn of Kŏjoam. The Kŭngnakchŏn of Pongjŏngsa demonstrates architectural features that connect it with the main halls of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist temples from earlier periods, while distinguishing it from those built in the Chosŏn period. The central bay of the façade has a door made of wooden boards, whereas the side bays of the façade have

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Figure 8.5  Kŭngnakchŏn at Pongjŏngsa (after restoration) in Andong, North Kyŏngsang Province. 12th to 13th century. National Treasure No. 15. Photo: courtesy of Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

mullioned windows. The rear of the building has a wooden door in the central bay with no windows in the side bays. Similar configuration of doors and windows can be found in the main hall of Nanchansi (built in 782), the earliest of extant Chinese wooden halls, located in Shanxi Province, and the Golden Hall (rebuilt in 693) of Hōr yūji in Nara, Japan. The interior of these halls is relatively dark, since the windows let in little sunlight, even during the day. The wall composition of the Kŭngnakchŏn stands in contrast to that of another hall at Pongjŏngsa, the Taeungjŏn of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. The entire front of the Taeungjŏn is comprised of folding doors that can be raised upward and held open by a hook, although its rear has a wooden door in the central bay and wooden windows in the two flanking side bays (Andong‐si 2004: 10–11). Compared to the semi‐closed façade of the Kŭngnakchŏn, the adaptable façade of the Taeungjŏn could have allowed the monks and laity to use the hall space more flexibly during major events and in the summer. The Kŭngnakchŏn’s plan features sixteen columns in total to create its three‐bay by four‐bay structure (Figure 8.6). The two structural columns that would have stood directly under the roof ridge are absent. Instead, two columns stand in the central section of the rear bay to support a partition wall of one bay, a type known in modern scholarship as a “wall behind the Buddha image” (hubulbyŏk). The column reduction in the inner sanctum was intended to increase the available space within the hall, creating a column‐free central section in which worshippers could venerate the main icon face to face. In fact, the inner sanctums of earlier temple halls were primarily

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Figure 8.6  Floor plan of Kŭngnakchŏn at Pongjŏngsa (after restoration). Source: CHA AC‐187524, No.029, NRICH Archives. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

created for the enshrinement of the main icons. In other words, the enshrinement of the Buddha image was regarded as more important than other cultic practices by individuals or assemblies of worshippers in the main hall. In such early halls, worshippers’ ability to view the main icon seems to have been highly limited due to the columns that supported the partition walls surrounding the sides and rear of the inner sanctum; good examples are found in the Silla remains of the inner sanctums of the main halls of Hwangnyongsa and Hwaŏmsa (Flower Garland Temple) in Kurye (Yi Kanggŭn 1998: 71–78). In this regard, the inner sanctum of an earlier temple hall was similar to a closed niche, and this tradition was maintained to a certain degree in the inner sanctums of Pusŏksa’s Muryangsujŏn, Sudŏksa’s Taeungjŏn, and Kŏjoam’s Yŏngsanjŏn, in which structural columns were placed in the front bays. Thus, the column reduction seen in Pongjŏngsa’s Kŭngnakchŏn, which later gained wide currency in Chosŏn temple halls, can be viewed as a way to expand the available space of the interior. Such changes in the plan of temple halls seem to reflect a larger shift in the performance of religious services at Buddhist temples. It has been suggested that Buddhist rituals or dharma assemblies began to be performed inside halls instead of in courtyards from the early Chosŏn period (Yi Kanggŭn 1994: 132–133, 135–136). In front of the partition wall in the central bay at the rear of the Kŭngnakchŏn of Pongjŏngsa is a wooden shrine that shelters the main icon (Figure 8.7). The shrine

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Figure 8.7  Miniature shrine of Kŭngnakchŏn at Pongjŏngsa, Andong, North Kyŏngsang Province. 13th century. Wood. H. 3.67 meters. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

is composed of a rectangular throne on a stone platform with an upper structure that painstakingly imitates the form of a worship hall in terms of its column configuration, bracketing system, suspended eaves, and the sweep of its roof ­ (Munhwajae yŏn’guso 1992: 28–30, 146–148). The freestanding shrine differs from the roof‐shaped wooden structures (tatchip) of the Chosŏn period in terms of its architectural integrity. The Chosŏn examples were typically built into the roof structure and were suspended in the air above the throne of the main icon like a canopy. More importantly, the Kŭngnakchŏn’s wooden shrine demonstrates that the carpenters were well aware of another type of bracket set, termed the “multi‐bracket” (tap’o) by Korean architecture specialists. This type is characterized by the adoption of intercolumnar brackets, which flank those atop the capitals, creating a much more decorative impact than column‐head bracketing. The refined form and architectural structure of this shrine are not to be found in other Korean examples but are closer to the nine‐ridged small shrine (jiuji xiaozhang) that appears in the “Small‐scale woodworking” (xiaomuzuo) section of Building Standards (Yingzao fashi), the Song official architectural code of the early twelfth century, and similar shrines produced in Japan during the Kamakura period (1185–1332). The Kŭngnakchŏn’s shrine seems to have been built around the start of the thirteenth

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century when the building was initially erected. This dating challenges the ­long‐ held notion that intercolumnar bracketing was introduced from Yuan China in the late Koryŏ (Pae Pyŏngsŏn 2011: 18–22). The architectural features of Koryŏ wooden halls, examined above, are also found in the Muryangsujŏn of Pusŏksa. The Muryangsujŏn deserves close examination both for its architectural forms and its relation to the larger temple compound. Although Pusŏksa was founded by the master Ŭ isang (625−702) in 676 following a royal command, the temple seems to have acquired its basic layout between the ninth and eleventh centuries. The overall structure of the temple is very distinctive; the entire compound consists of several large stone terraces on which the temple buildings stand. Visitors must climb stone stairs to reach the center of the temple, Muryangsujŏn. Interestingly, there is no pagoda in the courtyard in front of the hall, only a stone lantern. The building seems to have been repaired in 1376 after its reconstruction in the early thirteenth century (Kim Bongryol 2005: 70). It is a rectangular five‐bay by three‐bay structure that measures 18.7 meters wide and 11.5 meters deep. It was built with column‐head bracketing, but is crowned with a hip‐and‐gable roof instead of the simpler overhanging gable roof found in other Koryŏ wooden halls (Figure 8.8). As a whole, the Muryangsujŏn showcases distinctive construction methods that were favored by Koryŏ carpenters to avoid visual instability, and to facilitate the joinery between wooden members; these techniques were, in turn, transmitted to the Chosŏn period. For instance, the contour of the six front columns is slightly convex—a ­technique called “potbelly flow” (paehŭllim), equivalent to the entasis of ancient Greek

Figure 8.8  Muryangsujŏn at Pusŏksa (reconstructed 1376), Yŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. National Treasure No. 18. Photo by J. Rhi. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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columns. The front of the building also shows a combination of two techniques known as “leaning toward the inside” (anssollim) and “raised ears” (gwisosŭm) to create visual balance (Kim Dong‐uk 2013: 167, 384). The former refers to a method of erecting columns so that they lean very slightly toward the building’s center; this method was employed to solve the problem of columns tending to bend outward due to the weight of the eaves. “Raised ears” is a complex technique whereby the outside columns are made higher than the inner ones in order to counteract the optical illusion that causes a viewer to see a flat roofline as curving downward at its extremes. The gradual increase in height is so subtle that it is barely discernable to the naked eye. The most salient feature of the Muryangsujŏn is inarguably the direction in which the main icon faces. Contrary to the majority of worship halls, where the main icon faces the building’s façade, this Buddha image is seated at the western end of Muryangsujŏn facing eastward, perpendicular to the main axis of the building (Figure 8.9). The massive clay image with a height of 2.75 meters represents Amitābha Buddha, although it displays the bhūmisparśa mudrā that typically symbolizes the moment of Śākyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment. The Buddha statue is backed by an ornate wooden aureole but not flanked by attendant bodhisattva statues. This unusual altar arrangement creates an atypical interior layout not found in any extant Korean wooden halls. A crucial hint to understanding the idiosyncratic features of the Muryangsujŏn and the Pusŏksa as a whole may be found in a passage from the epitaph of the monk

Figure 8.9  Floor plan of Muryangsujŏn at Pusŏksa. Source: CHA AC‐187503, No. 006, NRICH Archives. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Kyŏrŭng (964–1053) carved on a stele that was erected at the temple soon after his death. The passage records a dialogue between the temple’s founder, Ŭ isang, and one of his disciples. The disciple is said to have asked Ŭ isang why the hall enshrines a single image of Amitābha Buddha and why there is no pagoda in front of the hall. Citing the master Zhiyan (602–668) of the Chinese Huayan (K. Hwaŏm) tradition, Ŭ isang is said to have explained that Amitābha Buddha of the One Vehicle did not enter nirvana and thus there is no time or place without the Buddha. No pagoda needs to be erected since there are no relics. By the same token, there is no need to represent bodhisattvas, who remain on this shore to save sentient beings out of compassion. The inscription further relates that the doctrinal tenets of Huayan tradition were transmitted from Zhiyan to Ŭ isang and then from Ŭ isang to generations of disciples including Kyŏrŭng (Yi Chigwan 1995: 269, 292). This inscription has served as key evidence for scholars to interpret the Muryangsujŏn as an architectural embodiment of the Western Pure Land of Amitābha Buddha envisioned by Ŭ isang even though the current building is presumably a thirteenth century reconstruction of the earlier one. The floor of the Muryangsujŏn was originally paved with glazed bricks but was replaced with wooden floors during the Chosŏn period in accordance with the changing religious needs examined above. The glazed bricks would have reminded worshippers of the Western Paradise, which is said to have been adorned with various precious substances. The Muryangsujŏn does not have a ceiling like other Koryŏ wooden halls, such as Pongjŏngsa’s Kŭngnakchŏn, Sudŏksa’s Taeungjŏn, and Pusŏksa’s Chosadang, revealing instead the ornate framework of the roof supported by columns and lintels. When facing the Buddha image in the eastern end of the hall, worshippers would have seen a series of overlapping crossbeams, a view rarely attainable from the usual site of worship in other worship halls. In this respect, the ceilingless interior of the Muryangsujŏn seems to have heightened worshippers’ dramatic encounter with the embodiment of Amitābha Buddha in a majestic clay image(Yi Kanggŭn 1994: 138; Munhwajaech’ŏng 2002, vol. 1: 19, 154).

“Yuan Influence” in Pagoda Architecture The tradition of pagoda building dates back to the earliest phase of the history of Korean Buddhist architecture. The form of wooden pagodas is thought to have been translated into stone at the end of the Paekche period. The stone pagoda became established as the norm in Korea after the seventh century under the Silla. The pagoda was still considered an important element of temple architecture during the Koryŏ as attested by the sheer number of pagodas built in the period (Pak Kyŏngsik 2008: 388–389). A typical Koryŏ stone pagoda is square in plan and consists of a base, main body, and upper structure, including a finial. The three‐story prototype of Unified Silla (668−935) became taller and more ornately decorated during the Koryŏ. For example, a stone pagoda at the site of Tongsa (Eastern Temple) in today’s Hanam has three stories; those at the Kŭmsansa in Kimje and the Kaesimsa (Opening the Mind Temple) site in Yech’ŏn have five stories; and those from Namgyewŏn (Southern Stream Cloister) and Hyŏnhwasa (Profound Teaching Temple) sites in present‐day Kaesŏng are composed of seven stories. There are

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also towering octagonal pagodas, such as a nine‐story pagoda at Wŏlchŏngsa (Moon Essence Temple) on Mount Odae, which were mainly found in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. Furthermore, there are several stone pagodas that defy all attempts at classification. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of these is a pagoda measuring 13.5 meters high from the site of Kyŏngch’ŏnsa (Respecting Heaven Temple) at the foot of Mount Puso in Kaesŏng, which now stands inside the National Museum of Korea in Seoul after being moved several times since the beginning of the twentieth century (Figure 8.10). The multi‐story pagoda, the monument par excellence of late Koryŏ Buddhist architecture, invites us to revisit the issue of “Yuan influence,” which has been rigorously examined in previous studies, from a new perspective. The Koryŏ state faced a series of invasions by the Mongol empire between 1231 and 1270 throughout the peninsula. Despite efforts to fight off the Mongols, Koryŏ ultimately became a semi‐autonomous vassal state under the rule of the Mongol Yuan dynasty from 1270 to 1356. The Mongol occupation, though harsh in many respects,

Figure 8.10  Ten‐story pagoda from Kyŏngch’ŏnsa. 1348. H. 13.5 meters. National Treasure No. 86. Photo: courtesy of National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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brought Koryŏ into communication with the wider world. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the connections between the Yuan court in Dadu (present‐day Beijing) and the Koryŏ court in Kaegyŏng were very close, and Koryŏ Koreans came into contact with a Tibetan tradition of tantric Buddhism through Mongol mediation (Sørensen 1993: 71–75). Sino‐Tibetan Buddhism flourished at the Yuan court after the time of Kublai Khan, Emperor Shizu (r. 1260−1294) of the Yuan, and tantric rituals were frequently held by high priests called “lamas.” Lamas, Mongol nobles, and Yuan craftsmen continued to arrive in Kaegyŏng, yet more importantly, so did Koryŏ Koreans, who had knowledge of ideas prevalent and monuments in the Yuan capital. Scholars have coined the term “Lamaist style” to describe the new visual vocabularies that originated from Sino‐Tibetan Buddhist art under Yuan rule and were adapted in the art and architecture of the late Koryŏ to varying degrees, and this style has often been presented as an outcome of Yuan influence. These two terms seem descriptive at first, yet they mask the actual dynamics of cultural interaction in which the recipient almost always plays a far more active role than the giver. In other words, the so‐called “Yuan influence” actually reveals much more about the Koryŏ than about the Yuan. Kyŏngch’ŏnsa, where the multi‐story pagoda originally stood, was frequently visited by kings and was the site of diverse court‐sponsored rituals during the early Koryŏ (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2005: 32; Sin Ŭ njŏng 2006: 319−320). The close relationship between the temple and the Koryŏ royal court was greatly altered at the time of the pagoda’s construction in the mid‐fourteenth century. According to a dedicatory inscription found underneath the eaves of the pagoda’s first story, the merit accrued from building a pagoda was supposed to be transferred not to the Koryŏ royal court but solely to the Yuan imperial court. The inscription reports that the pagoda was sponsored by Kang Yung (d. 1349) and Ko Yongbong (d. 1362) in the third month of 1348 “with wishes for the well‐being of the imperial family of Yuan, favorable wind and rain, and the prosperity and welfare of the state, so that Buddhism could spread further and bring enlightenment to all the sentient beings” (Ko Yusŏp 2007[1946]: 216–218). It deviates from the standard contents of contemporaneous votive inscriptions in which the benefits of the dedication are directed to the Yuan emperor and the Koryŏ court. Such pro‐Yuan sentiment is far from surprising, considering that the two major patrons were closely related to the Yuan court (Chŏng Ŭ nu 2005: 35). Kang was able to secure a relatively high government position by marrying off his daughter to the prime minister of Yuan, Tuo Tuo (1314−1355). Ko Yongbong, formerly a eunuch at the Yuan court, found favor with Empress Ki, who was of Koryŏ origin and became one of the primary consorts of Emperor Shundi (r. 1333−1370). Acting as a proxy for Empress Ki, Ko Yongbong frequently participated in Buddhist events that took place in Koryŏ temples for the well‐being of the Yuan court. A later tradition even identifies Kyŏngch’ŏnsa as a private prayer temple of Tuo Tuo; this notion may have been derived from the public memory of pro‐Yuan figures affiliated with the temple in the final days of Koryŏ. With its “foreign” look, the multi‐story pagoda certainly contributed to the formation of such memories, one of which credits Yuan artisans with its construction. Indeed, the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda is nothing like the Korean stone pagodas of previous periods in structure or iconography. Accordingly, it has provoked the interest of many scholars. To begin with, scholars continue to debate how many stories

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comprised the pagoda. While Chosŏn dynasty sources and modern scholars of earlier generations identified the pagoda as thirteen‐storied, most scholarly writings since the 1960s have considered it to be ten stories with a three‐tiered base. The latter interpretation was corroborated by the extensive repair of the pagoda from 1995 to 2005. Disassembling the pagoda revealed inscriptions etched on the inner surface of diverse parts. Some individual parts from the first to ninth stories are incised by builders with notes about their locations and positions, such as “first story northeast” (Kungnip munhwajae yŏn’guso 2006, vol. 3: 6–10). Even more interesting is the unique composition of the plans used in the pagoda’s three main sections. The pagoda consists of a three‐tiered base in a cruciform plan, three lower stories in a cruciform plan, and seven square upper stories with a finial that was repaired later. The cruciform plan, adopted in the base and lower three stories, has been identified as the most distinguishable stylistic feature derived from Sino‐Tibetan‐style pagodas. Both in concept and form, Sino‐Tibetan‐style pagodas are considerably different from their Chinese counterparts yet similar to contemporaneous Nepalese and Tibetan stūpas. The closest parallel to the base of Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda is found in the White Pagoda at Miaoyingsi (Wondrous Efficacy Temple), which was designed and built in 1271 by a Nepalese artisan named Anige (1245−1306) under the patronage of Kublai Khan for the symbolic protection of the capital, Dadu. The White Pagoda, an eloquent political symbol of the new Mongolian emperor of China, stood out in the new capital whose design had been based on that of classical Chinese capital cities (Chu Kyŏngmi 2009: 73−74). The bases of the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda and White Pagoda both have a ­cruciform footprint whose branches extend from a central square. Rising to a height of 50.9 meters, the White Pagoda, the largest structure of its kind in Beijing today, is composed of a base in a cruciform plan, a hemispherical body, thirteen broad circular bands of molding representing the “Thirteen Heavens,” and an umbrella‐like bronze structure with thirty‐six bronze bells hanging from its rim. Adorned in white and gold, the monumental pagoda standing at the heart of the new Yuan capital must have drawn great attention from locals and foreign visitors alike for its distinctive form and political symbolism. Given the close relationship between the two courts in the late thirteenth century, the Koryŏ Koreans who traveled back and forth between the two courts seem to have known the White Pagoda and its visual features from the outset (Chu Kyŏngmi 2009: 82−83). Apart from the cruciform plan of the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda, however, there is little else to stylistically associate it with Sino‐Tibetan‐style pagodas. The square plan, adopted in the pagoda’s upper seven stories, as well as the intricately crafted roofs clearly modeled after the timber‐frame architecture on the lower three stories, are not found in any extant Sino‐Tibetan‐style pagodas. Given that the seven‐story pagoda was the standard during the Koryŏ, the design of the upper seven stories of the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda most likely stems from the indigenous tradition of pagoda building that had been popular in Korea up until the fourteenth century. The rich carvings on each story are also different from typical Sino‐Tibetan‐style pagodas. There is a total of 136 sculpted reliefs, each adorned from the bottom to top with carvings of mythical creatures, narrative depictions of the famous Tang monk Xuanzang’s (602−664) journey to the West, arhats, and preaching assemblies of

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Buddhas and bodhisattvas. The subjects of the carvings are all deeply rooted in Chinese and Korean Buddhist traditions. The unique, or perhaps eccentric, combination of architectural forms and iconographical matter in the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda leaves us with many questions, the answers to which are beyond the scope of this short essay. An almost identical copy of the Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda was built in the new capital of the following Chosŏn dynasty. The pagoda, standing 12 meters tall, was constructed in 1467 under royal patronage to form part of Wŏn’gaksa (Perfect Enlightenment Temple) on the site of an older temple from the Koryŏ period. The two pagodas, now standing apart in the bustling city of Seoul, invite us to ponder questions of intention, appropriation, and reception across time and space.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Juhyung Rhi, Haewon Kim, and Phillip E. Bloom for their invaluable comments on earlier versions of this essay.

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Glossary Andong 安東 anssollim 안쏠림 Chanyuan qinggui (C.) 禪苑淸規 Chassijŏn [Jassijeon] 慈氏殿 Chinbong [Jinbong] 進鳳(山) Chinjŏn [Jinjeon] 眞殿 Chinul [Jinul] 知訥 Chogye [Jogye] 曹溪(山) Chŏnghye kyŏlsa [Jeonghye gyeolsa] 定慧結社 Chŏngnimsa [Jeongnimsa] 定林寺 Chosadang [Josadang] 祖師堂 chusimp’o [jusimpo] 柱心包

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dougong (C.) 枓栱 fatang (C.) 法堂 Fujiwara‐kyō (J.) 藤原京 Hanam 河南 Heijō‐kyō (J.) 平城京 Hoebinmun 會賓門 Hoegyŏngjŏn [Hoegyeongjeon] 會慶殿 Hōr yūji (J.) 法隆寺 Huayan (C.) (K. Hwaŏm [Hwaeom]) 華嚴 hubulbyŏk [hubulbyeok] 後佛壁 Hŭijong [Huijong] 熙宗 Hŭngwangsa [Heungwangsa] 興王寺 Hunyo sipcho [Hunyo sipjo] 訓要十條 Hwangnyongsa 皇龍寺 Hwaŏmsa [Hwaeomsa] 華嚴寺 Hyŏnhwasa [Hyeonhwasa] 玄化寺 jin (K. kŭn [geun]) 斤 jiuji xiaozhang (C.) 九脊小帳 Kaegyŏng [Gaegyeong] 開京 Kaesimsa [Gaesimsa] 開心寺 Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kang Yung [Gang Yung] 姜融 Kaogongji (C.) 考工記 Kimje [Gimje] 金堤 Ko Yongbong [Go Yongbong] 高龍鳳 Kŏjoam [Geojoam] 居祖庵 kongp’o [gongpo] 栱包 Koryŏsa [Goryeosa] 高麗史 Kŭmgangsa [Geumgangsa] 金剛寺 Kŭmsansa [Geumsansa] 金山寺 Kŭngnakchŏn [Geungnakjeon] 極樂殿 Kurye [Gurye] 求禮 Kwangjong [Gwangjong] 光宗 Kwanghwamun [Gwanghwamun] 廣化門 kwisosŭm [gwisoseum] 귀솟음 Kyo [Gyo] 敎 Kyŏngch’ŏnsa [Gyeongcheonsa] 敬天寺 Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Kyŏrŭng [Gyeoreung] 決凝 Manwŏltae [Manwoldae] 滿月臺 Miaoyingsi (C.) 妙應寺 Mirŭksa [Mireuksa] 彌勒寺 Munjong 文宗 Muryangsujŏn [Muryangsujeon] 無量壽殿 Namgyewŏn [Namgyewon] 南溪院

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Nanchansi (C.) 南禪寺 Nara (J.) 奈良 Odae 五臺(山) Ogong 蜈蚣(山) Ogwan 五冠(山) paehŭlliim [baeheullim] 배흘림 pang [bang] (C. fang) 坊 Parhae [Balhae] (C. Bohai) 渤海 pibo [bibo] 裨補 Pongŭnsa [Bongeunsa] 奉恩寺 Pongjŏngsa [Bongjeongsa] 鳳停寺 pu [bu] (C. bu) 部 p’ungsu [pungsu] (C. fengshui) 風水 Purilsa [Burilsa] 佛日寺 Puso [Buso] 扶蘇(山) Pusŏksa [Buseoksa] 浮石寺 Puyŏ [Buyeo] 扶餘 P’yŏngyang [Pyeongyang] 平壤 ri (C. li) 里 Sanch’ŏn pibo togam [Sancheon bibo dogam] 山川裨補都監 Sanggyŏng [Sanggyeong] 上京 Shizu (C.) 世祖 Shundi (C.) 順帝 Sipchaga [Sipjaga] 十字街 Sŏgyŏng [Seogyeong] 西京 Sŏlbŏpchŏn [Seolbeopjeon] 說法殿 Sŏn [Seon] (C. Chan; J. Zen) 禪 Songak 松岳(山) Songgwangsa 松廣寺 Sŏnŭimun [Seonuimun] 宣義門 Sudŏksa [Sudeoksa] 修德寺 Sunginmun 崇仁門 Susŏnsa [Suseonsa] 修禪社 Susŏnsa hyŏngji an [Suseonsa hyeongji an] 修禪社形止案 T’aejo [Taejo] 太祖 Taeungjŏn [Daeungjeon] 大雄殿 tangju [dangju] 堂主 tap’o [dapo] 多包 tatchip [datjip] 닫집 t’ongch’ŏn’gwan [tongcheongwan] 通天冠 Tongsa 東寺 Tosŏn [Doseon] 道詵 Tosŏn kuksa sillok [Doseon guksa sillok] 道詵國師實錄

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Tuo Tuo (C.) 脫脫 Ŭ isang [Uisang] 義湘 Ŭ nhaesa [Eunhaesa] 銀海寺 Wang Kŏn [Wang Geon] 王建 Wŏlchŏngsa [Woljeongsa] 月精寺 wŏnch’al [wonchal] 願刹 wŏndang [wondang] 願堂 Wŏn’gaksa [Wongaksa] 圓覺寺 xiaomuzuo (C.) 小木作 Xuanzang (C.) 玄奘 Xuanzu (C.) 宣祖 Yech’ŏn [Yecheon] 醴泉 Yesan 禮山 Yingzao fashi (C.) 營造法式 Yŏngch’ŏn [Yeongcheon] 永川 Yŏngju [Yeongju] 榮州 Yŏngsanjŏn [Yeongsanjeon] 靈山殿 Yongsu 龍岫(山) Zhiyan (C.) 智儼 Zhouli (C.) 周禮

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9

Arts of Refinement: Lacquer and Metalwares of Koryŏ Charlotte Horlyck

Since the early twentieth century, art objects of the Koryŏ kingdom (918–1392) have signified a ‘golden age’ of cultural achievements. Aristocrats dressed in the finest silk and spent their leisure hours in the company of friends, drinking wine and enjoying music and poetry, and historical sources and extant artworks tell of a flourishing arts industry that catered to their needs (Deuchler 2006: 4). Produced under royal patronage, arts prospered and spectacular works were made. Artifacts manufactured during this time have been praised for their technical excellence and aesthetic qualities. Green‐glazed celadon ceramics remain the most well‐known objects from this period, but many other types of artifacts were made. They include lacquer wares and objects manufactured of gold, silver, and bronze, and they form the focal point of this c­ hapter. Made for secular and ritual use, they signify the merging of Unified Silla (668–935) artistic traditions with new technological developments and novel aesthetic considerations that developed along with the steady influx of foreign designs, shapes, and artistic techniques.

Koryŏ Bronze and Lacquer This chapter draws on past and current scholarship in its discussion of Koryŏ metal and lacquer artifacts. Made for local as well as foreign consumers, they are representatives of Koryŏ aesthetic concerns and technical expertise. This was commented on by the Chinese scholar‐official Xu Jing (1091–1153), whose volume is one of the most significant historical accounts of Koryŏ society. In 1123 he accompanied a delegation of officials from the court of the Northern Song emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1126) to

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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the Koryŏ capital of Kaesŏng (then Kaegyŏng), where he spent around a month. Upon returning to China, he wrote a record of his trip, titled Illustrated Record of the Xuanhe Embassy to Koryŏ (Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing). Xu Jing covered a wide range of subject matters, which in addition to artifacts include Koryŏ institutions, customs and world views, among other topics. The volume was initially illustrated, but only the text has survived (Vermeersch 2016). In a section on local products, Xu Jing wrote: “There is not much gold or silver in the territory, but lots of copper. Vessels are made of lacquer, but [the quality] is not of a high level. However, the workmanship of their mother‐of‐pearl inlay is refined and very precious” (Xu Jing Chapter  23: “Various customs 2,” 121; Translation after Vermeersch 2016: 162; Pak 1998: 412). Xu Jing’s observations should be interpreted in context of early twelfth century Song Chinese cultural traditions that provided him with a conceptual and epistemological framework for understanding Koryŏ. In contrast to Song, in Koryŏ the use of gold, silver and gilded wares was reserved for a small elite group of high‐ranking individuals associated with the royal family. This is reflected in Xu Jing’s comments on ointment jars (myŏn’yakho) which were made in silver for chief and deputy envoys as well as for the general secretary and his assistant, but in bronze for others (Xu Jing Chapter 30: “Vessels 1,” 165; Vermeersch 2016: 195). The strict sumptuary laws to which the use of precious metals was subject may in part explain Xu Jing’s comment on the local scarcity of gold and silver objects, even though they featured prominently in tributary and commercial activities. Historical records indicate that Koryŏ presented large quantities of gold and silver as tribute to Song (960–1279), Liao (907– 1125) and Yuan (1279–1368) (Kim Sanggi 1985: 68–70). Only ten years after Xu Jing’s visit, Injong (r. 1122–46) offered to the Southern Song court close to three kilos of gold, and twenty‐eight kilos of silver (Bielenstein 2005: 165). In the thirteenth century too, tribute to the invading Mongols from the Yuan empire was frequently in the form of precious metal. For example, in the winter of 1231, when Koryŏ entered initial peace negotiations with the Mongols, gifts of gold and silver were presented to Marshal Sartaq, commander of the Mongol force. They included numerous drinking vessels of gold and silver, in addition to more than seven kilos of unworked gold, and seventeen kilos of unworked silver (Henthorn 1974: 248). Bronze objects on the other hand were widely used for ritual and secular purposes by different classes of people. Bronze and its component copper were not rare commodities on the Korean peninsula as verified in the Geographical Conspectus of the Eastern Kingdom Korea (Tongguk yŏji sŭngnam, 1486), which states that copper was produced in large quantities (Jeon 1974: 248). Like gold and silver, bronze also formed part of Koryŏ’s diplomatic and commercial exchanges with neighboring countries, and the abundance of bronze in Koryŏ is reflected in the variety and numbers of artifacts surviving in museum collections. Contrary to bronze and other metal items, few lacquer objects have been handed down from Koryŏ times. Lacquer is a resin made from the sap of the lacquer tree. The lacquering process is complicated and time consuming since the resin is applied layer upon layer onto a core that is typically made of wood. After each coating, the object is left to dry, its surface is smoothened, and another layer is applied. Depth of color is

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achieved by adding layers of lacquer that at the final stage is polished to a high sheen (Garner 1963: 84). During the Koryŏ period only black lacquer was used but mother‐ of‐pearl and other precious materials were inlaid into the surface as decoration. Lacquer is susceptible to damage when exposed to heat and humidity, as it can crack or flake off the wooden core. As a result, less than thirty lacquer objects from this period have survived, mostly in Japanese private and public collections. However, historical records, such as Xu Jing’s writings, testify to their production and use between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. With their long history of manufacture under royal governance, metal and lacquer wares offer rich scope for exploring the ways in which Koryŏ art evolved over time. Early scholarship on Koryŏ iconography and style created a chronological framework based on stylistic parameters, which continues to be used to this day. The reliance on relative dating methods is due to the fact that most Koryŏ artifacts held in museum collections lack context, and only few are inscribed with dates. This is due to the circumstances under which they were discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Some were found by chance, but many others were deliberately sought out, often by grave robbers. However, since the late twentieth century significant numbers of bronze artifacts have been retrieved from systematic archaeological excavations in the southern half of the peninsula. The majority of them are vessels, mirrors and spoons of bronze that were interred alongside other kinds of artifacts, typically ceramics. However, even when excavated from graves, the objects are difficult to date precisely, and instead are often placed within a broad time frame of one or two centuries (Horlyck 2014: 162). In some cases, the dates of Koryŏ artifacts have shifted significantly, as their historical contexts have become better understood. This chapter analyses representative dated and undated examples from important periods of the almost‐five‐hundred‐year rule of the Koryŏ kingdom.

Fluidity of Use From its inception Koryŏ was deeply seeped in Buddhist thought. T’aejo stressed the importance of the Buddhist faith for the welfare of the kingdom, famously noting in his “Ten Injunctions” (Hunyo shipcho): “The great enterprise of our state inevitably depends on the protective power of the Buddhas” (Breuker 2010: 345). Private temples (wŏndang, “hall of vows”) were built for Koryŏ monarchs, aristocrats and, from the twelfth century onwards, for powerful officials, too (Pak Youngsook 1998: 422). It also became common for one of the king’s younger sons to enter monkhood. For example, Munjong’s (r. 1046–1083) fourth son, Wang Hu (1055–1101), became the famous monk Ŭ ich’ŏn. The strong presence of Buddhism at this time can also be seen in the arts. In the capital and elsewhere on the peninsula, a large number of temples were built for public worship, leading to an increased demand for objects used in Buddhist ritual settings, such as temple bells, gongs, incense burners, relic containers, and miniature stupas, manufactured in ceramic, gold, silver, and bronze and expensively decorated (Choi 1988: 34). Nowadays Koryŏ artifacts tend to be grouped as fine art (misulp’um), crafts items (kongyep’um) and everyday items (saenghwalp’um).

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However, in the Koryŏ period such categories did not apply. Moreover, it can be difficult to determine whether an object was originally made for ritual or secular purposes, and it cannot be ruled out that some may have been used in both contexts. In recognition of this, the analysis below includes artifacts made for Buddhist as well as for secular use. As Koryŏ Buddhist sculptures are discussed separately in the current volume, they are not covered here. The kuṇdị kā stands as a good example of the fluidity of use that characterizes Koryŏ artifacts. The Sanskrit term means water‐pot or pitcher and denotes the foreign origin of this type of vessel. According to the Flower Garland Sutra (Skt. Avataṃ saka sūtra, K. Hwaŏmgyŏng), one of the most influential Buddhist scriptures within Mahayana Buddhism, a monk should carry eighteen objects, including a bottle for clean drinking water. The Tang Chinese monk Yijing (635–713) wrote in detail about such water bottles in diaries that recorded twenty‐five years of travels in India. The shapes he described resemble the kuṇdị kā that were manufactured in Koryŏ workshops. Despite the Buddhist connotations of kuṇdị kā, it seems that Koryŏ people used them in secular contexts too. In the Illustrated Account of the Xuanhe Embassy to Koryŏ, Xu Jing made note of a vessel, which he called a jingping (K. chŏngbyŏng, “pure bottle”): “The ­jingping has a long neck and a stout body; on the side there is a spout. The spout is divided into two sections that are connected with a hinge. In the middle of the neck there is a rim, and above the rim there is another small neck that looks [as thin as] a hairpin or brush.” (Xu Jing Chapter 31: “Vessels 2,” 167. Translation after Vermeersch 2016: 196). The description closely matches that of twelfth‐century kuṇdị kā bottles. Xu Jing further noted that the nobility, government officials, Buddhist temples, as well as ­common people used them as receptacles for water. Thus, it seems that kuṇdị kā were used concurrently as everyday containers for water in commoners’ households and as ritual objects in temples and other Buddhist settings. A Koryŏ kuṇḍikā typically has a round body and a long neck, above which rises a long slender tube which functions as a mouth. On the shoulder of the body sits a short spout used for filling the vessel. During the Koryŏ period a large number of kuṇḍikā bottles were made of bronze and ceramic, and many survive in museum collections. There are no dated examples, but a recent archaeological discovery of two bronze kuṇḍikā at In’gak Temple in North Kyŏngsang Province helps to establish a chronology for their manufacture. Believed to date between the mid‐eighth and the ninth century, the two vessels are slender in shape with long necks (No Hyŏngsŏk 2009). This shape continued to be in vogue during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but later they became squatter in shape and shorter in the neck (Choi 2003, 171–172). One of the most exceptional kuṇḍikā bottles from Koryŏ is in the National Museum of Korea (Figure 9.1). Celebrated for its balanced shape, silver inlaid surface decoration, and green patina, it is the only kuṇḍikā to be designated a National Treasure (kukpo). On the body is an elaborate composition of islets covered in grasses and reeds, surrounded by ducks and fishermen. This main composition is framed at top and bottom by a band of ruyi sceptre heads, and on the neck are stylized clouds and an open‐veined leaf motif. The apparent use of perspective in depicting the ducks in flight is noteworthy with those in the foreground appearing larger in scale than those in the background.

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Figure 9.1  kuṇḍikā Bottle. Koryŏ (918–1392). Bronze inlaid with silver wire. H. 37.5 cm. National Treasure No. 92. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Although the decoration seems secular in essence, the willow trees that adorn either side of the vessel point towards the ritual connotations of this type of object. In addition to being a monk’s attribute, the kuṇdị kā is also associated with the Buddhist deity Avalokiteśvara (Kwanseŭm posal) – one of the most popular bodhisattvas within Mahayana Buddhism due to his powers of salvation and healing. Bodhisattvas are often associated with attributes that signify their powers, and those of Avalokiteśvara are a water bottle and a willow branch, both representing healing and purification. Several Buddhist paintings from the late Koryŏ period depict Avalokiteśvara seated on a rocky outcrop next to a kuṇdị kā with a willow branch emerging from its spout. Among those, the kuṇdị kā bottles illustrated in the “Water‐moon Avalokitesvara” paintings in the Musée Guimet in Paris and the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne are notable for their detailed surface decorations. Both vessels are covered with a fine mesh of golden lines that probably ­represent inlaid motifs.

Craftspeople Entries in the History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa), compiled in the fifteenth century during the reign of King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) and one of the most significant historical sources for the Koryŏ kingdom, suggest that those craftspeople who worked in a particular

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material or manufactured a certain type of object were normally referred to as chang or kongjang a classification that had been passed down from the Three Kingdoms (trad. 57 BCE–668 CE) and Unified Silla periods (Yi Yŏnghŭi 2004). Chang or changin is usually translated into English as ‘craftsman’ or ‘artisan.’ In recognition that some may have been women, albeit probably only a small number, the gender‐ neutral term ‘craftsperson’ is used in this chapter. In pre‐modern times the concept of craftsperson was broader than how it is understood today. Some made artifacts that are nowadays termed as crafts (such as metal and lacquer items). Others worked as painters, carpenters, stonemasons, forgers or smelters, among other professions. Three types of craftspeople operated during this period. Those with the best skills were employed in government‐administered bureaus or offices that made artifacts for court and government use. This was noted by Xu Jing, who spoke highly of their expertise, though he also lamented the apparent government monopolization of good talent (Xu Jing Chapter 19: “Citizens,” 100). They manufactured the most exclusive and elaborate objects, using local and imported raw materials. All extant Koryŏ lacquer wares and many metal wares are believed to have been made by such government‐employed craftspeople for elite consumers, including two bowls of gold in the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, in Seoul (Figure  9.2). The bowls are decorated with floral scrolls and lotus motifs. On the exterior surface of each is an inscription of four Chinese characters that reads: “Pongnyŏng kungbang”. The first two characters refer to Princess Pongnyŏng (1096–1133), the fourth daughter of Sukchong (r. 1095‐1105) and sister of Yejong (r. 1105–22). The third character “kung” means palace and the fourth character “bang” refers to a residence, indicating that the bowls were made for use in the royal residence of the princess sometime between 1114

Figure 9.2  Dishes. 12th century. Gold. D. 11 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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(when she was granted the title of Princess) and 1133 (Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art 2013: 159, 176). Low‐ranking craftspeople, catering for commoners, worked in the provinces in administrative units overseen by the government. Called so, the units were assigned the production of specific materials, such as paper, thread, coal, and salt (Pak Yongun 1996: 244). A fixed quota of the goods they produced was set aside for government use, but the remainder was sold to local consumers (Koryŏ taehakkyo minjok munhwa yŏn’guso 1964: 1035). The third type of craftspersons worked in temples (sŭngjang), where they made bells, gongs, and incense vessels of bronze, as well as other artifacts used for secular and ritual purposes at the numerous temples that existed during this period. Choi Eung‐Ch’ǒn has suggested that temple craftspeople may have had the same official titles as their government‐employed equivalents, although little is known about the ways in which they were managed. An inscription on a bronze bell at Sŏnak Temple, dated to 1066, indicates that they may at times have worked together with other individuals. The inscription reads: “craftsperson […]” and “cast by the Priest Kyŏngjin” (chujang tongnyangsŭng Kyŏngjin) signifying a collaboration between two different craftspeople, one of them a Buddhist monk (Choi 2004: 178–179).

Government Workshops Unsurprisingly, historical records mostly offer insights into the government‐run craft industry that supplied the court. Government craftspeople were given official titles, such as taejang or pujang, and were treated as regular officials, although their salaries were different (Choi 2004: 175). According to the History of Koryŏ, during the reign of Munjong there were almost one hundred different types of craftspeople employed by the government. They either produced wares in specific materials, such as stone, silk, or lacquer, or made specific goods, including bronze mirrors, knives, bows, and writing brushes. They were all administered by a central bureau in charge of the manufacture of objects and the fashioning of materials for a specific use. For example, the “Office for Metalworking” (Changyasŏ) controlled eleven types of craftspeople, who predominantly specialized in producing artifacts of silver, bronze, and “white copper” (paektong), an alloy of copper and nickel, which sometimes also contained zinc (nickel served to make the copper soft and thus easier to hammer) (Koryŏsa 80: 14b; Jeon 1974: 252–4). It also employed craftspeople specialized in the casting of mirrors (kyŏngjang). Due to the lack of inscribed artifacts, it is difficult to link a ­particular object to its maker. However, some mirrors carry inscriptions suggesting that they were manufactured by government craftspeople. A large and elaborately decorated mirror in the Sumitomo collection at the Sen‐oku Hakko Kan in Kyoto is a rare example of this. The inscribed characters “Koryŏguk kyŏngjang Kim Hyŏp cho,” indicate that it was cast by the mirror craftsperson Kim Hyŏp in Koryŏ (Higuchi 1990: 68). Lesser detailed inscriptions are found on two mirrors in the National Museum of Korea, reported to have been found within the vicinity of Kaesŏng. They are decorated with a scroll motif and both carry a cartouche with four Chinese

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characters “Koryŏguk cho”, which means “made in Koryŏ”. The contours of the raised design appear soft and, in some cases, slightly blurred, suggesting that the mold had been re‐used many times, pointing to mass‐production of this particular type of mirror (Figure 9.3). Lacquered artifacts were also produced under the direction of the government. There are few extant lacquered pieces from the Koryŏ period, but historical sources indicate that a wide variety of wares was made, ranging from Buddhist sculptures to small containers for incense and large boxes for Buddhist scriptures. Some lacquered objects were used by the army and were made by craftspeople employed by the office in charge of manufacturing goods for the military (Kun’gigam) (Koryŏ taehakkyo minjok munhwa yŏn’guso 1964: 1028). Koryŏ consumers were particularly fond of artifacts inlaid with precious materials, and lacquered objects decorated with mother‐ of‐pearl were made under the jurisdiction of the “Central Office for the Royal Household” (Chungsangsŏ), which in the eleventh century was the largest of all the government‐run crafts bureaus (Frick 2012: 38). It was also in charge of producing other types of items used by the court, such as hemp and paper (Koryŏ taehakkyo minjok munhwa yŏn’guso 1964: 1026–1029). The delicate iridescence of mother‐of‐ pearl made it a much sought‐after material. In Koryŏ it was sourced either from the abalone shell or turban snail (Kobayashi 2012: 73). It was cut into shape and the pieces were applied to the lacquered surface in the final stages of production. Koryŏ craftspeople also added small pieces of tortoiseshell to their inlaid designs, probably as a means to add color and visual interest. They were painted on the reverse in red or yellow before being applied to the lacquered surface with the painted side facing down (Pak Youngsook 1998: 413). In addition, brass wire was used for decoration, often for borders and for the stems of floral scrolls. The minute pieces of mother‐of‐ pearl inlaid into the surface are typical of Koryŏ lacquer wares and contrast with the larger‐sized inlaid pieces typically used in the Chosŏn period. Historical records

Figure 9.3  Mirror. Koryŏ (918–1392). Bronze. D. 9.7 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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suggest that the production of inlaid lacquer intensified towards the end of Koryŏ. In 1272, according to the History of Koryŏ, a “Directorate for the Production of Mother‐ of‐Pearl Inlaid Boxes” (Chŏnham chosŏng togam) was established for the production of inlaid lacquer boxes. Such togam were temporary offices that were established at short notice to manage special commissions issued by the royal family or the central government (Frick 2012: 38).

The Early Koryŏ Period Relatively few metal wares remain from the early Koryŏ period in contrast to the numerous plain and inlaid objects made mainly of bronze that date from between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Most examples of early Koryŏ metal wares are in the form of unadorned bronze bottles, ewers, bowls, and dishes that stylistically link Unified Silla styles and shapes with the fluid and elegant forms of the mid‐Koryŏ period. Some larger scale bronzes have also survived, including temple bells. Percussion instruments played a significant role in Buddhist worship as they expressed Buddha’s teachings symbolically through sound. In addition to the temple bell, they include the drum, the wooden fish and the cloud‐shaped gong. Each has a different symbolic meaning and is struck at different times. A bell from Ch’ŏnhŭng Temple in North Ch’ungch’ŏng Province is the earliest known temple bell from the Koryŏ kingdom, and it signifies the emergence of a distinct Koryŏ tradition of casting large‐scale bells (Figure 9.4). It carries Unified Silla characteristics but also has noticeable Koryŏ features, as for example seen in the dragon‐shaped hook at the top. On Unified Silla bells the head of the dragon points downwards while on Koryŏ bells it faces forward and holds a jewel in its mouth. The cartouche on the main body of the bell is also a Koryŏ trait. Cast in relief, it carries an inscription, which states that the bell was made in the twenty‐eighth year of Tonghe, corresponding to 1010. The date is a Liao dynasty reign date and denotes the year when Liao invaded the peninsula, forcing Hyŏnjong (r. 1009–1031) to commence peace negotiations that resulted in the Liao army withdrawing from Koryŏ territory at the beginning of 1011 (Bielenstein 2005: 155). Ch’ŏnhŭng Temple was founded in 922 but was later abandoned. In the early twentieth century the bell entered the museum of the Yi Royal Family (Yi wangga pangmulgwan) (Choi 1988: 39; Choi and Kim 2004: 70–71). When the royal ­collection merged with the National Museum of Korea in 1969, the bell was moved to the latter. In 1993 it was designated National Treasure no. 280. Many works of art were lost in the wars with Liao that plagued the peninsula during the early centuries of the Koryŏ rule. In 993 Liao invaded for the first time, forcing Sŏngjong (r. 981–97) to acknowledge its suzerainty (Rogers 1983: 154). His successor Mokchong (r. 997–1009) also recognized the Liao ruler as the Son of Heaven, and in turn, Liao treated him as a vassal king. Therefore, when Mokchong was killed by one of his military commanders, Liao took military action, supposedly to avenge his death, and in 1010 launched a second and far more destructive invasion of the peninsula (Breuker 2010: 365). The Koryŏ capital was burnt to the ground, causing huge loss of books and artifacts housed in its palaces, temples, and libraries. It took decades for

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Figure 9.4  Bell. 1010. Bronze. H. 174.2 cm. National Treasure No. 280. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the kingdom to recover from the devastation, and it was not until Munjong ascended the throne in 1046 that Koryŏ regained power and wealth, heralding an era of prosperity and artistic efflorescence (Ebrey et al. 2006: 182). Munjong was a supporter of Confucian learning and a devout Buddhist. During his rule the payment structures for government craftspeople were laid out in detail, leading to a well‐controlled and effective industry. Koryŏ’s diplomatic and trade relations with Northern Song (960– 1126) and Liao led to exchanges of art objects, among other coveted items (Pratt 1980: 19–20; Shee 1995; Wittfogel and Feng 1949: 318– 319). It is within this context that the manufacture of a bronze burner cast in the shape of a lotus should be understood (Figure 9.5). The foot of the stand is in the shape of a large lotus leaf. From the leaf a stem branched off into a long handle, which no longer exists. On the top of the stem rests a large lotus‐bud‐shaped bowl, which originally had a matching lid. The foot carries an inscription that reads “Taikang 3,” corresponding to the year 1077. As in the case of the Ch’ŏnhŭng Temple bell, it is a Liao reign date, signifying the formalization of diplomatic relations between the two nations. Due to migrant refugees, Koryŏ arts was much impacted by the contact with Liao (An Kwisuk 2004: 156–7). In particular, the war of 1010 resulted in a large number of northern migrants settling on the peninsula, among them craftspeople

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Figure 9.5  Incense burner. 1077. Bronze. H. 14.7 cm. L. 18.8 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

who brought with them Liao technology and cultural traditions. The best among them seem to have been recruited into government workshops, leading to the manufacture of Liao‐style products, such as the incense burner in the shape of a lotus (An Kwisuk 2004: 175–177). Comparable incense burners found in Liao tombs point to the northern origins of the lotus burner. A particularly elaborate silver censer excavated in the tomb of Boteben (d. 1080) at Maiwangou, Ningcheng County, and now in the collection of the Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Inner Mongolia, has a long, curved handle, which grows into three stems. Two stems carry lotus blossoms elaborately decorated with out‐turning petals while the third stem terminates in a leaf, which acts as a support when the censer is positioned on a flat surface (Shen 2006, pl. 69). A nearly identical burner is illustrated in a mural from the tomb of Zhang Gongyou (d. 1113, buried 1117) in Xuanhua, Hebei Province (Shen 2006: 260). No lotus‐shaped hand‐held bronze burners survive from the late Koryŏ period, but they are illustrated in Buddhist paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, suggesting that they may have remained in use. An example comparable to the 1077 censer is depicted in a late Koryŏ painting titled Shakyamuni Triad and the Sixteen Arhats in the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, in Seoul (Hoam misulgwan 1993: 286). Written sources suggest that lacquer wares were also made during the eleventh century. The government employed craftspeople, who specialized in the making of either plain or inlaid wares. They were luxury articles that were predominantly used at the court, such as the mother‐of‐pearl inlaid carriages made during Munjong’s reign (Pak Youngsook 1998: 412). A small number of inlaid lacquered wares was sent abroad as gifts for high‐ranking people, including those presented by Munjong to the Liao court (Kim 2003: 15). Koryŏ craftspeople drew on Unified Silla traditions that incorporated visual elements and techniques from Tang China. Such traditions include

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the technique of inlaying lacquered artifacts with precious metals, mother‐of‐pearl and tortoise‐shell, among other materials. A representative example is a bronze mirror in the National Museum of Korea with its back covered with black lacquer into which large alternating gold and silver rosettes are surrounded by a leaping fox and birds in silver foil. Dating to the Unified Silla period, the technique is similar to that used on lacquered and inlaid Tang mirrors (Horlyck 2011: 166). The National Museum of Korea has in its collection fragments of a lacquered incense box with designs of willows, trees, and ducks inlaid in mother‐of‐pearl and accentuated with gold paint. The free‐flowing design resembles that seen on the patina‐covered bronze kuṇḍikā discussed earlier and is not found on any other extant Koryŏ lacquer wares. Also unusual is its decorative detailing in gold. Stylistic comparison with twelfth century inlaid celadon ceramics and metal wares suggests that the box is of an earlier manufacture; possibly from the eleventh century (Yi Nanhŭi 2014: 111–112). If so, it manifests the highly developed skills of early Koryŏ lacquer craftspeople. The production of inlaid lacquer wares developed ­further in the mid‐Koryŏ period, when they were praised by Xu Jing, reflecting a ­maturation of techniques and skills.

The Twelfth Century The blossoming of arts and culture that characterized Munjong’s reign continued into the twelfth century, which was a time of peace and prosperity. During this period Koryŏ achieved considerable wealth and it provided the state and local elites with the ability to invest in the commission and purchase of luxury objects reflecting their tastes (Shultz 2003: 27). Thus, the twelfth century is often referred to as a time of cultural efflorescence. The upper classes were not only consumers of locally made products but also coveted the goods that foreign traders brought into the peninsula. They included ceramics, medicine, tea, books and musical instruments (Pratt 1980: 19–20). As a result, Kaesŏng emerged as a busy city that thrived on trade, as reflected in the writings of the Koryŏ scholar and statesman Yi Kyubo (1168–1241), who compared incoming and outgoing ships at the bustling Koryŏ port on the Yesŏng River, near Kanghwa Island, to horses that ran as fast as the wind (Kim 2003: 10). The amalgamation of local and foreign techniques, shapes, and designs is manifested in many twelfth century objects. They include gold and gilt‐silver artifacts produced in the repoussé and chasing techniques. Repoussé designs are made by working a piece of metal from the back, resulting in a raised surface. The metal is either pushed into a die, or it is beaten from the back with a rounded tool. Sometimes chasing is added to repoussé designs as a means to refine the motif. In chasing, the metal is worked from the front, so that the marks which create the design are indented into the metal (White and Bunker 1994: 45). On the Korean peninsula, repoussé had been used for the decoration of gold and silver objects since the Three Kingdoms period, but it became very popular during Koryŏ (Lee 2011: 29). Most repoussé objects are of gold and silver and were likely made for elite consumers. They range from personal ornaments to objects associated with Buddhist worship, such as containers for sutras.

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Most of them are small in size, undoubtedly because of their time‐consuming method of manufacture, but larger artifacts, such as mirror stands, were also made. A gilt‐silver gourd‐shaped bottle with a stopper in the form of a lotus bud is an outstanding example of Koryŏ repoussé (Figure 9.6). Made in three parts, the main motif stands out in relief while the background is covered by a punched design. The lower part of the bottle features a phoenix among foliage resembling grape bunches. Overlapping lotus petals surround the upper and lower parts of the narrow waist. The top part of the bottle is decorated with floral scrolls. The function of the bottle is not known but it is likely to have contained perfumed oil. It may have belonged to a female member of the royal family as denoted by the phoenix seen on the lower part of the bottle since this auspicious bird was typically associated with women. The popularity of repoussé artifacts may be attributed to Koryŏ’s links to Liao and Song where this technique was commonly used. It is especially associated with nomadic traditions, and its prevalence in Koryŏ may be due to the migration of Liao craftspeople to the peninsula. Xu Jing bemoaned their employment by the Koryŏ government, arguing that as a ­consequence Koryŏ art had become “artificial and vapid”, leading to the irretrievable loss of “the quality of former days” (Xu Jing Chapter 19: “Common People,” 100. Translation after Vermeersch 2016: 146). However, Xu Jing was undoubtedly biased against the Khitan people whom the Song Chinese saw as barbarians and as threats to the stability of the Middle Kingdom.

Figure 9.6  Bottle with silver stopper. Koryŏ (918–1392). Gilt‐silver. H. 11.1 cm, D. of body: 5.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Ch’ŏngju National Museum, Ch’ŏngju. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Another technique that rose to prominence during the twelfth century was that of inlay with precious materials. Koryŏ consumers were fond of contrasting colors and favored inlaid designs on metal, lacquer, and ceramic wares. Craftspersons specializing in these materials drew inspiration from each other’s work. Consequently, slip inlays on celadon ceramics can be associated with earlier inlaid motifs on metal wares. Inlaid metal and lacquer wares were also made in twelfth‐century China, but they did not constitute the mainstay of production contrary to their huge popularity on the peninsula where inlaid decoration became a defining characteristic of mid to late Koryŏ arts. Inlaid designs on metal wares were made by hammering a thin metal wire into grooves cut into the surface of an object. Bronzes inlaid with silver and gold wire were already produced in the Unified Silla kingdom, but their manufacture was perfected during Koryŏ. A tall‐necked bottle in the National Museum of Korea is believed to be among the earliest examples of Koryŏ inlaid bronze. It has a design of ducks among grasses, lotus, and flowering plants inlaid in silver. This motif was hugely popular in mid‐Koryŏ inlaid metal and sanggam ceramic wares (see also Namwon Jang’s essay in this volume). The decoration is similar to that on the kuṇḍikā illustrated in figure 9.1 above, but the open‐spaced composition seems less mature, lacks spatial depth, and does not carry the same schematization of scrolling designs and borders that characterizes the kuṇḍikā. For example, the inlaid scrolls around the inner rim of the bottle appear randomly placed. Therefore, it is believed that the bottle may be of earlier manufacture than the kuṇḍikā, probably from the eleventh or possibly the twelfth century. An incense burner in P’yoch’ung Temple in South Kyŏngsang Province is among the earliest dated Koryŏ inlaid bronzes. Intended for burning incense before a Buddhist altar, an inscription under the wide rim states that it was made as a Buddhist offering for the living and the dead in the year Taejŏng 17, corresponding to 1177 (Figure 9.7). On the interior wall of the base, the name of Yonghŭng Temple (also in South Kyŏngsang Province) is inscribed in a dotted, rather than an engraved line, suggesting that at some point ownership of the burner changed from Yonghŭng Temple to P’yoch’ung Temple. In size, shape, and design, the burner is similar to others made during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It has a broad stemmed foot on which sits a straight‐walled bowl with a wide rim. The burner is skillfully inlaid with silver wire, signifying the maturation of this technique. The base of the burner is decorated with a dragon chasing a flaming pearl. Overlapping lotus petals frame the bowl which carries four Sanskrit characters within roundels that, in a counter‐­ clockwise sequence, read: oṃ , a, hrīḥ, hūṃ . Sanskrit characters appear on several burners from the mid to late Koryŏ period and this particular combination is not uncommon. They signify the purification mantra ōṃ a hūṃ , and the syllable hrīḥ references Buddha Amitābha. However, the burner is unusual for another set of six Sanskrit characters that are inlaid on the rim amid cloud motifs. No other incense burners from Koryŏ carry Sanskrit characters on the rim. In counter‐clockwise sequence they are: ōṃ , ma, ṇi, pad, me, hūṃ . This six‐syllable mantra was associated with Avalokiteśvara and was popular in Koryŏ as well as in other Buddhist countries at this time (Yi Yongjin 2012: 166–8).

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Figure 9.7  Incense burner. 1177. Bronze inlaid with silver. H. 27.5 cm. National Treasure No. 75. Photo: courtesy of the P’yoch’ungsa temple, South Kyŏngsan Province. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Also the manufacture of inlaid lacquer wares reached new heights in the twelfth c­entury. Xu Jing described such wares as “intricate and precious” and “extremely ­elegant” (Kim 2003: 15). He made special note of equestrian equipment: “Saddles of the cavalry are extremely exquisite. They are decorated with mother‐of‐pearl inlay; the hind straps and reins are made of cypress branches and agate and are inlaid with yellow gold and dark silver” (Xu Jing Chapter 15: “Horses and Carts,” 75; Translation after Vermeersch 2016: 126; Pak 1998: 412). No dated lacquer wares have survived but a twelfth century date has been ascribed to a mother‐of‐pearl inlaid flywhisk in the National Museum of Korea. It is thought to be contemporaneous with several small lobed inlaid boxes that are now in various museum collections around the world. Some such boxes may have been excavated from tombs (Yoshino 1954: 4; Gray 1968: 133). They were made in sets of four to be arranged around a small covered box, as evidenced in a complete set of five small lacquered boxes on a tray that was unearthed in the early half of the twentieth century (Yoshino 1954: 4). In the National Museum of Korea is a set of similarly shaped celadon boxes that were placed inside an openwork rectangular box with a cover and an inset tray (Frick 2012: 42). Discussions abound as to the function of the lobed boxes. Some scholars have argued that they were used as incense containers, while others believe that they were made for cosmetics (Pak 1998: 414). All inlaid lacquer wares from the mid‐Koryŏ period are decorated in a similar style, suggesting that they originated from the same workshop. A lobed box in the private collection of Tajima Mizuru is nearly identical in shape and size to an example in

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the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The technique of inlay lent itself well to delicate scrolling motifs, which in the mid to late twelfth century also became extremely popular in inlaid ceramics (Nakagawa 1954). Both are decorated with dense floral scrolls in mother‐of‐pearl further embellished with alternating pieces of red and yellow painted tortoiseshell. The edges of the boxes are inlaid with brass wire (National Museum of Korea 2006: 45). In addition to extravagantly decorated objects, large numbers of plain bronzes were made during the twelfth century by government and temple craftspeople for Buddhist worship as well as secular use. The majority of them have been retrieved from burials, suggesting that some may have had a ritual function within the tomb setting. Tomb objects include bronze (and in a few cases silver) spoons and chopsticks, bronze bowls, and other types of vessels, as well as coffin ornaments of silver and gilt‐bronze. Gilded hairpins and openwork clothes ornaments in gold, silver, and bronze completed the attire of the deceased (Horlyck 2014: 167–70). Bronze mirrors have also been unearthed from graves. They were cast in large numbers during the Koryŏ period, when stands were also made for them. Mirrors were popular in Koryŏ society as evidenced by their large numbers and by the fact that their manufacture was controlled in part by the central government, as mentioned earlier. They were produced in many sizes and various shapes, such as circles, squares, flowers, clouds, and bells. In contrast to earlier times, when mirrors chiefly carried cosmological motifs, in Koryŏ various auspicious themes became popular, such as pictorial arrangements and stylized floral, bird and animal patterns. Some mirror patterns seem to have been unique to Koryŏ while others imitated designs on foreign mirrors. Earlier and contemporary mirrors from Song, Liao, Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan, and to a lesser extent from the Japanese archipelago, were either copied or adapted to suit local taste and traditions.

The Late Koryŏ Period Repeated Yuan invasions of the peninsula between 1231 and 1259 forced Koryŏ rulers to engage in military action and call on the powers of Buddha for protection. The greatest manifestation of religiosity during this trying period was the carving of the Koryŏ Tripiṭaka (Koryŏ taejanggyŏng) on more than eighty thousand wooden blocks a project that was undertaken between 1237 and 1251. However, it was to no avail. When Kojong (r. 1213–1259) finally surrendered by sending the crown prince (later crowned as Wŏnjong, r. 1259–1269, 1269–1274) to the Mongol court as ­hostage, Koryŏ became a vassal state of the vast and powerful Yuan empire. As a means to secure control over the peninsula, the Mongols forced intermarriage with the Koryŏ ruling family. Ch’ungnyŏl (r. 1274–1308) was the first Koryŏ king to take a Mongolian wife, but thereafter this became the norm for all crown princes. Crown princes also had to spend their formative years in the Yuan capital. This led to the Mongol language and way of life being introduced to Koryŏ. Connections between the two courts encouraged Koryŏ craftspeople to incorporate Yuan ideas into their stylistic repertoires. It also led to exchanges of craftspeople. For example, twice during

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Ch’ungnyŏl’s reign calligrapher‐monks were dispatched to the Yuan court to write sutras with gold pigments (Pak 2003: 104). In the fourteenth century when Koryŏ experienced a shortage of craftspeople, Yuan sent skilled workers. The Yuan invasions devastated much of the country. Not only did they destroy towns and temples, causing loss of artworks and books, but famine ensued, making the death toll even higher. The impact on the production of the arts was also severe. By the 1250s the country was essentially bankrupt, as stated in the History of Koryŏ: “The treasuries and the storehouses were all exhausted” (Henthorn 1963: 204). Lack of bronze led to a decrease in the production of large individually made temple bells, and it brought about the mass production of smaller bells that may have been used indoors, as opposed to outdoors in the belfry (Choi 2003: 169–70). Koryŏ’s response to repeated demands for tribute by the Yuan court and Mongolian field commanders reflects the situation well. When in the winter of 1253 Mongolian officials demanded gold, silver, and other products, the answer from Koryŏ was: “The necessary gold and silver have since ancient times not been produced in our small state; as regards their being presented as tribute, this is not easily managed. As for otter pelts [a much desired product among the Mongols] and ramie cloth, since the beginning of the war, the people have all fled in alarm, so that it is difficult to provide [these things]” (Henthorn 1963: 204).

The impoverished state of the country affected craftspersons, too. An entry in the Collected Works of Prime Minister Yi of Korea (Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip) presents Yi Kyubo’s observations on this. He wrote that many craftspeople died due to either famine or illness, while others abandoned their profession and turned to farming. For this reason, when the Yuan demanded Koryŏ to send craftspeople, it was unable to comply. The shortage of skilled metalworkers became so acute that when, in 1346, Yŏnbok Temple in Kaesŏng wanted to cast six bells, no craftspeople could be found locally and workers had to be invited from Yuan China instead. The historical sources tell of several other cases from the fourteenth century when Yuan sculptors, wood and metal workers, among other craftspersons, were sent to Koryŏ, often to build temples or cast bells (Chŏng 2007: 33–8). It led to the introduction of new stylistic and decorative features that derived from Yuan. On the Yŏnbok Temple bell these include the eight trigrams and raised horizontal rows of tightly placed Sanskrit characters. In addition, the lotus‐shaped striking zones of earlier bells disappeared in favor of plainer surfaces (Choi 2004: 180). Also inlaid bronzes of the thirteenth and fourteenth century evidence the incorporation of Yuan motifs. They include quatrefoil and ogival frames, which were much used on Yuan ceramics, metal and lacquer wares (Watt 2010: 269–302). Quatrefoil frames form the main motif on a silver inlaid bronze bottle in the Victoria and Albert Museum (hereafter V&A), London. The bottle is delicately shaped and intricately decorated with a range of different inlaid patterns that draw on past and contemporary iconographic and stylistic trends. Cranes in flight decorate the neck, in a manner resembling inlaid celadon wares from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Each of the triple‐bordered ogival frames carries a different design of plants and trees; illustrated

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here is a willow tree underneath which stands a figure holding a willow branch (Figure 9.8). A comparable arrangement of frames is seen on an inlaid bronze incense burner, in the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. The bowl of that high‐ stemmed burner is decorated with four double‐bordered medallions with alternate designs of two phoenixes holding flowering lotus stems in their beaks, and a single dragon holding a flaming pearl. Surrounding the borders are small islands of water reeds and lotuses, as well as swimming ducks. The lower rim of the base carries an inscription in Chinese characters inlaid in silver wire. It states that monks of Hŭngwang Temple near Kaesŏng and the deputy officer (puhojang) of Chillye‐gun in South Ch’ungchŏng Province commissioned the burner. The cyclical year date of kich’uk that is included in the inscription corresponds to either 1229 or 1289, with most scholars believing it is the former (Choi 2003: 185). The V&A bottle was probably made around the same time as suggested by its stylistic similarities to the Leeum incense burner, the use of Yuan‐style frames and the dense arrangement of inlaid patterns. Shortage of precious metals, lack of craftspersons and an increased schematization of designs have led to the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries being associated with a general decline in the arts in contrast to the cultural achievements of the twelfth century. Representative examples are fourteenth century bronze incense burners which in contrast to the fluent and delicately arranged designs of earlier times, carry dense inlaid patterns of Sanskrit characters, floral scrolls, leaping dragons and other

Figure 9.8  Bottle. Koryŏ (918–1392). Bronze inlaid with silver. H. 25 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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motifs. Several examples are in the National Museum of Korea, including one made in 1366 for Chinjong Temple (present‐day Chŏndŭng Temple) in Kyŏnggi Province. In some instances high‐quality artifacts continued to be produced, including the stand for an incense burner in the British Museum, London. The bowl is no longer extant, but the stand is elaborately inlaid in silver wire with a motif of a dragon chasing a flaming pearl against a background of cloud scrolls. At the bottom of the stand an inscription states that it was made in 1358 as a prayer for the long life of Kongmin (r. 1330–1374) and his wife who was of Mongolian descent. Also inlaid lacquer wares continued to be manufactured during this period. Extant examples from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are in the form of large wooden boxes, lacquered in black and inlaid with tortoiseshell, mother‐of‐pearl and brass wire. They are believed to have been made to hold Buddhist texts as suggested in an inscription on a box in the Tokyo National Museum. On the lid of the box are seven Chinese characters, “Tae pang gwang bul hwa ŏm gyŏng” (Flower Garland Sutra), inlaid in mother‐of‐pearl. One of the most influential texts of Mahayana Buddhism, this sutra “sets out to portray the cosmos as it is seen by a Buddha or very advanced Bodhisattvas” and evokes a Universe where everything freely interpenetrates everything else (Snelling 1987: 153; Williams 1989: 121). The popularity of the text in Koryŏ is evidenced by the many printed and hand‐written copies of it that were made during this time. The design of the box in the Tokyo National Museum suggests a twelfth century date, and it was most likely a precursor to sutra boxes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. On the narrow side of the box are the characters yŏng (spirit), hwang (yellow), and i (two), inlaid in mother‐of‐pearl (National Museum of Korea 2006: 52‐7). They are believed to correspond to an indexing system for the text contained inside the box. The Flower Garland Sutra numbers sixty to eighty volumes and was therefore probably divided into two or three sets and stored in separate boxes. The box in the Tokyo National Museum is believed to have been the second of index ‘number’ hwang (Pak Youngsook 2003: 97). Index characters are also found on sutra boxes of a later date, including one in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Underneath the right‐hand side handle of the Rijksmuseum box are the characters kwi and sang. Made in bronze, they sit on top of the inlaid decoration, suggesting that they were added after the box was completed. The production of sutra boxes seems to have increased during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The special temporary “Directorate for the Production of Mother‐of‐Pearl Inlaid Boxes” (Chŏnham chosŏng togam), created in 1272, was in 1310 renamed the “Office for Production and Supply” (Kongjosŏ). This office was established in order to meet the demands of the Mongol empress, the principal wife of Kublai Khan (r. 1260–1294), who wanted them made to store the Tripitaka (Frick 2012: 38). Other sutra boxes were made to house illuminated sutras –‐ hand‐drawn Buddhist texts on mulberry paper, using gold and silver pigments (Pak Youngsook 2003: 97). Eight boxes in museum collections in Europe and Japan, are extremely similar in size, shape and design, indicating that they were made in the same workshop (Frick 2012: 47; Kawada 2006). The sutra box in the British Museum in London is a representative example (Figure  9.9). A dense scrolling design of schematic ­chrysanthemums dominates its surface while the borders of the front, side, and top

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Figure 9.9  Box. Koryŏ (918–1392). Lacquered wood with mother‐of‐pearl inlay and silver wire. 25.8 × 48.5 × 26.5 cm. British Museum, London. Photo: courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum, London. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

panels are decorated with peony scrolls. The peony and chrysanthemum were auspicious flowers that Koryŏ craftspersons often used on various types of objects. The foreign consumption of Koryŏ sutra boxes raises questions as to whether it led to imitations of them by craftspeople outside the peninsula. A similarly shaped lacquer box in Kyushu National Museum carries a date of 1315 and was made in a lacquer workshop in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. With its sloping horizontal edges and rounded corners, the Yuan box is comparable to Koryŏ sutra boxes, but its decorative technique and pattern of engraved and gilded decoration of pheasants and flowers have no precedent on the Korean peninsula (Watts 2010: 292–295).

Conclusion The Koryŏ kingdom has widely been understood as a heyday of Korea’s past when elegantly shaped and intricately decorated objects of precious materials were made. It was a period that witnessed the rise of a strong national consciousness that carried over into the cultural sphere. Interactions with peoples on the Chinese mainland and further afar formed part of Koryŏ’s diplomatic and trading interests as it negotiated its position amidst powerful neighbours resulting in a culturally rich and stimulating environment. Under the patronage of the Koryŏ rulers, arts and culture flourished, leading to the manufacture of objects rooted in local sentiments and circumstances. The Koryŏ government employed highly skilled craftspeople, who produced a wide range of artifacts and materials. Over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries the technical expertise of craftspeople improved greatly as evidenced in artworks that

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were not only visually appealing but also technically challenging. Migrations and exchanges of foreign craftspeople served to further enhance the local production of the arts as they brought with them new technical skills and aesthetic visions. Extant lacquer and metal wares highlight well this period of cultural efflorescence that resulted in the production of large scale Buddhist works of art as well as smaller secular artworks for personal use. However, the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century weakened the monarchy to the extent that it was unable to combat the internal and external pressures that arose in the mid‐fourteenth century. In 1392 the kingdom fell to General Yi Sŏnggye (r. 1392–8), who founded the Chosŏn dynasty and became its first king. Based on Confucian thought and principles, the five‐hundred‐year rule by the Yi family gave rise to different aesthetics and cultural practices.

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Glossary chang [jang] 匠 Changyasŏ [Jangyaseo] 掌冶署 Chinjongsa [Jinjongsa] 眞宗寺 Chŏndŭngsa [Jeondeungsa] 傳燈寺 chŏngbyŏng [jeongbyeong] 淨甁 Chŏnham chosŏng togam [Jeonham joseong dogam] 鈿函造成都監 Ch’ŏnhŭngsa [Cheonheungsa] 天興寺 chujang tongnyangsŭng Kyŏngjin [jujang dongnyangseung Gyeongjin] 鑄匠棟梁僧鏡珎 Chungsangsŏ [Jungsanseo] 中尙署 hodong 好銅 Hŭngwangsa [Heungwangsa] 興王寺 Hunyo shipcho [Hunyo sipjo] 訓要十條 hwangi 黃二 In’gaksa [In’gaksa] 麟角寺 jingping (C.) (K. chŏngbyŏng [jeongbyeong]) 淨甁 Kaegyŏng [Gaegyeong] 開京 kich’uk [gichuk] 己丑 kongjang [gongjang] 工匠 Kongjosŏ [Gongjoseo] 供造署 Koryŏ taejanggyŏng [Goryeo daejanggyeong] 高麗大藏經 Koryŏguk cho [Goryeoguk jo] 高麗國造 Koryŏguk kyŏngjang Kim Hyŏp cho [Goryeoguk gyeongjang Kim Hyeop jo] 高麗國鏡 匠金叶造 Koryŏsa [Goryeosa] 高麗史 kukpo [gukbo] 國寶 kŭn [geun] (C. jin) 斤 Kun’gigam [Gungigam] 軍器監 Kwanseŭm posal [Gwanseeum bosal] 觀世音菩薩 kwi [gwi] 貴 kyŏngjang [gyeongjang] 鏡匠 myŏnyakho [myeonyakho] 面藥壺 paektong [baekdong] 白銅 Pongnyŏng [Bongnyeong] 福寧(公主) Pongnyŏng kungbang [Bongnyeong gungbang] 福寧宮房 puhojang [buhojang] 副戶長 pujang [bujang] 副匠 P’yoch’ungsa [Pyochungsa] 表忠寺 sang 上 so 所 Sŏnaksa [Seonaksa] 仙岳寺 sŭngjang [seungjang] 僧匠 Tae pang gwang bul hwa ŏm gyŏng [Dae bang gwang bul hwa eom gyeong] 大方廣佛 華嚴經

ART S O F   RE F I N E M E N T

taejang [daejang] 大匠 Taejŏng [Daejeong] 大定 Taikang (C.) (K. T’aegang [Taegang]) 太康 Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip [Dongguk Yi Sangguk jip] 東國李相國集 Tongguk yŏji sŭngnam [Dongguk yeoji seungnam] 東國輿地勝覧 Tonghe (C.) (K. T’onghwa [Tonghwa]) 統和 Ŭ ich’ŏn [Uicheon] 義天 Wang Hu 王煦 wŏndang [wondang] 願堂 Xu Jing (C.) 徐兢 Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing (C.) 宣和封使高麗圖經 Yesŏng 禮成(江) Yi Kyubo [Yi Gyubo] 李奎報 Yijing (C.) 義淨 Yi wangga pangmulgwan (Yi wangga bangmulgwan) 李王家博物館 Yŏnboksa [Yeonboksa] 演福寺 yŏng [yeong] 靈 Yonghŭngsa [Yongheungsa] 龍興寺

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Part III

The Choso˘n Dynasty

10

The Emergence of Confucian Culture: Early Chosŏn Painting Insoo Cho

Introduction The Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) adopted Confucianism as a new ideology with the aim of transforming Korea into a Confucian state. Confucianism exerted great influence on culture and art. The early Chosŏn rulers utilized paintings as visual and material means of educating people through the display of pictorial images with didactic themes at palaces, government offices and various shrines. For Confucian scholars in the early Chosŏn period, art was a means of communicating correct modes of behavior. Portraits were closely associated with Confucian ancestral worship. Landscape painting based on the classical tradition flourished, and An Kyŏn was one of the most influential painters of this genre. Paintings of the so‐called Four Gentlemen gained favor among literati painters. Animal paintings possessed significant political meaning and delivered specific messages based on Confucian morals. Paintings of scholars’ gatherings comprise a unique genre. All these paintings were inseparable from the rise of the scholar‐official class and its taste for the arts.

Founding a Confucian State Born in the outlying districts of the northern frontier of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392), Yi Sŏnggye (1335–1408) gained fame not only for his superior archery skills, but also as the brave general who defeated the Red Turbans, the Mongol army, and Japanese raiders. Once he entered the central political arena, he became a major figure,

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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eventually establishing the new Chosŏn kingdom through a coup d’état and founding the Yi royal lineage as its first ruler, King T’aejo (r. 1392–98). Hansŏng (present day Seoul) became the new capital and continues to this day to be the capital of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The Chosŏn dynasty survived for more than five hundred years, a rare example of a long‐lived dynasty in the context of world history. The first two hundred years of the Chosŏn dynasty were a time of peace and vigor. As the kingdom enjoyed a secure position in the East Asian political order, it maintained a steady relationship with China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Japan’s Ashikaga shogunate (1338– 1573). Korea’s dual commitment to participating fully in East Asia’s Confucian civilization and at the same time to nurturing its own traditions produced an interesting and distinct polity and culture. Korea, located between its two powerful neighbors China and Japan, consciously adopted their cultures through friendly exchange. Therefore, to understand Korean culture, it is important to consider both foreign inspirations and indigenous distinctiveness. Early Chosŏn paintings clearly reveal how artists altered elements of Chinese origin and made works of art more suitable to their own needs. The transition from the Koryŏ to the Chosŏn dynasty did not usher in major changes to the social or economic structure of the country or to its system of hereditary ranks. In terms of philosophy and culture, however, the two dynasties exhibit great contrasts. Buddhism was revered during the Koryŏ dynasty, and the art of the period is known for its celadon ware and Buddhist paintings; however, in the Chosŏn dynasty, due to the promotion of Confucianism, we see the prominence of white porcelain and secular painting subjects. During China’s Song dynasty (960–1279), Confucian philosophy was stimulated by Buddhism and its exploration of metaphysical matters; this resulted in the development of Neo‐Confucianism. The Chosŏn dynasty adopted a new ideology with the aim of transforming Korea into a Confucian state and society. In contrast to the kings of Buddhist Koryŏ, the Chosŏn rulers—receiving support from the Confucian literati—reformed the social system by founding it on Confucian principles and ­ administering the country by promoting Confucian codes. It took, however, until the sixteenth century for the new ideology to completely permeate Chosŏn society. In the Chosŏn dynasty, it was the scholar officials who formulated Neo‐Confucianism (sŏngnihak) as the new state ideology. Recruited through civil service examinations, they were granted privilege for reinforcing the new policies. The primacy of the civil bureaucracy of the Chosŏn state was strengthened by the unquestioned authority of the civil service examination, which was the only legitimate channel for official appointment. In contrast to aristocrats (yangban), who had inherited their status, and military leaders of previous periods who had seized power, the candidates had to pass several exams—from the preliminary Licentiate Examination (chinsa) to the final Erudite Examination (munkwa)—to become high officials. With the goal of becoming virtuous gentlemen, they focused on scholarly activities and pursued an ethical lifestyle. The new ruling class had its basis in Neo‐Confucian philosophy, which was elevated to a higher philosophical level through the emergence of prominent Korean scholars like Yi Hwang (1501–1570) and Yi I (1536–1584). As a result, the Chosŏn



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state placed Confucianism in a supreme position of unchallengeable authority and devalued other ideological systems and religions, such as Buddhism and Daoism. Confucianism also prescribed a code of social ethics that began to infiltrate all areas of daily life. As a means of cultivating their minds, Confucian literati often focused on literature, art, and music. Naturally, Confucianism exerted great influence on culture and art. While Buddhist art flourished from the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668 BCE) to the Koryŏ dynasty, art characterized by Confucian ideas developed in important ways during the Chosŏn dynasty. What many today consider to be characteristic qualities of Korean art are actually features that developed during this period. Thus, it is no overstatement to say that in order to understand Korean art, it must be viewed through the filter of Confucianism (Cho Insoo 2014). In the early Chosŏn period, several anti‐Buddhist campaigns were carried out. Buddhist rituals were prohibited in state functions and replaced by Confucian rites. The number of Buddhist monasteries was reduced, and many temples were turned into Confucian academies. By the sixteenth century, Buddhist monasteries were allowed to exist only in secluded mountainous regions, and only a few existed in the capital. With the rise of Confucianism, Buddhism was gradually banished from the public realm and restricted to private spaces, including the making of offerings to monks or to Buddhist images. However, some court painters continued to produce Buddhist devotional paintings commissioned by the royal family in the early period, and later on monk painters took the responsibility of creating most of the large Buddhist images that still remain today in remote monasteries of the country. Above all else, the principles of moral ethics and fidelity emphasized by Confucianism became the basis for societal norms and rules. One of the first tasks the Chosŏn state attended to was the systematization and reconstitution of sacrificial rituals. For all the ceremonies, it was specified which food and wine was to be offered, which music was to be played, which utensils were to be used, and which clergies and participants were to be summoned. Buddhist monks were banished from these rituals, and lavish pictures and sculptures were dismissed. As Confucian sacrifices initiated a fundamentally different ritual culture, the funeral and sacrificial rites for the dead performed by the general population were transformed. Lay persons officiated at sacrificial and other funeral rites for their ancestors. The correct performance of a ritual was viewed as the ultimate cultural capital of elite families, and many families were intensely preoccupied with acquiring and maintaining ritual wares of unblemished quality. By performing these rituals with visual and material objects, individuals ratified their membership in a Confucian world.

Court Painters As a Confucian state, the Chosŏn dynasty utilized paintings as visual and material means of educating people through displaying images with didactic themes at palaces, government offices, and various shrines. The Royal Bureau of Painting (Tohwasŏ) oversaw the creation of paintings for the court. Similar institutes had existed in the Silla Kingdom (57 BCE–935 CE) and the Koryŏ dynasty. However, the Chosŏn

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Bureau of Painting became more organized and systematized within the central ­government administration. In the beginning, the Bureau inherited many features of the Koryŏ bureau, which had emulated the imperial painting academy of the Song dynasty in China. As a result, the Bureau came under the direct control of high ­officials affiliated with the Ministry of Works. After moving to the new capital Hansŏng, however, the Bureau underwent a reorganization focusing on Confucian rituals and was transferred to the Ministry of Rites. This shift indicates a departure from the Koryŏ tradition, where painters had catered directly to various needs of the court. In its renewal and expansion as a Confucian apparatus, the Bureau also differed from Ming China, which had a rather loosely organized painting academy. In Ming China, painters were summoned to the palace and appointed to various official positions that allowed them to function as court painters. They were often assigned to the ranks and salary levels of military units. Since Ming court painters lost their independent official status and were often controlled by eunuch‐officials and emperors, they were deeply involved in court politics and often expressed specific messages in their works (Sung 2009 and 2013). The situation of Chosŏn court painters was also different from that of painters in Ming China. The Administrative Code of Chosŏn (Chosŏn kyŏnggukchŏn) prescribes that “From a utilitarian aspect, the act of painting is productive and therefore necessary.” This belief in the usefulness of painting promoted the systematic training of painters within the government (Hong 2011). Embracing Neo‐Confucianism as the official state ideology, early Chosŏn scholar‐officials placed the Bureau more specifically and concretely in the Grand Code for State Administration (Kyo ̆ngguk taejŏn), the dynasty’s national code which was first published in 1471 and revised in 1484. In regard to the Bureau’s management, the Minister of Rites took the position of being its director. The artists were called hwawŏn, or painting officials, a term that had neither existed in the previous Koryŏ dynasty nor in China or Japan. Emphasizing their role in the bureaucratic system, the title hwawŏn was coined when the Bureau was moved to the Ministry of Rites. Although the Bureau was managed by the highest officials from the Ministry of Rites, the court painters were restricted to low rank and their social status was limited to the secondary class of “middle people” or chungin. They belonged to a lower “miscellaneous status” group, as did physicians and astronomers (Kang 2011). In order to supplement their low incomes, court painters also accepted private commissions from upper‐class people. In 1472, the court painter Ch’oe Kyŏng painted a portrait of the posthumously appointed King Tŏk chong (1438–1457), who was the father of King Sŏ ngjong (r. 1469–1494). Since King Tŏkchong had passed away when he was young, King Sŏngjong is said to have been extremely pleased to be able to look at an image of his father. As a result of this meritorious deed, Ch’oe Kyŏng was promoted to be a high government official of the third rank. Because the highest rank held by court painters was the upper‐sixth rank (out of nine official ranks), awarding this level of promotion to a court painter was unprecedented. As his ministers and other high officials strongly opposed the appointment, King Sŏngjong had to withdraw the promotion. Because of the strict delineation of status and identity of court painters during the Chosŏn dynasty, most of them had few advancement opportunities. It was a Confucian idea



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that artisans, including painters, as makers of things, should ranked below peasants but above merchants. The yangban aristocracy dominated Chosŏn society, and painters born into this class were regarded and considered themselves amateur “literati” artists, who were superior to professional court artisans. Court painters had to paint for their livelihood, so they were distinguished from literati painters, such as royal family members or scholar officials who pursued art as an avocation. As discussed in Burglind Jungmann’s essay, court painters were recruited through an examination, which determined entry and promotion at the Royal Bureau of Painting. The exam consisted of five painting genres, of which the candidates chose two genres to be tested in. The genres were ranked in four descending order of importance: bamboo, landscape, figures and animals, and flowers. A painting of a first‐ranked genre received more points than a painting of a fourth‐ranked genre. It was most advantageous for a candidate to excel in painting bamboo and landscape because they were ranked as the most important subjects. As these two genres were held in high esteem by Confucian scholars, the literati’s aesthetic values predominated the Bureau’s painting style. Not only the organization but also the mission of the Bureau reflects the Chosŏn Confucian worldview. The primary function of the court painter was to paint pictures that adhered to Confucian principles. They produced portraits of the king and his subjects, pictures used in rituals, images that documented important events, paintings to decorate palace interiors, and various types of maps. Such paintings reinforced the authority of the royal court, served as moral lessons for virtuous kingship, and adorned palace buildings. Rather than demonstrating originality, court painters were thus bound to follow the conventions of an established canon. The court painters also contributed greatly to the cultural exchange of painting in East Asia, by joining ambassadorial teams dispatched to China and Japan and by producing paintings as gifts for Chinese and Japanese envoys. The court painters sent to China learned newly developed painting techniques and purchased artists’ pigments. The envoy painters to Japan were often busy with requests from a wide range of Japanese admirers (Jungmann 2004).

Portraiture In the history of Korean painting, portraits from the Chosŏn dynasty rank among its most noteworthy achievements due to their exceptional artistic quality and incredible quantity. Those portrayed include the ruling elite, kings and royal family members, aristocrats, and eminent Buddhist priests. The painters were selected from a pool of professional artists who were known for their artistic mastery. Accordingly, Chosŏn portraiture is characterized by exquisite artistry and an extraordinary level of realistic detail. Portraiture in the Chosŏn period was closely associated with Confucian ancestor worship. People displayed portraits of their deceased parents or grandparents on a wall when performing ritual homage to them on the anniversary of their death. In ancient times, however, portraits had not been used in ancestor worship. Confucianism asserts that when a person dies, his spirit rises to the heavens and his body returns to the earth. Confucian scholars believed that the spirit of an ancestor

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did not disappear into the other world immediately but was transformed into an ancestral spirit that remained for a while in the world of the living. During this stage, the ancestor and his or her heirs were connected through the bonds of filial piety. It is for this reason that ancestor worship and ancestral rites were so important in Confucianism. The ancestral tablet (sinju), made of wood, served as a temporary locus for the ancestral spirit (Cho Insoo 2010). When the deceased was entombed, his or her name was inscribed on an ancestral tablet, which became a symbolic stand‐in for the deceased and a temporary dwelling place for his or her spirit. Although made of a mere piece of wood, the tablet was considered a sacred object, and it was placed in the family’s ancestral shrine. Confucian belief held that it was the duty of the heir to perform ancestral rites until the spirit had completely departed. Ordinarily, such ceremonies were performed for four past ­generations of ancestors. When the ancestral spirit was deemed properly gone, the ancestral tablet was buried. The practice of making and worshipping ancestral tablets was a Confucian tradition dating back to ancient times. From the time of the Koryŏ dynasty, a new custom emerged―that of producing ancestral portraits. These portraits supplemented the abstract character of the ancestral tablet with a more concrete image of the deceased. Following this new custom, Chosŏn monarchs and aristocrats commissioned portraits from the beginning of the dynasty. At first, the placement of these portraits in the ancestral shrine was somewhat controversial because it was considered too close to the Buddhist practice of making icons. Nevertheless, as filial piety was promoted, the use of portraits widened, and the practice of placing portraits in family shrines became popular (Cho Insoo 2010). During the Chosŏn dynasty, royal portraits were regarded as the most important type of figural image. Since kings were the pinnacle of Chosŏn society, royal portraits were rendered with utmost care, befitting the supreme stature of the sitters. Portraits of kings were commissioned to be painted by the best artist, and consequently they displayed excellent craftsmanship. From the beginning of the Chosŏn dynasty, kings not only ordered the painting of their portraits but also supported the construction of halls to house them. Each king often had a number of portraits of himself painted in various poses, including full‐length, half‐length, and as an equestrian. The most important task of court painters was to create royal portraits, and painting the current king’s portrait was the greatest honor. Those selected for that special task were considered the most talented and skillful court painters. They were not only promoted to higher posts, but also had advantage of using the experience to further their careers. The characteristics of Chosŏn royal portraiture are exemplified by Portrait of King T’aejo (Figure 10.1). Enshrined at Kyŏnggi Hall in Chŏnju, the full‐length portrait shows an old-aged man wearing a voluminous blue robe and a winged black cap gazing sternly out at the viewer. The king is sitting on an elaborate red throne on top of a highly decorative carpet but the remaining background is devoid of objects. Every detail is painstakingly rendered, from the textures of his embroidered silk robe to the carved furniture and the ornate carpet, which tilts at an impossible angle. Although the painting is a reproduction made in 1872, it preserves the style of the original ­portrait of early Chosŏn date. Since the vast majority of Chosŏn portraits employs a



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Figure 10.1  Cho Chungmuk, Yu Suk and others (ac. 19th century). Portrait of King T’aejo. Circa 1872. Hanging scroll; colors on silk. 220 × 151 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Royal Portrait Museum, Chŏnju. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

three‐quarter view, a notable feature of the T’aejo portrait is its use of a full frontal posture. The king’s face is depicted in a restrained manner, with a few simple lines to portray his wide cheekbones, small eyes and mouth, and large ears. These facial features are consistent with the descriptions of King T’aejo’s appearance as recorded in historical documents. A mole is shown above his right eyebrow, giving evidence for the importance of a realistic representation in Chosŏn portraiture. After Yi Sŏnggye ascended the throne, the most important task for the new dynasty was to consolidate the authority and prestige of the king. Under this circumstance, King T’aejo’s portrait functioned as a political tool to demonstrate the ruler’s power over the kingdom, and its enshrinement in a specially built portrait hall symbolized the pervasiveness of the royal presence. Many portraits of King T’aejo were produced, displayed, and reproduced throughout the Chosŏn period. By the early fifteenth century, portraits of King T’aejo were enshrined in six places around the kingdom: Yŏnghŭ ng, his birthplace; Kyŏngju and P’yŏngyang, the capitals of the ancient kingdoms of Silla and Koguryŏ, respectively; Kaesŏng, the capital of the previous Koryŏ dynasty; Chŏnju, the royal family’s ancestral home; and Hansŏng, the Chosŏn capital.

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Since King T’aejo’s portraits were icons of the dynasty’s founder, ancestral rites were regularly held in the portrait halls. Subsequent kings bestowed written prayers, incense and food for rituals, and appointed officials to manage the halls. Because of fires and warfare, these royal portraits were damaged on several occasions. For example, King T’aejo’s portraits housed at Sŏnwŏn Hall in Kyŏngbok Palace, along with several dozens of images of other kings, were lost in 1592 during the chaos of the Imjin War (aka Hideyoshi Invasions, 1792–98). Fleeing from the advancing Japanese army the Chosŏn court abandoned the capital, leaving desperate locals to storm and plunder palace and government buildings. Among them were slaves who burned the registers of their low birth. When royal portraits and royal portrait halls suffered damage, they were often faithfully replicated in order to symbolize the dynasty’s continued legitimacy. As a result, royal portraits enjoyed tremendous prominence during the entire Chosŏn period, and a great number of written sources regarding the making and preserving of royal portraits survive to this day. Unfortunately, most of the royal portraits with the exception of King T’aejo’s image were lost or damaged during the Korean War (1950–1953). In December 1954, several dozens of royal portraits from Sŏnwŏn Hall were incinerated in a fire at a shelter in Pusan, where they had been stored for safe‐keeping. Only King T’aejo’s portrait at Kyŏnggi Hall has survived, albeit in a reproduction of 1872, as a symbol of the dynasty’s long sovereignty (Cho Insoo 2011).

Landscape Painting: the An Kyŏn Tradition In East Asia, landscape paintings developed as an autonomous theme and gained popularity as a genre in pictorial art from about the tenth century. Initially landscape art illustrated idealized or romanticized scenery to represent the cosmic order. As a result, topographic accuracy was not considered significant. Moreover, due to its close affinity with calligraphy and literati culture, the ink‐monochrome technique prevailed. In Korea, especially during the early Chosŏn period, landscape painting based on classical Song‐Yuan traditions flourished. It is characterized by loose compositions and subtle use of ink, creating tranquil scenes and visualizing ideal sites. In 1447, An Kyŏn (act. ca.1440–1470) painted his famous Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land for Prince Anp’yŏng (1418–1453), the third son of King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) (Figure 10.2). Prince Anp’yŏng recounts in his colophon to the painting that one day, he fell into a deep sleep and had a wonderful dream. In his dream, the prince, accompanied by his close friend Pak P’aengnyŏn (1417– 1456), came upon a forest path leading to a beautiful landscape with precipitous mountains and peach trees. Passing through craggy cliffs and over winding streams, they arrived at a village with many peach trees. When the prince awoke from the dream, he summoned An Kyŏn, ordered him to paint his dream, and in just three days An Kyŏn completed this painting. Twenty‐one leading scholars were then entrusted to write poetry and prose, and their eulogies were attached to the painting (Ahn 1980).



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Figure 10.2  An Kyŏn (act. ca.1440–1470). Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land. 1447. Handscroll; ink and light color on silk. 38.6 × 106.2 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Tenri Central Library, Tenri University, Nara. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

An Kyŏn was one of the most important and influential painters of the early Chosŏn period. Yet, despite his fame, it is unknown when he was born and when he died, nor is there any information on the details of his life or his teachers. Because of their low social status, the lack of biographical record on famous professional painters of the Chosŏn dynasty is rather common. Relying on his artistic talent, An Kyŏn was promoted to a nominal military post of the upper‐fourth rank, which was an unusually high recognition for a mere painter. Clearly the image of beautiful peach trees blossoming in fantastic and remote mountains comes from the famous poem Peach Blossom Spring, written by the Chinese poet Tao Qian (365–427), better known as Tao Yuanming. Depicting an agrarian utopia where people live in harmony with nature without knowing the outside world, Tao Qian idealized the life of withdrawal and reclusion. This fantastic fable inspired many later artists. The profound spiritual influence of Tao Qian’s work on Prince Anp’yŏng reveals the classical cultural milieu during King Sejong’s reign. As the most distinguished Confucian ruler, King Sejong not only reformed the social system but also initiated and supervised the creation of han’gŭl, a phonetic alphabet for the Korean language, in order to educate common people who were unable to read literary Chinese. Above all, King Sejong promoted Confucianism as the ruling ideology that provided the ethical codes of the society and produced a particular effect on art and culture. Like the theme of the painting, An Kyŏn’s inspiration for his brush manner and style came from remote sources. He rendered jagged peaks, winding paths and running streams receding into mist‐covered trees and hills. Cloudlike rocks marked with black dots and overlapping ridges give the effect of deep recesses and create the impression of fantastic scenery. This landscape style can be traced to two Northern Song‐dynasty Chinese painters, Li Cheng (919–967) and Guo Xi (active 1060–1075), whose stylistic modes are generally known as the “Li‐Guo tradition” (Hearn 2009). An Kyŏn’s characteristic outlines of mountain formations using short, twisting and turning brushstrokes and alternating tones of heavy black and lighter gray builds on the Li‐Guo tradition.

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In order for An Kyŏn to revive ancient landscape traditions along with the classicist tend of the time, concrete visual references would have been made available to him. His patron Prince Anp’yŏng collected a large number of Chinese paintings and calligraphies. When the eminent scholar and politician Sin Sukchu (1417–1475) wrote Commentaries on Painting for the prince’s collection, it had reached a total of two hundred and twenty‐two scrolls including seventeen paintings by Guo Xi (Jungmann 2011). An Kyŏn must have been familiar with these works. In this regard, Sin Sukchu left a notable description on him: “An Kyŏn was a famous painter in the court. Being keen and thoroughly knowledgeable, he saw a great number of ancient paintings and perceived their essential qualities. He took from the best of various masters and synthesized them. He was proficient in every subject, but he especially excelled in landscape. He pursued sources of his style in antiquity, in which he rarely found his equal. He has long been associated with Prince Anp’yŏng and his works are of the greatest number in the prince’s collection” (Ahn 1980: 68).

A leader in cultural circles during the time of King Sejong, Prince Anp’yŏng excelled as a calligrapher, a collector of painting, and a patron of the arts, particularly of An Kyŏn. Since ancient times Korean painters had been diligently studying new fashions from China and blending them with their own styles and techniques. While the Chinese Li‐Guo tradition had a profound impact on the subject matter and style of early Chosŏn painters, artists, most notably An Kyŏn, transformed the Chinese model by favoring a somewhat flattened scenery with little spatial depth and softer tones of ink wash. In his Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land, An Kyŏn aptly represents a surreal, mysterious scene using this transformed style. As a result, the artist invented a refined mode of Korean landscape painting based on the classical tradition developed in the Northern Song dynasty. This mode spread predominantly among artists in the early Chosŏn period, resonating with Confucian ideals of a frugal and simple mind (Lee 2009). Although Prince Anp’yŏng describes his dream journey in the company of friends in his colophon, there are no visible travelers in the painting. Furthermore, the prince’s itinerary unfolds from left to right, first depicting a secular world and then a mysterious village among blossoming peach trees. This is an unconventional orientation for handscrolls in East Asia, which are usually unrolled and viewed from right to left. The eminent contemporaneous scholars who wrote the twenty‐one eulogies that follow the Prince’s colophon often refer to the painting with the title Dream of the Peach Blossom Land. Therefore, it is also possible that An Kyŏn depicted not just the dream journey but Prince An p’yŏng’s longing for paradise. In fact, the prince found a place resembling that in his dream near the capital and built a pavilion there in 1451. In this context, to viewers, including those scholars who wrote the eulogies, the scroll is not only the narrative of the prince’s dream but rather an auspicious visualization of the prince’s ascent to the throne (Cho Kyuhŭ i 2015). In fact, Prince Anp’yŏng was not only culturally talented but also politically ambitious. Following King Sejong’s



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death in 1450, fights over his succession arose, and Anp’yŏng was eventually killed in the purge of 1453 by his brother, Prince Suyang, who later became King Sejo (r. 1455–1468). In this regard, Dream Journey could be read as a visual manifesto of Prince Anp’yŏng’s unfulfilled dream of creating an ideal world. An Kyŏn’s legacy in landscape painting was influential throughout the early Chosŏn period. His mode, admired as classical, provided canonical representation for followers, who became known as the “An Kyŏn school” tradition of landscape painting that continued into the later Chosŏn period. In the following century, painters such as Kim Si (1524–1593), Yi Chŏnggŭ n (b.1531), and Yi Hŭ nghyo (1537–1593) executed works in the style of the An Kyŏn tradition. Their compositions are compact but not as dense as that of the Dream Journey, with a recognizable structure and clearer distinction between foreground, middle ground, and background. An extended, foggy space in the middle ground and rough execution of the rocks and mountains in the background are distinctive stylistic features of An Kyŏn’s legacy. The works of some painters in the seventeenth century, for example Yi Ching (1581–after 1645), reflect this aspect of An Kyŏn’s style. Most of his later followers employed a stylized representation of mountains arranged in a spacious background with simpler, repetitive brushstrokes to create the landscape.

Landscape Painting: the Korean Zhe School Korea’s contact with China was accomplished chiefly through the tributary system, which was the only type of foreign contact China allowed on an official level. In the early Chosŏn period, Korea had close diplomatic ties with Ming China, and the destination of Korean missions was its capital, now known as Beijing. On average, the Ming dynasty dispatched envoys once a year, while Chosŏn sent three regular congratulatory embassies each year. The whole entourage was composed of two to three hundred people, and court painters regularly accompanied Chosŏn missions to China. These painters created paintings and maps to document the journey to Beijing via P’yŏngyang, Ŭ iju, Shenyang, and the Shanhai Pass to procure pigments, silk, and paper. Besides professional court painters, literati‐officials versed in art were included in the missions and played a significant role in the cultural exchanges between Chosŏn and Ming. For example, the literatus painter Kang Hŭian (1417–1464) visited Beijing as a vice‐envoy in 1462 and may have been acquainted with the paintings of the Zhe school, a new artistic trend originating in the southern China area of Zhejiang Province and later prevailing in the northern capital of Beijing. Kang’s Lofty Scholar Contemplating Water shows sharply angled mountains in bold brushstrokes and presents a striking contrast to landscapes in the manner of An Kyŏn. Professional painters of the Chosŏn court were also easily exposed to paintings executed in the Zhe school mode, which dominated the painting style of the Ming imperial court during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This contemporaneous Chinese court style was transmitted to the Korean peninsula without a time lag. Korean Zhe school paintings are distinguished from the An Kyŏn tradition by their sharply angular boulders and rocks,

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trees with overly twisted branches, straight brushstrokes, and strong contrasts of light and dark ink. In the sixteenth century the Zhe school style was further developed by artists such as Kim Si and Yi Kyŏngyun (1545–1611). Kim Si’s Boy Pulling a Donkey is a primary example of the Zhe school style in Korea (Figure 10.3). It depicts the humorous scene of a donkey reluctant to cross a wooden bridge and a boy trying to pull the animal across. Beneath a large pine tree, the donkey, fearing the running stream, stands firmly on its forelegs, while the boy holds tightly onto the reins with all his strength. As the donkey has a nice leather saddle on its back, it can be assumed that the unseen rider must be nobility while the young boy wearing straw sandals and simple garments is his servant. If the servant arrives too late with the ride, his master will probably be angry. Depicting details of the boy and the

Figure 10.3  Kim Si (1524–1593). Boy Pulling a Donkey. Late 16th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 111 × 46 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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animal with precision, Kim Si vividly illustrates a lively moment of daily life. In contrast to landscapes of the An Kyŏn school, which depict tiny figures amidst rolling mountains and distant cliffs, the landscapes of Kim Si and other Zhe school painters seem to zoom in on valleys and emphasize figural compositions. In this painting, it is obvious that the painting style of the Chinese Zhe school inspired Kim Si. The main mountain peak soars up aslant, and there is a strong contrast between dark and light through the use of black ink on white paper. Rough brushstrokes define the shading and modeling of rocks in the foreground. The exaggerated branches of bent pine tree ascend from the lower‐left corner towards the middle ground. Most of the landscape elements are placed on the left side, and the diagonal composition creates a strong and dynamic landscape. These features are characteristic of a style that became dominant alongside the An Kyŏn school. As mentioned earlier, Kim Si also created landscapes in the An Kyŏn tradition, like many other skilled Korean painters of the time. Due to their fascination with Chinese trends on one hand and their desire to explore and maintain native conventions, Chosŏn artists transformed Chinese inspiration by adopting the foreign style to suit native aesthetics. Their asymmetrical composition and bold brushwork of their landscapes are based on the Zhe school style of the Ming, but the quality of greater flatness in pictorial space, coupled with livelier brushwork, and sensitive use of ink tones are distinctive to the school’s manifestation in Korea (Jungmann 2014). In China, the Zhe school style had been practiced mostly by professional painters while literati painters pursued the so‐called Wu school of amateur painting, which employs soft ink tones and delicate brush strokes to produce austere landscapes. In Korea, however, both literati and professional painters worked in the Zhe school style (Yi 2006). Kim Si was the youngest son of the powerful official, Kim Allo (1481–1537), who became an influential politician after his second son Kim Hŭ i (d. 1531) became the son‐in‐law of King Chungjong (r. 1506–1544). Kim Allo exploited his power and even tried to depose Queen Munjŏng (1501–1565), but the plot was revealed and he was executed for treason and has been remembered since then as a notorious politician. When the scholar‐official Kim Siyang (1581–1643) was exiled in the remote northeastern city of Chongsŏng in 1612, he compiled anecdotes from previous reigns, including Kim Allo’s arrest: King Chungjong used to bestow a royal gift of wine to his favorite subject Kim Allo whenever he had an event at his house. When [Kim Allo] sent his son Kim Si to the bride’s home to marry, his house was full of guests. Until dark, however, the gift of wine did not arrive and Kim Allo had a strange feeling. All of a sudden, the auditor of the State Tribunal along with his officials raided his house, and many guests escaped by jumping over a wall. As Kim Allo was being arrested, he told his son to go (to his wife’s home) and said that no one would marry into their family in the future (Kim ca.1612: 474).

This incident must have deeply affected Kim Si’s life because it was his wedding day when his father was captured. Although he was thirteen years old, a common age for marriage in Chosŏn Korea, Kim Si did manage to marry his betrothed. However, his

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father was killed in exile. In Korea, the sixteenth century was a time of turmoil because power struggles between opposing political factions resulted in several bloody purges of high officials. As the descendant of a once eminent but fallen family, Kim Si spent most of his life as a recluse and devoted himself to painting and calligraphy. He never passed a civil service examination but received an honorary title late in his life. According to contemporary records, he not only excelled at landscapes but also in genres such as figures, animals and plants. Most of his works exhibit remote scenes of tranquility far removed from the dusty world, thus representing his distance from the harsh realm of politics. The theme of a rider and donkey is often associated with famous historical figures, such as the Tang‐dynasty poet Meng Haoran (689–740), and functions as a metaphor for a recluse (Sturman 1995). Contrasted with the rider and horse theme, the rider and donkey pairing indicates a distaste for material comfort and symbolizes the humble life. Kim Si might have utilized the image of the donkey isolated without rider in the deep mountains to signify his refusal of wealth and his solidarity with his exiled father. Ironically, Kim Si’s talent as a painter was much indebted to his father, who wrote commentaries on Chinese and Korean paintings with the keenness of a true connoisseur. Kim Si’s eldest brother, his sister‐in‐law (daughter of King Chungjong), and his grandsons Kim Chip (1576–1625) and Kim Sik (1579–1662), all carried on the family tradition of painting (Jungmann 2014).

Symbolism of Animals and Plants Animal depictions have been popular in East Asian art as symbolic and metaphoric motifs, and by ascribing human traits to animals, people associated animal attributes with important aspects of human life. Thus, animals were not merely regarded as beasts of the natural world but also as anthropomorphic symbols of the human world. In the arts, mythical animals such as dragons and phoenixes often represented auspicious omens carrying didactic messages. Domestic and wild animals in the real world such as tigers, birds, and fish were associated with bravery, conjugal happiness, or abundance. Sometimes they possessed significant religious and political meaning and delivered specific messages based on Confucian morals (Sung 2009). With attitudes toward nature nurtured by Confucianism, Chosŏn literati sought to understand the divine providence of the cosmos through natural elements, such as flowers or birds. They also endowed animals and plants with Confucian meaning. Bamboo symbolized the virtue of the upright gentleman, and the plum blossom expressed the transcendence of the hermit scholar. The carp or crab represented the hope for success in government examinations, and the crane and the deer reflected the wish for longevity. These symbols appeared widely not only on paintings or ceramics, but also on various craft objects. Yi Am (1507–1566) was renowned for his lyrical portrayal of animals, especially dogs, cats, and falcons. His great‐grandfather Prince Imyŏng (1418–1469) was the fourth son of King Sejong and had supported his brother Prince Suyang in the aforementioned purge of 1453 to eliminate the rival brother Prince Anp’yŏng for whom Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land (Figure  10.2) had been created. As the descendant of an



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influential and wealthy royal family, Yi Am was given unrestrained access to the palace and royal household and he had opportunities to observe fine and rare animals. Although nowadays only his animal paintings are extant, his artistic talent was so outstanding that he was granted the honor of drawing King Chungjong’s royal portrait. The majority of Yi Am’s works that survive today depict innocent and friendly animals in an amicable atmosphere. In his Puppies, Birds, and Blossoms (Figure  10.4), animals and flowers appear against an empty background. Three puppies are sitting, sleeping, or playing with a grasshopper. On a blossoming tree, a pair of birds are staring at their prey of a butterfly and a bee. The simple composition, the foreground rock in the lower left corner, and the brushwork consisting of dark, wavy strokes are characteristic elements of the Zhe school style. It is a work of uncomplicated beauty

Figure 10.4  Yi Am (1507–1566). Puppies, Birds, and Blossoms. Mid–16th century. Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper. 86 × 45 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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with immense emotional appeal. The three puppies are a frequent motif in Yi Am’s oeuvre; in other scrolls he depicted the same group of black, gray and white puppies playing on the ground, occasionally together with cats. Since the majority of his paintings survived in Japan, it is plausible that his works were presented to members of the Japanese elite during emissary exchanges. That he was also highly valued by Japanese painters is proven by the fact that his seals on his animal paintings are recorded in Notes on Old Paintings (Koga biko ̄) compiled by Asaoka Okisada (1800–1856), a Kanō school artist. Moreover, the famous Kanō Tan’yū (1602–1674) copied one of Yi Am’s falcon paintings. Traditionally falcons symbolize justice and righteousness. Therefore, under the reign of King Chungjong when controversies between rival groups of Confucian scholars arose, Yi Am’s falcon paintings, standing for loyal officials, were charged by the reform faction (sarim) as having the political meaning of opposing the established faction (hungu) (O Tayŏn 2012). Thus, Yi Am’s animal paintings with their peaceful atmosphere can be read as exhibiting the harmonious Confucian society of the Chosŏn dynasty while concealing the tension caused by the power struggles of the Confucian elite. In the Chosŏn dynasty, painting was regarded as a method of self‐cultivation for the literati. Confucian scholars believed that painting was beneficial for preserving the purity of the mind and cultivating the attributes of a gentleman. Paintings of the so‐called Four Gentlemen (sagunja)—plum, bamboo, orchid, and chrysanthemum—gained favor among literati painters. Often executed in monochrome ink, these subjects held less decorative and more symbolic value. They stood as metaphors for gentlemanly virtues and were often considered to be symbolic images of escape from the mundane world. Therefore, paintings of the Four Gentlemen were not merely mimetic representations to judge craftsmanship but also effective vehicles of communication with one’s intellectual peers. Another reason for their popularity among scholar‐painters was their close affinity with calligraphy, for the two arts required very similar brush techniques. During the Chosŏn dynasty, the Four Gentlemen became important not only among scholar‐amateurs but also among professional painters. As mentioned earlier, those candidates to be employed by the Royal Bureau of Painting were tested on their accomplishment in five subjects of which bamboo was the most important. The bamboo signifies strength and resilience since it is evergreen and does not break easily under adverse conditions. An album thought to be from the fifteenth century indicates that the depiction of thin and delicate bamboo stalks may have been popular during the time. From the early ­sixteenth century, however, ink bamboo with thicker stems became fashionable. Yi Chŏng (1554–1626), another member of the royal Yi family gained a reputation for his ink bamboo. Yi Chŏng’s great‐grandfather was also Prince Imyŏng. Although he and Yi Am were cousins, it is unlikely that they had any artistic exchange because Yi Am died when Yi Chŏng was only twelve years old. Besides ink bamboo, Yi Chŏng also painted blossoming plums, orchids, and landscapes and was highly praised for his painting talent by King Sŏnjo (r. 1567–1608). His close friend Ch’oe Rip (1539–1612), an interpreter of Chinese and a famous writer, recorded that he almost lost his arm during the Japanese invasions, but he soon recovered and painted with his left hand better than before (Yi 1998; Paek 2007). Yi Chŏng created various types of ink bamboo in different seasons and weather conditions, for example, bent stalks standing upright against strong wind or ­



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drooping leaves laden with snow. In his Bamboo in Rain, a stalk of rain‐drenched bamboo leans toward the right (Figure 10.5). Yi Chŏng uses dark ink to capture the wet look of the long downward‐pointing leaves, heavy with rain, evoking the ­impression of dripping water. Later on, the scholar‐official painter Song Sangnae (1773–1843) wrote an inscription on his own bamboo painting expressing his admiration for Yi Chŏng’s skill: Various painting manuals explain that it is difficult to express clear or dark weather conditions. Among them, drawing bamboo in rain is even more of a challenge. The branches must be neither too still nor too bent; the leaves should not be too twisted, but neither should they face upward. Yi Chŏng always considered these points and devoted himself to their regard (Paek 2007: 375).

Figure 10.5  Yi Chŏng (1554–1626). Bamboo in Rain. 1622. Hanging scroll; ink on silk. 119 × 57.3 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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In order to create a sense of space and convey a dramatic mood, Yi Chŏng often depicted bamboo with two layers of ink. In contrast to the foreground bamboo in dark ink, the one behind it is done in light ink and seems to fade away into mist. His two‐tone ink bamboos are often accompanied by strangely shaped rocks or small mounded earth in the lower corners. In 1622, the year in which he executed this painting, Yi Chŏng was sixty‐eight years old and deliberately avoided involvement in the tyrannical regime of King Kwanghae (r. 1608–1623). The colophon by the painter in the lower right corner indicates that the work was painted at Wŏlsŏn Pavilion in Kongsan (present‐day Kongju) to where he had moved after the Japanese invasions and lived until his death. Far away from the disorderly capital, Yi Chŏng seemed to express his worry and sorrow through the depiction of this ink bamboo in the rain. After the notorious King Kwanghae was dethroned by a coup d’état in 1623, Yi Chŏng continued to paint ink bamboo in a more fluent and untrammeled manner. Traditionally it is emphasized that when painting bamboo, one should not seek the bamboo in nature but the bamboo in one’s mind. Yi Chŏng spent his lifetime painting bamboo and developed simple, delicate, and elegant forms where the ­literati mind could lodge. Moreover, the painter’s ink bamboos were thought to be evidence of his upright character and resilience, which are essential Confucian virtues.

Documentary Painting of Literati Gatherings The Chosŏn dynasty saw the advent of different types of documentary paintings. Among them, pictorial records of the gatherings (kyehoedo) of state examination alumni or of colleagues in government agencies represent a large quantity and form a unique painting genre that emphasizes the special ties which bond together groups of Chosŏn scholar officials. It was common to have painters depict scholarly gatherings with participants enjoying food and drink, and occasionally also song and dance. These scenes are set against a landscape backdrop or in a building representing the place of the gathering. The typical format of a literati gathering painting of the early Chosŏn dynasty consists of three parts: the title of the gathering is written at the top, the painting of the event is positioned in the middle, and the names of the participants are recorded at the bottom. The depiction of the event at the center of the scroll is sometimes accompanied by poems or prose written in a fluent calligraphy style which adds elegance and dignity to the painting. The main purpose of commissioning these literati gathering paintings was to commemorate the event with a written and pictorial record, and each participant of the gathering received a copy. Literati Gathering (Figure 10.6) is one of two remaining scrolls which depict a certain elegant gathering of scholar‐officials held in 1542. It shows the distinct tripartite composition. At the top of the composition is written the title of the painting in large seal‐script characters, Yŏnbang tongnyŏn ilsi chosa kyehoe or “Gathering of officials in the various central government bureaus who passed the Licentiate Examination in the same year.” The gathering itself is depicted against a landscape backdrop, rendered in the style of the An Kyŏn school. Compared to the panoramic view of distant



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Figure 10.6  Literati Gathering. 1542. Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper. 103 × 61 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Kwangju National Museum, Kwangju. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

mountains and a wide river, the human figures are rendered on a small scale. A poem written in fluent cursive script appears in the space above the distant mountains. Below the painting, on the bottom part of the scroll, is recorded the personal information of the seven participants, in the order of their official rank from right to left. This record is flanked by ink bamboo on the right and ink plum blossoms on the left. Among such documentary paintings of literati gatherings, two basic types can be discerned. One type follows the imaginary landscape tradition of the An Kyŏn school, as the example shown here, while the other shows the actual place and setting of the event. The painting features two high rocky promontories to the lower right, below which lies a riverbank, reached by a bridge and two small anchored skiffs scattered about. Seven tiny figures wearing official hats and robes sit in conversation on the riverbank while two servants deliver drink from large, white porcelain jars. Depicted

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on the opposite shore, on the lower left, are two small hillocks, sheltering a hamlet with houses and trees. The landscape elements serve to frame and balance the focal scene where the scholars are gathered. A fishing boat is seen on the wide river that occupies the center of the composition in the middle distance. The upper half of the composition features a panoramic view of the river scenery, with several towering peaks and a waterfall on the right, and a long stretch of lower mountains in the far distance to the left. The most distant peaks are painted without outline to emphasize their remoteness. The poem was inscribed by Kim Inhu (1510–1560), a famous scholar official and one of the seven participants of the gathering: Those gentlemen who succeeded together in the Licentiate Examination of the same year, Passed the Erudite Examination within around ten years. On the same road to a government career, this is not a new association, Though our duties differ, we are all minor officials. Unable to exhibit our true characters each time we meet, We go in our spare moments seeking lovely mountains and streams. Temporarily freed from the constraints of worldly affairs, Let us drink and laugh, sharing stories in abundance (Ahn 1995: 94).

The seven scholars, including Kim Inhu, all passed the Licentiate Examination in 1531 and then passed the Erudite Examination, one after another in the following decade. The civil service examinations were highly competitive and less than twenty percent of the successful Licentiate Examination takers were able to pass the Erudite Examination. This literati gathering must have played an important role as an opportunity for low‐ranking but promising young scholar‐officials to strengthen their fraternity bonds and foster closer relationships. Scholars’ gatherings at that time usually took place in scenic places along the Han River on the outskirts of the capital city. Thus, the vast expanse of the river was usually shown at the center of the composition, with the scene of the gathering and the mountainous backdrop depicted in the lower and upper parts, respectively. In contrast to this example of 1542, some documentary landscape paintings depict the actual venues where the gatherings took place. Popular places for gatherings were, for instance, Chamdu Peak and Chech’ŏn Pavilion which appear repeatedly in many scrolls of similar composition. However, most paintings of scholarly gatherings from the sixteenth century followed the style of the An Kyŏn school in showing indistinct scenery of a mythical or imaginary world. The towering mountain with a cascading waterfall depicted in Literati Gathering does not actually exist along the Han River and colossal cloud‐like rock formations are unusual in Korea’s topography. Although the seven scholars sitting beneath tall pine trees in the bottom right corner are rendered meticulously and clearly, their presence does not take center stage in spite of the importance of the event. Although meant as documentations of memorable meetings, such paintings of literati gatherings in the An Kyŏn style combine actual events with unrealistic



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backdrops. Perhaps this was intentional—in order to escape from the real world of competition and conflict, these Confucian officials wished to commune with each other in some imaginary ideal landscape. The ink bamboo in Literati Gathering, rendered with crisp and quick brushstrokes, is reminiscent of the style of Yi Chŏng. The blossoming plum is another symbol of the Confucian scholar, as it blooms in early spring, often before the last winter snow has melted. It is thus associated with fortitude and purity. Flanked by these two lofty plants, the participants listed on the record seem to become even more resilient and virtuous. Paintings of scholars’ gatherings, popular during the sixteenth century, comprise a unique genre of Chosŏn painting that is inseparable from the rise of the scholar‐official class and their artistic tastes.

Printing and Dissemination of Confucian Teaching In 1543, just one year after the painting of Literati Gathering, Kim Inhu became the teacher of the heir apparent who was enthroned as King Injong (r. 1544– 1545). Their relationship was close enough for the heir apparent to bestow an ink bamboo painted by him to his teacher. Later this painting was carved into a woodblock for printing and distributed widely as a symbol of the ideal relationship between a gracious ruler and a loyal subject. (Pak Chŏnghye et al. 2011: 207–208) King Injong, however, reigned only eight months, and his sudden death caused another bloody purge. Kim Inhu resigned from his position and returned home. Thereafter he repeatedly refused appointments from the court and devoted the rest of his life to studying and teaching. As an erudite scholar, Kim Inhu was often compared to Yi Hwang, the most prominent Confucian philosopher in Korean history. Once the scholar Chŏng Chiun (1509–1561) visited Kim Inhu to consult with him about the diagram Picture of the Mandate of Heaven (Ch’ŏnmyŏn) in which Kim had illustrated the principles and connections between heaven, earth, and mankind. Later, both Kim Inhu and Yi Hwang modified the diagram to better reflect their understanding of Confucian cosmology. From the beginning of the dynasty, the Chosŏn literati made prominent use of pictures to explain complicated ritual protocols and metaphysical ideas. In 1474, information on court rituals with many instructive illustrations was published in a book called Five Rites of the State (Kukcho orye ŭi). Beginning in the sixteenth century, when Confucianism was thoroughly established in Chosŏn society, numerous other books on Confucian rites were published utilizing diagrams and charts as visual aids. With the deepening of Confucian philosophy, diagrams explaining abstract concepts emerged. The eminent Confucian scholar Yi Hwang produced Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (Sŏnghak sipto), in order to explain the key ideas of Confucianism to King Sŏnjo. One of these diagrams illustrates the importance of waking up early, going to bed late, and diligently striving for self‐cultivation (Figure 10.7). In the center is the character kyŏng, meaning “to respect.” Surrounding this character is a diagram ­indicating the appropriate means of study for each time of the day. Yi Hwang’s ten diagrams were often mounted on folding screens and displayed in guest rooms.

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Figure 10.7  Yi Hwang (1501–1570). Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning. 17th–18th century. Woodblock print; ink on paper. 66.5 × 36 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Difficult Confucian concepts were thus explained graphically, so that they could be disseminated widely without much confusion (Cho Insoo 2014). To establish a strict Confucian social order and break from lax Koryŏ social practices, early Chosŏn rulers and high officials set about educating common people about Confucian ethics. To imbue ordinary people with Confucian thinking in daily life, scholars emphasized three basic requirements for harmony in human relations: the loyalty of a retainer to sovereign, the filial piety of a child to parents, and the fidelity of a wife to husband. To achieve this end, the Illustrated Guide to the Three Human Bonds (or Relations) (Samgang haengsilto), a collection of 330 stories taken from Chinese and Korean history that presented loyal subjects, filial children, and faithful



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wives as role models to follow, was published in 1434 by the court under King Sejong’s mandate. It is said that a particular incident inspired King Sejong to issue this guide book to educate his people on moral ethics. In 1428, a man named Kim Hwa in Chinju, a town located near the southern coast of Korea, murdered his own father. This crime, a son killing his own father, was no ordinary homicide but a severe act against the Confucian rule of filial piety. The desire to transform Chosŏn into a Confucian state was undoubtedly the single most important motivation behind the initial publication of the Illustrated Guide (Hong and Chang 2009: 66). In his edict for the publication of the Illustrated Guide, King Sejong stated that he feared common people were not able to understand the written contents and ordered the addition of illustrations, with the hope of reaching street children and village folk. The images of the Illustrated Guide thus functioned as an aid to educate the illiterate populace. They were meant to enhance the understanding of moral actions and proper behavior that originates in the innate goodness of human nature. Each picture in the Illustrated Guide depicts a single story in several stages.

Figure 10.8  “Sŏkchin Cuts His Finger off,” Illustrated Guide to the Three Human Bonds. ca. 1567–1608. Printed book; ink on paper. 37.7 × 23.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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A representative picture from the Illustrated Guide is “Sŏkchin Cuts His Finger off,” which recounts the filial story of Yu Sŏkchin, a prefecture official of the early Chosŏn period (Figure 10.8). When his father was seized with a severe illness, Yu Sŏkchin intensively cared for him and searched for a remedy. He was told that human bone and blood could cure his father, so he cut off his left ring finger, using it to make medicine for his father, who recovered from his ailment. In the illustration, Yu Sŏkchin, identified by a cartouche inscribed with his name, appears three times. He is seen at the top being informed about the secret medicine, on the right cutting off his finger, and on the left nursing his ill father. In the background, bamboo grows on the top of a low hill. It is recorded that An Kyŏn produced sketches for the Illustrated Guide. Because these images emphasized the ethical behavior of the protagonists, the figures were not individualized; rather, a generalized rendering was more effective in conveying the figures as role models, enabling readers to project themselves into the story. Since its first printing in 1434, the Illustrated Guide was reprinted continuously in revised, abbreviated, and enlarged editions. Even a translation of the text into vernacular Korean, or Han’gŭ l, was printed. In 1617, after the Japanese invasions, a Sequel to the Illustrated Guide to the Three Human Bonds from the Eastern Kingdom (Tongguk sinsok samgang haengsilto) was compiled with the addition of select stories of more than one thousand Koreans who had been killed because of their resistance to the invaders during the war. Although the illustrations were inserted to accompany the text, the general reception may not have been coincident with the original purpose. The role of the illustrations was not simply to aid in recounting the story as it was written. The Illustrated Guide went beyond its original purpose of helping people follow the pro‐Confucian narratives to creating a vivid world of pictorial drama. The cartoon‐like illustrations became a collection of iconic images that evoked the actions of moral superheroes, actions that might recall or mirror their own feelings and aspirations (Oh 2013: 109–126). For many people, the Illustrated Guide was not a moral textbook but a storybook with lots of interesting anecdotes, accompanied by even more appealing pictures. For Confucian scholars in the early Chosŏn period, art was a means of communicating correct modes of behavior; art had the task of helping to better society and mankind. For commoners and women, however, Confucian ideology was not only a social convention but also an inescapable burden. Consequently, different kinds of art and culture, especially for marginalized people, evolved in the late Chosŏn period.

References Ahn, Hwi‐joon. 1980. “An Kyŏn and ‘A Dream Visit to the Peach Blossom Land.’” Oriental Art 26 (1): 59–71. Ahn, Hwi‐joon. 1995. “Literary Gatherings and their Paintings in Korea.” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 8: 85–106.



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Cho Kyuhŭ i. 2015. “Anp’yŏng taegun ŭ i sangsŏ sansu: An Kyŏn p’il ‘Mongyu towŏndo’ ŭ i ŭ imi wa kinŭ ng” [Prince Anp’yŏng and his auspicious omen painting: An Kyŏn’s Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land]. Misulsa wa sigak munhwa 16: 6–33. Cho, Insoo. 2010. “Materializing Ancestor Spirits Name Tablets, Portraits, and Tombs in Korea.” In Religion and Material Culture, edited by David Morgan, 214–228. London: Routledge. Cho, Insoo. 2011. “Royal Portraits in the Late Joseon Period.” Journal of Korean Art & Archaeology 5: 8–23. Cho, Insoo. 2014. “Confucianism and the Art of the Joseon Dynasty.” In Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910, edited by Hyunsoo Woo, 1–11. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hearn, Maxwell. 2009. “Shifting Paradigms in Yuan Literati Art: The Case of the Li‐Guo Tradition.” Ars Orientalis 37: 78–106. Hong, Sunpyo. 2011. Traditional Korean Painting. Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press. Hong, Sunpyo and Chin‐sung Chang. 2009. “Peace under Heaven: Confucianism and Painting in Early Joseon Korea.” In Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400–1600, edited by Soyoung Lee, 65–90. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jungmann, Burglind. 2004. Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth‐Century Japanese Nanga. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jungmann, Burglind. 2011. “Sin Sukju’s Record on the Painting Collection of Prince Anpyeong and Early Joseon Antiquarianism.” Archives of Asian Art 61: 107–126. Jungmann, Burglind. 2014. Pathways to Korean Culture: Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910. London: Reaktion Books. Kang Kwansik. 2011. “Chosŏn sidae tohwasŏ hwawŏn chedo” [Painting system of the Chosŏn court]. In Hwawŏn [Court painters], edited by Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art 261–281. Seoul: Leeum Samsung Museum of Art. Kim Siyang. Circa 1612. “Pugye kimun” [Tales of Chongsŏng Province]. Reprinted and translated into vernacular Korean in 1966 in the compendium Yŏllyŏsil kisul II [Narratives of the Burning Pigweed Studio], edited by Yi Kŭ ng‐ik. Seoul: Minjok munhwa ch’ujin hoe. Lee, Soyoung. 2009. “Art and Patronage in the Early Joseon.” In Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400–1600, edited by Soyoung Lee, 15–63. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. O Tayŏn. 2012. “Yi Am ŭ i ‘Ka’ŭ ngdo’: haech’ŏngdo ŭ i chŏnt’ong kwa saeroun sangjing” [Yi Am’s Falcon on a Perch: Tradition and symbolic visualization]. Misulsa wa sigak munhwa 11: 136–169. Oh, Young Kyun. 2013. Engraving Virtue: The Printing History of a Premodern Korean Moral Primer. Leiden: Brill. Pak Chŏnghye, Yun Chinyŏng, Hwang Chŏngyŏn, and Kang Minki, et. al. 2011. Wang kwa kukka ŭi hoehwa [Paintings for the king and the country]. Paju: Tolbegae. Paek Insan. 2007. Chosŏn ŭi mukchuk [Ink bamboo of the Chosŏn]. Seoul. Taewŏnsa.

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Sturman, Peter C. 1995. “The Donkey Rider as Icon: Li Cheng and Early Chinese Landscape Painting.” Artibus Asiae 55 (1)2: 43–97. Sung, Hou‐mei. 2009. Decoded Messages: The Symbolic Language of Chinese Animal Painting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sung, Hou‐mei. 2013. “Rediscovering Zhang Jin and the Ming Painting Academy.” Archives of Asian Art 63 (2): 179–187. Yi, Song‐mi. 1998. “Yi Chong: The Foremost Bamboo Painter of the Choson Dynasty.” Orientations 29 (8): 61–68. Yi, Song‐mi. 2006. Korean Landscape Painting. Seoul: Hollym.

Glossary Anp’yŏng [Anpyeong] 安平 An Kyŏn [An Gyeon] 安堅 Asaoka Okisada (J.) 朝岡興禎 Chamdu [Jamdu] 蠶頭(峰) Chech’ŏn [Jecheon] 濟川(亭) chinsa [jinsa] 進士 Ch’oe Kyŏng [Choe Gyeong] 崔涇 Ch’oe Rip [Choe Rip] 崔岦 Chŏng Chiun [Jeong Jiun] 鄭之雲 Chŏnju [Jeonju] 全州 Chosŏn [Joseon] 朝鮮 Chosŏn kyŏngguk chŏn [Joseon gyeongguk jeon] 朝鮮經國典 chungin [jungin] 中人 Chungjong [Jungjong] 中宗 Guo Xi (C.) 郭熙 Han 漢(江) Hansŏng [Hanseong] 漢城 hwawŏn [hwawon] 畵員 hungu 勳舊 Imyŏng [Imyeong] 臨灜 Injong 仁宗 Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kang Hŭ ian [Gang Huian] 姜希顔 Kanō Tan’yū (J.) 狩野深幽 Kim Allo 金安老 Kim Chip [Kim Jip] 金集 Kim Hwa 金禾 Kim Inhu 金麟厚 Kim Si 金禔 Kim Siyang 金時讓 Kim Sik 金埴 Koga bikō (J.) 古畵備考



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Koguryŏ [Goguryeo] 高句麗 Kongju [Gongju] 公州 Kongsan [Gongsan] 公山 Koryŏ [Goryeo] 高麗 Kukcho orye ŭi [Gukjo orye ui] 國朝五禮儀 Kwanghae [Gwanghae] 光海(君) kyehoedo [gyehoedo] 契會圖 kyŏng [gyeong] 敬 Kyŏngbok [Gyeongbok] 景福(宮) Kyŏnggi [Gyeonggi] 慶基(殿) Kyŏngguk taejŏn [Gyeongguk daejeon] 經國大典 Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Li Cheng (C.) 李成 Li‐Guo (C.) 李-郭 Meng Haoran (C.) 孟浩然 munkwa [mungwa] 文科 Pusan [Busan] 釜山 P’yŏngyang [Pyeongyang] 平壤 sagunja 四君子 Samgang haengsilto [Samgang haengsildo] 三綱行實圖 sarim 士林 Sejo 世祖 Sejong 世宗 Silla 新羅 Sin Sukchu [Sin Sukju] 申叔舟 sinju 神主 Song Sangnae 宋祥來 Sŏnghak sipto [Seonghak sipdo] 聖學十圖 Sŏngjong [Seongjong] 成宗 sŏngnihak [seongnihak] 性理學 Sŏnjo [Seonjo] 宣祖 T’aejo [Taejo] 太祖 Tao Qian (C.) 陶潛 Tohwasŏ [Dohwaseo] 圖畵署 Tŏkchong [Deokjong] 德宗 Tongguk sinsok samgang haengsilto [Dongguk sinsok sanggam haengsildo] 東國新續三 綱行實圖 yangban 兩班 Yi Am 李巖 Yi Ching [Yi Jing] 李澄 Yi Chŏng [Yi Jeong] 李霆 Yi Chŏnggŭ n [Yi Jeonggeun] 李正根 Yi Hŭ nghyo [Yi Heunghyo] 李興孝 Yi Hwang 李滉 Yi I 李珥

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Yi Kyŏngyun [Yi Gyeongyun] 李慶胤 Yi Sŏnggye [Yi Seonggye] 李成桂 Yŏnbang tongnyŏn ilsi chosa kyehoe [Yeonbang dongnyeon ilsi josa gyehoe] 蓮榜同年一時 曹司契會 Yŏnghŭ ng [Yeongheung] 永興 Yu Sŏkchin [Yu Seokjin] 兪石珍 Zhe (C.) 浙

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Transformation: Three Centuries of Change in Late Choso˘n Painting Chin‐Sung Chang

The long peace of the Chosŏn dynasty was shattered by the Japanese invasion of the Korean peninsula led by warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), known as the Imjin War (1592–1598). In 1592, the Japanese army made its landing at Pusan and moved quickly northward to attack the capital city of Hanyang (present‐day Seoul). This devastating war put the peninsula into turmoil for six years, causing enormous casualties. Almost the entire country was sacked and burned and the established order was in shambles. The Chosŏn dynasty was further devastated by the Manchu invasions of Korea in 1627 and in 1636. After holding out against the Manchu army for several weeks, King Injo (r. 1623–1649) surrendered to Hong Taiji (1592–1643), the founding emperor of China’s Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in early 1636. For the next two and a half centuries, Korea served as a tributary state to Qing China. The bloody wars with the Japanese and the Manchus left a huge impact on seventeenth‐century Korea. It took several decades for the Chosŏn court to reestablish a new order and stability. As the population grew, domestic order and economic growth were gradually restored. Increases in agricultural productivity laid the ground for peace and prosperity in late Chosŏn Korea. The eighteenth century witnessed rapid commercialization. Private merchants played a significant role in the expansion of commercial activity. The economic growth and social change of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries served to shape the character and content of cultural and artistic production (Park 2018; Lee Soyoung 2018: 209–246; Seth 2011: 189–215). As the population and the economy grew, society became more complex. Art and literature also became more diverse. A new openness to cultural and artistic variety and progressive thinking became a distinctive characteristic of the time. Indigenous forms of poetry, literature, and art, along with adopted Chinese forms, served to

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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formulate the unique characteristics of Chosŏn culture. The distinction between elite and popular culture began to be blurred. Hanyang was home to a flourishing popular art and literature movement that celebrated the lives of commoners. High‐minded elites of the established order who championed Sino‐Korean culture gradually came to acknowledge the power of popular culture. The nativist and populist character in visual art was one of the defining elements in late Chosŏn culture (Ahn 1980: 211– 286; Jungmann 2014: 124–154, 240–267).

Rise of “True‐Scenery” Landscape Painting The celebration of native character in art is found in the rise of chin’gyŏng (“true‐­ scenery”, a.k.a. “true view”) landscape painting (Yi Song‐mi 1998). Chosŏn painting before 1700 drew heavily on Chinese precedents and principles. Most of the Chinese landscape themes popular from the fifteenth through the seventeenth century were of imaginary and idealized scenery. The paintings, based on Chinese models, presented generic images of remote and otherworldly landscapes removed from the real scenery of Korea (Ahn 1998: 310–322; Hong and Chang 2009: 75–79). The conventions adapted from Chinese models were persistent until Chŏng Sŏn (1676–1759) challenged the painting practice of the time and invented a new type of landscape that depicted the topographical features of famous scenic sites in Korea, most notably those of Mount Kŭmgang (the Diamond Mountains). In 1711, Chŏng painted Album of Mount P’ungak, now in the National Museum of Korea, an album of thirteen landscapes depicting scenic wonders of Mount Kŭmgang, called “Maple Peaks” (P’ungak) in autumn because of the colorful foliage of its forests during that season. In these small paintings towering peaks, overhanging cliffs, stone ­pillars, deep ravines, rushing torrents, and wooded hills come into view. Known in the West as the Diamond Mountains and located in the northern part of Kangwŏn Province, it has been since early times one of the most important pilgrimage sites both because of the breathtaking natural scenery and because of its sacred associations with Buddhism, Taoism, and Shamanism. Korea is a country of granite rocks. Vast areas of exposed ­granite sparsely covered by trees are seen on nearly every mountainside. Mount Kŭmgang is particularly famous for its splendors of granite weathered over time into a variety of ­fantastic shapes. It is no exaggeration that the mountain range consists entirely of g ­ ranite, which forms most of its geological and topographical features (Lee Soyoung 2018). Born in Hanyang into an impoverished family of the yangban class, the highest social class of title‐holders and scholar‐officials, Chŏng Sŏn acquired through perseverance and good fortune a Confucian education and went on to enjoy a successful career as a renowned painter and government official. At age fourteen, he lost his father and, as the eldest son, had to take responsibility for caring for his mother, sister, and brother. He gave up on taking civil service examinations and decided on painting as his profession. Chŏng constantly struggled to keep his family out of the poorhouse. He was a financially insecure painter, and it was not until his early forties that he became a noted local painter working on commissions from senior or more e­ stablished members of the yangban elite (Kim Kumja Paik 1992; Ch’oe 2005).

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Once Chŏng had settled on topographical landscape painting, success came quickly. Chŏng developed a deep affection for the region of Mount Kŭmgang which was becoming the most celebrated tourist destination of his time. Chŏng’s central and enduring artistic relationship with Mount Kŭmgang resulted in his innovative topographical landscape style focusing on its rocky peaks, wooded hills, rushing streams, and deep ravines. Chŏng’s compositions, begun as outdoor sketches and finished in the studio, sought to capture the essence of a landscape infused with the physical sensations of terrain and weather. He was a painter with a fresh vision. From the moment Chŏng first set foot on Mount Kŭmgang in 1711, his attention was drawn to the landscape before his eyes. Unlike his predecessors and colleagues who painted imaginary landscapes in styles adapted from Chinese models, Chŏng showed great interest in capturing the natural beauty of the remote mountainous regions that he observed directly. Powered by ideas of the significance of personal experience and observation of the specific site, he invented true‐scenery landscape painting that shifted the focus from the unseen to the seen. The 1711 album, the earliest dated surviving work by Chŏng, most likely derived from his first trip to Mount Kŭmgang in the same year, marks the decisive moment at which the painter emerged from obscurity to become a widely recognized artist. Some years later, Chŏng painted a set of landscapes of eight scenic spots in Inner, Outer, and Sea Mount Kŭmgang, now in the Kansong Art Museum, in which he demonstrated his energetic and exuberant brushwork. Unlike his early compositions rendered in his refined and careful brushwork, these landscapes show how Chŏng recorded the scenic sites in bold, vigorous, spontaneous, and untrammeled brushstrokes. Here, he wedded what he saw to what he interpreted. The techniques and attitudes of freedom, boldness, and the heroic spirit are the defining characteristics of his late work. Prior landscape practice before Chŏng’s time emphasized the careful construction and sophistication of imaginary and ideal scenery that was based on rigorous conventions. The constructed landscapes were filled with timeless qualities. They excluded the specificity of particular time and place, presenting the generic images of seemingly familiar yet remote and otherworldly scenery. The persistence of old conventions in painting came to be gradually replaced by collective efforts among painters to define and manifest more native characteristics in landscapes (Yi Sŏng‐mi 2015: 81–164). Chŏng Sŏn, by distancing himself from the retention of Chinese schemata, created a type of landscape that matched the needs of the newly developing cultural and artistic circumstances. The new thinking put emphasis on the self‐awareness that arose after the country had recovered from the foreign invasions of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. At the heart of enthusiasm for the topographical landscape was the astonishment and pleasure at seeing an image of external reality painted with fidelity. From the 1710s on, Chŏng attempted to survey in detail the features of a place or region, faithfully rendering the mountains, valleys, waterfalls, rivers, and streams. He turned his attention to describing the geographical and geological characters of scenic spots. He gained particular renown for painting landscapes of Mount Kŭmgang and scenes around the capital city of Hanyang and its environs. His vivid and compelling “true‐scenery” landscapes were much sought after by people from all walks of life. He

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raised the previously underdeveloped mode of landscape painting to a new level of sophistication and prestige. Complete View of Mount Kŭmgang presents a comprehensive overview of the entire mountain range in which the densely forested earthen hills and mountains on the left and the granite pinnacles rising one after another on the right are encompassed in a circular composition (Figure 11.1). The painter put to use his ambition, energy, pictorial intelligence, and knowledge of the mountain’s topography in creating a visionary landscape. The age of Chŏng Sŏn represents a f­undamental break in the continuity of Korean landscape painting largely based on Chinese models. A time of creative energy and quest for the new, it saw the emergence of new directions in landscape painting that resulted in the rise of topographical pictures of the native land. Mount Kŭmgang became a mountain of pride and continued to serve as a cultural ­symbol of Korea (Pak Ŭ nsun 1997; Chang 2018: 93–102). A pioneer in the formation of “true‐scenery” landscape painting, Chŏng was instrumental in bringing the significance of painting nature directly to his contemporaries and followers. The painter who emerged after Chŏng Sŏn to change the course of

Figure 11.1  Chŏng Sŏn (1676–1759). Complete View of Mount Kŭmgang. Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper. 130.7 × 94.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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topographical landscapes was Kim Hongdo (1745–after 1806), the most distinguished court painter of late eighteenth‐century Korea. Kim Hongdo was born into a family of low‐ranking military officials and rose to prominence as the most eminent court painter during King Chŏngjo’s reign (r. 1776–1800). Very little is known of the early years of Kim’s life. Sometime in his late teens, he was able to enter the Royal Bureau of Painting (Tohwasŏ) where he participated in various court‐sponsored painting projects. He excelled at almost all genres of painting and commanded a wide range of subjects, including Daoist immortals, Buddhist figures, birds and flowers, animals, and landscapes in various formats (Kim Kumja Paik 1982; Oh 2005). In 1788, King Chŏngjo commissioned Kim Hongdo and his fellow court painter Kim Ŭ nghwan (1742–1789) to paint landscapes of major scenic sites in the Diamond Mountains and along the East Sea. Upon the king’s order, the two court painters made the trip to the Diamond Mountains and created more than one hundred ­preliminary sketches on site. After a trip of some fifty days, Kim Hongdo painted an enormously long handscroll showing an all‐embracing view of the entire m ­ ountainous range rendered in fine brushwork and rich colors and dedicated it to the king. He also created an album of seventy famous scenic sites in Mount Kŭmgang for the king. Although none of the paintings have survived, Kim’s attempt to take topographical landscape painting of Mount Kŭmgang in a new direction is apparent in Landscapes of the Diamond Mountains and East Sea Region in the collection of the Kansong Art Museum. Originally a screen of eight panels, and now remounted as a set of eight hanging scrolls with eight views of scenic wonders in Inner, Outer, and Sea Kŭmgang, they depict landscapes in a more naturalistic manner than Chŏng Sŏn’s earlier works. This set shows the painter’s remarkable pictorial virtuosity in describing c­ arefully the topography, weather, and atmosphere of the sites, demonstrating his command of Western techniques of perspective and modeling that had been introduced to Korea by the early eighteenth century (Chin Chunhyŏn 1999: 210–274; Kim Kumja Paik 2016: 58–61).

Masters of Genre Painting During the reign of King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776) and his successor, Chŏngjo, the Chosŏn dynasty enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity. The political stability was accompanied by economic growth and cultural and artistic development. The cultural efflorescence of the time was inseparable from a growing awareness and appreciation of the distinctiveness of Korean culture. Consciousness of indigenous history and culture gradually emerged, playing an important role in the production of many works of art and literature exploring Korean subject matter (Ahn 2000: 642–665). Kim Hongdo was at the center of the artistic blossoming of the late eighteenth century. He was particularly famous for his genre paintings depicting the manners and customs of commoners and farmers. Before Kim, Yun Tusŏ (1668–1715) and Cho Yŏngsŏk (1686–1761) were two of the pioneers in genre painting who turned their attention to ordinary, mundane subject matter. They made pictures to illustrate life in the countryside; women are depicted picking spring herbs or sewing and men are shown cutting

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wooden bowls, ploughing a field, making straw shoes, grooming horses, or milking cows. As yangban painters, they carefully observed ordinary men and women and created sketches of their daily lives. Farmers, commoners, and women at work had rarely been painted as independent subject matter before the early eighteenth century. The practice of closely observing people’s everyday activities and realistically recording them in pictorial terms was one of the most innovative dimensions of late Chosŏn painting. Yun’s and Cho’s keen interest in the everyday lives of ordinary people anticipated developments in later genre painting (Jungmann 2014: 124–134). Following in the footsteps of Yun and Cho, Kim Hongdo played a crucial role in enhancing the level of genre painting. In 1778, Kim created Genre Scenes or Scenes from a Journey, an eight‐panel screen, now in the collection of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. The paintings present genre scenes set in rural areas in which travelers and people engage in daily activities such as working in fields, threshing, and forging iron. All the scenes are depicted with wit and humor. Putting his direct observations onto careful sketches, Kim combined landscapes and figures to create a marvelous tapestry of daily scenes in the countryside with people from various walks of life. Kim Hongdo’s astonishingly vivid figural compositions are breathtaking. For example, he captured dramatic moments, such as that of a mounted yangban traveler peeping from behind his folding fan at women engaged in collecting vegetables or that of another rider meeting a family on the road. He also depicted with great realism village women ­setting out early in the morning with baskets on their heads filled with chestnuts, crabs, shrimp, and salt while seagulls and egrets hover overhead at the water’s edge (Figure 11.2). By emphasizing the sense of the here and now, the painter makes the viewer see the scene as if it were happening right in front of the eyes. His genre ­pictures are records that bear witness to how yangban elites and common folk coexisted in traditional Korea. Kim’s social documents of his time were so appealing that whenever people looked at them, they clapped their hands and cheered in wonder and joy claiming them to be excellent (Kim Kumja Paik 2016: 55–58). Some of the scenes in the 1778 screen are also found in the Album of Genre Paintings, an album of twenty‐five leaves, also in the National Museum of Korea, which for a long time has been regarded as Kim’s most prominent work. In the threshing scene from the screen, for instance, the man with a broom on the left reappears in one leaf from the album. A man on horseback hiding his face behind a folding fan also appears in a second leaf, and the scene of blacksmiths at work in a third leaf. This strongly suggests that the subjects in Album of Genre Paintings are partially derived from those in the Scenes from a Journey screen. The album mirrors the various lives of ordinary people in humble daily activities in towns, marketplaces, and rural villages, demonstrating the painter’s mastery of documenting the daily activities of people from all walks of life with vividness and empathy. The authorship of Album of Genre Paintings, however, is questionable. Given that the album does not bear any signature and the seals on thirteen of the twenty‐five leaves appear to be spurious, Album of Genre Paintings may be a later copy of an original by Kim Hongdo. Nonetheless, most leaves have the stylistic hallmarks of the painter. Kim’s genre paintings in albums or folding screens became models for later painters such as Kim Tŭksin (1754–1822) and Yu Suk (1827–1873) (Jungmann 2014: 245–259).

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Figure 11.2  Kim Hongdo (1745–after 1806). “Village Women on Their Way to the Market” from Genre Scenes. 1778. Eight‐fold screen (Panel 4); ink and light color on silk. Each panel: 90.9 × 42.7 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

The blossoming of an urban culture in the capital city of Hanyang set the stage for the creative transformation and commercialization of cultural forms. The urban environment fostered the flowering of many forms of artistic expression that transcended social classes. As urbanization developed, the sharp distinctions between elite and popular culture became blurred. Artists responded to urban aesthetic tastes through their work. Sin Yunbok (b.1758) was the first and foremost painter to create eyewitness accounts of urban life in which upper‐class dandies and wealthy chungin (the status group below the yangban elite, consisting of professionals and functionaries such as doctors, interpreters, accountants, and painters) consorting with kisaeng (courtesans or professional female entertainers) in various settings. Album of Genre Paintings by Sin in the Kansong Art Museum offers a fascinating glimpse of the customs, fashions, and activities of well‐to‐do men and kisaeng. The album presents scenes such as an amorous couple meeting after midnight, boating parties by moonlight, yangban and kisaeng watching female sword dancers’ performance, kisaeng bathing by a stream, and yangban listening to kisaeng playing zither near a lotus pond. While Kim Hongdo was concerned primarily with the down‐to‐earth doings of ordinary people, Sin gave

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special attention to salacious scenes that were against Confucian norms, such as showing half‐naked women with exposed breasts and legs in “Women on Tano Day,” a leaf from the album. Sin’s bold depictions of love scenes, pleasure‐seeking yangban, and seductive kisaeng opened up new possibilities for late Chosŏn genre painting.

Literati Painting and the Visual Poetics of Selfhood One of the prevailing art movements in Korea during the eighteenth century was literati painting. The circulation of Chinese painting manuals such as the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Jieziyuan huazhuan, first edition 1679), the Illustrations for Tang Dynasty Poems (Tangshi huapu, ca. 1573–1620), and the introduction of theories and ideas on Chinese literati painting spurred the rise of scholar‐ amateur artists. Following the precepts of the Chinese, Chosŏn men of letters used painting as a means of cultivating their selfhood and pursuing a refuge from the world of commerce and politics. During the Song dynasty (960–1279), images of the private retreat gained popularity among a new class of scholar officials who highly praised the virtues of self‐cultivation and regarded painting as a means of expressing the mind and heart of the individual. The scholar‐painters of the Yuan (1279–1368) and later periods did not seek representational qualities in art. The artist’s private thoughts and inner feelings became the primary subject and as a result, works of art became autobiographical in content. For literati artists, painting was no longer about the mere representation of the external world. Rather, it was a means of conveying the ‘mind landscape’ of the painter. At the heart of the rise of literati painting was the idea of seeing the man in his painting or seeing an artist’s style as the reflection of his character. Chosŏn literati painters followed the Chinese tradition of using art to ‘speak one’s mind’ and turned to artistic expression during times of political setbacks, personal hardship, and reclusion. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries witnessed the ensuing conflict among political factions of which the Noron (Old Doctrine) faction came to occupy the seats of power at court, ousting political rivals from government and monopolizing high office. The concentration of power in the hands of a small number of eminent families belonging to the Noron faction led to the exclusion of many literati in the Namin (Southerners) and Soron (Young Doctrine) factions from participation in the political process (Seth 2011: 190–191). Due to the prolonged factional strife, the politically alienated men of letters became scholars in retreat, devoting their time to composing poems, writing calligraphy, and painting. Given that it remained difficult for members of the Namin and Soron factions to reach office, they made a living as writers, painters, and calligraphers, limiting their human contacts to a circle of congenial and like‐minded friends. Their frustration over the monopoly held by the Noron faction on high office led them to give up all hope for a better future and to turn instead to moral and spiritual self‐cultivation. Unlike Chinese literati painters, most Chosŏn scholar‐artists were men not withdrawn from society but excluded from politics. For them, painting was a means of conveying their despair, frustration, and bitterness.

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Sim Sajŏng (1707–1769) was one of the most representative literati painters of his day and his life was heavily influenced by contemporary politics. He came from a highly distinguished Soron family that had produced high‐ranking officials for several generations. His family was also related by marriage to the royal household. But his grandfather was involved in a treasonous plot to assassinate the king’s heir‐apparent who was supported by the Noron faction. The grandfather was captured and executed, leading to the downfall of the family whose members were barred from pursuing government careers in perpetuity. Sim had no choice but to make a living as a professional painter. He is said to have painted every day to support his family. Several members of his family including his maternal grandfather and father are known to have been painters. Sim was a child prodigy capable of painting any subject but excelled at landscapes, flowers, grass, insects, birds, and animals. In his early years, he studied Chinese painting manuals and mastered the styles of the Chinese literati masters Mi Fu (1051–1107) and Shen Zhou (1427–1509). He was good at painting both “true‐scenery” landscapes of Korea and imaginary landscapes based on Chinese models. He gradually developed his individual style by incorporating the academic tradition of the Southern Song (1127–1279) painters Ma Yuan (active ca. 1190–1225) and Xia Gui (active ac. 1195–1230) and their followers in the Ming dynasty (1368– 1644) into his oeuvre. The inspiration that Sim gained from Chinese literati painting is found in A Night on the Riverbank, dated 1747, in the National Museum of Korea, a landscape showing a mooring boat near the shore set against cloudy mountains and an expanse of water. Sim used the style that the famous Song‐dynasty painter Mi Fu invented for cloudy landscapes in depicting haze‐filled mountains in the distance and darkly‐silhouetted river bathed in mist and cloud. The landscape embodies nightly darkness, hazy weather, and wet atmosphere. Drawing on two lines from the famous poem “Welcome Rain on a Spring Night” by the Tang poet Du Fu (712–770), Sim conveyed successfully in this landscape what was on his mind—melancholy and doubt. The haze and darkness that permeates A Night on the Riverbank mirror his doomed destiny and is inseparable from his tragic life as a man of learning and refinement who ends up eking out a living as a professional painter. The painting is autobiographical in content, evoking the mindscape of the painter in the most dramatic of visual terms (Yi Yesŏng 2014). The life of Kang Sehwang (1713–1791), a contemporary of Sim Sajŏng, was also enmeshed in the factional strife of the time. He was born into a prestigious family aligned with the Sobuk (Young Northerners), a minor political faction that opposed the ruling Noron. Kang was multi‐talented and had a great knowledge of Confucian classics and Chinese painting. He became the most influential connoisseur and art critic of his time, but was not able to find a position at court until he was sixty-one because of his affiliation with the Sobuk faction, which never regained political power. Therefore, like Sim Sajŏng, Kang spent most of his life as a frustrated scholar‐painter. Traces of Kang’s personality and self‐identity can readily be traced in his paintings, which show a complex mindscape of doubt, despair, endurance, and survival. His grandfather and father were both high officials who entered the Kirosa (Honorary Elders Assembly or Bureau of Elder Statesmen) that had been established to honor the highest‐ranking court officials aged seventy and above. Despite this distinguished family background, Kang was denied

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access to officialdom due to continuous factional struggles at court dominated by the Noron and its political rivals (Pyŏn Yŏngsŏp 1988). At the age of thirty‐two, Kang moved to Ansan, his wife’s hometown, south of Hanyang, where he lived for almost 30 years until he began a career as a minor official in 1773. During his years in Ansan, he devoted himself to studying Confucian classics, composing poems and prose, writing calligraphy, painting, attending elegant gatherings with congenial friends, and traveling. He left literary works of autobiographical nature and paintings conveying his frustration at being a politically unsuccessful scholar. He was renowned for his topographical landscapes, as seen in Journey to Songdo or Scenic Spots of Songdo, an album of sixteen leaves painted around 1757 that records a trip he took to Songdo (present‐day Kaesŏng). Now in the National Museum of Korea, the “true‐scenery” landscape leaves introduce the use of Western pictorial methods such as chiaroscuro and perspective in depicting the famous scenic sites he saw. He was also famous for his landscapes based on Chinese models in which he developed his own style by adapting the pictorial idioms of eminent Chinese literati masters such as Shen Zhou and Dong Qichang (1555–1636) to the Korean sensibility. Kang often used some interesting seals that referred to his life in reclusion: “I am the only pure person in the midst of this dirty world,” “[clear] green water [reflected] on a zither,” “old man on river and lake,” and “there is no dust [in my life]”. Enjoying Leisure in a Thatched Pavilion, dated 1748, in a private collection, shows a scholar looking over a lotus‐filled pond surrounded by bamboo, a willow, and a paulownia tree. The figure depicted in this pleasant and peaceful scene could very well be the painter himself after he moved to Ansan in 1744 as a lonely man who had lost hope for a political career and now had to lead the life of a recluse. His “I am the only pure person in the midst of this dirty world” seal on the painting speaks of what was on his mind, resonating with his determination to not be muddied by politics. Kang was an ardent advocate of “life‐likeness” in painting and encouraged younger painters, such as Kim Hongdo, to pursue “true‐scenery” landscapes and genre paintings portraying the natural environment and customs of Chosŏn Korea in a realistic manner. After beginning his career as a low‐ranking official, he quickly rose to prominence and was appointed Mayor of Hanyang before entering the Kirosa. In 1784, he travelled to China as an envoy to Beijing, where his paintings and calligraphy were greatly appreciated. His unusual career led him to paint numerous self‐portraits throughout his life. His Self‐Portrait (Figure 11.3), dated 1782, now in the Chinju Kang family collection, is a fascinating example highlighting how Kang looked back on his life and evaluated it. In this painting, he presents himself wearing an official black hat but a non‐degree holder’s plain robe. While the black hat indicates the present Kang, a high‐ranking court official, the plain robe refers to the past Kang, a politically frustrated scholar in despair. In retrospect, Kang narrates his life in the most dramatic of pictorial terms. Yi Insang (1710–1760) was perhaps the foremost scholar‐amateur painter of the eighteenth century, exploring in his paintings his self and identity. Yi Insang was born into a prestigious Noron family that had produced many distinguished high‐ranking officials. Despite his outstanding family background, he was born as a great‐grandson of a secondary son (soˇoˇl), whose mother was a concubine of a yangban. In general, upper‐class yangban men of the Chosŏn dynasty had more than one wife. Marriage to

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Figure 11.3  Kang Sehwang (1713–1791). Self‐Portrait. 1782. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 88.7 × 51 cm. Chinju Kang Family Collection. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the primary wife, who was also of yangban descent, secured the links among influential family lineages. Secondary wives or concubines, however, were of lower social standing and their sons did not inherit the yangban status of their husbands. Due to low birth, secondary sons were not permitted to take state examinations, nor were they able to inherit their father’s high status and privileges. Numerous pejorative terms for the sŏo ̆l class were coined to mock the marginalized status of secondary sons. Yi Insang emerged as a distinguished so˘˘ol literatus, constantly investigating his psychological selfhood in his autobiographical paintings. Since his childhood, Yi Insang had devoted himself to painting and calligraphy and by his early thirties had established himself as a renowned artist. Yi held various low‐ranking government posts in different places and resigned from his position as county magistrate in 1752

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after quarreling with his superiors. Shortly thereafter he retreated to a place in the mountains near Sŏlsŏng (present‐day Changhowŏn, Kyŏnggi Province) to spend the rest of his life as a recluse. His difficult life at the margins of society and his explorations of self and identity permeate his oeuvre. Pine Trees in Snow, now in the National Museum of Korea, shows two pines and cold rocks caught in winter’s hardship (Figure 11.4). One majestic trunk rises straight up in the center of the composition while the other crosses it at right angles. The snow‐covered branches are set against a bleak, wind‐blown mountain valley. The harsh wind, snow, and wintry rocks present the world of desolation, despair, deprivation, and melancholy that the painter has experienced. The exposed roots of the pines

Figure 11.4  Yi Insang (1710–1760). Pine Trees in Snow. Mid‐18th century. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. 117.3 × 52.6 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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on a frosty winter day further suggest the miserable status of secondary sons who had no place in society. The uprooted pines, struggling to survive the hardship of winter, are his own self‐image. They mirror Yi’s life of sorrow, bitter hardship, poverty, and old age. The vision of frozen desolation in this winterscape captures the bleak mindscape of the painter facing his own mortality (Chang 2015). Sometime shortly before he died, Yi painted Dying Chrysanthemums, also now in the National Museum of Korea. In this work, the painter made suggestive use of the floral symbolism attached to chrysanthemums to reveal his self, identity, and social status as a man of endless sorrow. The chrysanthemum had long been associated with the life of the late‐fourth to early‐fifth‐century Chinese recluse‐poet Tao Qian (365–427), better known as Tao Yuanming. The drooping branches, dried leaves, and withered flowers indicate that the end is near. Although it appears to be a flower painting, Dying Chrysanthemums is heavily encoded with allusions to the last moment of Yi’s life as a recluse, a life comparable to that of Tao Qian. For Yi, painting was a means of speaking about himself.

Flourishing of Court Painting The late Chosŏn period witnessed a large production of court paintings. The royal court was the major center of artistic patronage throughout the Chosŏn dynasty. Court‐sponsored painting projects were closely related to the establishment of the Neo‐Confucian state. Many court paintings based on Neo‐Confucian norms were produced for promoting the values and interests of the king and the dominant ­r uling yangban class. Within the palace, many paintings were utilized primarily to meet the symbolic and ritual needs of the king and his family in official and private life. At the center of the massive production of court‐sponsored works were painters at the Royal Bureau of Painting who created numerous paintings documenting court rituals and ceremonies and important government projects. Confucian ceremonies, palace banquets, royal processions, and birthday celebrations for ­ ­important members of the royal family are vividly portrayed and thus those works provide magnificent pictorial records of the various dimensions of court life. The folding screen was the major format of Chosŏn court painting (Pak Chŏnghye 2000; Kang Kwansik 2001; Jungmann 2014: 207–231). Of monumental scale and in ­exquisite detail, they show what court life looked like, depicting celebrations at Injŏngjŏn (Hall of Benevolent Rule), the throne hall of Ch’angdŏk Palace, and the day and evening banquets of T’ongmyŏngjŏn (Hall of Everlasting Brightness). One such royal screen, Birthday Banquets for Grand Queen Dowager Sunwo˘n, dated 1848 and now in the collection of the National Museum of Korea, presents a ­pictorial record of banquets and ceremonies celebrating the birthday of the dowager queen Sunwŏn (1789–1857) (Han 2013: 138–153). The king’s wedding was one of the most important court ceremonies. The Celebration of King Ho˘njong’s Wedding, now in the Dong‐A University Museum, is a magnificent painting depicting the king’s wedding to his second wife, Queen Hyojŏng (1831–1904) in 1844. In addition to court ceremonies, royal processions were of great political importance to the king in demonstrating his power and authority. Royal Procession to Hwaso˘ng (Figure 11.5) is the best example showing how King Chŏngjo

Figure 11.5  Kim Tŭksin (1754–1822) and others. “Royal Retinue in Sihŭng Returning to Hanyang” from Royal Procession to Hwaso ̆ng. 1795. Eight‐fold screen (Panel 7); ink and colors on silk. Each panel: 142 × 62 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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used his visit to his father’s mausoleum as an opportunity to enhance his rulership. In 1776, he bestowed the posthumous title of Crown Prince Changhŏn on his father who had died tragically in 1762. In 1789, he moved his father’s tomb to an ­elaborately built mausoleum in Hwasŏng (present‐day Suwŏn). In 1795, Chŏngjo visited Hwasŏng to celebrate his mother’s sixtieth birthday as an act of filial piety. But, the underlying purpose of the visit was political in that Chŏngjo enjoined his officials to honor his deceased father as an act of loyalty to him. The royal visit resulted in the creation of multiple copies of this lavishly painted screen. Chŏngjo commissioned Kim Tŭksin and six other chabi taeryo˘ng hwawo˘n (painters‐in‐waiting to the court) in 1795 to create multiple copies of the Royal Procession to Hwaso˘ng screen, which illustrates the eight commemorative events related to his visit to Hwasŏng (Yoo 2013). Court painters worked not only for the royal court but also for local governments. Some court painters were dispatched to provincial governors’ and military generals’ headquarters for two‐year periods. They were given military titles and called “painters at military posts (hwasa kun’gwan).” Welcoming Ceremonies for the Governor of P’yo˘ngan, attributed to Kim Hongdo, in the National Museum of Korea, is one of the best examples highlighting the work court painters did for local governments. The three handscrolls document in detail major scenes of a welcoming ceremony for the new governor of P’yŏngan Province. Given that a governor was the administrative head of a province, the welcoming ceremony for a new governor was one of the most important events for people in local regions. The most spectacular scene of the three scrolls is that of a fleet cruising on a river in moonlight. The large vessel carrying the new governor is at the center. Local government officials, musicians, and female entertainers in other boats accompany the governor. People line up along the river with torches in their hands to light the scene and to express their welcome. Another spectacular example of what court artists in military posts painted for local governments is The Kyo ̆nggi Provincial Office (Figure 11.6), a twelve‐panel screen, now in the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. It presents a panoramic view of the provincial ­governor’s headquarters and villages set against a long mountain range interspersed with groups of villagers, guards, soldiers, and local officials. A procession of the ­governor and his retinue is seen in the lower area. The monumental composition and

Figure 11.6  The Kyŏnggi Provincial Office. 1st half of 19th century. Twelve‐fold screen; ink and colors on paper. Overall painting (unfolded): 135.8 × 442.2 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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the effective use of brilliant colors, lavish pigments, and finely painted forms make it a striking example of local government‐sponsored painting. Court painters in the Royal Bureau of Painting produced various types of paintings for the royal court. They also worked at home, sometimes in collaboration with each other, to produce privately commissioned paintings. Although court painters worked for the government, their social status was low, and they could only hold positions in the Board of Rites starting from the lower-ninth up to the lower-sixth rank. They were not allowed to advance to positions above the lower‐sixth rank. In the early Chosŏn period, the Royal Bureau of Painting had twenty painters. Of the twenty, only five received regular salaries. Furthermore, painters took turns and worked in salaried positions only once every six months. Painters not assigned to paid positions, were offered a small per diem and meals for the days that they worked. Thus, the economic conditions of court painters were extremely poor, and supplementing their incomes was the primary reason they accepted commissions from private patrons or clients on a daily basis. King Chŏngjo reformed the organization and management of the Royal Bureau of Painting, offering special promotions and bonuses to his painters‐in‐waiting, who comprised the ten best court painters of the time. Despite Chŏngjo’s efforts to enhance the social status and economic conditions of his court painters, there was little change to their livelihoods. In fact, because court painters could not support themselves and their families, there was no choice for them but to paint for money. In fact, most of the extant paintings by the leading court painter of the time, Kim Hongdo, are privately commissioned works. His masterworks in screen format such as Taoist Immortals (dated 1776, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art), Genre Scenes or Scenes from a Journey (dated 1778, National Museum of Korea), Landscapes of the Diamond Mountains and East Sea Region (Kansong Art Museum), and Pleasures of Life in the Countryside (dated 1801, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art), were all privately commissioned.

Europe in Korea Although, unlike China and Japan, Korea did not have direct contact with European countries, knowledge of the West was introduced during the seventeenth and ­eighteenth centuries. The Jesuits in Beijing were admired for their skills in creating paintings with one‐point perspective and chiaroscuro, for scientific maps, for their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, and for their curious mechanical devices, ­especially telescopes and clocks. Koreans traveling on diplomatic missions e­ ncountered the Jesuits and learned from them European science and technology. By the early eighteenth century, Chosŏn intellectuals knew most of the books on European science and technology that were available in Chinese translations, such as Euclid’s Elements, which was issued in 1607 bearing the Chinese title Jihe yuanben (Elements of Geometry). The first discussion of Europe and Christianity appeared in the writings of Korean intellectuals in the early seventeenth century. The Korean government sent regular and special tribute missions to China each year. About seven hundred missions went to Beijing from 1644 to 1894. Despite their diplomatic duties, the mission found

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time to convene privately with Jesuits and Chinese scholars and traded with ­merchants. After finishing their official business with Chinese officials and having an audience with the emperor, the mission spent a great deal of time seeing the sights and shopping. For most Koreans, the trip was considered a once‐in‐a‐life time opportunity. Many Korean envoys wrote travel accounts of their journey, which provide ample information on what they saw, heard, and acquired in China (Hong Sunpyo 2014: 146–209; Yi Sŏng‐mi 2015: 17–80). Tribute Mission to China (painted after 1789), an album of thirteen leaves now in the Korean Christian Museum of Soongsil University, depicts the major sites that a Chosŏn envoy visited on the way to China and in the Chinese capital itself. The “Hall of Supreme Harmony” leaf depicts the heart of the immense Forbidden City palace complex, as the hall was the place where the emperor received high officials and foreign envoys and held other important court ceremonies. Gathered outside in the courtyard of the hall are Manchu officials who are seen welcoming the Koreans to the seat of Qing imperial power. Another leaf, “Liulichang Street,” presents a group of men on horseback, camel‐ riders, and horse‐driven carts in the district of shops selling antiques, stationery, books, calligraphy, paintings, and curios. During the Qianlong period (1736–1795), this street became more prosperous, serving as a flourishing cultural center. Korean visitors purchased numerous books, paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, jades, ink‐stones, and curious instruments and devices from the antique shops at Liulichang. By the mid‐eighteenth century, Western maps, self‐striking clocks, prints, paintings, prisms, telescopes, and books translated into Chinese on science and technology were known in Korea, and knowledge of Western science and religion also became widespread. Of these novelties from China, a copy of Matteo Ricci’s (1552–1610) Complete Map of the World (1602) came as a shocking experience. In 1603, a Chosŏn envoy received a copy of the map from the Ming court. When high officials examined the map, they were all surprised that the world was round and extended far beyond East Asia, meaning China was no longer its center. Painted and mounted on an eight‐panel screen, the Complete Map of the Myriad Countries of the World, dated 1708, now in the Seoul National University Museum, is the oldest surviving example of a Jesuit map made in Korea, showing European painting techniques in the early eighteenth century. Various animals representing exotic lands were included, such as an elephant, a winged mythical beast, a goose, a crocodile, and a rhinoceros. The artist employed Western shading techniques to depict the animals, particularly in the case of the winged creature, which conveys a sense of volume and movement in space not seen before in the painting of East Asia (Jungmann 2013). Chosŏn artists also showed their interest in Western animals. Black Dog, by the court painter Kim Turyang (1696–1763), in the National Museum of Korea, is the earliest surviving depiction of a Western dog in Korean painting. Kim captures a humorous moment of a Western dog with a slight smirk on his face scratching his hairy body under a tree. The meticulous rendering of the fur and the attention to shading reflect Western influence. Yellow Dog in the National Museum of Korea, attributed to Kim Tŏkha (1722–1772), the son of Kim Turyang, shows a large Western dog scratching his body under a tree. The painter employed shading techniques in depicting the claws, ear, and nose of the dog. Kim Hongdo and Yi Hŭiyŏng

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(d.1801) joined the former two Kims in painting Western dogs. It is unclear why these painters took an interest in Western dogs and what models they used, if any, for their painting. Ferocious Dog (Figure 11.7), in the National Museum of Korea, shows a watchdog tied up with a thick chain. The realistic and voluminous depiction of the dog’s musculature and anatomy reflects careful observation on the part of the painter, while the ground and architectural elements exhibit Western techniques of shading and perspective. The painter pays extreme attention to detail and draws the fur in an ultra‐naturalistic manner. Two still‐life paintings by Yun Tusŏ are stunning in subject matter. He was the first painter to experiment with the new genre of still life. Two leaves from Album of Old Paintings in the Yun Family of Haenam are fascinating still‐life paintings. The first is a watermelon, a melon, an eggplant, and tomatoes grouped in a bowl and painted in a visually convincing manner. Shading techniques are employed to bring to life the textures and forms of the fruits and vegetables in a most believable manner. In the second leaf from the same album, Yun meticulously depicts pomegranates, citrons, a plum branch, and a cucumber, also grouped together in a bowl. Fruit piled in a bowl, reminiscent of Dutch still‐life painting in its proliferation of form upon form, suggests a European model. Yun Tusŏ was particularly innovative in portraiture. His Self‐ Portrait, also in the Yun family collection and painted with utmost precision, is a remarkable example highlighting how Yun’s understanding of European pictorial techniques has helped him to explore both his likeness and his inner spirit in fine detail. Self‐portraits are extremely rare in East Asian art, and Yun’s is the earliest surviving Korean example. The self‐portrait, showing a bearded man with a full, round

Figure 11.7  Ferocious Dog. 19th century. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on paper. 44.2 × 98.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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face and dark hair is impressive in its powerful full frontal pose. Yun’s brushwork is sensitive and meticulous as he handles the effects of light and shade and uses fine lines to carefully draw every hair. The painter’s attention to light effects is found in lighter areas of the black silk hat and the forehead. The revelation of self‐awareness is reflected in the sitter’s gaze, with its impressive vital presence. After Yun Tusŏ, Chosŏn portrait painters further attempted to scrutinize the sitter’s likeness through the use of meticulous brushwork and shading. The achievement of lifelikeness became the most important goal for later painters. Yi Myŏnggi (1756– after 1802) emerged as the leading portraitist in the late eighteenth century. In ˘ nho, dated 1787, in the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies at Portrait of Yu O Seoul National University, Yi demonstrates his remarkable skills as a portrait painter. He painstakingly drew and painted the sitter’s cloud‐patterned official robe and black hat, and used shading to model his face and his right hand. The careful depiction of the wart on the forehead, the smallpox‐affected face, and the thumb shows the painter’s attention to detail. Yi’s last masterwork is Portrait of O Chaesun (Figure 11.8), datable to 1791, in the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. This is a full‐length frontal

Figure 11.8  Yi Myŏnggi (1756–after 1802). Portrait of O Chaesun. Datable to 1791. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 152 × 89.6 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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portrait of the sitter in dignified pose and attire looking straight out at the viewer. The painter pays careful attention to the sitter’s complexion; the dark spots and sparse eyebrows are depicted with particular realism. He also draws each hair of the beard, strand by strand. The magnificent pose and carefully studied face convey the vital presence of the sitter. Yi’s legacy is seen in Portrait of a Scholar, attributed to Yi Chaegwan (1783–1849), in the British Museum. Inspiration from European painting is evident in the detailed rendering of the face that gives a sense of lifelikeness. The wrinkles are meticulously depicted in a naturalistic manner. The sitter is thought to be Kang I′o (1788–1857), the grandson of Kang Sehwang. Chosŏn painters’ pursuit of verisimilitude is revealed in an episode of Chŏng Yagyong’s (1762–1836) experimentation with the camera obscura. Sometime in the mid‐1780s, Chŏng set up a room‐type camera obscura at the courtyard of his brother to paint a portrait of Yi Kiyang (1744–1802) by tracing an inverted image of him projected on the wall. This record is of great interest in that the camera obscura was actively employed in the making of a portrait. Some textual records reveal that the camera obscura was known to the royal court and was used in the making of cityscapes of Hanyang. Nonetheless, it is still difficult to determine whether late eighteenth‐century Korean painters actually employed it in the creation of landscapes and portraits. One of the reasons to argue against its possible use is that good mirrors and lenses were not available in eighteenth‐century Korea. The effective function of a camera obscura depends entirely on the combination of a concave mirror and a convex lens to produce a clear image. But, the camera obscura opened up new possibilities for painters. The marvelous wonders and surprising delights that the instrument created in the eyes and minds of the painters played an important role in ushering in a new age of change in perceiving the world (Chang 2014). Linear perspective was introduced to Korean painters in the eighteenth century via China and Japan. Western perspectival prints produced in Suzhou may have been a major source of inspiration for Korean painters. Perspectival landscapes gained wide currency in late Chosŏn Korea. Kang Sehwang experimented with linear ­perspective in his “Taehŭng Temple,” a leaf from the album Journey to Songdo (ca. 1757), now in the collection of the National Museum of Korea. Kang was also interested in European shading techniques and applied them to the depiction of stones in “White Rock Pool,” a leaf from the same album. The painter had a wide range of knowledge about European prints, paintings, and instruments such as the telescope. One enigmatic painting from the album is “Approach to Yŏngt’ong Grotto” (Yŏngt’ongdong‐gu), which shows a rider on donkey and his servant among huge boulders and rocks. According to the painter’s own inscription on the leaf, the rock formations are “as large as houses.” The imagery of travelers passing a mountain passage with enormous rocks might have been derived from Western prints such as “Mount St. Adrian,” an engraving from the Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun (1541–1622) and Franz Hogenberg (1535–1590). This is a six‐ volume work on the cities and towns of the world, published in Cologne between 1572 and 1617, of which some volumes had by 1608 reached Beijing. The German prints had an enormous impact on the landscapes of the Chinese painter Zhang Hong (1577–after 1652) (Cahill 1982: 1–35).

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The court painter Yi P’ilsŏng (ac. mid‐18th century) joined Kang in using linear perspective and shading techniques in painting landscapes. In “Shanhai Pass” from the album Landscapes of Shenyang Pavilion, dated 1761, in the LG Yŏn’am Library at Myongji University in Seoul, Yi employs a bird’s eye view to depict the most geopolitically important mountain pass that served as a frontline defense against ethnic groups such as the Khitans, the Jurchens, and the Manchus throughout Chinese history. As a member of the Korean embassy, the painter traveled to Beijing four times between 1759 and 1773. Linear perspective was actively utilized in court paintings by 1760, as seen in Dredging of Ch’o˘nggye Stream in the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University by an unknown painter. Kang Hŭiŏn (b.1738), a painter working at the Bureau of Astronomy took a special interest in weather, atmosphere, and climate. The Northern Palace Bathed in Fog, in a private collection, shows his keen interest in meteorological effects. He uses atmospheric perspective in depicting the wet weather of the day. In addition to China, Japan was a source of knowledge of European art for Korea. One notable example of Japanese inspiration is Koxinga and His Mother by Pak Chega (1750–1805) in the National Museum of Korea. Koxinga (“Lord with the Imperial Surname,” 1624–1662) or Zheng Chenggong was a Chinese military leader who was born in Hirado, Japan, to the Chinese merchant‐pirate Zheng Zhilong (1604–1661) and his Japanese wife. A Ming loyalist who died on Taiwan, Koxinga, as he is known in early Dutch records, was the chief maritime commander of Ming troops in China’s resistance to the Manchu conquest. Pak Chega painted this theme based on a sketch by the painter Ch’oe Puk (1712–ca.1786), who had accompanied the 1747 Korean embassy to Edo (present‐day Tokyo). In this painting, the painter used opaque colors in depicting the Western architectural building, the figures, and the distant peak, in all likelihood, Mount Fuji. In its use of opaque color, Pak Chega’s painting is comparable to Seven-League Beach at Kamakura by Shiba Ko ¯ kan (1747–1818), dated 1796, in the collection of the Kobe City Museum. The low, curved horizon frequently found in late eighteenth‐century Japanese landscapes deserves special attention. Shinobazu Pond by Odano Naotake (1749– 1780) in the Akita Museum of Modern Art shows an enormous urn of pink and white peonies, a smaller but equally colorful flowerpot behind it, and a portion of a tree trunk set against the background of a large pond with a low, curved horizon. Low horizons are also found in Korean Embassy’s Journey to Edo, attributed to Yi Sŏngnin (1718–1777), but in all likelihood, a later copy of the original 1748 album. The album leaves, currently remounted on two handscrolls, are depictions of scenic spots on the sea and land routes from Pusan to Edo (Jungmann 2004: 25–45, 196–203). Chosŏn diplomats set sail from Pusan on the southern tip of Korea for Tsushima, the first stop in Japan. Correspondingly, the first leaf from the album is “Landscape of Pusan,” showing villages, interspersed with boats, ships, and the city wall in tranquil atmosphere. The low, curved horizon gives an impression of openness and spaciousness. In “Ainoshima” (Aino Island), the painter again used a curved composition to depict a village on a beautiful island near Fukuoka, northern Kyushu. “Kŭmnan Cave,” a panel from Landscapes of the Diamond Mountains and East Sea Region by Kim Hongdo, in the Kansong Art Museum, also shows a low, curved horizon, strongly

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suggesting that it became an important part of “true‐scenery” landscape painting by the late eighteenth century. Books and Scholarly Accouterments by Yi Hyŏngnok (1808–after 1874), now in the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, is a remarkable example illuminating how the ­illusionistic, perspectival vision embedded in a ch’aekko˘ri screen creates a simulated world of precious objects that looks like the real thing. Yi was the son of the ch’aekko˘ri painting master Yi Yunmin (1774–1841). Following in the footsteps of his father, Yi employed one‐point perspective and European‐style chiaroscuro techniques in rendering Chinese objets d’art in the most realistic manner. A panorama of stacked books, rolled scrolls mounted in beautiful brocades, seals, an ink stone, painting brushes in a holder, ceramic and bronze vessels, wood containers, peacock feathers, a plate of pomegranates, a bowl of blooming narcissus, a carved jade carp, a coral ornament, and other precious things arranged in a continuous composition comes into view. The painter gives the viewer a direct experience of a virtual world of valuable books, scholarly accouterments, and precious objects in which the real and the imaginary are blurred. For the beholder, such painted images of books and precious things could easily replace a real collection. (Black and Wagner 1993; Pak Youngsook 2013; Kim Sunglim 2014; Kim Sunglim 2018: 53–109; Chung and Kim 2017).

Conspicuous Consumption of Paintings The late Chosŏn period was a time of economic prosperity and social stability. One of the remarkable social phenomena of the era was the rise of a nouveau‐riche class of social climbers and their conspicuous consumption of art and antiquities. Wealthy merchants and affluent commoners without much knowledge or respect for old traditions rose to prominence and gradually expanded their influence in society. The upward‐reaching efforts by wealthy merchants and rich peasants were expedited by active commercialization that included the expansion of foreign and domestic trade, monetization of business transactions, and development of various commercial organizations. Urbanization developed hand in hand with commercialization. The most important aspect of commercialization was the proliferation of urban and local markets throughout the realm. As economic hub of the realm, the capital city of Hanyang not only received goods from overseas but also from local producers throughout the country. In this commercially changing city, business flourished and various merchants prospered. The population growth, improvements in transportation and trade, and advances in material technology and commercial organization furthered the development of Hanyang as the center of Korea’s urban culture and economy. Due to the city’s rapid commercialization, from the late eighteenth century, wealthy merchants and commoners aspired to upward social and cultural mobility by building beautiful houses, employing skilled artisans and painters to decorate them, laying out grand gardens, and cultivating their interest in learning. They put effort into fashioning themselves as merchants and commoners with culture who could aspire to the world enjoyed by the ruling yangban class. Their active emulation of the refined lifestyles of

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the yangban resulted in massive purchases of antiquities, precious objects, and luxury goods. As a result, rich merchants and wealthy commoners emerged as rivals to the yangban in the consumption of prized cultural objects (Chang 2013; Kim Sunglim 2018: 11–62). The economic ascendancy of wealthy merchants and commoners by the end of the eighteenth century gave rise to a new social hierarchy in the consumption of goods in which purchasing power mattered the most. Class tensions arose as ordinary people were able for the first time to gain access to material culture that previously had been confined to the privileged upper yangban class. Art became a commodity produced for a price. The production and consumption of art became very much a part of the dynamics of economic power in society. The physical growth, social stability, economic prosperity, and rapid urbanization of Hanyang in late Chosŏn Korea are well presented in The City of Great Peace (Figure 11.9), a magnificent eight‐panel screen, painted around 1820, and now in the collection of the National Museum of Korea. The screen presents the urban life and commercial activities of a flourishing city in a time of peace. Members of different classes and people of diverse professions, shown across the various scenes of the painting, are engaged in a wide range of activities. The multiple pursuits and variety of people in the city are remarkably presented. The ­activities of merchants, government officials, shopkeepers, passersby, street e­ ntertainers, and laborers are meticulously depicted. As a visual record of urban life, The City of Great Peace shows a peaceful, affluent society with thriving commercial districts that add up to an auspicious image of good government. The features of peddlers, jugglers, vendors, street entertainers, sedan‐chair carriers, government officials, and merchants selling wine, grain, secondhand goods, ornaments, dyed fabrics, paintings, and artifacts moving along the lanes of the large commercial district are remarkable and reveal the details of daily life in traditional Korea. The enormous commercial district with row after row of shops, occupying a large portion of the screen, likely represents Hanyang’s thriving marketplace, once known as Unjongga (present‐day Chongno), where numerous shops sold silk, cotton and hemp cloth, fish, paper, fans, books, flowers, and Chinese antiques and furniture. The fall of the old order was clearly in sight. The growth of the market, the impoverishment of the yangban, and the emergence of rich merchants and commoners brought about tensions and contradictions in society. The affluent merchants and commoners no longer showed deference to the yangban. For them, material success counted most. Birth and lineage meant nothing to them. The privilege and authority that the yangban once held were challenged by merchants and commoners in an age when money became the marker of social status and prestige. Portrait of a Scholar (Figure 11.10), attributed to Kim Hongdo, in the Chosŏn Art Museum in P’yŏngyang, North Korea, offers a glimpse of how wealthy townsmen such as the rich salt‐­merchant Kim Hant’ae (b.1762) displayed their precious collectibles. The sitter is a neatly dressed young man sitting quietly with a fan in his hand. Next to him is an intriguingly shaped low display table fashioned with scroll‐shaped ends on which a bronze gu vessel with a ruyi scepter and a peacock feather, an ink stone, a brush pot with brushes and paper, a water dropper, scrolls, books, and seals are strategically placed. A Western self‐striking clock hung on the wall, is seen behind the sitter. All the items

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Figure 11.9  The City of Great Peace. Circa 1820. Eight‐fold screen (Panels 3 and 4); ink and colors on silk. Each panel: 113.6 × 49.1 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

depicted in this portrait are rare and expensive objects from China that only a few could afford to possess at that time. The coveted items on display show the sitter’s economic power and enviable social status as demonstrated by his proud and self‐confident posture. In particular, the self‐striking clock was one of the rarest and most expensive luxury items of the late Chosŏn period. The sitter’s prized belongings on the scroll‐shaped low table are cultural accoutrements of scholarly taste and cultivation. However, the depicted owner likely regards them as props to show off his wealth. To own such riches at his young age, he is likely a member of the nouveau riche ­merchant or chungin class who wasted no time to acquire the trappings of a cultured

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Figure 11.10  Attributed to Kim Hongdo (1745–after 1806). Portrait of a Scholar. Early 19th century. Album leaf; ink and light color on paper. 27.5 × 43 cm. Chosŏn Art Museum, P’yŏngyang. Source: Kikutake Jun’ichi and Yoshida Hiroshi, eds. (1999), pl. 44. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

man, equal in elegance and loftiness to his yangban contemporaries. Imported valuables served as prestige items, or marks of elevated status and wealth that conferred social power. In late Chosŏn Korea, precious Chinese objets d’art played such a critically important role in enhancing the social status of non‐yangban men. Portrait of a Scholar shows why such men were strongly motivated to possess and display valuable items as prestige goods, offering a glimpse of how the luxury craze and conspicuous consumption had permeated all levels of society.

References Ahn Hwi‐joon. 1980. Han’guk hoehwasa [History of Korean painting]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Ahn, Hwi‐joon. 1998. “The Origin and Development of Landscape Painting in Korea.” In Arts of Korea, edited by Judith G. Smith, 295–329. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ahn Hwi‐joon. 2000. Han’guk hoehwasa y˘on’gu [Study of the history of Korean painting]. Seoul: Sigongsa. Black, Kay E., and Edward W. Wagner. 1993. “Ch’aekk˘ori Paintings: A Korean Jigsaw Puzzle.” Archives of Asian Art 46: 63–75. Cahill, James. 1982. The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth‐Century Chinese Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Chang, Chin‐Sung. 2013. “Ambivalence and Indulgence: The Moral Geography of Collectors in Late Joseon Korea.” In Archaism and Antiquarianism in Korean and Japanese Art, edited by Elizabeth Lillehoj, 118–142. Chicago: Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago. Chang Chin‐Sung. 2014. “Sasil chuŭi ŭi sidae: Chosŏn hugi hoehwa wa ‘chŭngmul sajin’” [Age of realism: Late Chosŏn painting and verisimilitude]. Misulsa wa sigak munhwa 14: 6–29. Chang, Chin‐Sung. 2015. “Marks of Selfhood: Yi Insang and Pine Trees in Snow.” In Elegante Zusammenkunft im Gelehrtengarten: Studien zur Ostasiatischen Kunst zu Ehren von Jeong‐hee Lee‐Kalisch (Elegant Gathering in a Scholar’s Garden: Studies in East Asian Art in Honor of Jeong‐hee Lee‐Kalisch), edited by Annegret Bergmann et al, 129–133. Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften. Chang, Chin‐Sung. 2018. “The Landscape before the Eyes: Mounts Geumgang, Fuji, and Huang.” In Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art, edited by Soyoung Lee, 93–115. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Chin Chunhyŏn 1999. Tanw˘on Kim Hongdo y˘on’gu [Study of Kim Hong‐do]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Chung, Byungmo, and Sunglim Kim, eds. 2017. Chaekgeori: The Power and Pleasure of Possessions in Korean Painted Screens. New York: State University of New York Press. Ch’oe, Wansu. 2005. Korean True‐View Landscape: Paintings by Ch˘ong S˘on (1676–1759), translated and edited by Youngsook Pak and Roderick Whitefield. London: Saffron Books/Eastern Art Publishing. Han, Hyonjeong Kim. 2013. “Beyond Birthday Banquets: Celebrations, Arts, and Politics of Queens in Nineteenth‐Century Korea.” In In Grand Style: Celebrations in Korean Art during the Joseon Dynasty, edited by Hyonjeong Kim Han, 134–163. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum. Hong, Sunpyo and Chin‐Sung Chang. 2009. “Peace under Heaven: Confucianism and Painting in Early Joseon Korea.” In Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400–1600, edited by Soyoung Lee, 65–90. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hong Sunpyo. 2014. Chosŏn hoehwa [Painting of the Chosŏn dynasty]. Seoul: Han’guk misul yŏn’guso. Jungmann, Burglind. 2004. Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth‐Century Japanese Nanga. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jungmann, Burglind. 2013. “Korean Contacts with Europeans in Beijing and Western Inspiration in Early Modern Korean Art.” In Looking East: Rubens’s Encounter with Asia, edited by Stephanie Schrader, 67–87. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Jungmann, Burglind. 2014. Pathways to Korean Culture: Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910. London: Reaktion Books. Kang Kwansik. 2001. Chosŏn hugi kungjung hwawŏn y˘on’gu, kyujanggak ŭi chabidaery˘ong ̆ ŭl chungsim ŭro [Court painters in the late Chosŏn period: Study on painters‐ hwawon in‐waiting of the Royal Library]. 2 vols. Seoul: Tolbegae. Kikutake Jun’ichi and Yoshida Hiroshi, eds. 1999. Sekai bijutsu daizenshu ¯ To¯yo¯ hen 11: Cho¯sen ¯ o cho¯ [Complete compendium of world art, Asia: The Chosŏn dynasty]. Tokyo: Sho¯gakkan.

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Kim, Kumja Paik. 1982. “Kim Hong‐do (1745–before 1818), a Late Yi Dynasty Painter.” PhD dissertation, Stanford University. Kim, Kumja Paik. 1992. “Chŏng Sŏn (1676–1759): His Life and Career.” Artibus Asiae 52 (3/4): 329–343. Kim, Kumja Paik. 2016. “King Jeongjo’s Patronage of Kim Hong‐do.” Archives of Asian Art 66 (1): 51–80. Kim, Sunglim. 2014. “Chaekgeori: Multi‐Dimensional Messages in Late Joseon Korea.” Archives of Asian Art 64 (1): 3–32. Kim, Sunglim. 2018. Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets: The Culture of Objects in Late Chos˘on Korean Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Lee, Ki‐baik. 1984. A New History of Korea, translated by Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Schultz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lee, Soyoung, ed. 2018. Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. 2011. Chos˘on hwaw˘on taej˘on [Court painters of the Chosŏn dynasty]. Exh. cat. Seoul: Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. Oh, Ju‐seok. 2005. The Art of Kim Hong‐do: A Great Court Painter of 18th‐Century Korea. Chicago: Art Media Resources. Pak Chŏnghye. 2000. Chos˘on sidae kungjung kirokhwa y˘on’gu [Study on documentary court paintings of the Chosŏn dynasty]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Pak Ŭ nsun. 1997. Kŭmgangsando y˘onʼgu [Study on Diamond Mountain paintings]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Pak, Youngsook. 2013. “Ch’aekkado—A Chosŏn Conundrum.” Art in Translation 5 (2): 183–218. Park, J.P. 2018. A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chos˘on Korea (1700–1850). Seattle: University of Washington Press. Pyŏn Yŏngsŏp. 1988. Pʻyoam Kang Sehwang hoehwa y˘onʼgu [Study on the paintings of Kang Se‐hwang]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Seth, Michael J. 2011. A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Yi, Sŏng‐mi. (1998). “Artistic Tradition and the DRepiction of Reality: True‐View Landscape Painting of the Chosŏn Dynasty.” In Arts of Korea, edited by Judith G. Smith, 331–365. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yi, Sŏng‐mi. 2015. Searching for Modernity: Western Influence and True‐View Landscape in Korean Painting of the Late Chos˘o n Period. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Yi Yesŏng. 2014. Hy˘onjae Sim Saj˘ong Chos˘on namjonghwa ŭi t’ansaeng [Sim Sajŏng: Birth of Korean literati painting]. Kyŏnggi‐do P’aju‐si: Tolbegae. Yoo, Jaebin. 2013. “The Politics of Art under King Jeongjo Exemplified by ‘Events from King Jeongjo’s Visit to Hwaseong in 1795.’” In In Grand Style: Celebrations in Korean Art during the Joseon Dynasty, edited by Hyonjeong Kim Han, 90–11. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum.

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Glossary Ainoshima (J.) 相島 Ansan 安山 chabi taeryo˘ng hwawo˘n [jabi daryeong hwawon] 差備待令畵員 ch’aekko˘ri [chaekgeori] 冊巨里 Ch’angdŏk [Changdeok] 昌德(宮) Changhŏn [Jangheon] 莊獻 Changhowŏn [Janghowon] 長湖院 chin’gyo˘ng [jin’gyeong] 眞景 Chinju [Jinju] 晉州 Cho Yŏngsŏk [Jo Yeongseok] 趙榮祏 Ch’oe Puk [Choe Buk] 崔北 Chŏng Sŏn [Jeong Seon] 鄭敾 Chŏng Yagyong [Jeong Yagyong] 丁若鏞 Ch’ŏnggye [Cheonggye] 淸溪 Chŏngjo [Jeongjo] 正祖 Chongno [Jongno] 鐘路 Chosŏn [Joseon] 朝鮮 chungin [jungin] 中人 Dong Qichang (C.) 董其昌 Du Fu (C.) 杜甫 Edo (J.) 江戶 gu (C.) 觚 Hanyang 漢陽 Hong Taiji (C.) 皇太極 Hŏnjong [Heonjong] 憲宗 hwasa kun’gwan [hwasa gun’gwan] 畵師軍官 Hwasŏng [Hwaseong] 華城 Hyojŏng [Hyojeong] 孝定 Imjin 壬辰(倭亂) Injo 仁祖 Injŏngjŏn [Injeongjeon] 仁政殿 Jieziyuan huazhuan (C.) 芥子園畫傳 Jihe yuanben (C.) 幾何原本 Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kang Hŭiŏn [Gang Huieon] 姜熙彦 Kang I′o [Gang Io] 姜彛五 Kang Sehwang [Gang Sehwang] 姜世晃 Kangwŏn [Gangwon] 江原(道) Kim Hant’ae [Kim Hantae] 金漢泰 Kim Hongdo 金弘道 Kim Tŏkha [Kim Deokha] 金德夏 Kim Tŭksin [Kim Deuksin] 金得臣 Kim Turyang [Kim Duryang] 金斗樑

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Kim Ŭ nghwan [Kim Eunghwan] 金應煥 Kirosa [Girosa] 耆老社 kisaeng [gisaeng] 妓生 Koxinga (C. Guoxingye) 國姓爺 Kŭmgang [Geumgang] 金剛(山) Kŭmnan [Geumnan] 金蘭 Kyǒ nggi [Gyeonggi] 京畿(道) Kyujanggak [Gyujanggak] 奎章閣 Liulichang (C.) 琉璃廠 Ma Yuan (C.) 馬遠 Manchu (C. Manzhou) 滿洲 Mi Fu (C.) 米芾 Namin 南人 Noron 老論 O Chaesun [O Jaesun] 吳載純 Odano Naotake (J.) 小田野直武 Pak Chega [Bak Jega] 朴齊家 P’ungak [Pungak] 楓嶽(山) Pusan [Busan] 釜山 P’yŏngan [Pyeongan] 平安(道) Qianlong (C.) 乾隆 Qing (C.) 淸 Shanhai (C.) 山海(關) Shen Zhou (C.) 沈周 Shenyang (C.) 瀋陽 Shiba Ko¯kan (J.) 司馬江漢 Shinobazu (J.) 不忍(池) Sim Sajŏng [Sim Sajeong] 沈師正 Sin Yunbok 申潤福 Sobuk 小北 Sŏlsŏng [Seolseong] 雪城 so˘˘ol [seoeol] 庶孼 Songdo 松都 Soron 少論 Sunwon 純元 Tangshi huapu (C.) 唐詩畫譜 Tano [Dano] 端午 Tao Qian (C.) 陶潛 Tao Yuanming (C.) 陶淵明 Tohwasŏ [Dohwaseo] 圖畵署 T’ongmyŏngjŏn [Tongmyeongjeon] 通明殿 Toyotomi Hideyoshi (J.) 豊臣秀吉 Unjongga 雲從街 Xia Gui (C.) 夏珪 yangban 兩班

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Yi Chaegwan [Yi Jaegwan] 李在寬 Yi Hŭiyŏng [Yi Huiyeong] 李喜英 Yi Hyŏngnok [Yi Hyeongnok] 李亨祿 Yi Insang 李麟祥 Yi Kiyang [Yi Giyang] 李基讓 Yi Myŏnggi [Yi Myeonggi] 李命基 Yi P’ilsŏng [Yi Pilseong] 李必成 Yi Sŏngnin [Yi Seongnin] 李聖麟 Yi Yunmin 李潤民 Yŏngjo [Yeongjo] 英祖 Yŏngt’ongdong‐gu [Yeongtongdong‐gu] 靈通洞口 Yu Ŏ nho [Yu Eonho] 兪彦鎬 Yu Suk 劉淑 Yun Tusŏ [Yun Duseo] 尹斗緖 Zhang Hong (C.) 張宏 Zheng Chenggong (C.) 鄭成功 Zheng Zhilong (C.) 鄭芝龍

12

Ceramics and Culture in Choso˘n Korea Soyoung Lee

Over the five hundred years of the Choso ˘ n dynasty (1392–1910), ceramics played an integral part of the social life of both the elites and commoners. Their function ranged from the quotidian—such as daily tableware or kitchen storage jars—to grand and special—such as majestic vessels for royal ceremonies. They also served as collectibles and conveyors of taste. The prevailing trend in Choso ˘ n ceramics was the preeminence and ubiquity of white ware (paekcha), or porcelain. This may be seen as part of a larger phenomenon, the shift in global ceramic history toward the dominance of porcelain, beginning in China long before the fourteenth century and sweeping throughout Asia and later Europe and the Americas. While porcelain from other parts of the world served as both local and export trade commodities, Choso ˘ n porcelain was intended primarily for domestic consumption. At the same time, the particular developments of porcelain production and consumption in Choso ˘ n Korea directly reflected the Neo‐ Confucian ideology of the state, which became deeply embedded in society and shaped its cultural life. Beyond porcelain, high‐fired stoneware (despite the name it does not have anything to do with stone) comprised a large portion of Choso ˘ n ceramics. Included in this classification is punch’o˘ ng, a distinctive ware with dramatic flair, loosely defined by the use of white slip (mixture of clay and water) in its surface embellishment. Heir to the inlaid celadon from the preceding Koryo ˘ dynasty, punch’o˘ ng was the antithesis of white porcelain. Unlike porcelain, which was produced throughout the Choso ˘n period, punch’o˘ ng existed for approximately the first two hundred years of the dynasty, disappearing from the peninsula until its rediscovery and reemergence, literally and metaphorically, in the twentieth century. Plain, humble stoneware without adornment other than semi‐translucent glazes of ash or feldspar, or darker glazes of

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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iron‐brown or black, formed the basis of everyday ceramics for the non‐elite. They were manufactured mostly at regional kilns and catered to local consumers. A portion of the dark‐glazed ware from towards the end of the Choso ˘ n can be categorized as onggi ware—a type that continued to be produced into the modern times and is today probably best known in the form of kimchi storage jars (Kang 2008: 185–191).

Porcelain as State Project The highly centralized structure of the Choso ˘ n state extended beyond the political realm. It impacted the production of various arts, crafts, and other commodities, especially those tied to palace life and government administration. In the late fifteenth century, the state had oversight of industries like ceramics, both in the capital and the regions, as evidenced by the institution of a court‐sponsored and ‐managed group of kilns. Known as Punwo ˘ n (a branch of the Saongwo ˘ n, part of the central government), they were established on the outskirts of the capital city of Hanyang (today’s Seoul) in Kwangju, Kyo ˘ nggi Province, in the second half of the 1460s (Cho ˘ n 2010; Kim 2011: 62–70). Punwo ˘ n was the largest state‐run organization producing handicraft commodities, employing about 380 people affiliated with Saongwo ˘ n alone by the end of the fifteenth century, as recorded in the Kyo˘ngguk taejo˘n, or Grand Code for State Administration (Pang 2002). A supervisor from Saongwo ˘ n, the state bureau responsible for all aspects related to food, including overseeing tableware for meals and special rites and ceremonies at the court, was dispatched to and resided at Punwo ˘ n to oversee its operation, to ensure quality control and a proper supply of porcelain. Such a system represented a shift from ceramic manufacture in the preceding Koryo ˘ dynasty. Although the previous court conducted periods of inspection of select kilns specializing in celadon for royalty and aristocracy, nothing comparable to the structure of Choso ˘ n Punwo ˘ n existed. Spurred by the introduction of Chinese porcelain from the Yuan and early Ming periods (Kim 2006: 192–197), both plain white or painted with cobalt blue, the Choso ˘ n court from the beginning was dedicated to fostering domestic production of high‐grade, hard‐paste porcelain. Simultaneously, there was an effort to control the consumption of porcelain, restricting its use to the court through royal decree and punishing those who violated this rule. A significant part of this effort involved sourcing the right raw materials and refining both the technical skills and kiln technology: superior quality clay low in impurities and iron content, usually combined with kaolin (also known as “china clay”); clear glaze containing high levels of silica and low levels of iron‐oxide; and firing at a high temperature of between 1200° and 1400° Celsius. Soft‐paste porcelain had already been produced in the preceding Koryo ˘ dynasty alongside celadon, albeit in relatively small quantity. Prior to the establishment of Punwo ˘ n, during the reign of King Sejong (r. 1418–1450), over three hundred ceramic kilns were in operation throughout the peninsula (Kim 2011: 46–49). Indeed, under Sejong’s rule there was a significant effort to survey the state of ceramic manufacture, the results of which were recorded in Sejong sillok chiriji, or Geographical Appendix to the Annals of King Sejong (Kim 2003: 57–88; Pang 2002: 39–44; Pang 2005: 78–84). The majority of these were likely producing punch’o˘ ng ware or other stoneware. The



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products of these kilns around the country provided tax revenue for the central government, which made it imperative for the state to obtain accurate accounting of the locations and operation of various kilns. The central government did not have a direct hand in managing these kilns, however. The founding of Punwo ˘ n in the 1460s arguably shifted the whole landscape of ceramic manufacture in the early Choso ˘ n that lasted throughout the dynasty. (For further reading on the significance and background of Punwo ˘ n’s establishment see Kim 2011: 39–62). The official court kilns of Punwo ˘ n were relocated (within Kwangju) approximately every decade—in search of more firewood especially, which proved a constant challenge. This trend continued until 1752 when a permanent location was set up in the hamlet of Punwo ˘ n‐ri. This was the final and longest‐running state‐managed porcelain complex in Kwangju. The constant relocation had proven to be not only a financial and logistical burden on the state but also a considerable strain on the potters, who had to help rebuild their workshop and living quarters with every move. A proposal to institute a long‐term production center was raised by the end of the seventeenth century. However, it took over a half century until the plan was implemented, with the launch of the Punwo ˘ n kilns. Various factors contributed to the selection of this location, including the feasibility of obtaining necessary materials like firewood for kiln use, and the proximity to waterways to ship raw materials and finished products to and from the kilns (Ch’oe 2013: 9–12). The establishment of a stable, permanent manufacturing complex at Punwo ˘ n‐ri facilitated an expansion of the community built around the ceramic operation, as reflected in the increase in the labor force and accompanying population, and in the building of housing for administrative oversight and services (Ch’oe 2013). Punwo ˘ n‐ri arguably represented a successful operation in scale and in the breadth and experimentation of wares produced. Yet, even from the time of its opening, the ceramic complex was moving inexorably away from centralized government management and its primary role as a supplier of porcelain for the court and central government. During its long lifespan, the kilns also produced for the domestic market, with merchants facilitating the commercial trade. The court suspended official operation in 1884, although in reality the state continued to provide some measure of financial support through the end of the nineteenth century (Ch’oe 2013). (For a survey of the changes in operation of the Punwo ˘ n kilns post‐1883 to the end of the Choso ˘ n focusing on “privatization” and the market, see Pak 2016: 36–114.) Besides Jingdezhen in China, there are few comparable cases globally of state‐managed ceramic production in one location for such an extended time span. This alone makes Punwo ˘ n all the more intriguing and notable as a case study.

Early Porcelain: Ideal of Austere Elegance The majority of porcelain from the early Choso ˘ n period was undecorated white ware without painted or enameled design. Nonetheless, throughout the dynasty, the restraint in use of color remains a constant feature of porcelain produced on the peninsula. Even as embellished porcelain became more standard during the latter part of the Choso ˘ n, the majority of wares tended to display one hue at a time—blue from cobalt, red from copper,

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brown from iron. Moreover, the preference for an abundance of blank background space surrounding the painted design or motif embodied purity and rejection of ostentation. Most notably, Choso ˘ n porcelain did not adopt polychrome enameled decoration so popular in China and Japan, even as the royal family and elites had knowledge of, coveted, and in some cases owned imported polychrome porcelain. This unique development in Korea undoubtedly had much to do with Confucian aesthetics, specifically, the translation of Confucian ideals of purity, humility, and frugality into ceramic design (or lack thereof). Adherence to austere taste in porcelain decoration set Choso ˘ n elites, especially of the early period, apart from patrons of the costly ware elsewhere in the world. White porcelain vessels of the early Choso ˘ n embody a restrained elegance—evidenced in their minimalist forms and clean lines—that defined this period. A large exquisite lidded bowl (Figure 12.1) from the late fifteenth century, exemplifies these qualities. The bowl possesses a distinguished silhouette compared to typical porcelain bowls of the period, with a generously rounded bottom and relatively high foot; its top tapers inward rather than flare out. The accompanying hemispherical lid has a prominent, pointed knob. This exceptional piece would have been used for ceremonial functions. The prototype for this simple yet striking form can be traced to metalwork, most likely silver. A state‐mandated prohibition on the use of metal vessels during the last years of King Sejong’s reign prompted an increase in the use of ceramics (Cho ˘ n Sŭngch’ang 2010). Metal vessels were replaced with ceramics, both punch’o˘ ng and porcelain, of identical or similar designs, including those used at the court for Confucian rites, according to the Veritable Record of the Reign of King Sejong (Sejong sillok) of 1447 (Pang 2005: 64; Kim 2006: 218).

Figure 12.1  Bowl with lid. 15th century. Porcelain. H. 22.5 cm. Treasure No. 806. Photo: courtesy of the Horim Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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The aesthetic of austerity informed not only undecorated white ware but also underglaze cobalt‐blue porcelain of the early Choso ˘ n. Porcelains with cobalt‐blue decoration, a much‐sought extravagance, were produced in limited quantity. This was in part due to the expense and difficulty of obtaining imported cobalt. It is unclear to what extent attempts to source domestic cobalt [blue mineral pigment] were successful. The use of blue‐and‐white ware was severely circumscribed in the early Choso ˘ n; its manufacture and consumption became more prevalent from the early eighteenth century, with the availability of more affordable domestic cobalt. Only a handful of blue‐and‐white ware from the early period survive (as intact vessels, not counting sherds from kiln sites). The earliest dated example surviving is a set of epitaph tablets, now in the collection of the Koryo ˘ University Museum, which belonged to King Sejo’s (r. 1455–1468) mother‐in‐law (d. 1456); it provides evidence of domestic production of blue‐and‐white porcelain by the mid‐fifteenth century (Kim 2006: 206). Some examples of early Choso ˘ n blue‐and‐white ware follow a Chinese stylistic paradigm. These have exacting, precise brushwork and a design scheme that covers the entirety of the vessel’s surface, and usually have a band of secondary pattern along the neck and base. Their counterparts in taste are Choso ˘ n blue‐and‐white wares, which tend to display spare designs executed in looser brushwork against plenty of empty background—even when the decorative motifs have origins in China. This direction is exemplified by a jar with a design of bamboo and blossoming plum tree (Figure 12.2), which displays a sensitive balance between the decorated and undecorated spaces, with the unfilled areas as evocative as the painted areas. It should be noted that

Figure 12.2  Jar with design of bamboo and blossoming plum tree. Late 15th–early 16th century. Porcelain with cobalt‐blue decoration. H. 34.3 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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throughout the Choso ˘ n, the designs on blue‐and‐white ware were executed by trained painters from the court’s Bureau of Painting, who were dispatched to the Punwo ˘n kilns. Painted cobalt decoration on early Choso ˘ n porcelain, therefore, exhibit sophisticated brushwork and composition.

Punch’ŏ ng: Earthy and Exuberant Counterpart to Porcelain Punch’o˘ ng ware developed out of the celadon tradition from the end of the Koryo ˘ period, a result of shifting and declining patronage and need for greater and more efficient output. In terms of style and technique of fabrication, punch’o˘ ng evidences direct ties to, and transformation of, inlaid celadon (see Figure 5.7 in essay by Namwon Jang). The best of the Koryo ˘ predecessor displays a nuanced and vibrant balance amongst the three‐color palette employed in the piece—the white and black of the inlay and the luminous, gray‐green of the defining celadon glaze. In contrast, inlaid punch’o˘ ng ware embraces the dominance of the white slip, a feature that becomes even more pronounced on punch’o˘ ng with stamped designs and later examples brushed with, or dipped entirely in, white slip. Whereas celadon, and thus the preference for green, dominated the ceramic industry of the Koryo ˘ , from the early Choso ˘n there is an irrevocable shift to a penchant for white. Indeed, the introduction of porcelain from China and the desire for domestically made white ware inevitably shaped the aesthetics and styling of punch’o˘ ng. The production and consumption of punch’o˘ ng developed in tandem and in competition with the establishment of a centralized manufacturing program for porcelain. Prior to the establishment of official court kilns for porcelain, the ceramic vessels needed by numerous departments of the royal palace and government—for daily meals, special banquets, ceremonies, storage of foods, among others—were made at various regional kilns throughout the country and collected as taxes. For the most part, these earlier ceramics were punch’o˘ ng ware, rather than porcelain. As such, punch’o˘ ng vessels were stamped or inscribed with the names of various offices of the court, a method that was instituted both to control the quality of the wares and to keep proper accounting of the vessels ordered for court use (Kang 2008: 116–118). Among the most frequently found names are Changhu˘nggo (the bureau that supplied mats, paper, and various other goods to government offices) and Naeso˘msi (the bureau that processed tribute arriving from the provinces to the royal palace, provided liquor to officials of the second rank or higher, and food and textiles for Japanese and Manchurian visitors) (Figure 12.3). Punch’o˘ ng is an abbreviation of the modern term punjang hoech’o˘ ng sagi, coined by the art historian Ko Yuso˘p (1905–1944). It literally means “gray‐green stoneware embellished with powder” and refers to early Choso˘n ceramics whose decoration involves the application of white slip (a mixture of clay and water) on the surface before the glaze is applied. There does not appear to have been a Choso˘n‐period nomenclature. Indeed, there is no written record indicating that at the time this rather loose and diverse range of stoneware was conceived as a cohesive group. Grouping the stoneware with all modes of white slip decoration as one ceramic category and



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Figure 12.3  Bowl with chrysanthemum design and “Naesŏm” inscription. Mid‐15th century. Punch’ŏng ware with stamped decoration. D. 16.8 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

designating a name to it was a modern‐day phenomenon. That the identification occurred during the Japanese Colonial period was significant; it symbolized a reclaiming of a long‐buried cultural tradition. Punch’o˘ng ware is generally classified into seven decorative categories, depending on how the white slip is applied on the surface of the vessel, before the semi‐­translucent glaze is applied. One is inlay, in which the individual motifs are carved and the crevices are filled with white slip. The technique directly follows that of celadon; indeed, the earliest punch’o˘ng were produced in the same kilns as Koryo˘ celadon, as the ceramic industry tried to adapt changing patronage and economic circumstances. As a result, the distinction between the last stages of Koryo˘ celadon and the ­beginnings of punch’o˘ng is not always clear. There are marked differences in style and aesthetics, however, of Koryo˘ inlaid celadon at its zenith and well‐developed inlaid punch’o˘ng. The former is refined and delicate; the latter more robust and organic, the designs sometimes infused with a sense of playfulness or wit—a quality that defines punch’o˘ng’s aesthetic in general. The second decorative mode of punch’o˘ng, closely related to inlay, is stamp‐application. Rather than hand‐carving each individual motif, stamps are used to create the overall design. In this case the patterns tend to be simplified and repeated in multiples. The third decorative category is incised or carved design; usually the entire surface of the vessel is covered in white slip, then the motifs are cut through the slip. The fourth is a technique known as sgraffito, in which the background of the motifs are carved out so that the design shows in relief. Usually combined with incised decoration, punch’o˘ ng with sgraffito embellishment tends to be bold and dynamic. This type

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was a specialty of kilns in Cho˘lla Province in the southwestern part of the peninsula. The fifth is iron‐painted design (over white slip). This is perhaps the most well‐known and beloved type of punch’o˘ ng today. Vigorous, gestural brush strokes are the hallmark of the decoration, which tend to favor abstraction (Figure 12.4). Even when a motif appears readily identifiable (for example, fish design), it nonetheless eschews realism for selective emphases and abbreviations to accentuate its essential quality. The center of production for this category of punch’o˘ ng was the Kyeryongsan kilns at Hakpong‐ri in Kongju, Ch’ungch’o˘ng Province. It should be noted that sgraffito‐ decorated and iron‐painted punch’o˘ ng share technical similarities with Cizhou ware of China, which emerged in Northern Song (960–1127) and continued through the Ming (1368–1644) periods. Thus far there has not been sufficient research into the possibility of direct exchanges or interventions of potters. Stylistically and aesthetically, punch’o˘ ng and Cizhou wares (especially the later‐period, contemporaneous ones) seem to share little in common. The final two decorative modes in punch’o˘ng focus solely on the white slip. In one the slip is brushed onto the surface (kwiyal), usually covering the majority, and often the entirety, of the vessel. Applied in rapid movement, the spirited strokes and traces of the brush create a forceful, hypnotic, impression. In the other, the vessel is dipped in white slip (to˘mbo˘ng, paekt’o). With no further embellishment, the milky whiteness and smooth, creamy texture of the slip dominates the overall appearance. Whether brushed or dipped, punch’o˘ng ware with only white slip adornment and offering no other design features developed in response to ever‐growing demand for porcelain, or white ware. One of punch’o˘ ng ware’s great appeals to the contemporary art lover is its bold and minimalist aesthetic. Its economical yet arresting designs seem to embody the modernist sensibilities of abstract and conceptual art of the twentieth century, ­

Figure 12.4  Drum‐shaped bottle with peony design. Late 15th–early 16th century. ˘ ng ware with iron‐painted decoration. H. 21.6 cm, L. 31.1 cm. Treasure Punch’o No. 1387. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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transcending the half millennium plus interval since their creation. The central appeal of punch’o˘ ng lies in its materiality: the texture of the relatively coarse clay and of the thickly‐applied white slip; and the quality of the surface designs, which are organic and earthy on the one hand, and delightfully modern on the other hand.

Early Choso˘ n Ceramics and the Japan Factor The overwhelming demand and preference for white ware, not only from the court and the elite in the capital but also from consumers of all classes in the regions, directly contributed to the disappearance of punch’o˘ ng ware from the Korean peninsula by the second half of the sixteenth century. The Japanese invasions known as the Imjin War (1592–1598), while resulting in mass relocation of potters and other populations of skilled and unskilled workers from the peninsula (especially the southern half) to the Japanese archipelago, was not the catalyst for punch’o˘ ng’s demise. However, from the seventeenth century, inspired reinterpretations and revivals of the punch’o˘ ng styles flourished at select ceramic industries in Kyushu, Japan, notably those established by immigrant Korean potters, such as Karatsu‐ware kilns of Takeo near Arita (Lee 2011: 107–117. For a survey of the relationship between early Choso˘n ceramics and Karatsu ceramics in the Hizen domain pre‐ and post‐Imjin Wars see Katayama Mabi 2003: 141–180). By the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, revival punch’o˘ ng, especially in inlaid and stamp‐decorated styles—recognizable due to its decorative repertoire yet distinct from the earlier Choso˘n originals—emerged in various parts of Japan, including at kilns in the Kansai region that had no direct ties to transplanted Choso˘n potters (Lee 2011: 119–121). The Japanese term “mishima”— referring to punch’o˘ ng with stamped design and more broadly to inlaid punch’o˘ ng as well as to any decorative pattern that is achieved through the application of stamps— was in use already in Edo Japan, as early as the seventeenth century. Early Choso˘n punch’o˘ ng ware of all designs was imported to contemporaneous Japan. Their altered usage and exalted status as treasured tea accoutrement (particularly tea bowls) within the highly ritualized tea ceremony (chanoyu), from at least the sixteenth century on, evidence punch’o˘ ng’s appeal beyond the borders of the Korean peninsula. The Japanese fascination with Choso˘n ceramics extended beyond punch’o˘ ng ware to other stoneware without white slip that were produced in regional kilns, primarily in Kyo˘ngsang Province. In modern Korean art history these are classified as white ware (paekcha), though they are not technically porcelain. In Japan they are classified as stoneware (J. tōki). For the most part these ceramics were coarsely made—possessing relatively thick‐walled bodies and ash or feldspar glazes that tend to be visibly and unevenly applied. That unrefined, earthy quality, however, was precisely what the Japanese consumers, primarily tea aficionados ranging from the daimyō to the merchant, valued from the sixteenth century onwards. The coarse white paekcha were mostly used as tea bowls, and like punch’o˘ ng, imbued with an aesthetic and a radically elevated status divorced from its original context in Choso˘n. Unlike China or Japan, Choso˘n Korea rarely produced ceramics specifically for the export market (whether within Asia or to Europe). Perhaps the only exception is a category of ceramics

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produced at the so‐called Pusan kilns for Japanese clientele (and known in Japanese as Gohon‐de). Beyond these made‐to‐order vessels, there was a distinct phenomenon of Choso˘n ceramics, mostly non‐porcelain and originally made primarily for domestic consumption, that were transplanted to and repurposed in Japan. They even garnered a term, Ko¯rai jawan, or Koryo˘ tea bowls (Ko¯rai here means “Korea” rather than the dynasty specifically). The ceramic’s transformation crossed boundaries of taste, function, and meaning. For example, inlaid and stamp‐decorated punch’o˘ ng vessels originally intended for certain government bureaus and particular official occasions (as indicated by the name of the bureau stamped on the surface), or stoneware bowls of atypical shapes or sizes relative to the majority of ceramics produced at regional kilns, without much visual appeal as measured against Choso˘n tastes, would become treasured possessions in the tea circles of Japan—to be used and valued in ways entirely divergent and unexpected from their original context in Korea. Punch’o˘ ng reappears on the peninsula in the early twentieth century during the Japanese Colonial period—through discoveries of Choso˘n‐period kilns and through imitations made primarily for the Japanese market. Subsequently, modern and contemporary potters in both Korea and Japan have found artistic inspiration in Choso˘n punch’o˘ ng ware. They were especially drawn to the earthy and robust character as well as to the rich decorative repertoire of punch’o˘ ng wares.

Kiln Structure and Firing Methods The typical kiln of the early Choso˘n period, for both punch’o˘ ng and porcelain, was a tunnel‐like structure built on a relatively smooth incline. Except for the fire‐starting chamber at the front (the lower part), the kiln was essentially one long room with a couple of strategically placed pillars to help circulate and effectively distribute the heat. This structure is exemplified by the mid‐sixteenth century Po˘ncho˘n‐ri kilns No. 5 and No. 9 in Kwangju. Although both were part of the Punwo˘n system, the former was devoted to manufacturing porcelain for palace use only and the latter to making porcelain for the central government use (Ihwa yo˘ja taehakkyo pangmulgwan 1986 and 2007; Cho˘n 2010). Kilns comprising a series of discreet chambers became more standard from the seventeenth century onwards. Excavations of Choso˘n kilns thus far seem to indicate that stepped, multi‐chamber climbing kilns did not appear until the late nineteenth century. Their establishment was undoubtedly influenced by counterparts in Japan, especially Kyushu (on the various types of kiln structures throughout the Choso˘n, see Kang 2005: 588–622. See pp. 310–561 of the same text for a survey of excavated Choso˘n kilns and their wares). Differentiated firing tools and techniques helped ensure that porcelain destined for the use of the royal family were of the highest quality. Each vessel was placed in a saggar, a clay container with lid, to ensure that no debris settled on the surface of the ceramic during firing, yielding pristine porcelain. Such a method limited the output capacity per firing. A more common way involved stacking layers of dishes—separated by clay spurs or coarse sand to prevent the pots from sticking to one another. This resulted in vessels with some impurities (depending on the location vis‐à‐vis the source of fire) and with spur marks on the interior and along the base. However,



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loading and firing the kiln with piles of ceramics facilitated a more efficient and larger‐ scale production. Most punch’o˘ ng kilns and regional white ware kilns operated in this fashion, though some early punch’o˘ng kilns producing the inlaid and stamped variety destined for the court (marked with names of government bureaus) used individual saggars to make unblemished vessels. The official kilns of Punwo˘n administered both types of kilns simultaneously—producing limited edition, high‐grade porcelain for the royal family and the court and the more mundane vessels for various needs, functions, and departments of the central government.

Ceramics in Rites of Birth and Death In the Choso˘n period, performances of rites or rituals symbolized important affirmations of Neo‐Confucian ideology. More practically, they represented the conversion of philosophical ideals into tangible social norms and customs. Ceramic vessels, alongside metalwork, were essential objects incorporated into various customary rites. Among the most significant Confucian practices, especially on the state level, were funerary or burial ceremonies. An illustrated manual on Confucian rites (Oryeu˘i, or Five Rites) performed by state officials that was compiled during the reign of King Sejong exemplifies the significance of such occasions and codification of Neo‐ Confucian principles. The five rites were as follows: killye, or sacrificial rites, including ancestral rites; karye or ceremonies marking auspicious events of the royal family, including weddings; pillye or reception of foreign envoys; kunnye or military rites; and hyungnye or rites of state funerals. Provided in the manual are drawings of specific vessels recommended for use in each of these rites; most were metal ware, especially bronze, in antiquarian shapes from ancient China that had been long associated with rituals. Extant porcelain and punch’o˘ ng pieces mimicking bronze forms evidence the use of ceramics in place of ceremonial metal ware, especially during the early Joseon period. What is interesting about the punch’o˘ ng vessels is that while retaining the essential features of the bronze prototypes both in form and surface decoration, they are not as classical or solemn. Instead, they impart a sense of whimsy that is generally characteristic of punch’o˘ ng ware. The practice of burying a set of ceramic epitaph tablets in the tombs of elite yangban men prevailed throughout the Choso˘ n period. The epitaphs recorded the birth and death dates of the deceased, along with a narrative of his accomplishments, especially in government service. The rectangular tablets―often of porcelain (though some extant examples are of punch’o˘ ng) with calligraphy usually inscribed in cobalt blue and in some cases in iron‐brown or more infrequently in copper‐red—were usually placed inside a large, lidded ceramic jar and then the entire ensemble would be entombed. Depending on the social status of the deceased, epitaph tablets can number just one to a handful, or in the case of more renowned or high‐ranking officials they can run into multiples of tens. One such example is a set of thirty‐six porcelain epitaph tablets, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for O Myo˘ nghang (1673–1728), a celebrated scholar‐official and calligrapher who rose to the rank of Right State Councilor

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(uu˘ijo˘ ng), one of three highest‐ranking government positions. Beyond supplying information on the life and achievements of the chronicled individuals, the e­ pitaphs often provide important insight into Choso˘ n ceramic production, especially since they have known dates. A particular and somewhat peculiar burial practice associated with the court in the early Choso˘n dynasty is exemplified by placenta jars for royalty. Upon birth, the placenta of a prince or princess was placed in a jar that typically had a simple, elongated silhouette and four lugs along the shoulder for tying down the lid; the placenta jar was then put inside a larger, outer jar and sealed. The set was then placed in an auspicious spot within the new mother’s living quarters. On a preselected, auspicious date the placenta set was buried in a location determined by geomantic principles, essentially creating a placenta “tomb.” A stone or ceramic tablet detailing information about the newborn was also buried with the jar (Kwon 2014: 39). Such practices evidence Choso˘n society’s views on the sacredness of placentas and its proper consecration, as well as the significant role that ceramics played in that ritual. Among the most renowned examples of a set of white porcelain placenta jars today resides in the collection of Horim Art Museum in Seoul. One of the five principal Confucian rites is that of ancestral worship, or marking the anniversaries of the deaths of male progenitors. Presentation of an elaborate offerings table, complete with elegant porcelain ceremonial dishes piled with a great variety of food, formed the centerpiece of such occasions. Surviving examples of late ­seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century porcelain vessels attest to the incorporation of ceramics within sacrificial rites to ancestors. These dishes tend to take the form of a sharply contoured platter atop a tall foot, like a stand; sometimes these wares were marked with the Chinese character meaning “rite” (che in Korean pronunciation) that was hand‐­ written in cobalt blue onto the interior surface. The chief visual characteristic of these various types of ritual vessels used at life’s most solemn and sacred moments is their subtly distinctive forms articulated in simplified, clean lines with minimal or no s­ urface ornamentation (beyond the calligraphy that is part of the ceramic’s function, as in the case of epitaph tablets).

Ceramics for Royal Celebrations Festive commemorations of major milestones in life such as significant or auspicious birthdays (for example, the first and the sixtieth year) and weddings and anniversaries were communal affairs typically involving feasts and merrymaking. Such celebrations in the royal palace, as with nearly every aspect of court life, were guided by detailed prescriptions for various facets of the occasion, from the seating of court officials to the selection of musical performances to the types of vases for floral arrangements. Illustrated manuscripts known as u ˘ igwe (literally a compound of “rite” and “model”) were produced by the court as official records of grand palace festivities (for further reading on royal wedding rites see Yi Song‐mi 2008; and the chapter by Burglind Jungmann in this volume). These manuals also had a dual ­function as guides for properly and precisely implementing future celebrations. Among the vividly depicted scenes in these court records—the surviving ones all



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date to the late Choso˘n—are banquet table settings, which nearly always feature tall ceramic vases for majestic, formal flower arrangements. The quintessential vase used in court ceremonies marking birthdays and weddings was a pristine porcelain jar painted with a design of dragons in cobalt blue, which also doubled as wine containers. These blue‐and‐white dragon jars (yongjun) signify imperial power and authority as channeled through the auspicious, mythical beast associated with water—especially when the dragon depicted possesses five claws (Figure 12.5). As a ceramic object, they represent the highest standard of blue‐and‐white porcelain production in late Choso˘n dynasty. A number of extant nineteenth‐century blue‐and‐white porcelain designated as tableware for banquets commemorating royal weddings exhibit designs ranging from auspicious Chinese characters in geometric arrangement to surprising floral designs atypical of Choso˘ n ceramics (more on this later). A distinguishing feature of the latter type is writing in vernacular Korean (han’gu˘l) drilled on the interior of the base or just above and around the foot. The inscription usually provides the date and the special royal occasion at which the vessel was deployed, as well as the total number in that particular set of bowls. That the markings are drilled through the glaze post‐production, rather than written or carved onto the surface prior to glazing (which would have been an easier task) is intriguing, and perhaps ­indicates that though the vessels were likely ordered in advance, the specific commemorative functions at which they would be served were determined after their manufacture.

Figure 12.5  Jar with design of dragons and flaming pearls. 18th century. Porcelain with cobalt‐blue decoration. H. 54 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Quintessentially Korean Styles in Eighteenth‐Century Porcelain The eighteenth century witnessed a flourishing of Choso˘n culture in the arts with a heightened awareness of native customs and history. They ranged from the blossoming of vernacular stories in literature to the rise of topographic (so‐called “true‐scenery” or “true‐view”) landscapes in painting, which captured native locales based on actual travel and first‐hand observation, in lieu of specific Chinese or generic idealized scenery. In reality, though, the “Koreanness” of the arts of this era was complex and cross‐fertilized with “foreign” layers—not surprising given the travel to, and the cross‐cultural interactions with, Qing China (and through China contact with things Western) and with Japan. The desire for made‐in‐Qing luxury collectibles in the eighteenth century is well documented not only in written documents but also in vividly painted screens of ch’aekko˘ ri, in which nearly all objects displayed, including ceramics, were imported commodities (see Figure 13.9 in essay by Burglind Jungmann).Yet, most porcelain used by the elite was produced at both Punwo˘n and regional kilns. Additionally, from the late seventeenth through the eighteenth century, that porcelain encompassed significant stylistic genres that were essentially Choso˘n, without close parallels within the East Asian, or indeed global, context. One prime example is the globular porcelain vessel unofficially dubbed the “moon jar” for its evocative shape (major examples of this kind of jar can be found in the catalogue of an exhibition shown at the National Palace Museum, Seoul. See Kungnip kogung pangmulgwan 2005). The largest vessels of this type measure nearly 20 inches in height while some are more modest in size. Deceptively simple yet distinctive, this particular form is not found in porcelain from other cultures of this period, despite the fact that many basic forms of ceramics tend to be universal. Its original function is uncertain but most likely related to storage (perhaps of grain or liquid). The moon jar was typically made in two vertical halves, top and bottom—essentially two bowls were joined to ­create a spherical vessel, and often the seam is left visible rather than completely smoothed away. One can see and trace the potter’s hand. Indeed, the overall contour of these jars tend to be slightly irregular, rather than symmetrically circular. The organic quality, an essential part of their charm, reflects the Choso˘n penchant for a “natural” beauty unencumbered by forced enhancements. The moon jar’s lack of embellishment and generally milky‐white glaze heighten its visual impact (Figure  12.6). A few ­examples exhibit hints of color, an unintended result from the firing process, as seen in the peach‐hued flourishes on the surface of a moon jar in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Such chance features were accepted, even embraced, by the Choso˘n consumers and continue to appeal to modern viewers. While blue‐and‐white porcelain represented the major ceramic genre in the mid‐ to late‐Choso˘n period, porcelain painted with copper‐oxide red designs emerged as a startling new type in the eighteenth century. Copper‐red as an underglaze decorative pigment is difficult to control in kiln firing, as it can easily evaporate or turn black in color. Potters on the peninsula first experimented with it in the Koryo˘ period, successfully producing celadon with painted red accents under the glaze. This colorant reappears on Choso˘n porcelain in the eighteenth century. The bold, deep red embellishments against the slightly gray‐white porcelain body presents an arresting



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Figure 12.6  Large “Moon jar.” 18th century. Porcelain. H. 44.5 cm. Treasure No. 1441. Photo: courtesy of the Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

contrast to the more prevalent cobalt‐blue decoration. One of the most distinctive of such examples is the squat, globular jar with an unusually edged lip and painted in copper red with a grapevine design. While the grapevine as a pictorial motif on ceramics is not unique to Choso˘n Korea (it also appears on Ming blue‐and‐white and Persian Iznik dishes, among others), this rather abstract rendition painted with loose, free‐form brushstrokes unequivocally reflects a Choso˘n aesthetic. Indeed, the entire ensemble, from vessel shape to the style of the design and its iconography to the scarlet hue, is singular and expressive of the period and culture. A number of similar jars exist today, indicating that they were likely produced at the same kiln (though probably not the state kilns of Punwo˘n), yet to be identified and excavated. The grapevine was a favored subject in Choso˘n painting, especially in ink monochrome works by literati artists. A superbly rendered grapevine decoration on a celebrated large jar from the first half of the eighteenth century (Figure  12.7) may arguably exemplify the most exquisite “painting” of this subject in any medium. As was customary for decorated porcelain made at the state‐managed Punwo˘n kilns in Kwangju, the image on this vessel was executed by a professional painter associated with the Royal Bureau of Painting. The elegant composition, sensitive and sophisticated brushwork, paired with the beautifully calibrated tonality, contrasts, and balance of the ink all point to a highly experienced and inspired artist. The graceful and poetic imagery, at once delicate and intense, floating against the vast empty “background” of the porcelain body, creates a lasting, lyrical impression. The refinement of this piece presents a surprising contrast to other iron‐painted porcelain of the seventeenth century in more typical styling and aesthetic.

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Figure 12.7  Large jar with grapevine design. 18th century. Porcelain with iron‐brown decoration. National Treasure No. 107. H. 53.3 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Ewha Womans University Museum, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

With the rejuvenation of ceramic production following a succession of Japanese and Manchu invasions at the end of the sixteenth through the first decades of the seventeenth century, porcelain painted with iron‐oxide arose as a popular genre. One important factor was the difficulty of obtaining cobalt, which led to experimentation with iron‐oxide pigments. Many iron‐painted porcelains of this period tend to exhibit whimsical, quirky, and abbreviated designs, including dragons with amusing, rather than regal, faces (and at times so abstracted as to eliminate the head altogether), and tigers that are more comic‐like in style than realistic. It may be argued that both versions of iron‐painted porcelain, the playful and the refined, epitomize quintessentially Korean developments in the ceramic arts.

New Trends in Blue‐and‐White: Native and Foreign The final state‐managed kilns of Punwo˘n introduced a number of trends in blue‐and‐ white porcelain in the first half of the nineteenth century. Some reflect newly popular native idioms that crossed media (porcelain and painting, and in certain cases also decorated porcelain and lacquer). Others reveal cross‐cultural inspiration from China and Japan, sometimes in unexpected ways. Popular iconography exemplifying the former trend include the Ten Symbols of Longevity (and select motifs from, or variants on, this theme) and such folk painting staples as jumping carp, and tiger with magpie pairings, all rich in auspicious symbolism. Individual motifs comprising the



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Ten symbols of Longevity include animals such as deer, crane, and tortoise; plants such as pine tree, bamboo, and mushroom of longevity; and elements of nature such as rock, water, cloud, and sun. While these auspicious motifs are common across East Asia, grouping the ten together and presenting them as a cohesive imagery within a landscape setting seems to have been unique to the Korean peninsula. This assemblage was also popular on nineteenth‐century lacquer (both ones with mother‐of‐ pearl and ones with painted ox horn decoration) and blue‐and‐white porcelain. Whereas painted screens presented a tableau of a paradisiacal landscape that weaved in the ten motifs, on ceramic jars and bowls the decoration was edited to highlight the key motifs. An example in the collection of the National Museum of Korea has additional color from the underglaze copper‐red accents on parts of the design. On other examples, the Chinese character for longevity (su) also appears on the vessel—emphatically underscoring the symbolism of the decorative scheme and, indeed, of the whole piece. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an example with the longevity character written on the interior of the bowl. Auspicious emblems were particularly popular in the art of late Choso˘n, demonstrating a broad cross‐over of media in adopting au courant themes. In particular, folk paintings and blue‐and‐white porcelain shared a number of common threads in subject matter, including the tiger, carp, crab, and peach (Cho˘n 2002). Flowers like the peony, a prevalent decorative motif on Choso˘n ceramics (including punch’o˘ ng ware) from early on, became an even more prominent subject on nineteenth‐century blue‐ and‐white ware as well as in paintings of the same period, both as opulent screen versions for the court and in humbler folk paintings. The carp, whether swimming in or jumping out of water and symbolizing success in official examinations, conveyed both potent presence and much‐desired good fortune. The tiger is often presented in combination with the pine tree and/or with the magpie (for example, see the piece in the collection of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco). It is also depicted alongside the Mountain God (sansin) and typically looks tame, even humorous, rather than ferocious or predatory (for a study of the tiger motif on Choso˘n porcelain, see Pang 2013). Accessibility and easy appeal, infused with anthropomorphic characterization trumped meticulous realism—porcelain with select plant and animal images were meant to be pleasing possessions cherished for their auspicious meaning. Some of the more intriguing trends in nineteenth‐century Choso˘n porcelain relate to inspiration from Qing Chinese and Edo (and early Meiji) Japanese blue‐and‐white ware. Excavations of residential and consumer sites, including royal palaces, in recent years have demonstrated a notable presence of Qing blue‐and‐white vessels, many produced at privately‐operated Jingdezhen kilns. Moreover, porcelain decorated with cobalt‐blue from the Arita kilns of Kyushu, Japan (operated under the auspices of Hizen Province), had also been imported and used by Choso˘n consumers (Ch’oe 2009: 210–217)—not surprising, given that Japanese blue‐and‐white ware had been traded in the Asian and European markets since the mid‐seventeenth century. One new type of blue‐and‐white porcelain popular in nineteenth‐century Korea was painted with a schematized design of lingzhi mushroom and abstract floral‐grass motif (Chang 2011: 48–53). Both Chinese and Japanese porcelain of this genre were imported into Choso˘n, with its circulation and usage concentrated in the capital.

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The domestic bowls and dishes, produced at Punwo˘n kilns, reflect stylistic influences from unofficial or folk kilns at Jingdezhen as well as the kilns of Arita. Another distinctive genre that represents the inspiration of both Chinese and Japanese prototypes—through a complex and layered transmission and adaptation—is porcelain with Kraak‐type design elements. Kraak refers to a type of Chinese porcelain made primarily during the Wanli reign (1573–1620) but also includes porcelain made in the Tianqi (1620–1627) and Chongzhen (1627–1644) eras for export to Europe. Some also made their way to Japan, and copies of this Kraak ware—from relatively faithful imitations of the Chinese model to those with varying levels of adaptations of the primary motifs— were produced steadily at the porcelain kilns of Arita starting in the seventeenth century. The Arita versions also competed in the seventeenth‐century European market, spurred especially by direct requests from the Dutch East India Company (see, for example, the piece in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, AN. 2002.447.40). The Chinese Kraak ware does not seem to have been imported into Choso˘n; yet a distinct category of porcelain bowls and dishes with unmistakable Kraak design elements were produced at Punwo˘n kilns, and some were even designated specifically for use in royal celebrations. One splendid example (Figure 12.8) exemplifies the complicated transference and adaptation of Kraak style: the abstract design on the exterior, comprising cherry‐like fruits with stems contained within a floral‐shaped frame, punctuated by corner brackets; each of these vignettes is separated by a comma‐shaped motif. The center of the bowl’s interior has an unusual spiraling floral motif with feathered leaves atypical of Chinese Kraak and of late Choso˘n porcelain designs. Along the rim of the interior are schematized peony and leaves, which are not unusual in contemporaneous Choso˘n vessels. Given the three‐hundred year gap between this bowl and Chinese Kraak ware, and the fact that the latter does not seem to have been available in Choso˘n, the model for this bowl was most likely Arita. Porcelains with Kraak‐type

Figure 12.8  Bowl with floral and abstract design. 1847. Porcelain with cobalt‐blue decoration. H. 12.3 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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design were among the Japanese imports available to Korean consumers. The example in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum has an inscription in han’gu˘l drilled through the glaze along the underside, just above the foot. As noted earlier, vessels with this type of inscription were used in palace banquets, and in this example, the inscription indicates that this was one of thirty bowls intended for use in the Sunhwa Palace to celebrate the 1847 royal wedding of King Ho˘njong (r. 1834–49) to his court‐selected concubine, Sunhwagung. Other similarly styled Kraak‐type vessels have been found at Kyo˘ngbok Palace (Ch’oe 2009). It is fascinating that porcelain with decidedly foreign design elements were selected for use by the court, including at such major celebrations as royal weddings.

Global Perspective on Choso˘ n Ceramics Choso˘n Korea was among the first cultures beyond China to produce porcelain. Throughout most of its long centuries of production and use, Choso˘n porcelain essentially remained a domestic product without an active distribution on the global market. Its manufacturing model as a state‐operated complex of kilns near the capital was not typical of ceramic production in the rest of the world. This structure reflected a highly centralized society bound by a strong philosophical ideology that permeated and shaped innumerable practical endeavors. The aesthetic preferences of the court and the elite, while not monolithic, were fairly circumscribed by their ideals of purity, simplicity and decorum—all aptly embodied in Choso˘n porcelain. Yet knowledge of Chinese and Japanese commodities, which tended to favor more flamboyant flavors, and the human desire for sumptuous consumption, competed at times with the promotion of Neo‐Confucian principles that governed Choso˘n society. The spirit of experimentation and the natural inclination for the light‐hearted and the unconventional can be found in highly distinctive punch’o˘ ng ware—including its revivals beyond the temporal and geographical boundaries of the original version.

References Chang Hyojin. 2011. Chungguk yo˘ ngji chohwamun cho˘ nghwa paekcha u˘i yuhaeng kwa cho˘ np’a [Trend and spread of Chinese blue‐and‐white porcelain decorated with lingzhi mushroom and grass motif]. MA Thesis, Ewha Womans University. Ch’oe Kyo˘nghwa. 2009. “18, 19 seigi Ilbon toja u˘i yuip kwa cho˘ngae yangsang” [Influx and development of Japanese ceramics in the 18th–19th century]. Misulsa nondan 29: 197–222. Ch’oe Kyo˘nghwa. 2013. Choso˘ n hugi Punwo˘ n‐ri sidae kwanyo˘ paekcha yo˘ n’gu—1752–1895 nyo˘ n u˘l chungsim u˘ro [Study on late Choso˘ n porcelain from Punwo˘ n‐ri—with focus on the period from 1752 to 1895]. PhD Diss., Ewha Womans University. Cho˘n Su˘ngch’ang. 2002. “Choso˘n hugi paekcha changsik u˘i minhwa yoso koch’al” [Study on folk painting elements in the decoration of late Choso˘n porcelain]. Misulsa yo˘n’gu 16: 255–278.

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Cho˘n Su˘ngch’ang. 2010. “Choso˘n cho˘ngi u˘i tojo˘n kwa wio˘m, punch’o˘ng sagi wa paekcha” [Challenge and dignity in early Choso˘ n: Punch’o˘ng ware and porcelain]. In Hanbando u˘i hu˘k, tojagi ro t’aeo˘ nada [Birth of ceramics on the Korean peninsula], edited by Pang Pyo˘ngso˘n, et. al, 250–309. Seoul: Kuksa p’yo˘nch’an wiwo˘nhoe. Ihwa yo˘ja taehakkyo pangmulgwan. 1986. Kwangju Choso˘ n paekcha yoji palgul chosa pogo—Po˘ ncho˘ n‐ri 5–ho, So˘ ndong‐ri 2, 3–ho [Report on the excavation of Choso˘ n porcelain kilns: Po˘ ncho˘ n‐ri No. 5, So˘ ndong‐ri Nos. 2, 3]. Kwangju‐si and Seoul: Ihwa yo˘ja taehakkyo pangmulgwan. Ihwa yo˘ja taehakkyo pangmulgwan. 2007. Kwangju Po˘ ncho˘ n‐ri 9–ho Choso˘ n paekcha yoji palgul chosa pogoso˘ [Report on the excavation of the Choso˘ n porcelain kiln No. 9 in Po˘ ncho˘ n‐ri, Kwangju]. Kwangju‐si and Seoul: Ihwa yo˘ja taehakkyo pangmulgwan. Kang Kyung‐sook. 2005. Hanʼguk tojagi kamatʻo˘  yo˘ nʼgu [Study on Korean kilns]. Seoul: Sigongsa. Kang, Kyung‐sook. 2008. Korean Ceramics. Seoul: Korea Foundation. Kang Taegyu and Kim Yo˘ngwo˘n. 2004. Toja kongye [Ceramic craft]. Seoul: Sol. Katayama Mabi. 2003. Imjin waeran cho˘ n‘gi u˘i Han‐Il toja pigyo yo˘ n‘gu—Ilbon Kuju Pijo˘ n [Kyushu Hizen] toja wau˘i kwanggye‐ru˘l chungsim u˘ro [Comparison of Korean and Japanese ceramics during the Imjin War, with emphasis on relations with Hizen in Kyushu]. PhD Diss., Seoul National University. Kim Yo˘ngwo˘n. 2003. Choso˘ n sidae tojagi [Ceramics of the Choso˘ n dynasty]. Seoul: So˘ul taehakkyo ch’ulp’an munhwawo˘n. Kim Yo˘ngwo˘n. 2006. “Choso˘n cho˘nban’gi toja u˘i taewae kyoso˘p” [Negotiating ceramics with Japan in the early Choso˘n period]. In Choso˘ n cho˘ nban’gi misul u˘i taewae kyoryu [Exchanges with Japan during the early Choso˘ n period], edited by Hanʼguk Misulsa Hakhoe, 189–241. Seoul: Yegyo˘ng. Kim Yo˘ngwo˘n. 2011. Choso˘ n cho˘ n’gi tojasa: punwo˘ n u˘i so˘ lch’i‐ru˘l cho˘ nhuhan Choso˘ n cho˘ n’gi toja u˘i yo˘ ksa [Early Choso˘ n ceramic history: Changes in the equipment of Punwo˘ n ceramics during the early Choso˘ n dynasty]. Seoul: Ilchogak. Kungnip kogung pangmulgwan. 2005. Paekcha tal hangari [Porcelain ‘moon jars’]. Seoul: Nurwa. Kwon, So‐hyun. 2014. “Ceramics and Ritual Vessels of the Royal Household.” In Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910, edited by Hyunsoo Woo, 37–43. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Lee, Soyoung. 2011. “Beyond the Original: Buncheong Idioms in Japan, 1500–1900, and Contemporary Revivals.” In Korean Buncheong Ceramics from the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, edited by Soyoung Lee and Jeon Seung‐chan. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. 95–133. ˘ nsuk. 2016. Sijang‐u˘ro nagan Choso˘ n paekcha: Punwo˘ n‐gwa sagijang‐u˘i majimak Pak U iyagi [Choso˘ n porcelain on the market: Punwo˘ n and the potters’ final stories]. Koyang-si Kyŏnggi-do: Yo˘ksa pip’yŏngsa. Pang Pyo˘ngso˘n. 2000. Choso˘ n hugi paekcha yo˘ nʾgu [Study on late Choso˘ n porcelain]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Pang Pyo˘ngso˘n. 2002. Sunbaek u˘ro pijo˘ naen Choso˘ n u˘i mau˘m, paekcha [Producing the pure white of Choso˘ n— porcelain]. Seoul: Tolbegae. Pang Pyo ˘ ngso ˘ n. 2005. Wangjo sillok u ˘ l tʻonghae pon Choso˘n tojasa [Choso˘n ceramics seen through the Veritable Records of the Choso˘n dynasty]. Seoul: Koryo ˘ taehakkyo chʻulpʻanbu.



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Pang Pyo˘ngso˘n. 2013. “Choso˘n‐hugi paekcha e natanan horang’i imiji wa pyohyo˘n koch’al” [Study on the tiger image on late Choso ˘ n porcelain]. Misulsahak yo˘n’gu: 279–280: 267–294. Yi So˘ng‐mi. 2008. Karye togam u˘igwe wa misulsa: wangsil hollye u˘i kirok. [Court ceremony records and art history: Documentation of royal weddings]. Seoul: Sowadang.

Glossary Arita (J.) 有田 ch’aekko˘ ri [chaekgeori] 책거리 Changhu˘nggo [Jangheunggo] 長興庫 chanoyu (J.) 茶の湯 che [je] 祭 Choso˘n [Joseon] 朝鮮 Ch’ungch’o˘ng [Chungcheong] 忠淸(道) Cizhou (C.) 磁州(窯) daimyo ̄ (J) 大名 Gohon‐de (J.) 御本で Hakpong‐ri [Hakbong‐ri] 鶴峯里 han’gu˘l [hangeul] 한글 Hanyang 漢陽 Hizen (J.) 肥前 Ho˘njong [Heonjong] 憲宗 hyungnye 凶禮 Imjin 壬辰(倭 亂) Jingdezhen (C.) 景德鎭 Karatsu (J.) 唐津 karye [garye] 嘉禮 killye [gillye] 吉禮 Kongju [Gongju] 公州 Ko¯rai jawan (J.) 高麗茶碗 Koryo˘ [Goryeo] 高麗 kullye [gullye] 軍禮 Kwangju [Gwangju] 廣州 kwiyal [gwiyal] 귀얄 Kyeryongsan [Gyeryongsan] 鷄龍山 Kyo˘ngbok [Gyeongbok] 景福(宮) Kyo˘nggi [Gyeonggi] 京畿(道) Kyo˘ ngguk taejo˘ n [Gyeongguk daejeon] 經國大典 Kyo˘ngsang [Gyeongsang] 慶尙(道) lingzhi (C.) 靈芝 mishima (J.) みしま Naeso˘msi [Naeseomsi] 內贍寺 O Myo˘nghang [O Myeonghang] 吳命恒 onggi 甕器

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Oryeu˘i [Oryeui] 五禮儀 paekcha [baekja] 白磁 paekt’o [baekto] 白土 pillye [billye] 賓禮 Po˘ncho˘n‐ri [Beoncheon‐ri] 番川里 punch’o˘ ng [buncheong] 粉靑 punjang hoech’o˘ ng sagi [bunjang hoecheong sagi] 粉粧灰靑沙器 Punwo˘n [Bunwon] 分院 Punwo˘n‐ri [Bunwon‐ri] 分院里 Pusan [Busan] 釜山 sansin 山神 Saongwo˘n [Saongwon] 司饔院 Sejo 世祖 Sejong 世宗 Sejong sillok 世宗實錄 Sejong sillok chiriji [Sejong sillok jiriji] 世宗實錄地理志 su 壽 Sunhwa 順和(宮) Takeo (J.) 武雄 to¯ki (J.) 陶器 to˘ mbo˘ ng [deombeong] 덤벙 u˘igwe [uigwe] 儀軌 uu˘ijo˘ ng [uuijeong] 右議政 yongjun 龍樽

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Ritual and Splendor: Chosŏn Court Art Burglind Jungmann

While in early modern Europe the highest honor and best source of income for an artist was a commission from a royal court, the situation was quite different on the Korean peninsula during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). The concept of ‘art’ had been governed in East Asia for almost a millennium by works created by well‐­educated, cultivated, socially, and politically influential scholar officials (sadaebu) or ‘literati’ (munin), who primarily occupied themselves with writing philosophical essays and poetry and practiced calligraphy and painting for leisure. Therefore, the ‘art of painting’ was identified with ‘literati painting’ (muninhwa). The materials used for writing and literati painting were the same—brush, ink, and paper—and since the process of production was also similar, they were both evaluated by the vigor and elegance of the brushwork. Literati painting often visually reflects the world of the highly educated elite and their pleasure in literature and calligraphy as attested by the poetic inscriptions, signatures, and seals that embellish their works. The true artist was often an ‘amateur’ who was well‐off and who did not have to earn a living through painting, thanks to income from high office and family holdings. Moreover, literati artists and their friends left critical commentary as colophons on their paintings or in their literary texts, which allows modern art historians to trace their activities, their personal sentiments and political, cultural, and intellectual motivations. Court painting was just the opposite of this. Court painters were trained professionals who mostly worked collaboratively, so their individual contribution is often difficult to discern. It is important to note that throughout history societies on the Korean peninsula were controlled by a strict class system, built on birthright. While Koryŏ society had been divided into three classes—yangban (two orders), commoners (yangin or yangmin), and low‐born people (ch’ŏnmin)—in the Chosŏn dynasty a

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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fourth class of chungin (middle people) came into existence. This latter class mainly consisted of lower officials in the central government and included court painters. The main job of court painters was to produce images and other visual paraphernalia for use in certain functions within set ceremonial contexts. As such, they were undoubtedly important players in providing and preserving meaningful content for particular art projects and events sponsored by the court. Nevertheless, their work was not appreciated as ‘art.’ painters, the use of ink, the ultimate expression of the individual in ­literati art, was reduced to the outlines of a given iconography because nearly all p ­ ersonal brushwork in court painting disappeared under opaque and bright coloration. The iconography used in court painting was prescribed by the function of the painting within its ceremonial context. Often multiple copies were produced, and the similarity of iconographies among extant examples suggests that sometimes stencils or iconographic templates known as ch’obon were employed. In fact, the production process recalls that of Buddhist painting in which a set iconography would assure the efficacy of the image, while creative and individual artistic ­expression was to be largely avoided. Because court paintings were not considered ‘art’ they were not collected and seldom preserved—although they sometimes ­survived as important ‘documents’ within family collections. Most court paintings were reproduced and replaced, and earlier works discarded as soon as they became worn out. Since the paintings themselves usually neither bear a date nor any information on artists or patrons, they can only be understood within the context of court ­ceremonies as explained in historical texts, such as the Veritable Records of the  Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn wangjo sillok), the Daily Records of the Kyujanggak (Naegak illyŏk), or records of individual events, known as ŭigwe. Thus, during the Chosŏn dynasty court painters were considered mere artisans, and court painting a learned ‘craft’.

Seoul and its Palaces When Yi Sŏnggye (1335–1408, r. 1392–98), known under the posthumous title of T’aejo, declared himself king of the newly established Chosŏn dynasty in 1392 and proclaimed Seoul the site of his new capital in 1394, his ruling elite was eager to reform state and society according to Neo‐Confucian (Sŏngnihak) principles. The Neo‐Confucianists were determined to fight the influence of the Buddhist clergy that had dominated the state during the previous Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) because they held it responsible for widespread corruption and lavish expenditures, which had lead to the eventual decline of the dynasty. Whereas large Buddhist temples had been ­integrated into the layout of capitals in earlier dynasties, such as Kaegyŏng during the Koryŏ and Kŭ msŏng during the Silla, no Buddhist temples were included in the plan of Seoul. Sŏul (Seoul), the indigenous Korean word for ‘capital’ was used throughout the Chosŏn dynasty. Since it cannot be written in Chinese characters, the script used by the government and by the educated elite, Hansŏng and Hanyang (which could be written in Chinese), were used as official names for the capital city.

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Kyŏngbok Palace was the first royal complex to be built as government seat and royal residence of the new dynasty. Following geomantic considerations, the site selected for the palace precinct was regarded as most propitious, because it was protected on the north by Mount Pugak, to the east, west, and south by lower mountain ranges, and opened up to a flat area facing south towards the life‐affirming waters of the Han River. In the fifteenth century Ch’angdŏk and Ch’anggyŏng palaces, also known together as the Eastern Palaces (Tonggwŏl), were built to the east of the ­capital as detached estates and later enlarged. All these palaces were destroyed during the Japanese invasions of the late sixteenth century. Thereafter, only the Eastern Palaces were rebuilt and functioned as both government seat and royal residence until the late nineteenth century, when Kyŏngbok Palace was also reconstructed. The layout of the palaces was again fundamentally changed during Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). Parts of the Kyŏngbok Palace precinct were torn down or moved to other areas of the city and a Western‐style construction was built in 1916 to accommodate the seat of colonial power administered by the Japanese Governor‐General. Since this building, which for short periods after 1945 also accommodated the government of South Korea and later the National Museum, was not only regarded as a symbol of the repression of the colonial government but also as harmful to the geomantic forces of the palace (and hence the country) because it blocked the open area south of the throne, it was demolished and the area was restored to its former condition from 1995 to 1996. A large court painting by an unknown artist of the early nineteenth century, The Eastern Palaces, gives a good idea of the layout of the immense palace precinct (Figure 13.1). The painting consists of sixteen long sheets of paper, each sheet accordion‐folded into six leaves each. Only when all sixteen units are unfolded and arranged

Figure 13.1  Eastern Palaces. Early 19th century. Sixteen album‐units; ink and colors on paper. Overall painting (unfolded): 584 × 273 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Korea University Museum, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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horizontally in sequence side‐by‐side is the whole composition of the painting revealed. When folded, each album‐like unit takes the shape of a book and is stored as such in a library. The format of this painting is unique in that it takes form of a pre‐modern Korean map. The names of important buildings are inscribed in Chinese characters next to their painted images, which are so accurate in detail that this work was used for the restoration of the palaces in the late twentieth century. Ch’angdŏk Palace on the left, the government center for most of the Chosŏn dynasty, was built along a north‐south axis, according to the ancient Chinese formula requiring that the ruler had to face south when sitting on the throne. The layout of Ch’anggyŏng Palace to the right departs from this general rule with its main gate facing east and its throne hall to the west of it. The spacious paved courtyards in front of the two throne halls are clearly discernible on the lower left and the right side, while the rest of the wide precinct is packed with residential buildings and royal gardens with artificial lakes and pavilions as well as remote paths leading into the natural woodland at the foot of gentle mountains in the background. The Hall of Benevolent Governance (Injŏngjŏn), which is the throne hall of Ch’angdŏk Palace, is shown as a large, two‐story structure built on a two‐step granite terrace on the lower left side of the painting. In the spacious courtyard nine pairs of stone posts mark the spots where civil and military officials lined up according to their ranks during state ceremonies. In fact, there would have been two rows of eighteen stone posts because each of the nine official ranks had a higher (senior) and a lower (junior) level. The highest officials (senior first rank), occupied the position closest to the throne hall, with its imposing two‐storied roof resting on a construction supported by high columns. The façade is divided into five inter‐columnar bays. Each bay contains wooden shutters adorned with carved open‐work designs that are covered on the inside with paper. While the columns and beams are coated in dark red, the multiple layers of brackets that support the roof, the ceiling, and the canopy are painted in bright red, green, blue, and yellow colors, a decorative scheme typical not only of palace but also of religious architecture. The symmetrical layout of the halls, observation of the cardinal directions, and the geometrical arrangement of the residential quarters are based on conventions that had developed in China and were followed all over East Asia. During the early decades of the Chosŏn dynasty the scholar‐official Chŏng Tojŏn (1342–1398) chose the names of the newly built palace halls on the basis of ancient Chinese texts, such as the Book of Odes (C. Shijing) and the Book of History (C. Shujing), thus consciously referring to the Chinese past in order to build an ideal kingdom (Shin 2004: 159–60). Most of the festivities took place either in the throne hall or in the residence hall of the king. Apart from these two main buildings, a two‐story structure in the rear garden behind the large pond was the most important location for court painters of the late Chosŏn dynasty— Kyujanggak, or the Royal Library. Kim Hongdo’s (1745–ca. 1806) painting of the Kyujanggak (Figure 13.2), done in 1776, the year when Kim’s most important patron King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800) ascended the throne, is a rare example of a signed court painting. Kim depicted the buildings in parallel perspective using a ruler and meticulously depicted every architectural detail. Moreover, he adhered to court traditions by using the customary strong opaque colors. The inscription on the painting

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Figure 13.2  Kim Hongdo (1745–ca. 1806). Kyujanggak. 1776. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 144.4 × 115.6 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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reads: “With utmost respect painted according to [royal] instructions by the humble servant Kim Hongdo.” Due to a great loss of material we know little about court commissions in the early half of the dynasty. Yet, one exceptionally influential personality was An Kyŏn (ca. 1440–ca. 1470) who owes much of his fame to the patronage of Prince Anp’yŏng (1418–1453), son of King Sejong (r. 1418–1450). An’s Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land of 1447 (see Figure 10.2 in Insoo Cho’s essay) was much admired by the most influential people of his time, as attested by the twenty‐one colophons written by leading scholars and politicians attached to the painting. The eminent­ contemporaneous scholar‐official Sin Sukchu (1417–1475) praises An Kyŏn as follows: “Having viewed many ancient paintings, he was able to grasp their essence, combine the strengths of various masters, and digest them. There is nothing he did not ­master, with landscape [painting] being his greatest strength. Even searching in antiquity, one can hardly find anybody who can compare with him.”

However, An Kyŏn’s achievements are described in terms of ‘literati taste’ which required following the styles of ‘ancient (Chinese) masters.’ We learn little about his actual court commissions, although other sources tell us that he painted a portrait of Prince Anp’yŏng at the beginning of his career. Court painters were also in charge of the production of illustrations for books that were published by the court in order to propagate the Confucian social virtues of loyalty, female chastity, and filial piety, such as the Illustrated Guide to the Three Human Bonds (Samgang haengsil‐to), first ­published in 1434 (see Figure 10.8 in Cho Insoo’s essay). In spite of their official anti‐Buddhist measures, early Chosŏn kings practiced Buddhism privately within the palace and also had court painters produce Buddhist paintings. In the fifteenth century, male members of the royal household still supported Buddhist projects, but from the sixteenth century onward, only the names of female royalty and royal concubines appear among the sponsors of Buddhist art (Song 2014: 53–59). During the first half of the sixteenth century Queen Dowager Munjŏng (1501–1565), who acted as regent for her son King Myŏngjong (r. 1545–1567), attempted a Buddhist revival and had great numbers of Buddhist paintings produced by court painters (Kim Hongnam 1991: 15–23).

Painting Institutions at Court Although a painting bureau already existed at the court as early as the Silla dynasty we do not have any information on its structure and function. In the early Chosŏn dynasty, the Royal Bureau of Painting (Tohwasŏ) was established based on a previous Koryŏ institution and supervised by the Board of Rites. Its organization, as prescribed in the nation’s Grand Code for State Administration (Kyŏngguk taejŏn, 1484), included one director, who occupied the junior sixth rank and one or two deputy directors in the same rank. Since the administrative hierarchy consisted of nine official ranks, each divided into a senior and junior level with the senior first rank being the

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highest possible, the Royal Bureau of Painting was a fairly low‐ranking institution. Besides the directors, who were of aristocratic (yangban) background, the main body of the Bureau consisted of about twenty court painters (hwawŏn) employed with ­official titles ranging from the junior sixth to junior ninth rank, several members who held honorary military ranks, and fifteen apprentice painters (hwahak) belonging to the chungin class. Two craftsmen were in charge of mounting and, as in other government offices, slaves belonging to the low‐born class were employed as servants. Throughout the Chosŏn dynasty, the status of court painters was somewhat ambiguous, because a few of them enjoyed special royal favors and were promoted to ranks that were far beyond the officially allowed level. High government officials often tried to intervene, stating that painters were mere technicians and did not deserve high honors, but in many instances the kings did not comply with their requests. The most extraordinary case of a promotion was that of Yi Sangjwa (ac. mid‐16th century), who had entered the Royal Bureau of Painting as a slave, but, due to his special talent, became a ranked hwawŏn. Most government institutions were located either within the palace precincts or in its immediate vicinity. In contrast, the Royal Bureau of Painting was located farther away and therefore not directly accessible to the king and other royalty. This meant that the king depended on officials to have his wishes conveyed to court painters. Thus, the officials were able to keep a strict eye on the king’s activities, and when his conduct did not conform to their ideas of Confucian propriety, they indeed occasionally interfered. In the eighteenth century, in an effort to counterbalance the power of officials, which extended far beyond just limiting the royal taste, the Kyujanggak Library was established by royal decree (Figure. 13.2). It was initially intended for the storage and study of the writings of former kings but developed under King Chŏngjo into a center of political discourse and royal authority. From the 1780s onward it also became the center of court art because the king established a system of painters‐in‐ waiting (chabi taeryŏng hwawŏn) who were chosen through special exams (nokch’wijae) to serve him directly. According to the National Code, entrance examinations for the Royal Bureau of Painting during the early Chosŏn dynasty required proficiency in various painting genres, with bamboo ranking first, landscape second, animals and figures third, and flowers fourth. This hierarchy undoubtedly reflects Confucian taste, and interestingly stands in contrast to the real necessities of the Bureau, as a glance at entries into the Veritable Records of the Chosŏn Dynasty and into painters’ biographies reveals. The assignment that would give court painters the best opportunities for promotion was the production of portraits of kings and ‘merit subjects’ (kongsin), officials who had served the country in an extraordinary way and received special recognition from the court (Cho Sunmie 2005: 151–181). The documentation of court events, such as royal weddings, the king’s coming of age and his accession to the throne, and royal birthday banquets and parades (Figure  13.5), was another important task. Other assignments included cartography and sketches for geomantic purposes, for instance, when the location of a hall or a tomb had to be chosen. Paintings with Neo‐Confucian didactic content, often illustrating ancient Chinese stories, were also in great demand. Apart from the illustrations of didactic books, such as the aforementioned The Illustrated

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Guide to the Three Human Bonds that was republished and enlarged throughout the dynasty, court painters designed images for ceremonial records of important events (ŭ igwe). They were also involved in other projects, for instance, the design of textile or metalwork and the decoration of porcelain at the royal Punwŏn kilns (see Figures 12.2, 12.5 in essay by Soyoung Lee). After establishing the system of painters‐in‐waiting at the Kyujanggak Library, King Chŏngjo exerted considerable influence on the choice of subjects and styles for court art and introduced new genres, namely architectural paintings (Figure 13.2), depictions of the daily life of commoners and of the books and objects in a scholar’s studio (ch’aekkado or munbangdo) (Figure 13.9). As discussed in the chapter by Insoo Cho, being employed at court did not mean that a painter had a regular income that allowed him and his family a decent living. Court painters usually earned only half a regular salary because, like other lowly officials, they had to share positions and stipends. Occasionally, they received special awards for participating in important court projects. Otherwise they would face ­difficulties in supporting their families. Even Kim Hongdo, King Chŏngjo’s favorite and, apart from An Kyŏn, the most successful court painter in Chosŏn history, was so poor towards the end of his life that he was unable to pay school fees for his son. From the beginning of the dynasty court painters therefore had to seek private commissions. Most of their clients were yangban families of means and influence, but from the eighteenth century onward, due to overall economic growth, people of the chungin class and commoners were also able to afford works of art. This resulted in the development of an art market in which highly trained court painters sold their works, along with lesser‐trained professionals who sold to a less affluent clientele. Since customers were eager to imitate the royal family and the nobility, art genres popular at court were widely disseminated. Court painting motifs were copied and altered by painters outside the court who developed their own styles and produced what we nowadays call ‘folk painting’ (minhwa). The low regard for court painters and the evaluation of their work as ‘craft’ rather than ‘art’ are not the only reasons for the fact that the their paintings are usually unsigned and remain unattributed. The ‘hand’ of individual artists are often difficult to discern because they were required to collaborate on large projects, such as the production of a king’s portrait or the documentation of an important celebration. Ŭigwe, the painted records of court ceremonies, which depict every step of the preparation and completion of an event and were meant to serve as guideline for similar occasions in the future, usually provide a list of the names of the painters who were involved in a given project and are therefore important sources of information (Yi 2008: 115–117; Yi 2011: 376–380). In the late Chosŏn dynasty multiple documentary screens of court ceremonies (ŭ igwedo) in different sizes were produced to be given to various offices and to the persons who had been at the center of the celebrations. We know, for instance, that Lady Hyegyŏng, mother of King Chŏngjo, thanked court painters Kim Hongdo, Yi Inmun, and others for a screen she received of the festivities commemorating her sixtieth birthday (Figure 13.5). Apprenticeship training, collaboration and the demand for multiple copies resulted, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in a fairly standardized style and a cross‐over, or borrowing of single

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elements between different genres of painting. Repetitive, schematized motifs indicate that stencils were occasionally used, and iconographic drafts give evidence of an efficiently organized production process.

A Court Painter’s Foremost Task: Portraiture In the hierarchy of painting genres at court, portraiture played the most important role, and portraits of the king naturally had the highest priority. In contrast to European portraits, where from ancient times the ruler’s portrait was cast on coins and widely circulated, Chosŏn kings’ portraits were hidden from public view. Installed in special halls they were only accessible during rituals to a small group of select officials and thus held an air of secrecy pertaining to the sacred status of the ruler as mediator between Heaven and Earth. Many close relationships between a painter and members of the royal family were formed through the production of portraits, for instance, in the fifteenth century between Prince Anp’yŏng and An Kyŏn, and in the eighteenth century between King Chŏngjo and Kim Hongdo, who already portrayed the king while he was still the crown prince and later participated in further royal portraiture projects. Every step of the process, including the drafting and completing of the painting, its mounting and the inscription of the title was recorded in ŭigwe records. The portrait’s transport and enshrinement in its dedicated hall were carried out with great ceremony. Physical likeness was extremely important, because the portrait was considered and treated as if it were the living monarch. An elaborate technique was employed in Chosŏn portraiture (and sometimes in documentary painting) of applying colors to the backside of the silken canvas in order to achieve more subtle tones, especially for the face, a technique that had been already used for Buddhist painting during the Koryŏ dynasty. Although its production was a highly complicated process, the first or original portrait of a ruler held no intrinsic value. The conservation of an old portrait was of no interest; instead it was copied and replaced at certain intervals. Discarded drafts and unsatisfactory portraits were not just thrown away, but carefully washed and buried (Yi 2011: 372). The elaborate production and the ceremonial burial recall religious practice and attest, in fact, to the ‘animated’ character of portraits. The earliest extant example of royal portraiture depicts the founder of the dynasty, King T’aejo, now preserved as a fairly late reproduction dated to 1872 (See Figure 10.1 in Insoo Cho’s essay). The convention of (re)producing portraits of the founder of the dynasty started shortly after his death in 1408. T’aejo’s portraits have been continuously enshrined in different places throughout the country: in the Chosŏn capital of Seoul, in present‐day P’yŏngyang, Kaesŏng, and Kyŏngju (the capitals of former kingdoms which continued to function as major administrative centers), in Chŏnju (the seat of the royal Yi lineage), and in Yŏnghŭ ng, Hamgyŏng Province (the birthplace of T’aejo) (Cho Insoo 2011: 9–10). The ŭ igwe of the 1872 copying of T’aejo’s portrait lists the names of ten court painters, among whom the most well‐ known is Yu Suk (1827–1873). King T’aejo is shown in frontal view wearing a black cap and a blue robe, decorated on the chest and the shoulders with a large golden roundel containing a five‐clawed dragon. It has been suggested that the blue color of

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the robe still reflects Koryŏ customs. In 1444 the Ming imperial court bestowed a red dragon robe on the Chosŏn king, which from then on governed the dress code for subsequent rulers (National Museum of Korea 2012: 216). As in most portraits, T’aejo’s hands are hidden in the sleeves. He wears a gray pointed beard and mustache and gazes straight at the viewer with a solemn expression. Although this painting preserves most of the characteristics of the earliest versions of the image, it betrays signs of ‘modernity,’ that is, there are subtle traces of late nineteenth‐century style in the shading of the face, in the strict geometric layout of the throne, and in the extreme accuracy of the decorative patterns of the carpet and the throne. These patterns are shown as if seen from above, evoking the impression that the king sits in a two‐dimensional space. The complete avoidance of spatial impression is an intentional device to give the portrait an “antiquarian” atmosphere. Portraits of eminent scholars were also kept in special halls at the palace, or bestowed upon the scholar by the king. Among portrait painters of the late Chosŏn dynasty, Yi Myŏnggi (b. 1756) was the most gifted, and his Portrait of Kang Sehwang, done in 1783 by order of King Chŏngjo, is remarkable for its naturalism (Figure  13.3). It reflects the skills that court painters of the latter half of the eighteenth century acquired

Figure 13.3  Yi Myŏnggi (b. 1756). Portrait of Kang Sehwang. 1783. Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk. 145.5 × 94 cm. Photo: courtesy of private collection, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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through their acquaintance with paintings and prints by European Jesuit painters working in Beijing and their Chinese followers. Yi Myŏnggi’s portrait depicts Kang Sehwang (1713–1791), who was himself one of the most influential painters, calligraphers, and painting theorists of the late Chosŏn dynasty (see also Fig.11.3 in Chin-Sung Chang’s essay) seated in an armchair covered by a leopard skin, wearing the formal attire of a civil official. The embroidered badge on his chest, adorned with two cranes among clouds, indicates his high official position. At this point in life Kang had reached the senior second rank. The Western naturalism is not only apparent in the shading of his wrinkled face, but particularly in the red hues subtly diffused along the inside of his eyelids and the ­coloration of the pupils. In addition, his right hand is shown resting naturally on his knee and the shading of his gown gives a convincing impression of the voluminous folds of the heavy, slightly stiff brocade garment. The portrait, created on the occasion of Kang’s admission to the exclusive Bureau of Elder Statesmen (Kirosa), which kings joined at the age of fifty‐one and high officials over the age of seventy, bears a eulogy composed by King Chŏngjo (National Museum of Korea 2012: 243).

Weddings, Processions, Birthday Banquets, and other Court Celebrations Special court celebrations, for instance, the coming of age of a crown prince, a royal wedding, the sixtieth birthday of a queen, or the gathering of high government o ­ fficials marked important stages in the lives of the honored and the careers of the attendees. Court painters were therefore asked to produce documentary paintings to commemorate such events. Up until the seventeenth century these paintings mainly took the form of album leaves and vertical or horizontal scrolls. A rare early work in this genre is Han Sigak’s long handscroll Special National Examination for Applicants from Northeastern Provinces of 1664 (Figure 13.4 a–b) that depicts military and civil examinations held in Kilchu, Hamgyŏng Province. In the first scene, the judges of the military examination sit in an open hall and watch an archery contest of mounted riders shooting backwards. In the background, the pinnacles of Mount Ch’ilbo can be seen (Yi 2015: 89–91). In the second scene candidates of the civil examination are lined up in the spacious courtyard of the local government office while the sun sets behind the mountains. The scroll is done in the so‐called blue‐and‐green landscape style, a mode preferred for court paintings due to its ‘archaic’ flavor and decorative effects. During the late seventeenth century, the court started to favor the screen format for the documentation of special events. Most compositions of these screens depended on illustrations produced for the corresponding ŭ igwe books, which depicted the positioning of every attendant of a large ceremony in minute, diagrammatic detail. These ŭ igwe paintings can therefore only be appreciated through close inspection (Jungmann 2007: 100–105). A particularly important example, not only because of its interesting content and composition, but also because of its political significance, is Royal Visit to the City of Hwasŏng, painted in 1795 by the prominent court painters Kim Hongdo, Yi Inmun (1745–1821), and Kim Tŭ ksin (1754–1822) in collaboration with other ­colleagues (Figure 13.5). The screen visualizes a number of events that celebrated the

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Figure 13.4  Han Sigak (b. 1621). Special National Examination for Applicants from Northeastern Provinces. 1664. Handscroll scroll; ink and colors on silk. 56.7 × 665.0 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

sixtieth birthday of King Chŏngjo’s mother, Lady Hyegyŏng, and honored his deceased father, Prince Sado, who had been born in the same year as Lady Hyegyŏng. In 1762 Prince Sado was officially accused of treason and impiety and locked up in a rice chest by order of his father and Chŏngjo’s grandfather, King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776). Sado died after eight days of suffocation and starvation (Kim Hongnam 1994: 28–37). While some historians suggest that the prince’s mental illness was the reason for the cruel verdict, others see him as a victim of intrigue. King Chŏngjo, as an act of filial piety, took extraordinary measures to restore his father’s reputation. In 1789 he moved Prince Sado’s tomb from the outskirts of the capital to a newly chosen site near present‐day Suwŏn and had it rebuilt in the style of a royal tomb. He then had the Buddhist monastery Yongjusa constructed near the tomb and the royal fortress of Hwasŏng built, which included within its walls the largest palace outside Seoul. King Chŏngjo is especially known for having encouraged the adaptation of  Western technology for this building project. Unlike other contemporaneous structures ­ the ­fortress’ walls and towers were largely made of brick, and special machines were designed for their construction by the scholar Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836) on the basis of European texts that had been translated into Chinese (Yi 2015: 28).

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Figure 13.5  Kim Hongdo, Yi Inmun (1745–1821), Kim Tŭksin (1754–1822), and others. Royal Visit to Hwasŏng. 1795. Eight‐fold screen; ink and colors on silk. Each panel: 147.0 × 62.3 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Although King Chŏngjo paid annual visits to his father’s tomb, it appears that only the most important occasion of 1795 was commemorated in documentary paintings. Of the multiple copies produced at the time, several large screens and single panels with similar composition, but slight variation in the quality of detail, have been

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preserved. Each panel of the Royal Visit to Hwasŏng (Figure 13.5) represents a different event of the festivities. It starts on the right‐hand side with the king’s visit to the Confucian Shrine at Hwasŏng, then shows an award ceremony for officials who succeeded in special civil and military examinations and a banquet in honor of Lady Hyegyŏng, followed by a reception of elders aged seventy and sixty‐one. The military drill at the West General Fort on panel five gives a bird’s eye view of the whole fortress. Since the event took place in the evening, big torches burn alongside the city walls and in town. In the nighttime military training by lantern and torch light, depicted on the sixth panel, King Chŏngjo himself joined the archery contest. In addition to the torches, fireworks can be seen in the courtyard. On the two last panels the royal procession is shown on its return to the capital, crossing a pontoon bridge over the Han River. In its sequence of some fairly dynamic, and some more static, geometrical compositions, the screen combines views of ceremonies on palace grounds with landscape scenery. Showing hundreds of figures, it describes every event accurately in greatest detail. Although we only see an empty throne in front of a screen of the Sun, Moon and Five Peaks (Figure 13.6) inside the palace hall, the king’s presence is implied by the courtiers bowing towards him. Such aniconic representation of royalty is typical of documentary paintings during the Chosŏn period. Interestingly, ladies of high standing, such as the king’s mother, other female members of the royal household, and the wives of high officials are also not depicted, but their presence is indicated by empty cushions. This was due to the Confucian concept of female ­chastity which required that women should not show their faces in public. While Royal Visit to Hwasŏng has a somewhat experimental flavor, documentary painting became more codified and static towards the end of the Chosŏn dynasty (Jungmann 2007: 107–108).

Figure 13.6  Sun, Moon and Five Peaks. Late 18th–early 19th century. Eight‐fold screen; colors and gold on silk. 162.5 × 365.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Meaningful Ornaments: Screens for Palace Ceremony and Decor Documentary screens, such as Royal Visit to Hwasŏng, because of their detail, not only give us valuable information on court events but also show how other types of screens were used in ceremonies. Screens usually mark the focal point of a ceremony and elevate the person positioned in front of it (even if invisible), and create a hierarchy between that person and other participants. Screens of the Sun, Moon and Five Peaks were placed behind the king’s throne, and for birthday celebrations screens of the Ten Symbols of Longevity would be employed. Weddings ceremonies often took place in front of screen paintings like the Banquet of Queen Mother of the West (Figure 13.7) or the Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi (Figure 13.8), and Peonies (Figure 13.10) were frequently used in the quarters of the bride. These functions were, however, not strictly prescribed. We also find screens of the Banquet of the Queen Mother of the West theme being produced for the coming of age of a prince, and the Ten Symbols of Longevity adorning a screen that was commissioned for the commemoration of a prince’s recovery from illness. Bearing such central function in the lives of the royal family, screens naturally also carried important messages pertaining to court ritual and ceremony. Screens like the Sun, Moon and Five Peaks (Figure 13.6) are easily recognizable by their bold design and strong blue and green pigments. The sun symbolizes yang, the male cosmic force, while the moon stands for yin, the female force. The five mountain peaks refer to the five directions (north, south, east, west, and the center) which again correspond to the five elements of the Yijing, the Chinese Book of Changes, hence to ancient Chinese cosmology. Until recently, scholars have tried to trace the combined motifs of sun, moon, and five peaks to Chinese models. However, earlier Chinese paintings containing similar elements are quite different and, as far as we know, they never occupied the prominent space behind the throne. The iconography of Sun, Moon and Five Peaks screens thus appears to be a Chosŏn invention based on Chinese literature. Due to the recurrent process of discarding and renewing court paintings, only screens from the nineteenth and twentieth century have survived. It is, however, most likely that such screens were already employed from the beginning of the Chosŏn dynasty, when Confucian scholars chose the names for palace halls on the basis of ancient Chinese literature in their effort to construct an ideal kingdom. Due to its strict symmetrical composition, bold design, and strong colors, such a screen staged the king in a splendid setting: pine trees provided framing on both sides, while blue‐green mountains, outlined in gold, and the sun and moon rose above him. Another type of screen frequently used for Chosŏn court celebrations shows the Ten Symbols of Longevity. It was employed for royal weddings and birthdays, but also for events related to the health of a member of the court. During the Koryŏ dynasty, paintings of the Ten Symbols were produced as gifts for the New Year (Kim Kumja Paik 2011: 348–351). Again, the symbols derive from Chinese mythology but the combination of symbols used is a Korean invention. Although the ten symbols can slightly vary, they usually include mountains, pines, sun, and water, tortoises (known for their long life), deer (favorite companions of Daoist immortals), peaches and yŏngji mushroom (thought to prolong life), and bamboo and cranes. Usually screens

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of the Ten Symbols of Longevity, like other court paintings that cannot be linked to any particular event, are undated, and it is thus difficult to position them in time. A rare example with a date of around 1880 survives. Unlike other screens of this theme, the last panel on the left contains a list of royal physicians who had been in charge of treating the crown prince, later to become Emperor Sunjong (1874–1926, r. 1907–1910), when he fell ill from smallpox in late 1879. They celebrated their successful work and the prince’s recovery by commissioning the painting. This example shows that there were various groups of people at court who would employ court painters for official and private purposes. Interestingly, two extant documentary screens produced to celebrate the prince’s recovery from illness show a depiction of the Ten Symbols behind a tiny throne of the young prince. Its late nineteenth‐century production date gives us some clues for the stylistic development of court painting. While earlier examples convey a more natural feeling of space through a carefully constructed composition and the gradation of color tones, here the depiction of the landscape and the animals has become more ornamental. The clouds take on diamond shapes, the sun sits in a red sky, and some cranes, formerly exclusively shown with white and black feathers, have yellow and blue wings (Jungmann 2014: 234–239). Many other types of large painted screens were used for court celebrations in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Due to their festive character and expressed wishes for longevity and wealth, colorful paintings such as Banquet of Queen Mother of the West (Figure 13.7), Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi (Figure 13.8), and One Hundred Children were favored for weddings. According to Daoist lore, the Queen Mother of the West, or Xiwangmu, lived on Mount Kunlun at the shore of the Turquoise Pond in a golden palace surrounded by rocks of jade. In the painting she is hosting a banquet for King Mu (r. 10th century BCE) of the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1046 BCE–256 BCE), and the immortals she has invited to the feast arrive flying on clouds or riding on sea waves. Apart from the Eight Immortals, Laozi, the author of the Daoist classic Daodejing, is shown riding an ox, and the Tang poet Li Bai (702–762) crosses the sea on a carp. The lore of the Queen Mother of the West was known on the Korean peninsula at least since the Unified Silla kingdom (668–935). During the Chosŏn dynasty the theme is first mentioned in relation to painting in an inscription by King Sukchong (r. 1674–1720), and during King Chŏngjo’s reign the Daoist deity became a topic of examinations for painters‐in‐waiting. The host—shown in frontal view—and her guest of honor, King Mu, sit separately in front of large one‐panel screens behind tables with beverages and delicacies, including peaches and mushrooms, which grant immortality. Heavenly maidens surround them; others prepare more food and drink, play music, and dance with phoenixes. Various Chinese sources may have inspired the composition, among them Coromandel lacquer screens, which were produced in the southern Chinese city of Suzhou during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and woodblock prints of Daoist and Buddhist deities (Seo 2014: 174–78). However, Chosŏn screens are unique in their combination of two themes, which are found separately in Chinese art, one that shows immortals arriving at the palace of the Queen Mother and the other showing celebrations in her legendary palace. In addition, they emphasize the banquet scene. The Chosŏn screens thus mirrored real celebrations heightened with festive splendor by transplanting it into an

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Figure 13.7  Banquet of Queen Mother of the West. 19th century. Eight‐fold screen; ink, colors and gold on silk. 120.33 × 407.04 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.2000.15.31a‐h). (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

ideal realm. Multiple, very similar screens of the Banquet of Queen Mother of the West theme still exist. Three of them bear dated inscriptions and give evidence of their varied functions: two screens were produced in 1800 for the investiture of the crown prince, and the third was created on the occasion of a crown prince’s birth in 1812. In addition, an iconographic sketch (ch’obon) has survived and gives rare visual evidence of the production process (Seo 2014, fig. 3‐22). The use of ch’obon is a well‐ known practice in Buddhist painting in which the efficacy of an icon is ascertained through its fidelity to the proper iconography. In the case of secular court painting, however, it was employed for greater efficiency and better collaboration when multiple copies of a theme were required. Some elements in the Banquet of Queen Mother of the West (Figure  13.7) such as the female attendants in Chinese costume, the blue‐and‐green rocks, the trees and bamboo, the curly clouds and ornately carved balustrades also appear in other types of court screens, for instance, depictions of the Ten Symbols of Longevity, or the Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi (Figure 13.8). In addition, the positioning of the Queen Mother in frontal view and King Mu shown in three‐quarter view towards her, both in front of a screen and behind a table, are reminiscent of the composition of another favored theme, the Elegant Gathering in the Western Garden (Jungmann 2008: 58–67). In all of these cases, the use of elements from Chinese lore and literature is a conscious reference to an ideal world associating the Chosŏn court with the sage rule of legendary Chinese emperors. More mundane, yet no less festive scenes adorn screens like the Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi (Figure 13.8). Guo Ziyi (697–781) famously rescued the Tang empire during the rebellion of An Lushan (703–757) in the mid‐eighth century, and he also enjoyed a long life in the midst of a large family. He is said to have had so many grandchildren that he was unable to remember all their names. Having the ‘three blessings of abundance’―wealth, longevity, and many descendants―made him a favorite subject of painting in late Chosŏn Korea. Chinese representations of Guo Ziyi

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Figure 13.8  Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi. 19th century. Eight‐fold screen; ink and colors on silk. 144.5 × 416 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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either depict him as a military leader or emphasize his retirement as a wealthy man surrounded by his large family. In contrast, Chosŏn court screens exclusively focus on his private side and further emphasize his blessed household by adding scenes of the female quarter with Guo’s wife at center. The male and the female realms are treated almost equally. It is quite obvious that these alterations of the iconography were made to suit the purpose of the screens (Seo 2014: 212–219).

Male and Female Quarters Confucian etiquette required that the male and female members of a household live in separate parts of their home, the men in the ‘outer’ and the women in the ‘inner’ quarters. In Chosŏn palaces, the most important members of the royal family, the king, queen, crown prince, and queen dowager each occupied separate buildings with their own courtyards, and were attended by ladies‐in‐waiting, eunuchs, and servants. These separate quarters were decorated according to their gender and status within the court hierarchy. A particularly interesting genre, dedicated to the male quarters is that of books, objects, and accouterments found in the scholar’s studio, as presented in Books and Scholarly Implements (Figure 13.9). In Korean, different names are used for paintings of this type: ch’aekkŏri (books and things), ch’aekkado (bookshelf paintings), and munbangdo (screens of the scholar’s study). Although the earliest extant screen of this theme, by the court painter Chang Hanjong (1768–1815), dates to the

Figure 13.9  Yi Hyŏngnok (b. 1808). Books and Scholarly Implements. 19th century. Ten‐fold screen; ink and colors on hemp. 153 × 352 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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late eighteenth or early nineteenth century (Jungmann 2014: 280–284), texts reveal that screens depicting the genre started to flourish in the 1780s when they became a topic of the examinations for painters‐in‐waiting at the Kyujanggak. King Chŏngjo is known to have particularly favored the theme, telling his officials that the books comforted him when he did not have the time to read. Best known for his production of ch’aekkŏri is the court painter Yi Hyŏngnok (b. 1808) whose paintings in this genre can be found in a great number of collections in Korea, the United States, Europe, and Japan (Black and Wagner 1993: 63–75). Emphasizing the Confucian virtues of self‐cultivation through education, Yi’s screen, as with many others of this genre, show stacks of books, an ink stone, an ink stick, seals, brushes, and paper (Figure 13.9). However, in contrast to the Confucian ideal of the frugal and modest scholar, the screen also lavishly displays precious and exotic items: porcelain vases and bowls, bronze incense burners, containers made of rare woods, a fish carved out of jade, and a coral branch with a pendant, all of which originated in China. In addition, the small European clock shown here must have been extremely rare and valuable. The fruit and flowers are equally exotic: peony, narcissus, pomegranate, and the so‐called “Buddha’s hand” citron. Chosŏn envoys, who travelled to Beijing, wrote accounts about their forays into the antique markets of China’s capital and their enthusiastic efforts to obtain such rarities. Apart from accumulating a substantial collection for themselves from their journeys they earned considerable profit after returning home by selling the Chinese collectibles to friends. The exotic aspect of ch’aekkŏri screens is not only due to the display of rare objects but also to the painters’ emphasis on employing European illusionism (trompe l’oeil) and naturalistic rendering of light (chiaroscuro). Chosŏn Korea had, unlike China and Japan, no direct contact with Europe until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Yet, starting in the early seventeenth century, Chosŏn envoys met with Jesuit priests at the Chinese capital and they left writings containing discourses on their knowledge of the Catholic faith and on European sciences and art. During the eighteenth century, the travel diaries of Chosŏn envoys increasingly included reports of their visits to Jesuit churches in Beijing, conveying their amazement at the illusionistic effects of Baroque painting (Yi 2015: 17–30). The interest in European painting methods, namely chiaroscuro and one‐point perspective, can also be seen in other genres of court painting of the latter half of the eighteenth century, such as portraiture (Figure 13.3), landscape, and paintings of the daily life of commoners, all attesting to King Chŏngjo’s support of new directions in painting. In regard to these new genres, including ch’aekkŏri screens, we find the name of the king’s favorite painter, Kim Hongdo, mentioned, even though no painting by him is known to have survived (Jungmann 2013: 78–84). The fairly large number of extant screens bearing Yi Hyŏngnok’s name—not in the common way of applying a signature but painted on the underside of a seal lying in a tray among other seals—suggests that the painter ran a workshop and served not only the court but took private commissions from the noble and the wealthy. Moreover, although every screen is different in its composition and arrangements of items, the same objects are found over and over again, not only just in works by Yi himself but also by his predecessor Chang Hanjong and by his many followers. These repetitions

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of the same motifs suggest that none of these artists painted from the real objects, but used sketchbooks that were transmitted at court and within the painters’ workshops. An album leaf by Yi Hyŏngnok of single items, an incense burner, books, seals, an ink stone, and a container with brushes, confirms this assumption (Pak Youngsook 2013, fig. 11). In fact, Yi Hyŏngnok’s father and grandfather had also served as court painters and were known to have been well‐versed in the ch’aekkŏri genre. Another type of scholar’s study screens emerging in the latter half of the nineteenth century shows arrangements of books and rarities without bookshelves, as if floating in space. Since the objects are almost identical to those found in illusionistic bookshelf screens, sometimes only differing in coloration, it appears that fashions changed towards the end of the nineteenth century and that followers of Yi Hyŏngnok catered to customers who no longer favored trompe l’oeil effects (Jungmann 2014: 286–291). The women’s quarters of Chosŏn homes were adorned with paintings of birds and flowers, usually shown in pairs to convey marital bliss. Peonies were particularly favored because they symbolized wealth and female beauty. The Peonies screen shown here (Figure 13.10) is thought to date from the late eighteenth century for stylistic reasons. White, red and pink flowers are decoratively arranged on each of the ten panels, yet the stems of the shrubs appear to grow naturally out of the ground. Planted in front and behind picturesque garden rocks at the shore of a stream the composition evokes a sense of space, as if representing the peony bed of a splendidly designed garden. The intertwining and overlapping branches of budding, half‐opened, and fully blossomed peonies embedded in lush foliage convey a sense of luxury and grandeur. Garden rocks in light blue and brown colors merge organically with the plants and, at the same time, give the painting an exotic effect, due to their curved and twisted forms. Only the blue‐and‐green rock in the center stands out and echoes the color of the shores on either side. Later screens, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, tend to be much more schematic, both in composition and coloration: sprays of red, white and two‐tone blossoms of identical form and size are arranged on each panel in the same order, each emerging from behind a garden rock of either bright blue or a light purple color (Woo 2014, pl. 1‐5). Apart from an overall change of

Figure 13.10  Peonies. 18th century. Ten‐fold screen; colors on silk. 194 × 580 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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taste, the repetitive and schematic design of later paintings may be the result of the greater demand for peony screens in the palace which necessitated a more efficient process of production. Peony screens were not only used for weddings and the decoration of the female quarters, but also employed during funeral rites and as decoration for the portrait niches of the king’s ancestral shrines. An ŭ igwe record tells us that twenty‐eight panels of peony screens were made in 1901 in conjunction with the copying of portraits of seven former kings (Yi 2011: 374–75).

‘Court Art’ and ‘Folk Art’ While we nowadays acknowledge all the screens discussed earlier, on such themes as the Sun, Moon and Five Peaks, the Ten Symbols of Longevity, banquets of the Queen Mother of the West and of Guo Ziyi, Books and Scholarly Implements, or Peonies, as works produced by court artists for the Chosŏn elite, they were considered folk ­painting (minhwa) throughout most of the twentieth century. This is mainly due to the history of collecting. Since court paintings were just regarded as paraphernalia for the conduct of rites and ceremonies, they were neither thought of as objects worthy of preservation by the court nor were they appreciated by private collectors who preferred ink paintings signed by individual artists. The discovery of court screens—and their categorization as folk painting—is credited to two collectors who admired their unique artistic qualities, the Japanese folk art enthusiast Yanagi Sōetsu (a.k.a Yanagi Muneyoshi, 1889–1961) and his Korean counterpart Zo Zayong (Cho Chayong, 1926–2000). Inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement and European trends of modern art, they both developed a passion for the unpretentious and unsophisticated, thus for the very opposite of ‘literati culture.’ It is, in fact, sometimes difficult to distinguish between court and folk painting because they share the same themes, symbolism, and function. Nearly all genres of court painting were imitated by professional painters working outside the court for a less affluent clientele. Textual sources of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century inform us about an art market in the center of the capital where all kinds of paintings were traded, including those created by court artists, who, as already discussed, were dependent on customers from outside the royal court to supplement their stipends. Subject matter or painting themes mentioned in these texts are One Hundred Children, Banquet of the Queen Mother of the West, the Ten Symbols of Longevity, Cranes and Immortal Peaches. Paintings on those subjects appeared alongside works more closely associated with ‘literati style’ art, such as ink paintings of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, plum blossoms, orchids, and bamboo. Professional painters working outside the court therefore had ample opportunities to see and copy the works of court artists and adapt them to suit their own skills and to match the understanding, taste, and financial means of their customers. In the case of screens of the scholar’s studio, we find alterations in subject matter; more ordinary vegetables and fruit like cucumbers and water melons appear next to pomegranates to confer the wish for abundant offspring or, instead of Chinese polychrome enamelware, the plainer and more familiar Korean blue‐and‐white porcelain is depicted. The

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perspective and the spatial relationship between objects are often neglected, but we find a strong effort to carefully render the ornamentation and surface texture of objects depicted. Different genres, such as landscape, auspicious animals, and books and scholarly implements are often mixed together, apparently in an effort to combine all blessings and well‐wishes into one composition (Jungmann 2014: 289–300).

Advent of Modernity During the latter half of the nineteenth century the Chosŏn government found itself not only under pressure from the emerging Japanese empire, which was gaining dominance through its victory in the Sino‐Japanese War of 1894 to 1895 before finally annexing Korea in 1910, but also under pressure to give up its closed‐ door policy towards the West. The royal court reacted by employing Westerners in key political positions, and Western artists were invited to produce the king’s portrait in the new medium of photography for public distribution. The dissemination of photographic images of the Korean ruler served two purposes: to assist in international diplomacy and to demonstrate royal power on the national level. In the late 1890s, Queen Victoria, who is especially known for her pioneering interest in the medium, asked the British explorer Isabella Bird (1831–1904) to take a photographic portrait of King Kojong (r. 1864–1907). Over a decade earlier, in 1884, Kojong had his first photographic portrait taken both by the American Percival Lowell (1855–1916) and the Korean scholar‐painter Chi Unyŏng (1851–1935). In such photographs the king wears his traditional official garment but does not pose on his throne, nor in front of a Sun, Moon and Five Peaks screen, but in an open pavilion at Ch’angdŏk Palace. Photographs and paintings of him done by foreigners in different settings attest to the king’s cautious negotiation between native traditional values and international conventions. In spite of the international custom to have the ruler’s image shown on stamps and banknotes, the late Chosŏn government still chose to show only the royal crown on a stamp issued in 1902, thereby adhering to the aniconic representation that had been practiced in documentary painting throughout the dynasty (Kwon 2011, fig. 9). In 1894, King Kojong’s consort, Queen Myŏngsŏng (better known in the West by the derogatory colonial‐period appellation as Queen Min, 1851–1895), was assassinated by Japanese agents and the king eventually took refuge in the Russian legation in 1896. In 1897 Kojong declared himself Emperor of Korea, disposing of the vassal relationship with China that had lasted for more than a millennium, in order to manifest his nation’s independence within the international community. The distribution of his image was part of Kojong’s strategy to consolidate power, but since Korea’s photographic technology and print media were still not fully developed, he depended on the English and Korean publications produced by Christian missionaries to make up the deficit (Kwon 2011: 62–63). Despite embracing the new technology of photography for picture making, the court still needed painters who were able to adapt to the new times in their own way.

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An Chungsik (1861–1919) is a good example of this transition. He continued old traditions in his art, but gave also lessons to Ko Hŭ idong (1886–1965), the first Korean to study Western‐style oil painting (yuhwa) in Japan.

Conclusion Court art and crafts, explored here through the examination of paintings, but also encompassing other media such as ceramics, textiles, furniture, metal and lacquer wares, strongly reflect the ideological and political circumstances of the Chosŏn court throughout its five‐hundred year existence. The iconography of court art was strictly governed by court ritual, although painters were at times able to experiment with new compositions, as in the Royal Visit to Hwasŏng (Figure 13.5) and adopt new visual concepts, as shown in Yi Hyŏngnok’s, Books and Scholarly Implements (Figure 13.9). Painters had a fairly low position at court and, due to their meagre salaries, were dependent on private commissions and on selling in the open market—circumstances that provided lesser painters with opportunities to copy and alter their motifs, creating inventive variations for commoner customers, which became known as ‘folk painting’ (minhwa). Court paintings distinguish themselves from folk paintings by the employment of precious materials, vivid coloring and meticulous rendering, thereby adhering to aristocratic taste. In their symbolism, which draws from traditional East‐Asian lore based on Confucian and Daoist ideas, they represent the aspirations and well‐wishes of their patrons. Although themes deriving from ancient Chinese literature were often favored, they were altered according to the circumstances in which court art was employed. For instance, in screens depicting the theme of the Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi that were produced for royal weddings, scenes of the female quarters presided over by Guo’s wife received equal if not more pictoral emphasis than scenes of the general himself. The evolution of Chosŏn court art thus, in spite of its restrictions and limitations, attests to the openness towards new trends by both patrons and artists, and to the creativity of Chosŏn painters in adapting these trends to local traditions, customs and tastes, thereby developing unique styles and genres.

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Jungmann, Burglind. 2007. “Documentary Record versus Decorative Representation: A Queen’s Birthday Celebration at the Korean Court.” Arts Asiatiques 62: 95–111. Jungmann, Burglind. 2008. “Two Screens of the Elegant Gathering in the Western Garden in Western Collections.” Orientations 39 (4): 58–67. Jungmann, Burglind. 2011. “Sin Sukju’s Record on the Painting Collection of Prince Anpyeong and Early Joseon Antiquarianism.” Archives of Asian Art 61: 109–128. Jungmann, Burglind. 2013. “Korean contacts with Europeans in Beijing and Western inspiration in early modern Korean art.” In Looking East: Rubens and Asia, edited by Stephanie Schrader, 67–87. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum. Jungmann, Burglind. 2014. Pathways to Korean Culture: Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910). London: Reaktion Books. Kang Kwangsik. 2001. Chosŏn hugi kungjung hwawŏn yŏn’gu [Study on Painters at the late Chosŏn court]. 2 vols. Seoul: Tolbegae. Kim, Dong‐uk. 2006. Palaces of Korea. Translated by Michael Finch. Seoul: Hollym Publishers. Kim Han, Hyeonjeong, ed. 2013. In Grand Style: Celebrations in Korean Art during the Joseon Dynasty. Exh. cat. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum. Kim, Hongnam. 1991. The Story of a Painting, a Korean Buddhist Treasure from the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation. Exh. cat. New York: Asia Society Gallery. Kim, Hongnam, ed. 1993. Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century: Splendor and Simplicity. Exh. cat. New York: Weatherhill and Asia Society Gallery. Kim, Hongnam. 1994. “Tragedy and Art at the Eighteenth‐Century Chosŏn Court.” Orientations 25 (2): 28–37. Kim, Sunglim. 2014. “Ch’aekgeori: Multi‐Dimensional Messages in Late Joseon Korea.” Archives of Asian Art 64 (1): 3–32. Kwon, Heangga. 2011. “King Gojong’s Portrait and the Advent of Photography in Korea.” Journal of Korean Art and Archaeology 5: 58–69. Kim, Kumja Paik. 2011. “Re‐evaluating Court and Folk Painting of Korea.” In A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton, 341–364. Chichester, West Sussex and Malden, MA: Wiley‐Blackwell. Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. 2011. Hwawon—the Court Painters of Joseon Dynasty. Exh. cat. Seoul: Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. National Museum of Korea. 2012. The Secret of the Joseon Portraits. Exh. cat. Seoul: National Museum of Korea. Oh, Ju‐seok. 2005. The Art of Kim Hong‐do: A Great Court Painter of 18th Century Korea. Chicago: Art Media Resources. Pak Chŏnghye. 2000. Chosŏn sidae kungjung kirokhwa yŏnʾgu [Study on court documentary painting of the Chosŏn dynasty]. Seoul: Ilchisa. Pak Ponsu. 2008. “Origŏn taehakkyo pangmulgwan sojang sipchang saengbyŏngdo yŏn’gu” [Ten Symbols of Longevity screen at the Museum of Art, University of Oregon]. Kogung munhwa 2: 11–38. Pak, Youngsook. 2013. “Ch’aekkado—A Chosŏn Conundrum.” Art in Translation 50 (2): 183–218. Portraits of the Joseon Dynasty, Journal of Korean Art & Archaeology 5. 2011. Accessed July 3, 2011. http://www.museum.go.kr/program/ebook/ebookList.jsp?menuID=002005006005&e bookSearchTypeID=&boardLines=10&ebookTypeID=6&categorySelect=¤tPage=3.

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Seo, Yoonjung. 2014. “Connecting Across Boundaries: The Use of Chinese Images in Late Chosŏn Court Art from Transcultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Shin, Myung‐ho. 2004. Joseon Royal Court Culture, Ceremonial and Daily Life. Translated by Timothy V. Atkinson. Seoul: Tolbegae. Song, Unsok. 2014. “Buddhism and Art in the Joseon Royal House: Buddhist Sculpture and Painting.” In Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910, edited by Woo Hyunsoo, 53–67. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Woo, Hyunsoo, ed. 2014. Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Yi, Sŏng‐mi. 2008. “Euigwe and the Documentation of Joseon Court Ritual Life.” Archives of Asian Art 58: 113–133. Yi, Sŏng‐mi. 2011. “The Making of Royal Portraits during the Chosŏn Dynasty: What Ŭigwe Books Reveal.” In Bridges to Heaven: Essays East Asian Art in Honor of Professor Wen C. Fong, edited by Jerome Silbergeld, Dora C. Y. Ching, Judith G. Smith, and Alfreda Murck, 363–386. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yi, Sŏng‐mi. 2015. Searching for Modernity: Western Influence and True‐View Landscape in Korean Painting of the Late Chosŏn Dynasty. Lawrence and Seattle: Spencer Museum of Art and University of Washington Press.

Glossary An Chungsik [An Jungsik] 安中植 An Kyŏn [An Gyeon] 安堅 Anp’yŏng taegun [Anpyeong daegun] 安平大君 chabi taeryŏng hwawŏn [jabi daeryeong hwawon] 差備待令畵員 ch’aekkado [chaekgado] 冊架圖 ch’aekkŏri [chaekgeori] 책거리 Chang Hanjong [Jang Hanjong] 張漢宗 Ch’angdŏk [Changdeok] 昌德(宮) Ch’anggyŏng [Changgyeong] 昌慶(宮) Chi Unyŏng [Ji Unyeong] 池運永 Ch’ilbo [Chilbo] 七寶(山) ch’obon [chobon] 草本 Chŏng Tojŏn [Jeong Dojeon] 鄭道傳 Chŏng Yagyong [Jeong Yagyong] 丁若鏞 Chŏngjo [Jeongjo] 正祖 Chŏnju [Jeonju] 全州 ch’ŏnmin [cheonmin] 賤民 Chosŏn [Joseon] 朝鮮 Chosŏn wangjo sillok [Joseon wangjo sillok] 朝鮮王朝實錄 chungin [jungin] 中人 Daodejing (C.) 道德經 Guo Ziyi (C.) 郭子儀

RI T UAL AND   S P L E ND O R

Hamgyŏng [Hamgyeong] 咸鏡(道) Han Sigak 韓時覺 Hansŏng [Hanseong] 漢城 Han 漢(江) Hanyang 漢陽 hwahak 畵學 Hwasŏng [Hwaseong] 華城 hwawŏn [hwawon] 畵員 Hyegyŏng [Hyegyeong] 惠慶 Injŏngjŏn [Injeongjeon] 仁政殿 Kaegyŏng [Gaegyeong] 開京 Kaesŏng [Gaeseong] 開城 Kang Sehwang [Gang Sehwang] 姜世晃 Kilju [Gilju] 吉州 Kim Hongdo 金弘道 Kim Tŭ ksin [Kim Deuksin] 金得臣 Kirosa [Girosa] 耆老社 Ko Hŭ idong [Go Huidong] 高羲東 Kojong [Gojong] 高宗 kongsin [gongsin] 功臣 Koryŏ [Goryeo] 高麗 Kŭ msŏng [Geumseong] 金城 Kunlun (C.) 崑崙(山) Kyŏngbok [Gyeongbok] 景福(宮) Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Kyujanggak [Gyujanggak] 奎章閣 Laozi (C.) 老子 Li Bai (C.) 李白 Min 閔 minhwa 民畵 Mu (C.) 穆(王) munbangdo 文房圖 munin 文人 muninhwa 文人畵 Munjŏng [Munjeong] 文定(王后) Myŏngjong [Myeongjong] 明宗 Myŏngsŏng [Myeongseong] 明成(皇后) Naegak illyŏk [Naegak illyeok] 內閣日曆 Pugak [Bugak] 北岳(山) P’yŏngyang [Pyeongyang] 平壤 sadaebu 士大夫 Sado 思悼(世子) Samgang haengsil‐to 三綱行實圖 Sejong 世宗 Shijing (C.) 詩經

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Sin Sukchu [Sin Sukju] 申叔舟 Shujing (C.) 書經 Sŏngnihak [Seongnihak] 性理學 Sukchong [Sukjong] 肅宗 Suwŏn [Suwon] 水原 T‘aejo [Taejo] 太祖 Tohwasŏ [Dohwaseo] 圖畵署 Tonggwŏl [Donggwol] 東闕 ŭ igwe [uigwe] 儀軌 Xiao Xiang (C.) 瀟湘 Xiwangmu (C.) 西王母 Yanagi Sŏetsu (Muneyoshi) (J.) 柳宗悦 yang (C.) 陽 yangban 兩班 yangin 良人 yangmin 良民 Yi Hyŏngnok [Yi Hyeongnok] 李亨祿 Yi Inmun 李寅文 Yi Myŏnggi [Yi Myeonggi] 李命基 Yi Sangjwa 李上佐 Yi Sŏnggye [Yi Seonggye] 李成桂 Yijing (C.) 易經 yin (C.) 陰 Yŏnghŭ ng [Yeongheung] 永興 yŏngji [yeongji] (C. lingzhi) 靈芝 Yŏngjo [Yeongjo] 英祖 Yongjusa 龍珠寺 yuhwa 油畵 Zo Zayong [Cho Chayong, Jo Jayong] 趙子庸

14

Faith, Ritual, and the Arts: Chosŏ n Buddhist Art and Architecture1 Unsok Song

During the Chosŏn dynasty, which adopted Neo‐Confucianism as its national ideology, Buddhism could no longer maintain the powerful influence it had enjoyed as a dominant political and social principle during the preceding Koryŏ dynasty. Buddhism, having played a part in the affairs of the country ever since its introduction to the Korean peninsula more than one thousand years earlier, lost its influence at the national level in the fourth century of the Three Kingdoms period and simply became a private religion for individuals. The anti‐Buddhist campaigns carried out by the government eventually destroyed the economic foundation of Buddhist temples and monasteries, and the newly risen nobility, armed with Neo‐Confucian ideas, steadily imposed ­policies that limited the influence of the religion and further depleted the financial resources of its institutions. Although policies favorable to Buddhism were instituted during the reigns of the kings Sejong (1418–50) and Sejo (1455–68), in general the fifteenth century was marked by steady suppression of the religion. Official anti‐Buddhist laws were enacted during the first half of the sixteenth century, particularly during the reigns of  Yŏnsan’gun (1494–1506) and Chungjong (1506–44). During the reign of

1 Discussions on royal patronage of Buddhism during the Chosŏn dynasty are excerpted from Unsok Song, “Buddhism and Art in the Chosŏn Royal House: Buddhist Sculpture and Painting,” in Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392– 1910, edited by Hyunsoo Woo (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014), pp. 52–67. I would like to thank the Philadelphia Museum of Art for kindly granting permission.

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Myŏngjong (r. 1545–67) in the mid‐sixteenth century, Queen Mother Munjŏng (1502–1565)—governing as her son’s regent—enforced pro‐Buddhist policies. After the Japanese invasion of 1592 and the second Manchu invasion of 1636, the latter half of the dynasty saw no drastic changes in these laws, and a tacit acceptance of Buddhism persisted until the end of Chosŏn rule. The waning of Buddhism as a consequence of the rise of Neo‐Confucianism naturally led to a general decline in the quality of Buddhist art, particularly in comparison with its caliber in the preceding Koryŏ dynasty. Art characteristic of the Chosŏn period includes paintings based on Confucian and Daoist ideologies (such as figure and landscape paintings, and paintings of the so‐called Four Gentlemen) and ceramics used during national Confucian rites and the funerary rituals of the nobility. Despite the focus on those other art forms, Buddhist art was able to develop in unique ways during the reigns of certain early pro‐Buddhist monarchs such as Sejong, Sejo, and Myŏngjong. In the latter half of the dynasty, it was the Buddhist faithful among the masses who provided the foundation for the emergence of a new aesthetic in Buddhist art. This chapter will discuss Buddhist art of the Chosŏn dynasty divided into two periods, an early (1392–1598) and a late period (1599–1910), with the aftermath of the Japanese invasion as the demarcation point.

The Early Period Even amidst the general decline of Buddhism in the first half of the dynasty, a pro‐ Buddhist attitude was held by the kings T’aejo (r. 1392–98), Sejong, Sejo, and Myŏngjong, as well as their royal households. T’aejo supported Buddhism throughout his reign. Mourning the death of his wife, Queen Sindŏk (ca. 1356–1396), he had Hǔngch’ŏnsa (Flourish Heaven Temple) built in 1397. He ordered the performance of various Buddhist services for his ancestors and for the benefit of the nation. Additionally, he commissioned the publication of a complete set of the Buddhist canon (Takahashi 1929). During the early years of his reign, King Sejong reduced the number of active Buddhist sects to two—Sŏn and Kyo—down from the eleven sects that were active during the reign of his father, T’aejong (r. 1400–1418). Although Sejong generally enacted anti‐Buddhist policies, after the death of his queen, Sohŏn (1395–1446), he became more amenable to Buddhism. Sejong ordered the performance of a Buddhist ritual for her happiness in the afterlife as well as the rebuilding of a Buddhist worship hall (along with the sculptures therein) within the Kyŏngbok Palace (Takahashi 1929). He also contributed to the large‐scale dissemination of Buddhist teachings by having texts such as the Detailed Articles on Buddha’s Genealogy (Sŏkpo sangjŏl) and the Songs of the Reflection of the Moon on Thousand Rivers (Wŏrinch’ŏn’gang chigok)—both biographies of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni— published in Korean language. Sejo was the most aggressive of the early Chosŏn kings in his efforts to promote Buddhism. In 1457, he reopened Chŏngŏbwŏn (Pure Karma Cloister), a Buddhist nunnery in the capital, and a year or two later he ordered the construction of



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Chŏnginsa (Proper Cause Temple) after the death of the crown prince Ǔ igyŏng (1438–1457). The Wŏn’gaksa (Perfect Enlightenment Temple) and its pagoda, the largest stone pagoda erected during the Chosŏn dynasty, were also commissioned by Sejo in 1466–1467. Most importantly, he established the Office for Buddhist Sutra Translation (Kan’gyŏng togam), which translated and published the Tripitaka in Korean language. Sejo thus continued the work of his father, Sejong, in spreading Buddhist doctrine to a wide audience (Takahashi 1929). During the reign of Myŏngjong, strong pro‐Buddhist policies were enacted through  the efforts of Queen Regent Munjŏng and the monk Pou (1515–1565). The aforementioned Sŏn and Kyo schools were re‐established, and temples were constructed in the capital again. The government resumed the system of ordaining monks and administering the ecclesiastical examinations. These policies set the stage for the emergence of strong Buddhist leaders—figures such as Hyujŏng (1520–1604) and Yujŏng (1544–1610), the Sŏn monks who actively engaged in the military resistance to the Japanese during the 1592 invasion—in the latter half of the dynasty (Kim Yongt’ae 2010). Hǔngch’ŏnsa and Wŏn’gaksa were major temples in Seoul during the Chosŏn period. The former was built in 1397 by King T’aejo to mourn his wife, née Kang, while the latter was built by King Sejo in 1467 on the site of Hǔngboksa (Flourish Fortune Temple) to commemorate a miraculous event related with the Buddha’s relics that occurred at Hoeamsa (Fir Rock Temple) in Yangju. A five‐story stupa at Hǔngch’ŏnsa and a ten‐story stone pagoda in Wŏn’gaksa were the monumental objects that brought a noticeable change to the skyline of Seoul, where there had been no such tall structures. Later, when the Chosŏn dynasty further suppressed Buddhism, Wŏn’gaksa was turned into an entertainment place with courtesans in 1504, before finally disappearing, leaving only the stone pagoda, while the Hu˘ngch’ŏngsa’s stupa was destroyed by fire in 1510. In this way, little trace of the Buddhist temples remained in the center of the capital Seoul. Indeed, only temples that remained inconspicuous in the mountains managed to survive the state’s suppression of Buddhism. A wooden building has a structure, in which horizontal beams interconnect with vertical columns. The horizontal space of a building is set by the length of its beams and purlins. Such member has a limit in length and it is necessary to join them with each other. The joint is generally made on a column. A supporting wooden device is used to stabilize the parts thus joined. This tells us about the need for kongp’o (a roof‐supporting bracket system). For a traditional wooden building in East Asia, rafters are made wider to protect wooden members of the roof and columns from moisture. Kongp’o was developed to put on the columns to support the rafters outside the columns. Kongp’o is generally divided into two types: chusimp’o (a system using brackets only on columns) and tap’o (a system using brackets between columns) (Kim Wangjik 2007). Most of government offices and Buddhist buildings in the early Chosŏn period were in the tap’o type of bracketing system. The Hojimun (Protect Support Gate) of Sŏgwangsa (Interpret King Temple) in Anbyŏn and the Patriarch Hall (1469) at

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Figure 14.1  Chosadang at Sillu˘ ksa in Yŏju, Kyŏnggi Province. 15th–16th century. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Sillǔksa (God Restraint Temple) in Yŏju are important buildings associated with T’aejo and Sejong (Figure 14.1). The tap’o‐type buildings look gorgeous and imposing due to their multi‐layered sets of kongp’o brackets and the upturned ends of the eaves (Kim Tonguk 2007). For small buildings, the chusimp’o type of bracketing ­system was used in both the Chosŏn period and the preceding Koryŏ period. Leading examples of the chusimp’o‐type buildings include the Bhaiṣajyaguru Hall at Kwallyongsa (Look Dragon Temple) in Ch’angnyŏng; at the Hasadang (Patriarch Hall) in Songgwangsa (Pine Broad Temple) in Sunch’ŏn; the Kǔngnakchŏn (Sukhāvatī Hall,1430) at Muwisa (Inexertion Temple) in Kangjin; and the Liberation Gate (1473) at Togapsa (Valley of the Way Temple) in Yŏngam. Buddhist images made during the early Chosŏn period are divided into two groups: (1) those that follow the earlier style established during the late Koryŏ period and (2) those made with Tibetan influence via China. The first group is characterized by reduced volume and three‐dimensionality compared with their late Koryŏ models, and display rather flattened cheeks and jaw and a breast lacking volume. Most of the statues made in this period, both Buddhas and bodhisattvas, exhibit the outer robe (saṃ ghāti) draped over the left shoulder, leaving the right shoulder bare, although the style is subtly different from that of Tibetan statues (Song Ŭ nsŏk 2005). The upper end of the inner robe (saṃ kakṣikā) is slightly curved (unlike the statues of late Koryŏ, where it is straight), showing that it is knotted. The U‐shaped folds of the robe on the left upper arm are rendered in a simpler manner than those of the late



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Koryŏ Buddha images. As for the bodhisattva statues, the entire body is covered with beaded ornaments, showing the influence of the bodhisattva statues of the late Koryŏ, which were, in turn, influenced by the statues of Song China (960–1279). A fine example of the traditional style is provided by a dry‐lacquered seated Avalokitesv́ ara bodhisattva enshrined in Changyuksa (Solemn Land Temple) in Yŏngdŏk, which was made―according to a written prayer stored inside it―in 1395. The Avalokitesv́ ara maintains the characteristic features of bodhisattva statues of the late Koryŏ in that it wears only an undergarment without an outer robe, has fastening loops at the upper part of the inner robe, and beaded ornaments covering almost its entire body. As for the statues of Buddha, an Amitābha Buddha Triad enshrined at the Sukhāvatī hall of Muwisa in Kangjin is a good example. Believed to have been made in 1478, according to a record made to mark the renovation of a stone pagoda at Porimsa (Treasure Forest Temple) in Changhǔng, the triad exhibits a unique appearance in which the principal Buddha, Amitābha, is flanked by the two bodhisattvas Avalokites v́ ara and Kṣitigarbha seated in the relaxed lalitāsana pose. What is equally interesting here is that the production of the Amitābha triad took place as part of a long‐term plan involving the construction of the main hall (1430) and the altar painting on the rear wall (1476). The statues display more voluminous faces and breasts compared with other contemporary works, but the thick robes and the symbolic hand gestures (mudrā) of Fearlessness and Wish‐fulfillment clearly show the tradition of Koryŏ. In the early Chosŏn period, new Buddhist statues began to be introduced from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) of China. Such statues are largely divided into two categories of which the first displays a fusion between the Tibetan style and the traditional Chinese style established in the Song and Yuan periods, while the second displays the traditional Song and Yuan styles slightly revised by Ming sculptors. Regarding the second category, a gilt‐bronze Avalokiteśvara image seated in lalitāsana currently in the collection of the National Museum in Seoul is a fine example. The statue features a long, slender body slightly leant to the left and supported by the left arm, large empty spaces between the body and both arms, and bejeweled ornaments around the neck and on the stomach ― elements of the Ming style unseen in earlier bodhisattva statues. It was also in the early Chosŏn period that Buddhist statues in the new Tibetan style arrived in Korea from Ming China. The statues introduced to Korea in this period featured, however, not original Tibetan works but Sino‐Tibetan works for which the original Tibetan style was significantly revised to suit the Chinese tradition. The Buddhist statues produced in Tibet during the Yuan period were marked by the bold expression of the body, with the veiled robe closely adhering to the body, a Tibetan face with a long hairline and narrow chin, and no or few folds on the robe. By contrast, the Tibetan‐style statues made by Ming artists were characterized by a lack of enthusiasm in the expression of the Buddha’s body, a thick robe with many folds obscuring the contours of the body, and a square face. The rendering of the topknot jewel on the head and the double‐tiered lotus pedestal is common in both the Yuan and Ming statues (Yang 1988).

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A gilt‐silver Amitābha Buddha triad in the Harvard Art Museum is a fine example that shows the influence of the Sino‐Tibetan style from Ming China on Korean Buddhist statues of the early Chosŏn. Specifically, while the triad statuettes maintain traditional Korean elements dating back to Koryŏ and even as far back as Unified Silla―such as the rather flat topknot (uṣṇı s̄ ạ ), the beaded ornaments draped down to the lower body, and the triple‐tiered lotus pedestal, they also feature the elements of a new style such as the topknot jewel protruding from the center of the head, the earth‐touching mudrā, the outer robe draped over the left shoulder while leaving right shoulder bare, and the U‐shaped chest ornaments. These new sculptural elements are believed to have emerged in China in a full‐fledged manner during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and to have arrived in Korea during the early phase of Chosŏn Buddhist art. It suggests that the Amitābha triad of the Harvard Art Museum was made in this period by combining the Sino‐Tibetan style from Ming with the Korean style established during the Koryŏ period (Song Ŭ nsŏk 2005). The Tibetan style that dominated Buddhist sculpture in fifteenth‐century Chosŏn was thereafter never seen again in Korean Buddhist art. Only the topknot jewel placed on the comparatively flat uṣṇı s̄ ạ survived until the late Chosŏn, becoming one of the characteristic elements of Korean Buddhist statues of the Chosŏn period. From the sixteenth century onwards, Korean Buddhist sculptors followed the Koryŏ tradition, which is marked by a decrease in volume, three‐dimensionality, and dynamism. The body is usually covered with thick garments and placed in a simple ­standing or sitting position, creating an attractive symmetry. A simpler version of the traditional Koryŏ style revived in the early fifteenth century can be seen in a wooden seated Avalokitesv́ ara bodhisattva in Kwanǔmsa (Avalokites v́ ara Temple) of Mount Ch’ŏnsŏng in Sunch’ŏn, South P’yŏngan Province in 1502. Here, there are none of the beaded ornaments that used to cover almost the entire body of a bodhisattva, and its face and chest lack volume. However, the toes of the bodhisattva’s left foot are bare, displaying an element of the style established before the seventeenth century. We know of three Buddhist sculptures that were commissioned by members of the  royal household during the early Chosŏn dynasty: a seated wooden image of Amitābha Buddha (1458) in the Pŏpch’ŏnsa (Dharma Spring Temple) on Mount Chŏngam, a seated wooden image of Mañjusŕ ī bodhisattva (1466) in Sangwŏnsa (Upper Monastery Temple), and a seated gilt‐bronze image of Sā́ kyamuni Buddha (1459–1479) found inside a stone pagoda at Sujongsa (River Dividing Temple) in Namyangju. The number of images increases to four if we include relief carvings on an octagonal nine‐storied stone pagoda at Wŏn’gaksa (1467), which show many depictions of various Buddhist deities (Mun Myŏngdae 2002). The seated Amitābha from Pŏpch’ŏnsa is currently at Hǔksŏksa (Black Stone Temple) in Yŏngju (Figure  14.2). Originally, this Amitābha formed part of a triad along with images of the bodhisattvas Avalokitesv́ ara and Kṣitigarbha, but the current whereabouts of the two flanking images are unknown. A prayer petition found inside the cavity of the Pŏpch’ŏnsa Amitābha reveals that the triad was commissioned by prominent pro‐Buddhist figures in the early Chosŏn royal household, including King T’aejong’s royal concubines Ŭ ibin (from the Kwŏn clan) and Myŏngbin (from the



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Figure 14.2  Amitābha Buddha. 1458. Wood. H. 72 cm. Hu˘ ksŏksa in Yŏngju, North Kyŏngsang Province. Source: Taegu National Museum 2013: 18, pl. 1. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Kim clan). The sculptors who produced the image are identified as Yi Chungsŏn and Yi Hǔngson, artisans holding the fifth‐rank sajik position at court. Both were lay Buddhist sculptors, a rarity in the early Chosŏn period. It seems that the involvement of these particular sculptors was based on the fact that the statues were produced at the behest of royal family members. Compared to its lower body, the Amitābha’s torso is too long, and the chest, hands, and feet show considerable volume. At the top of the head are two jeweled hair ornaments (kyeju). The top of the under robe, visible on the abdomen, is tied with a string, and the drapery over the figure’s upper left arm forms the shape that resembles the Greek omega (Ω) letter. The image’s bare feet are exposed beyond the lower hem of the robe. All of these elements are characteristic of the early Chosŏn Buddhist sculptures. The seated gilt‐bronze Śākyamuni from Sujongsa was found along with a bronze portable shrine inside a five‐story stone pagoda. Text engraved on a copperplate plaque on the bottom of the image leads us to assume that production of the ­sculpture was made possible by donations from King T’aejong’s royal concubine Myŏngbin (from the Andong Kim clan) (Chŏng Yŏngho 1970). Because she was officially designated a royal concubine in 1411 and died in 1479, the sculpture was

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likely produced in the mid‐fifteenth century. Sujongsa, established in 1459, maintained an intimate relationship with the royal household for generations, and in 1493 donations made by concubines of King Sŏngjong (r. 1469–1494) as well as their children were used to restore many of the temple’s images and portable shrines. Noticeable characteristics of Sujongsa’s seated Śākyamuni accord with the early Chosŏn sculptural features also seen in the Hǔksŏksa Amitābha such as the narrow lap and elongated torso, the two jeweled ornaments adorning the uṣṇ īṣa, and the under robe with a straight hem, tied with a string. The seated wooden Mañjuśrī at Sangwŏnsa was commissioned by King Sejo’s daughter, Princess Ŭ isuk (1442–1477), and her husband, Hasŏngwi Chŏng Hyŏnjo, in the hopes of bearing a son (Figure 14.3). Additionally, images of the Buddhas Sā́ kyamuni, Bhaiṣajyaguru, and Amitābha were also commissioned and were installed in Munsusa (Mañjuśrī Temple) on Mount Odae. The year of production and names of the donors are clearly written in red characters on a blue silk document, but the sculptor’s name is not mentioned. Sangwŏnsa was particularly important to King Sejo, to the extent that in 1466 he was directly involved in its reconstruction. The face, hands, and feet of the Mañjuśrī image are elegantly rendered with voluminous forms, and the naturalistic treatment of the flowing drapery folds harmonizes gracefully with the body. This work demonstrates a great aesthetic achievement that stands out in Chosŏn Buddhist sculpture.

Figure 14.3  Mañjuśr ı̄ Bodhisattva. 1466. Wood. H. 97 cm. Sangwŏnsa in P’yŏngch’ang, Kangwŏn Province. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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There are more than twenty extant Buddhist paintings originating from the f­ifteenth century, seven of which carry the exact dates of production. They display stylistic elements and decorative patterns similar to their counterparts made in the preceding Koryŏ period, but differ from those made in or after the seventeenth century. The most notable of the Buddhist paintings made in the fifteenth century is an illustration of the Pure Land of Amitābha produced in 1465 by Yi Maenggǔn, who belonged to the Royal Bureau of Painting. The work is currently at the Chion’in temple in Kyoto, Japan. The painting follows the compositional type shown in a Koryŏ painting of the Sixteen Visualizations by the painter Sŏl Ch’ung (1323), but varies from the latter in the simplification of the composition and the looseness of the brushwork (Chŏng Ut’aek 1999; Kim Chŏnghǔi 2002). Another major work that inherited the hallmarks of Koryŏ Buddhist painting is a painting of Śākyamuni preaching, which is in the main hall of Pongjŏngsa (Phoenix Perch or Phoenix Abiding Temple) in Andong. Located at the front side of the wall behind a Buddha statue in the main hall renovated in 1435, the painting depicts a preaching Śākyamuni Buddha surrounded by bodhisattvas, disciples, and guardian deities. It also portrays a heavenly canopy, musical instruments, clouds, flowers, and the Buddhas of the ten directions. Its coloring technique and portrayal of heaven and people mark it out as an inheritor of the Koryŏ tradition of Buddhist painting. The Kǔngnakchŏn (1430) of Muwisa in Kangjin displays a fantastic combination of Buddhist statues and murals, making the entire Buddha hall look as if the Pure Land. The hall contains four walls with painting associated with the Pure Land: a painting of the Amitābha Buddha triad at the front side of the wall behind the altar in the center of the building; paintings of Amitābha Buddha preaching and Amitābha Buddha guiding the dead souls to the Pure Land on the eastern and western walls respectively; and a painting of Avalokiteśvara in a White Robe on the rear wall behind the statues of the Amitābha Buddha triad at the center of the altar. The painting of the Amitābha Buddha triad (1476) exhibits restrained coloring and a static stance, while the painting of Amitābha Buddha guiding dead souls to the Pure Land on the western wall depicts them moving forward gracefully, expressing a fine sense of contrast and harmony between the two. The use of hemp as a canvas for Buddhist paintings was a feature of works made in the early Chosŏn period by commoners, in contrast to those made on silk for the royal  family. The painting of Kṣitigarbha bodhisattva and the Ten Kings of Hell (1586) currently at the Kokubunji temple in Yamaguchi, Japan is thought to be the first example of a painting made on hemp. This piece, which was painted on long and narrow sheets of hemp cloth attached to each other, displays free and humorous expressions of people, unlike those made at the behest of the royal family (Pak Ŭ n’gyŏng 1993). The use of a background color and lines without coloring are considered unsuitable for Buddhist paintings, which need to convey their content through diverse visual expressions. However, it cannot be denied that such a method had its own usefulness based on the fact that 25 of the more than 120 extant Buddhist paintings from the early Chosŏn period during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, used such a method (Pak Ŭ n’gyŏng 1995).

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Most Buddhist painting commissioned by the royal household in the first half of the Chosŏn dynasty date to the sixteenth century. In fact, only two fifteenth‐century works are extant: the aforementioned painting of the Sixteen Visualizations (1465) and the painting of a Bhaiṣajyaguru triad (1477). The Bhaiṣajyaguru triad was commissioned by Princess Myŏngsuk, a sister of King Sŏngjong, and her husband, Hong Sang. This work also displays the continuation of the earlier Koryŏ compositional models, yet with the simplification of various elements, a characteristic of the early Chosŏn Buddhist painting. Thirteen royally commissioned Buddhist paintings from the sixteenth century are extant. Eight of them were commissioned by Queen Munjŏng, wife of King Chungjong and mother of Myŏngjong. Three were commissioned by Queen Insŏng (1515–1577), wife of King Injong (r. 1544–45). Yi Chongrin (pen name P’ungsanjŏng; 1536–1611), a grandson of Chungjong, and Injong’s royal concubine Sukpin (from the Yun clan) both ordered one painting each. The most famous of Queen Munjŏng’s commissions is a collection of four hundred scrolls made in 1565 to mark the reconstruction of the temple Hoeamsa. According to the postscript on one of the paintings written by the monk Pou, these four hundred paintings of Śākyamuni, Maitreya, Bhaiṣajyaguru, and Amitābha (fifty of each of the four Buddhas in gold, and fifty of each in colors and gold) were ordered as a wish for Myŏngjong’s long life, benevolent rule, and numerous offspring. Presently only six of these paintings are extant, four depicting Bhaiṣajyaguru and two depicting Śākyamuni. Two versions of the Bhaiṣajyaguru triad, in gold, are housed in the National Museum in Seoul (Figure 14.4) and the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya while the other two versions, in gold with color, are in the Japanese temples of Hōjū in in Osaka and Ryūjōin in Kō chi. The remaining two of the six extant works, both Śākyamuni triads in colors with gold, are housed in the Kōzenji temple in Komagane and the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation in New York. These works follow the Koryŏ practice of dividing the ­composition into upper and lower registers, for the Buddha and attendant bodhisattvas respectively; but, as with previous examples, the composition has been simplified. The use of gold and silver in the colored works is limited, and the rendering of the garment patterns is less realistic (Kikutake 1999). The figures exhibit characteristics typical of royally commissioned Buddhist paintings of the sixteenth century: wide faces with small features, and narrow, pointed uṣṇ īṣa adorned with jewels (Kim Chŏnghǔi 2001). The Thirty‐two Manifestations of Avalokites ́vara (1550) in Chion’in was a commission of King Injong’s consort, Queen Insŏng. It was painted by Yi Chasil, who was most likely a court painter. With Mount Wolch’ul in the background, Avalokites ́vara is shown in his thirty‐two manifestations as well as in acts of saving a variety of ­creatures from all manner of sufferings.

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Figure 14.4  Bhaiṣajyaguru Buddha Triad. 1565. Hanging scroll; gold on silk. 54.2 × 29.7 cm. National Museum of Korea, Seoul. Source: Korea Open Government License. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

implicitly tolerated during the late Chosŏn period. During the Japanese and Manchu invasions, members of the Buddhist clergy fought as soldiers, doing their part to save the country; such actions impressed the ruling Confucian class, which valued loyalty to the state, and thus facilitated its implicit acceptance of Buddhism as a part of the national order. The fact that Buddhist temples and monasteries could be rebuilt even in the context of a devastated economy was due to the selfless efforts demonstrated by the clergy to save the nation in a time of crisis. The capacity of Buddhism to soothe the minds and hearts of the people suffering through the chaos of war (and the resulting famine) proved to be a significant social force. The government even showed its support by entrusting Buddhist monks to perform funeral rites for the war dead (Chŏng Myŏnghǔi 2004).

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King Kwanghaegun (r. 1608–1623), who had helped his father Sŏnjo (r. 1567– 1608) protect the country from the Japanese, was a pro‐Buddhist monarch who both led and participated in Buddhist causes. In 1622, along with his queen, he commissioned eleven images for the nunneries of Chasusa (Benevolent Life Temple) and Insusa (Benignant Life Temple), and had the storage house for the Korean Buddhist canon called the “Eighty‐Thousand Tripitaka” at Haeinsa (Ocean Seal Temple) in Hapch’ŏn repaired (Yi Kanggǔn 1994). In 1660, during the early years of his reign, King Hyŏnjong (r. 1659–1674) got rid of the ancestral tablets of past kings and queens that had been enshrined in the royal temple Pongǔnsa (Reward Favor Temple) in Seoul, and closed Chasusa and Insusa (Kim Yongguk 1966). In 1674, however, he built Pongguksa (Reward State Temple) in Kwangju to pray for the repose of the souls of his two daughters and henceforth took a more favorable attitude toward Buddhism (Yi Kanggǔn 1994). Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800) was probably the most favorable ruler toward Buddhism in the late Chosŏn period. He built Yongjusa (Dragon Cintāmaṇi Temple), the mortuary temple for his father, Crown Prince Sado (1735–1762), in Hwasŏng; and wrote a prayer known as Kibokke, which are verses commemorating the erection of the ­temple. In addition, Chŏngjo printed the Sūtra on the Profound Kindness of Parents (Pumo ǔnjung kyŏng), which promoted the value of filial piety as well as a primary virtue of Confucianism. He gathered up talented monks from all over the country, erected buildings and commissioned Buddhist images and paintings, and generally contributed to the prosperity of Buddhism. After Chŏngjo, Queen Sinjŏng (1808– 1890), the regent Hǔngsŏn Taewŏn’gun (1820–1898), and Queen Myŏngsŏng (1851–1895) were the most prominent royal supporters of Buddhism in the nineteenth century (Ch’oe Yŏp 2012). During the Korean Empire era (1897–1910), Buddhism was officially incorporated into the ruling system. Buddhist temples and monasteries were able to survive by remaining inconspicuous in the mountains. They made courtyards between buildings to make better use of the limited space. Courtyard‐type buildings were adopted by most of the mountain temples and monasteries renovated after the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) (Kim Tonguk 2007). Courtyards were built connecting the main hall, pavilions, and dormitories so that open‐yard ceremonies were performed in them (Figure  14.5). The lift‐and‐hang type of fenestration for the main hall made it possible to expand the interior space of the hall into the exterior. Buildings within a temple or monastery were laid out in a way that linked ancillary structures like the Myŏngbujŏn (Hades Hall) or the Ǔ ngjinjŏn (Arhat Hall) and the Four Guardian Kings’ Gate more closely with each other, and with the main Buddha hall at center. Ceremonial facilities were kept in the main hall and taken out regularly for use in outdoor ceremonies (Kim Sŏngu and Kim Hongju 2001). The main hall was mainly used as a space to enshrine Buddhist statues, but began to be used as a space for worship services and rites toward the late Chosŏn Period. The main halls of temples and monasteries came to be used more often for sermons and rites. The rites included a procedure for verifying their own sacrosanct and miraculous nature by calling many Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and supernatural guardians forth to the place where a rite was taking place. It is thought that thinner pictorial



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Figure 14.5  Sillu˘ ksa in Yŏju, Kyŏnggi Province. 17th–18th century. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

depictions of many Buddhas and bodhisattvas were put behind the enshrined Buddha statue in place of a thicker sculptural halo due to space concerns. As the interior space of the hall could not accommodate the large number of people who attended sermons, attempts were made in the late Chosŏn period to expand the floor space by pushing the altar and the wall further back. As more sermons and rites came to be held in the Buddha hall, and devotees experienced the enshrined images at closer range, this proximity had the unwanted effect of weakening their sense of awe before the divine. It is thought that the addition of further layers of richness to the altar and to the deity’s pedestal represented an attempt to restore devotees’ awe in the divine presence. Thus, Buddha statues on a pedestal of around two meters high in a small hall in the late Chosŏn period had a different aesthetic quality to those placed on a lower one meter‐high pedestal in prior times (Song Ŭ nsŏk 2009). Buddha statues made in the late Chosŏn period feature a disproportionately large head, with the upper body and head bent forward, thus distinguishing themselves from their counterparts made in earlier in the Chosŏn period and before. This is thought to be a result of efforts to improve the experience of the Buddha for worshippers, who would have had to look up at the deity at a sharp angle and be filled with wonder. The most important purpose of the Buddha statues placed in the main temple hall was religious communication between worshippers and the primary icons of worship. Thus, the Buddha statues of the late Chosŏn period attest to the efforts to achieve this purpose.

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The architectural trend of temple halls in the late Chosŏn period was characterized by the use of the tap’o system of bracketing, which used overlapping short members unlike the chusimp’o style, which consisted of many long and curved members. Due to the poor financial situation of most temples and monasteries, the quality of the wooden members deteriorated. To restore temples and monasteries after the Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598, members from old buildings were also reused. Aesthetic quality was also a factor in the prevalence of the tap’o style, which requires a large number of kongp’o brackets between the roof and the columns, thus creating more room for gorgeous ornaments both inside and outside a temple building. Rites of all kinds were often held inside temple halls in the late Chosŏn period, and this led to ever greater efforts to make the interior look more splendid and gorgeous. As for the ancillary halls of temples, the ikkong style, which is a simplified version of the chusimp’o style of brackets, became widespread (Kim Tonguk 2007). During the Chosŏn period, rites were held in the hall where the main Buddha was installed, in the so‐called “three‐altar ritual” system. For example, the space for holding the Suryukchae (Water and Land ritual) at Chin’gwansa (Broad Ford Temple), which was designated as a temple for the performance of national rites in the early fifteenth century, was divided into three separate parts, enacted on the upper, middle, and lower altars. Around the sixteenth century, the three separate altars were relocated inside a single main hall. The upper altar, which was placed at the inner northern wall of the hall, contained the Three Jewels (the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṃgha); the middle altar placed at the inner eastern wall contained the heavenly figures of the three worlds; and the lower altar placed at the southern wall contained the great kings, queens, people, and lonely spirits. The lower altars were later relocated to the inner western wall. The adoption of this “three‐altar” configuration had a great impact on the layout of paintings inside the main hall. At the upper altar, i.e. the so‐called sumidan altar (named after Mount Meru), a Buddha statue was placed, and a painting was hung behind it. Generally, only paintings were placed at the middle and lower altars. The paintings placed at the upper altar were associated with the main Buddha statues, while those at the middle and lower altars were associated with rites performed at the temple. In the late Chosŏn period, a Buddha triad consisting of Śākyamuni flanked by Bhaiṣajyaguru and Amitābha was usually placed in the main hall. In step with this arrangement, paintings of the Vulture Peak Assembly, the Pure Land of Bhaiṣajyaguru, and the Pure Land of Amitābha were hung behind the Buddha statues. Paintings hung at the middle altar, such as those of a set of three bodhisattvas called the “Samjang bodhisattvas,” or of the bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha with the Ten Kings of Hell and various guardians, were used for the Suryukchae ritual, the Yesujae (Ritual for the Advance Accumulation of Virtuous Deeds), and other more ordinary rituals. The paintings of the Samjang bodhisattvas were first made in the sixteenth century for the middle altar ― supposedly for use in the Suryukchae or Yesujae rituals (Chŏng Myŏnghǔi 2013). Paintings of Kṣitigarbha bodhisattva and the Ten Kings of Hell were hung behind a Kṣitigarbha statue in the Chijangjŏn (Kṣitigarbha Hall) or the Myŏngbujŏn (Hades Hall). They were also used at the middle altar in the main hall of a temple without a dedicated Hades Hall (Chŏng Myŏnghǔi 2013). This suggests that the main hall was used as a space for the rituals such as Yesujae in which the spirits



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of the dead were guided to the Pure Land. It appears that paintings of Kṣitigarbha bodhisattva were used for different purposes, given that the one at the Myŏngbujŏn of Ch’ŏnǔnsa (Hidden Spring Temple) was identified as a painting for the upper altar, while the one in the main hall was recorded as a painting for the middle altar. The lower altar is a space for the performance of food‐serving rites. Virtuous deeds provided through the upper and middle altars are culminated through the food‐serving rite, which was intended to deliver souls suffering from the agonies of loneliness and pain. At first, the lower altar was installed at the southern wall of the main hall or set up outside the main hall for special rites. Toward the eighteenth century, it came to be relocated to the western wall of the main hall, complete with designated wall paintings (Chŏng Myŏnghǔi 2013). The Nectar Ritual painting (kamnodo) was the only kind used at the lower altar. It depicts Buddhas and bodhisattvas as saviors in the upper part of the composition, a scene of ritual food‐offering for hungry ghosts in the middle part, and a scene of ritual food‐offering for the dead in the lower part. Several royally commissioned sculptures from the late Chosŏn period are extant. A seated wooden image of Vairocana Buddha currently in the National Museum, Seoul is particularly important because it was commissioned by the consort of Kwanghaegun in 1622 to be originally installed in Chasusa and Insusa, with deep connections to the royal court (Figure 14.6). It is also notable that the image was produced by the most

Figure 14.6  Vairocana Buddha. By Hyŏnjin. 1622. Wood. H. 117.5 cm. National Museum of Korea, Seoul. Photo by the author. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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famous monk‐sculptor in the country at the time. Many important sculptors of the seventeenth century from various schools participated in the carving of the image with their disciples; the resultant piece thus exemplifies a variety of styles. Twenty‐three statuettes currently in the Central Buddhist Museum in Seoul were commissioned by Queen Inmok (1584–1632) and completed in 1628 by the monk‐ sculptor Sŏngin. This group was originally found inside a five‐story stone pagoda at Sujongsa. Queen Inmok, Sŏnjo’s consort, had been expelled from the palace when Kwanghaegun ascended the throne, but was later reinstated in the royal household after the coup that brought King Injo (r. 1623–1649) to power. As an exemplary devotee of Buddhism among members of the Chosŏn royal court, she made offerings at many Buddhist services and personally copied many scriptures. The statuettes, including a seated Vairocana, demonstrate key characteristics of royally commissioned Buddhist works of the era. In addition to the use of gilt bronze, all feature a shared style: the lower part of the body is minimized in size, and the head and torso are proportionally large. Though small, these images are noteworthy in that all of the heads are tilted downward, as was the case for larger images made to be placed on altars in the late Chosŏn period. A seated Avalokitesv́ ara image in the Avalokites ́vara Hall at Songgwangsa in Sunch’ŏn was commissioned by Prince Kyŏngan (1644–1665) and his wife. Prince Kyŏngan was the third son of Crown Prince Sohyŏn (1612–1645), Injo’s son; due to a set of complicated and difficult historical circumstances, Prince Kyŏngan had been orphaned and sent into exile at the age of four. The wooden image of Avalokites ́vara was commissioned three years before the end of his brief life, ironically as a prayer for his and his wife’s longevity. The pronounced chin on the square face and the strong sense of three‐dimensionality in the handling of the drapery folds are characteristics of the later‐phase style of the sculptor Hyehu˘i (Song Ŭ nsŏk 2012). In 1789 Chŏngjo moved the tomb of his father (Crown Prince Sado) to Hyŏllyungwŏn in Hwasŏng, and in 1790 he built the temple Yongjusa next to the new tomb. A seated trio of Buddhas of the Three Directions were enshrined there (Figure 14.7). A document for the commission of these three near identical images was discovered inside the canopy of the main hall says: “Twenty sculptors including Sanggye, Sŏlhun, Kyech’o, and Ponghyŏn created the sculptures.” A different artist took charge of each of the three wooden images: Ponghyŏn led the production of the Amitābha image; Sangsik the Bhaiṣajyaguru; and Kyech’o the Śākyamuni. All were important sculptors of the eighteenth century. Although individual differences are seen in the details of the faces and robes as well as the proportions, hand gestures, and handling of the drapery, the gilt images demonstrate a general consistency (Ch’oe Sŏnil 2003). Although no confirmed royally commissioned Buddhist paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been discovered as of yet, three extant works may have been patronized by the royal house. A large banner painting of Five Buddhas’ Assembly at Ch’ilchangsa (Seven Sage Temple) in Ansŏng was possibly commissioned by Queen Inmok in 1628 (Figure 14.8); a Nectar Ritual painting (1681) currently in the Uhak Cultural Foundation, and a large banner painting (1735) at Pongsŏnsa (Respect Ancestor Temple) in Namyangju were donated by court ladies. The court



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Figure 14.7  Sā́ kyamuni, Bhaiṣajyaguru, and Amitābha Buddhas. By Kyech’o and others. 1790. Wood. Sā́ kyamuni: H. 106.5 cm. Yongjusa, Hwasŏng, Kyŏnggi Province. Source: Korea Open Government License. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

ladies seem to have commissioned the works at the behest of women of the royal family. The use of large banner paintings began during the late Chosŏn period when outdoor rituals held in the courtyard outside the main hall of a temple became more frequent. With the nineteenth century we find a large number of extant Buddhist paintings produced through royal patronage. Buddhism served as a calming force in the face of the era’s chaotic events, and kings, queens, concubines, and royal in‐laws, as well as many court ladies, participated in the donation of Buddhist images. The primary beneficiaries of such images were the temples in Seoul and the surrounding Kyŏnggi area that had deep connections to the royal household. These nineteenth‐century paintings tend to be large in scale and elaborately decorated. It appears that many different paintings were produced using a single model (Chang Hŭijŏng 2001). A large‐scale banner painting in the temple Hǔngch’ŏnsa, the Buddhas of the Three Bodies (trikāya), was commissioned in 1832 by Kim Chosun (1765–1832), the father‐in‐law of King Sunjo (r. 1800–1834) and a powerful late Chosŏn political player himself, along with several other members of the royal family (Songch’ŏn et  al. 2011). The painting’s simple composition is unusual; the painter chose to portray only the three Buddhas and their disciples, leaving out the rest of the figures usually depicted of this theme. This composition, which follows that of a painting (1735) Pongsŏnsa, became a characteristic feature of nineteenth‐century large banner paintings (Chŏng Myŏnghǔi 2013). The monk‐painter who produced the work, Sinsŏn, lived at Yongjusa and was a leading figure among the monk‐painters of the Kyŏnggi area.

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Figure 14.8  Five Buddhas Assembly. By Pŏp’yŏng. 1628. Banner painting; colors on silk. 661.0 × 407.3 cm. Ch’ilchangsa, Ansŏng, Kyŏnggi Province. Photo: courtesy of Research Institute of Sungbo Cultural Heritage. (See color plate section for color ­representation of this figure.)

Similar simplified compositions can be found in royally commissioned works from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century in Seoul and the surrounding Kyŏnggi area such as the large banner painting, Assembly on the Vulture Peak (1886), donated by the royal concubine Kyŏngbin (from the Kim clan), currently housed at Pongǔnsa in Seoul, and another large banner painting, Amitābha (1901) offered by the royal concubine Sunbin (from the ŏm clan; 1854–1911). A painting, Amitābha (1882) at Kyŏnsŏngam (Seeing Nature Hermitage) in Namyangju was produced by monk‐ painters Ponggan and Yakhyo at the behest of the same royal concubine Kyŏngbin. Although this small painting hung behind the altar in a small hermitage, it exemplifies the high quality of royally commissioned Buddhist paintings in its sumptuous colors, elaborate details, and stable composition.



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Monk‐Artists Of the numerous temples destroyed across the country during the Japanese invasions in 1592–1598, many of the most historically significant ones were reconstructed over the following century. This work involved not only reconstructing the buildings themselves but also reproducing sacred objects necessary to the operation of the temples including statues, paintings, and ritual instruments. Notably, in seventeenth‐century Chosŏn, when many of the temples were rebuilt in the years immediately following the Japanese invasions, there was a significant rise in the production of sacred objects such as Buddhist altars, statues, paintings, and tools. The situation appears to be analogous to that of the early eighth century when Silla unified the three kingdoms after the wars with Paekche and Koguryŏ as well as with Tang China or that of the thirteenth century after the Mongol invasions of Koryŏ. Owing to the increasing need for reconstruction in various regions, the number of artisans or artists employed appears to have matched the necessity. As the number of artisans and artists involved in the construction of temples and the creation of many types of artworks for temples rose, it is presumed that there were several groups of monk who doubled as artists during the period. It was during the first half of the seventeenth century that monk‐sculptors began to form into groups or schools for their activities as artists. The schools formed in the seventeenth century for the production of Buddhist sculpture were greatly indebted to monks of the early seventeenth century who revived the traditions of Korean Buddhist sculpture that had disintegrated during the Japanese invasions. The major schools of sculptors whose heyday occurred in the seventeenth century include the Hyŏnjin‐Ch’ŏnghŏn school, Ŭ ngwŏn‐In’gyun school, Suyŏn school, Pŏmnyŏng school, and Muyŏm school, while those between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries include the Tanǔng‐T’angmil school, Sǔngho school, Saengnan school, and Chinyŏl‐Sangjŏng school. The Hyŏnjin‐Ch’ŏnghŏn school is regarded as the most active group of Buddhist sculptors during the late Chosŏn period. The school was founded by two monk‐ sculptors, Hyŏnjin and Ch’ŏnghŏn, who were active in the first half of the seventeenth century. They were succeeded by Sǔngil, Ǔ nghye, Hǔijang and Tojam in the second half of the seventeenth century, by Chinyŏl and T’aewŏn in the first half of the eighteenth century and, finally, by Sangjŏng and Kyech’o in the second half of the eighteenth century. Records reveal that Hyŏnjin participated as the head sculptor in many restoration projects of Buddhist temples and monasteries devastated during the Japanese invasions. The fact that he led a team of sculptors in a project to create Buddhist statues to be enshrined in Chasusa and Insusa under royal patronage suggests that he was regarded by his contemporaries as the finest sculptor of their time (Song Ŭ nsŏk 2004). A seated clay Buddha triad in the main hall of Pŏpchusa (Dharma Residence Temple) in Poǔn is widely regarded as his greatest masterpiece. Viewers are overwhelmed by a sense of presence and the serene atmosphere created by the magnificent appearance of the three Buddhas. The artistic achievements of Sǔngil, Ǔ nghye, and Hǔijang, whose careers flourished in the mid‐ and late‐seventeenth century, are represented by a wooden seated Buddha triad in the main hall of Pŏmŏsa

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(Nirvana Fish Temple) in Pusan. Each statue features a thick, voluminous body creating a fine sense of balance and stability. The Ŭ ngwŏn‐In’gyun school was formed by the two monk‐sculptors Ŭ ngwŏn and In’gyun, who were active in the first half of the seventeenth century, and was succeeded by Samin in the second half of the century. Their remaining works suggest that their activity was largely focused on the eastern area of South Chŏlla and some parts of North Chŏlla provinces. One early example of the works produced by the school can be seen in a wooden seated Amitābha Buddha made in 1624 and enshrined in the Kwangwŏnam (Broad Distant Hermitage) of the temple Songgwangsa in Sunch’ŏn. The statue is marked by an imposing figure with a voluminous oval face. Elsewhere, a seated clay Buddha triad and a set of the Sixteen Arhats at the Kwisinsa (Join Faith Temple) in Kimje made by In’gyun in 1633, characterized by an imposing physical appearance, a plump face, and rhythmic movements of the robe’s folds, are further great examples of the school (Son Yŏngmun 2006). The Suyŏn school was represented by Suyŏn and Yŏngch’ŏl, who were active in the first half of the seventeenth century, and by Unhye and Kyŏngnim in the second half of the century. The style established by the school underwent significant change when it came under the leadership of Unhye. The new style is represented by a statue of Kṣitigarbha bodhisattva made by Unhye and enshrined at Ssangbongsa (Double Peak Temple) in Hwasun, is characterized by a square face, a thick neck, broad shoulders, and an elaborately carved robe. The Pŏmnyŏng school, established by Pŏmnyŏng in the first half of the seventeenth century, was continued by his pupils Hyehǔi and Chonǔng, who put their own imprint on the style during the second half of the century. The style as developed by Hyehǔi is represented by a seated wooden Avalokites ́vara bodhisattva he carved in 1655, now enshrined in the Wŏnt’ongbojŏn at the temple Pŏpchusa. The statue features a square face with angled jaw, elaborately rendered drapery folds falling between the legs, and unique protuberances on the ears. The Muyŏm school was represented by two monk‐sculptors, Muyŏm and Haesim. Of the two, Muyŏm created works characterized by a face displaying inner energy and a three‐dimensional rendition of drapery folds, as shown by a seated wooden image of Vairocana Buddha carved in 1650 and enshrined at Piraesa (Arrive Flying Temple) in Taejŏn (Mun Myŏngdae 2006). The Tanǔng‐T’angmil school was formed by the two monk‐sculptors who were active between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in North Kyŏngsang and Kangwŏn provinces. The style established by the school is best represented by a Śākyamuni Buddha triad at Puryŏngsa (Buddha’s Shadow Temple) in Ulchin, which is characterized by rather abruptly protruding nose and ears, and symmetry between the outer robe and the garment over the shoulders. A seated wooden Amitābha Buddha triad made in 1684 and enshrined in the main hall of the Yongmunsa (Dragon Gate Temple) in Yech’ŏn also shows characteristic features of the school’s style (Sim Chuwan 2006). The Saengnan school established by a group of monk‐sculptors including Ch’ungok and Hach’ŏn as well as Saengnan was active between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries around South Chŏlla and South Kyŏngsang



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provinces. The statues made by the artists such as those enshrined in the main Buddha hall and the Sukhāvatī Hall at the temple Ssangbongsa in Hwasun in 1694 are characterized by a dignified appearance, and a stout body covered with an elaborately carved robe, overwhelming viewers with the primal spiritual force emanating from it (Ch’oe Sŏnil 2000). The monk‐sculptors of the Sǔngho school, including Sangnyun, Suyŏn, and Pŏpchong, gained popularity with works full of primitive energy made by using stone with levels of zeolite produced at Mount Pulsŏk in Kyŏngju. At the height of their activity between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the sculptors produced statues for temples mostly in Kyŏngsang Province, represented by a stone seated Kṣitigarbha bodhisattva with the Ten Kings of Hell made in 1678 and enshrined in the Hades Hall of Tŏksa (Virtue Temple) in Ch’ŏngdo (Kim Kirung 2007; Yi Hǔijŏng 2008). Finally, there was a group of monk‐sculptors active in the eighteenth century who formed the Chinyŏl‐Sangjŏng school, which was connected through Chinyŏl’s master, Tojam, with the monk‐artists of the Hyŏnjin‐Ch’ŏnghŏn school, such as Sǔng’il, Ǔ nghye, and Hǔijang, who had enjoyed their heyday in the seventeenth century. The Chinyŏl‐Sangjŏng school was also connected to the style of T’aewŏn, who had influenced Sangjŏng and led him to transmit his style to a later generation of monk‐ sculptors including Kyech’o and Ponghyŏn. The style originating from the works of Chinyŏl and Sangjŏng is characterized by a sturdy, voluminous body, a serene face, and finely carved elaborate drapery folds (Ch’oe Sŏnil 2003 and 2006). During the seventeenth century many temples and monasteries were reconstructed, which led to the emergence of schools of monk‐painters as well as sculptors. Schools of monk‐painters would work together to produce a Buddhist painting by a division of labor. It appears that the master‐disciple relationship naturally formed among these schools. Among the schools that engaged in such activities in the Ch’ungch’ŏng Province area were those led by the monks Sin’gyŏm, Myŏngok, and Ǔ ngnyŏl. The school led by Sin’gyŏm made a wall painting for Posalsa (Bodhisattva Temple) in Ch’ŏngju in 1649 and another one at Piamsa (Stele Rock Temple) in Sejong in 1657. As for the school led by Myŏngok, a painting dated 1653 at Yŏngsusa (Divine Water Temple) in Chinch’ŏn is their most representative work. The school led by Ǔ ngnyŏl painted one work at Sinwŏnsa (New Origin Temple) in Kongju dated 1644 and another at Sudŏksa (Cultivate Virtue Temple) in Yesan dated 1673. Meanwhile, the school led by Ch’ŏnsin, which was active in the Chŏlla Province area, produced such representative works as the Vulture Peak Assembly at Ssanggyesa (Double Valley Temple) in Hadong and at Hǔngguksa (Develop Country Temple) in Yŏsu dated to 1688 and 1693 respectively. Monk‐painters were highly productive in the eighteenth century. Ǔ igyŏm made himself conspicuous for his talent in the provinces of Kyŏngsang, Chŏlla, and Ch’ungch’ŏng in the early eighteenth century, and was considered the greatest monk‐painter of the late Chosŏn period (Figure 14.9). He also produced outstanding disciples such as Kǔngch’ŏk, Saengmin, and Ch’aein among others (An Kwisuk 1994 and 1995). Some of his disciples gathered and created a group of monk‐painters at Mount Chogye in Sunch’ŏn. They included P’yŏngsam, Sǔngyun, and Hwayŏn in the late eighteenth century and K’waeyun, Toil, Ch’ŏnyŏ,

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Figure 14.9  Śākyamuni Assembly. By Ŭigyŏm. 1725. Hanging scroll; colors on silk. 221.0 × 187.5 cm. Songgwangsa, Sunch’ŏn, South Chŏlla Province. Photo: courtesy of Songgwangsa Museum, Sunch’ŏn. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

and Naewŏn in the nineteenth century. Ǔ igyŏm was skilled at traditional landscape paintings with ink and light colors. He engaged in diverse activities, creating a new style of Buddhist paintings based on books of Buddhist rituals as well as sculpting unique Buddha images. In the Kyŏngsang Province area, monk‐painters like Ǔ igyun, Segwan, and Imhan produced works at Tonghwasa (Paulownia Flower Temple) in Taegu, Chikchisa (Straight Finger Temple) in Kimch’ŏn, and T’ongdosa (Through Salvation Temple) in Yangsan (Yi Yongyun 2015). In particular, Ǔ igyun, originally based and active in the Taegu area at the temple Tonghwasa, moved around a lot in his ministry. He taught disciples like Ch’ejun, Sŏngmin, K’waemin, and Segwan at Chikchisa in Kimch’on, and also left works there as well as at Namjangsa (South Long Temple), among others. Imhan, also from the temple T’ongdosa painted pictures exuding a strong sense of color. In addition to T’ongdosa, he was productive at a number of other temples and monasteries, including Sŏngnamsa (South Stone Temple) and Unmunsa (Cloud Gate Temple), and also produced various disciples, notably, P’o’gwan, Yusŏng, and Chiyŏn (Kim Lena 2011). In the nineteenth century, monks from the area of Kyŏngsang and Kyŏnggi provinces were also active in producing Buddhist art. The monk Ǔ ngsang from Kimnyongsa



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(Gold Dragon Temple) in Mun’gyŏng, Kyŏngsang led a school of painters at Mount Sabul and produced disciples like Sewŏn, Chinch’ŏl, and Kijŏn. In the Kyŏnggi area, monks like Sanggyŏm, Min’gwan, and Yŏnhong were also active. They painted a work now kept at the temple Yongjusa in Hwasŏng, which was built to pray for King Chŏngjo in 1790. They also produced new generations of disciples including Yŏnghwan, Ch’anghwa, and Ǔ ngsŏ, active in the late nineteenth century; Ch’ŏllyu, Ch’ugyŏn, and Yak’yo, active between the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and Munsŏng and Ilsŏp, active in the early twentieth century. (Kim Lena 2011; Ch’oe Yŏp 2012). It appears that, in the late Chosŏn period, groups of monks skilled in architecture were active, just as active as those skilled in Buddhist paintings and statues. In the seventeenth century, a group of monks led by Kagwŏn engaged in the reconstruction of the main hall of various temples and monasteries including Songnimsa (Pine Forest Temple) in Ch’ilgok, Pukchijangsa (North Kṣitigarbha Temple) in Taegu, and Unmunsa in Ch’ŏngdo. Other groups engaged in similar activities, such as a group led by Sǔngwŏn at the temple Songgwangsa in Sunch’ŏn and nearby areas, and another group led by Wŏr wŏn around Mount Chiri (O Sedŏk 2014). There were other groups of monk‐architects engaged in similar activities during the course of the eighteenth century. Among the most active were a group led by monk Chohŏn, who reconstructed buildings of temples at Pŏmŏsa in Pusan, T’ongdosa in Yangsan, and Puryŏngsa in Ulchin; a group led by Monk Kangmin, who applied skills developed in the northern area of Korea to the main halls of Tonghwasa in Taegu, Ssanggyesa (Double Valley Temple) in Nonsan, and Naesosa (Come Recover Temple) in Puan; and a group led by Monk K’waeyŏn, who carried out activities in Mihwangsa (Beauty Yellow Temple) in Haenam, Pulgapsa (Buddha First Temple) in Yŏnggwang, Pulguksa (Buddha Land Temple) in Kyŏngju. Another group led by Minyŏl carried out similar activities throughout the country in the nineteenth century (O Sedŏk 2014). All of these monk‐architects had their own unique architectural philosophy.

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Glossary Anbyŏn [Anbyeon] 安邊 Andong 安東 Ansŏng [Anseong] 安城 Ch’aein [Chaein] 彩仁 Changhǔng [Jangheung] 長興 Ch’anghwa [Changhwa] 瑲華 Ch’angnyŏng [Changnyeong] 昌寧 Changyuksa [Jangyuksa] 莊陸寺 Chasusa [Jasusa] 慈壽寺 Ch’ejun [Chejun] 體俊 Chijangjŏn [Jijangjeon] 地藏殿 Chikchisa [Jikjisa] 直指寺 Ch’ilchangsa [Chiljangsa] 七長寺 Ch’ilgok [Chilgok] 漆谷 Chinch’ŏl [Jincheol] 震徹 Chinch’ŏn [Jincheon] 鎭川 Chin’gwansa [Jin’gwansa] 津寬寺 Chinyŏl [Jinyeol] 進悅, 震悅, 振悅 Chion’in (J) 知恩院 Chiri [Jiri] 智異(山) Chiyŏn [Jiyeon] 指演 Chogye [Jogyeo] 曹溪(山) Chohŏn [Joheon] 祖軒 Ch’ŏllyu [Cheollyu] 喆侑 Chŏng Hyŏnjo [Jeong Hyeonjo] 鄭顯組 Chŏngam [Jeongam] 井巖(山) Ch’ŏngdo [Cheongdo] 淸道 Ch’ŏnghŏn [Cheongheon] 淸憲 Chŏnginsa [Jeonginsa] 正因寺 Chŏngjo [Jeongjo] 正祖 Ch’ŏngju [Cheongju] 淸州 Chŏngŏbwŏn [Jeongeobwon] 淨業院 Ch’ŏnsin [Cheonsin] 天信 Ch’ŏnsŏng [Cheonseong] 天聖(山) Chonǔng [Joneung] 祖能 Ch’ŏnǔnsa [Cheoneunsa] 泉隱寺 Ch’ŏnyŏ [Cheonyeo] 天如 chosadang [josadang] 祖師堂 Ch’ugyŏn [Chugyeon] 竺演 Chungjong [Jungjong] 中宗 Ch’ungok [Chungok] 忠玉, 冲玉 chusimp’o [jusimpo] 柱心包 Hach’ŏn [Hacheon] 夏天



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Hadong 河東 Haeinsa 海印寺 Haenam 海南 Haesim 海心 Hapch’ŏn [Hapcheon] 陜川 Hasadang 下舍堂 Hasŏngwi [Haseongwi] 河城尉 Hoeamsa 檜巖寺 Hojimun 護持門 Hōjūin (J.) 寶壽院 Hong Sang 洪常 Hǔijang [Huijang] 熙藏, 熙壯, 熙壯, 希藏 Hǔksŏksa [Heukseoksa] 黑石寺 Hǔngboksa [Heungboksa] 興福寺 Hǔngch’ŏnsa [Heungcheonsa] 興天寺 Hǔngguksa [Heungguksa] 興國寺 Hǔngsŏn Taewŏn’gun [Heungseon Daewongun] 興宣大院君 Hwasŏng [Hwaseong] 華城 Hwasun 和順 Hwayŏn [Hwayeon] 華演 Hyehu˘i [Hyehui] 惠熙, 慧熙 Hyŏllyungwŏn [Hyeollyungwon] 顯隆園 Hyŏnjin [Hyeonjin] 玄眞 Hyŏnjong [Hyeonjong] 顯宗 Hyujŏng [Hyujeong] 休靜 ikkong [ikgong] 翼工 Ilsŏp [Ilseop] 日燮 Imhan 任閑 In’gyun [Ingyun] 印均 Injo 仁祖 Injong 仁宗 Inmok 仁穆 Insŏng [Inseong] 仁聖 Insusa 仁壽寺 K’waemin [Kwaemin] 快旻 K’waeyŏn [Kwaeyeon] 快演 K’waeyun [Kwaeyun] 快允 Kagwŏn [Gagwon] 覺元 Kamnodo [Gamnodo] 甘露圖 Kangjin [Gangjin] 康津 Kangmin [Gagmin] 覺敏, 覺玟 Kan’gyŏng togam [Gangyeong dogam] 刊經都監 Kibokke [Gibokge] 祈福偈 Kijŏn [Gijeon] 琪銓 Kim Chosun [Kim Josun] 金祖淳

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Kimch’ŏn [Gimcheon] 金泉 Kimje [Gimje] 金堤 Kimnyongsa [Gimnyongsa] 金龍寺 Kōchi (J.) 高知 Kokubunji (J.) 國分寺 Komagane (J.) 駒ヶ根 Kongju [Gongju] 公州 kongp’o [gongpo] 栱包 Kōzenji (J.) 光前寺 Kǔngch’ŏk [Geungcheok] 亘陟 Kǔngnakchŏn [Geungnakjeon] 極樂殿 Kurye [Gurye] 求禮 K’waemin [Kwaemin] 快旻 K’waeyŏŏn [Kwaeyeon] 快演 K’waeyun [Kwaeyun] 快允 Kwallyongsa [Gwallyongsa] 觀龍寺 Kwanghaegun [Gwanghaegun] 光海君 Kwangju [Gwangju] 廣州 Kwangwŏnam [Gwangwonam] 廣遠庵 Kwanǔmsa [Gwaneumsa] 觀音寺 Kwisinsa [Gwisinsa] 歸信寺 Kyech’o [Gyecho] 戒初 kyeju [gyeju] 髻珠 Kyo [Gyo] 敎 Kyojong [Gyojong] 敎宗 Kyŏngan [Gyeongan] 慶安 Kyŏngbin [Gyeongbin] 慶嬪 Kyŏngbok [Gyeongbok] 景福(宮) Kyŏngju [Gyeongju] 慶州 Kyŏngnim [Gyeongnim] 敬林, 敬琳, 瓊琳 Kyŏnsŏngam [Gyeonseongam] 見性庵 Mihwangsa 美黃寺 Min’gwan [Mingwan] 旻官 Minyŏl [Minyeol] 敏悅 Mun’gyŏng [Mungyeong] 聞慶 Munjŏng [Munjeong] 文定(王后) Munsŏng [Munseong] 文性 Munsusa 文殊寺 Muwisa 無爲寺 Muyŏm [Muyeom] 無染 Myŏngbin [Myeongbin] 明嬪 Myŏngbujŏn [Myeongbujeon] 冥府殿 Myŏngjong [Myeongjong] 明宗 Myŏngok [Myeongok] 明玉 Myŏngsŏng [Myeongseong] 明成



FA I T H , R I T U A L , A N D   T H E   A R T S

Myŏngsuk [Myeongsuk] 明淑 Naesosa 來蘇寺 Naewŏn [Naewon] 乃圓 Namjangsa 南長寺 Namyangju 南楊州 Nonsan 論山 Odae 五臺(山) Piamsa [Biamsa] 碑巖寺 Piraesa [Biraesa] 飛來寺 P’ogwan [Pogwan] 抱冠 Pŏmnyŏng [Beomnyeong] 法靈 Pŏmŏsa [Beomeosa] 梵魚寺 Ponggan [Bonggan] 奉侃 Pongguksa [Bongguksa] 奉國寺 Ponghyŏn [Bonghyeon] 奉絃 Pongjŏngsa [Bongjeongsa] 鳳停寺 Pongsŏnsa [Bongseonsa] 奉先寺 Pongǔnsa [Bongeunsa] 奉恩寺 Pŏpchong [Beopjong] 法宗 Pŏpch’ŏnsa [Beopcheonsa] 法泉寺 Pŏpchusa [Beopjusa] 法住寺 Pŏp’yŏng 法浻 Porimsa [Borimsa] 寶林寺 Posalsa [Bosalsa] 菩薩寺 Pou [Bou] 普雨 Poǔn [Boeun] 報恩 Puan [Buan] 扶安 Pukchijangsa [Bukjijangsa] 北地藏寺 pulchŏn [buljeon] 佛殿 Pulgapsa [Bulgapsa] 佛甲寺 Pulguksa [Bulguksa] 佛國寺 Pulsŏk [Bulseok] 佛石(山) Pumo ǔnjung kyŏng [Bumo eunjung gyeong] 父母恩重經 P’ungsanjŏng [Pungsanjeong] 豊山正 Puryŏngsa [Buryeongsa] 佛影寺 Pusŏksa [Buseoksa] 浮石寺 P’yŏngsam [Pyeongsam] 評三 Ryūjōin (J.) 龍乘院 Sabul 四佛(山) Sado 思悼 Saengmin 色敏 Saengnan 色難, 色蘭, 賾蘭 sajik 司直 Samin 三忍, 三認 Samjang 三藏

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Sanggye 尙戒 Sanggyŏm [Sanggyeom] 尙謙 Sangjŏng [Sangjeong] 尙淨, 常淨 Sangsik 尙植 Sangwŏnsa [Sangwonsa] 上院寺 Segwan 世冠 Sejo 世祖 Sejong 世宗 Sewŏn [Sewon] 世元 Sillǔksa [Silleuksa] 神勒寺 Sindŏk [Sindeok] 神德 Sin’gyŏm [Singyeom] 信謙 Sinjŏng [Sinjeong] 神貞 Sinsŏn [Sinseon] 愼善 Sinwŏnsa [Sinwonsa] 新元寺 Sŏgwangsa [Seogwangsa] 釋王寺 Sohŏn [Soheon] 昭憲 Sohyŏn [Sohyeon] 昭顯 Sŏkpo sangjŏl [Seokbo sangjeol] 釋譜詳節 Sŏl Ch’ung [Seol Chung] 薛冲 Sŏlhun [Seolhun] 雪訓 Sŏn [Seon] (C. Chan; J. Zen) 禪 Songgwangsa 松廣寺 Sŏngin [Seongin] 性仁 Sŏngjong [Seongjong] 成宗 Sŏngmin [Seongmin] 碩敏 Sŏngnamsa [Seongnamsa] 石南寺 Songnimsa 松林寺 Sŏnjo [Seonjo] 宣祖 Ssangbongsa 雙峯寺 Ssanggyesa 雙磎寺, 雙溪寺 Sudŏksa [Sudeoksa] 修德寺 Sujongsa 水鍾寺 Sukpin [Sukbin] 淑嬪 sumidan 須彌壇 Sunbin 淳嬪 Sunch’ŏn [Suncheon] 順天 Sǔngho [Seungho] 勝湖 Sǔngil [Seungil] 勝日 Sǔngwŏn [Seungwon] 勝元 Sǔngyun [Seungyun] 勝允 Sunjo 純祖 Suryukchae [Suryukjae] 水陸齋 Suwŏn [Suwon] 水原 Suyŏn [Suyeon] 守衍



FA I T H , R I T U A L , A N D   T H E   A R T S

T’aejo [Taejo] 太祖 T’aejong [Taejong] 太宗 Taeungjŏn [Daeungjeon] 大雄殿 T’aewŏn [Taewon] 太元 T’angmil [Tangmil] 卓密 Tanǔng [Daneung] 端應 tap’o [dapo] 多包 Togapsa [Dogapsa] 道岬寺 Toil [Doil] 度鎰 Tojam [Dojam] 道岑 Tŏksa [Deoksa] 德寺 T’ongdosa [Tongdosa] 通度寺 Tonghwasa [Donghwasa] 桐華寺 Ŭ ibin [Uibin] 懿嬪 Ǔ igyŏm [Uigyeom] 義謙 Ǔ igyŏng [Uigyeong] 懿敬 Ǔ igyun [Uigyun] 義均 Ŭ isuk [Uisuk] 懿淑 Ulchin [Uljin] 蔚珍 Ǔ nghye [Eunghye] 應惠, 應慧 Ǔ ngjinjŏn [Eungjinjeon] 應眞殿 Ǔ ngnyŏl [Eungnyeol] 應悅 Ǔ ngsang [Eungsang] 應祥 Ǔ ngsŏk [Eungseok] 應釋 Ŭ ngwŏn [Eungwon] 應元 Unhye 雲惠, 雲慧, 云惠 Unmunsa 雲門寺 Wolch’ul [Wolchul] 月出(山) Wŏn’gaksa [Wongaksa] 圓覺寺 Wŏnt’ongbojŏn [Wontongbojeon] 圓通寶殿 Wŏrinch’ŏn’gang chigok [Worincheon’gang jigok] 月印千江之曲 Wŏr wŏn [Worwon] 月圓 Yakhyo 若效 Yamaguchi (J.) 山口 Yangju 楊州 Yangsan 梁山 Yech’ŏn [Yecheon] 醴泉 Yesan 禮山 Yesujae 豫修齋 Yi Chasil [Yi Jasil] 李自實 Yi Chongrin [Yi Jongrin] 李宗麟 Yi Chungsŏn [Yi Jungseon] 李重善 Yi Hǔngson [Yi Heungson] 李興孫 Yi Maenggǔn [Yi Maenggeun] 李孟根 Yŏju [Yeoju] 驪州

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Yŏngam [Yeongam] 靈巖 Yŏngch’ŏl [Yeongcheol] 靈哲, 靈澈 Yŏngdŏk [Yeongdeok] 盈德 Yŏnggwang [Yeonggwang] 靈光 Yŏnghwan [Yeonghwan] 永煥 Yŏngju [Yeongju] 榮州 Yongjusa 龍珠寺 Yongmunsa 龍門寺 Yŏngsanjŏn [Yeongsanjeon] 靈山殿 Yŏngsusa [Yeongsusa] 靈水寺 Yŏnhong [Yeonhong] 演弘 Yŏnsan’gun [Yeonsangun] 燕山君 Yŏsu [Yeosu] 麗水 Yujŏng [Yujeong] 惟政 Yusŏng [Yuseong] 有誠

Part IV

Modern & Contemporary Developments

15

Modern Korean Art in the Japanese Colonial Period Jungsil Jenny Lee

What does modernity mean for Korea? When did the modern period begin in Korean history? These are two crucial questions that are still discussed with controversy, due to tumultuous political, economic, and cultural changes that occurred in and around Korea during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This period was the most important era in modern Korean art, but also a time of Japanese colonialization (1910–1945) on the peninsula. Japanese domination, which had already begun before official annexation in 1910, overlaps with but is not equivalent to Korea’s Westernization and modernization. Nevertheless, they are conceptually and historically intertwined. In the same vein, “modern art” does not necessarily mean following European trends or a kind of “Occidentalism” for Korean artists. Western‐style art was so new to them in its materials, techniques, and ideas that they considered almost any oil painting mode “modern” in contrast to their traditional ink painting styles and aesthetics. In retrospect it is impossible to reach consensus on the question of whether Japanese colonization accelerated or hindered the modernization process in Korea. Yet we cannot deny that the introduction of modern art was, in fact, largely attributable to the Japanese art world, just as the rise of modern urban culture in the capital Seoul (called Kyŏngsŏng in the colonial period) was inseparable from Japanese colonial projects. At the same time, colonial cultural policy and imperial militarism, due to their weakening and manipulating of the social and national consciousness, induced a defeatist attitude among Korean artists. Such complexity and adversity caused great diversity in modern Korean art. Through the reception and transformation of new artistic modes and theories received during the Japanese colonial period, artists absorbed national and

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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international trends, creating modern art that provided the foundation for Korean art in the second half of the twentieth century. Contacts with European art and culture had already occurred during the eighteenth century when elite members of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) had become increasingly interested in adopting European studies and material culture through diplomatic contacts with Qing China. However, in the early nineteenth century, Korea’s conservative government harshly persecuted Catholicism, the religion closely linked with importation of European culture. Attempts by reformers to modernize the country were repeatedly suppressed and the elite art scene more or less reflected the overall dominance by conservative forces. The orchid paintings by Yi Haŭng (1820–1898), also known as Hŭngsŏn taewŏn’gun, the father of King Kojong (r.1863–1907) and powerful regent of the “hermit kingdom” in the latter half of the nineteenth century, are good examples of this dominance (Eckert 1990: 178–198). The Chosŏn government reinforced its seclusion policy after battles against French forces in 1866, which launched a campaign against Korea in retaliation for the execution of French Catholic priests, and in response to the United States’ attempts to open Korean ports in 1871. By contrast, Japan ended its feudal military government, during the same period, restoring imperial rule with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, accepting Western educational systems and technology, and reforming its administration to emerge internationally as an imperial power. In 1876 Chosŏn was forced to open its ports to Japan under an unequal treaty for trade relations. It also opened its ports to other countries, including the United States and Russia. Inner turmoil followed in Korea due to sociopolitical tension leading to soldiers’ uprisings (Imo Incident, 1882), a failed coup by reformists (Kapsin Coup, 1884), and peasant movements (Tonghak Uprising, 1894), all of which were quelled by the intervention of Chinese and Japanese armies. In an effort at political reform (Kabo Reforms, 1894), Kojong (r. 1863–1907) proclaimed the advent of the “Great Korean Empire” (Taehan cheguk, 1897–1910) and made himself emperor, renouncing the centuries‐old supremacy of the Chinese empire on the peninsula. This break with tradition was meant as a step to reconstruct the declining state as a modern nation. The Korean government and Western missionaries also founded modern institutions such as schools and hospitals. Nevertheless, after victories in the Sino‐Japanese (1894–1895) and Russo‐Japanese (1904–1905) wars, Japan deprived Korea of diplomatic rights in 1905 and annexed Korea in 1910. While Korea underwent tremendous changes during the colonial period due to physical and psychological suppression by the Japanese, the country was also widely exposed to Western culture, albeit mainly through a Japanese filter. Colonization ended in 1945 when Korea was liberated with Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War (1937–1945), but the country was soon divided ideologically, resulting in the devastating Korean War (1950–1953). Within this historical context, art historians have argued for various dates marking the beginning of modern art in Korea, some starting as early as the eighteenth century, when painters adapted certain European concepts of art (Yi Sŏng‐mi 2015: 1–5). Several events serve as markers for different hypotheses (Ahn 2009: 15–20): during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when new ideas for reforming culture and society appeared in Confucian intellectual circles, known as “Practical Learning”



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(sirhak), along with new trends in painting, such as true‐scenery (chin’gyŏng, aka “true‐view”) landscape and genre painting (O Kwangsu 2000:15–16); when Chosŏn opened to the West during the 1870s and adopted Western techniques of illusionism (Yi Kyŏngsŏng 1998: 22–23); during the late nineteenth century, when cultural self‐ awareness emerged (Ch’oe 1998: 22); when the new system of writing and visual representation in school textbooks and print media was formulated during the 1890s (Hong 2009: 12–15); when Korean Western‐style oil painters first appeared during the 1910s (Kim Youngna 1993: 155); during the 1920s when the modern idea of individuality started to be accepted (Kim Hyŏnsuk 1995: 6–37); and when Korea became independent from Japan in 1945 (Sŏ 1994: 10). There are even radical positions stating that there was no modern period in Korea or that modern art emerged during the 1970s at the earliest (Kim Yunsu 1975). Considering these theories of the origins of Korean modern art, enormous ambiguity and controversy surrounds its current definition and historical positioning. Therefore, instead of defining the starting point of modern art in Korea, this chapter attempts to illuminate various aspects of modern Korean art, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presenting examples of representative artists who sought to create their own modernity under and beyond colonial rule.

Influx of Western Culture before Japanese Colonization During the 1880s to the 1900s, after Korea’s ports opened and increasing numbers of foreign visitors and residents arrived, the Korean experience of Western technology and culture (which began in the mid‐eighteenth century, mostly via China) surged. The most noticeable changes in the public realm appeared in the form of urban architecture. Examples include modern schools, hospitals, and church buildings established by Catholic and Protestant missionaries, such as Eugene Coste (1842–1896) and Henry Appenzeller (1858–1902). Modern architecture also appeared in the form of legation, commercial, and residential buildings, often designed by Western architects residing in Korea, such as Henry Gordon (1854–1951). The new architecture introduced Neo‐Gothic, Neo‐Renaissance, and other contemporaneous Western styles, often blending new building components and materials with local traditional structures, thereby creating a distinctive modern architecture on the peninsula. The Great Korean Empire also adopted Western‐style architecture for some royal palace buildings in the 1900s. Tŏksu Palace, one of the royal palaces in Seoul, is a neoclassical stone and brick structure built by British and Russian architects that was used as a reception hall for foreign ambassadors and as a royal private residence. The Korean royal family actively adopted Western ways of living in the palace, changing their traditional attire, tableware, furniture, and stationery to Western designs (Moon 2014: 69–78). Photography, first introduced to Korea in the early 1880s, had the most significant impact on forming a new visual culture. As can be seen in many contemporaneous portraits, photography not only promoted naturalistic representations in paintings but also became an important means of propagating Korea’s new image. US diplomat

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Percival Lowell (1855–1966) took the earliest surviving photograph of King Kojong in 1884 (Kwŏn 2011: 58–69). Later, several Western painters such as Henry Landor (1865–1924) from the United Kingdom, Dutch‐American Hubert Vos (1855–1935), and Scotswoman Constance Tayler (1868–1948) received audiences with the king and painted Western‐style portraits of royal family members and court officials. They also did numerous sketches of common people and local scenery. These naturalistic portraits and illustrations of the country were mainly published in travelogues. Hubert Vos’s 1899 life‐sized portrait of the standing Emperor Kojong, done in oil on canvas, was presented at a major international event, the Paris Exposition of 1900. With its natural hues, chiaroscuro, and soft brushwork, Vos’s portrait shows the king smiling and in a relaxed posture, creating an impression quite different from the stiff formal portraits done in a traditional manner by Korean court painters (see Figure 10.1 in Cho Insoo’s essay). Also in 1900, Léopold Remion, a French ceramic artist, was invited to Korea by the court to establish a joint Korean‐French school for the decorative arts. He stayed for several years, but unfortunately the plan was never realized. In addition to Western artists who traveled and resided in Korea, several Japanese artists were active on the peninsula during the 1890s and 1900s. They taught modern Japanese painting modes such as so‐called “Southern school” literati painting and a modernized version of Japanese painting (J. nihonga) in their studios and presented their works in exhibitions (Chung 2006: 76). Inspired by the practice and business of their Japanese colleagues, leading Korean court painters and calligraphers such as An Chungsik (1861–1919) and Cho Sŏkchin (1853–1920), began training a younger generation of Korean artists in their private studios. An and Cho were followers of Chang Sŭngŏp (1843–1897), the nineteenth‐century master known for his excellent command of classical ink techniques and versatility in all painting genres. The two court painters had also been exposed to Western technology and industrial drawing methods during an official visit to China in 1881. After the modern public school system was institutionalized following the Kabo Reforms, primary schools started to include drawing and craft classes within their regular curriculum in 1906, and art teachers from Japan were invited. In 1907, the first state‐designated art textbook, Tohwa imbon (Drawing Manual), was published and used in these schools until 1910. In another attempt to introduce modern cultural institutions, in 1909, Emperor Sunjong (r.1907–1910) established the Yi Family Royal Museum on palace grounds, which was the initial stage of a museum that was open to the public. In addition to these state‐driven cultural projects, autonomous art markets, which had thrived during the late nineteenth century, continued to grow in the modernizing capital, adding antique and art‐supply shops that now catered to foreign residents and visitors. These foreigners also contributed to the success of painters in major port cities. These painters included Kim Chun’gŭn, who was active in the 1880s–1900s in Pusan, Chemulp’o and Wŏnsan, and whose vivid illustrations of Korean folk life were exported in large numbers (Woo Hyunsoo 2014: 306–307). Today, a considerable number of Kim’s works are found not only in Korea but also in major collections in Europe and America. In sum, the era of the opening of Korean ports preceding Japanese colonization was a period of germination when modern concepts of art began to be tested. The



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new term “fine art” (misul) appeared in Korea during the early 1880s as an adaptation of the same term in Japanese (bijutsu), written in Chinese characters but pronounced differently in each languages. Initially, Japanese art circles used this direct translation of the term, which was conventionally used in German, French, and English at the time, only for their adaptation of European concepts. The first indication of the concept of fine art appeared with regard to industrial and technical developments in the craft and design fields. Later, with the emergence of modern education, exhibitions, and markets during the 1900s and 1910s in Korea, “fine art” began taking on the meaning of “art” as it is used nowadays and became central to reflections on Korean aesthetics and cultural identity (Hong 2009: 51–56).

Introduction of New Painting Modes in the 1910s During the first decade of Japanese colonization, which was characterized by harsh military suppression, the traditional term “painting and calligraphy” (sŏhwa) continued to be used among members of the political elite, artists, and intellectuals for creating, appreciating, and collecting art. This practice was closely connected to a tradition of social and political gatherings, out of which grew one of the first art schools for the public: the School of Painting and Calligraphy (Sŏhwa misulhoe). It was founded in 1912 with support from the Office of the Yi Royal Family, then already part of the colonial government. With the purpose of reviving Korean art, the school trained young students in courses under the supervision of An Chungsik and Cho Sŏkchin. Subsequently, in 1918, the first organized group of artists, the Association of Painting and Calligraphy (Sŏhwa hyŏphoe), was established by teachers and graduates of the School of Painting and Calligraphy. The purpose of the association was to study Asian and European art and develop old and new Korean art styles. All members were Korean, and many were conscious of their precarious colonial situation. In 1921, they organized the first annual exhibition in Korea and continued doing so until the group disbanded in 1937. While mostly showing ink paintings and calligraphies, exhibitions also included Western‐style paintings (sŏyanghwa or yanghwa). The leading court painter An Chungsik used ink and light colors on paper or silk for his landscape paintings, often with poetic calligraphy that implicitly expressed anti‐ colonial sentiments. For example, his two landscapes with the same title, Spring Dawn at Mount Paegak, done in the summer and fall of 1915, show Kyŏngbok Palace in front of Mount Paegak (Figure  15.1). Certain traces of traditional court painting, such as vertical composition and a blue‐green color scheme, indicate An’s deliberate attempt to revive the true‐scenery landscape tradition of the late Chosŏn period. The so‐called “Mi‐dots” texture of the mountain, brushwork relating to Mi Fu and Mi Youren of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), support his historical reference to the literati culture of China and Korea. Yet, to create a three‐dimensional space, An applied a Western‐style linear perspective in the foreground, located the buildings in layers among the dense foliage of the trees, and inserted scattered bands of clouds in the front and back of the palace ground. An Chungsik painted these right before the Japanese colonial government implemented its plan to dismantle Kwanghwamun, the

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Figure 15.1  An Chungsik. Spring Dawn at Mount Paegak. Summer 1915. Hanging scroll; light colors on silk. 125.9 × 51.4 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Korea, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

main gate to the royal palace, to build a new Government‐General Building. In contradiction to the title, these two landscapes actually show summer and autumn foliage. The title thus suggests a hidden meaning in association with Tang (618–907) Chinese poetry, such as the verse “in spring one sleeps, unaware of dawn” in Spring Dawn by Meng Haoran (689–740) and “the country is broken, yet hills and rivers remain; spring in the city, grasses and trees are dense” in Spring View by Du Fu (712–770). Through these references to poems that were well known among the educated elite, An found a way to express despair at the fate of his powerless country. Despite the use of traditional painting materials, ink and light colors on silk, these landscapes should indeed be seen as works of modernity due to their amalgamation of traditional concepts and the Western technique of evoking space. While relating to



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the East Asian tradition of subtly expressing political opposition through the title’s poetic associations, An Chungsik also relates to modernity in his critique of the colonial situation. During the 1910s, increasing numbers of Japanese modern artists visited and resided in Korea, presenting their artwork and teaching basic techniques of Western‐style painting (Kim Youngna 2001: 123–124). At the same time, talented and privileged art students in Korea sought to study Western‐style painting at Japanese educational institutions in Tokyo. However, what was taught both in Korea and Japan was a Japanized version of Western painting, or yōga. The most influential figure of the time was Kuroda Seiki (1866–1924), professor in the Western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Inspired by French Academic Realism and Impressionism, Kuroda created a Japanese hybrid style of oil painting based on the plein–air school of the late nineteenth century. This reinterpretation of European art by Japanese modern artists was what the first generation of Korean artists at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts during the 1910s learned. Returning to their home country in the second half of the decade, they pioneered the introduction of Western oil painting. Ko Hŭidong (1886–1965) set out as the first Korean to learn oil painting in 1909 and returned in 1915; Kim Kwanho (1890–1959) entered the school in 1911 and returned in 1916; Kim Ch’anyŏng (1893–1960) was at the same school from 1912 to 1917; and Na Hyesŏk (1896– 1946), the first female Korean modern artist, studied at the Tokyo Women’s School of Fine Arts and returned in 1918. Before moving to Tokyo, Ko Hŭidong was introduced to Western culture and art by his French teacher, the aforementioned Léopold Remion, while working as a court clerk at the palace in Seoul. He had also learned traditional ink painting from An Chungsik and Cho Sŏkchin. Ko went to Japan in 1909 to escape political turmoil and studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. For his graduation in 1915, he painted Impressionist self‐portraits in oil on canvas, two of which depicted him wearing formal Korean costumes. In a third self‐portrait, painted in Korea in the same year, he presents the artist self‐consciously as a modern painter (Figure 15.2). Ko sits in his studio on a hot summer day holding a fan, wearing an unbuttoned ramie shirt that reveals his bare chest. A bookshelf and framed painting are partly visible on the walls behind him. However, there is textual evidence that Ko Hŭidong was neither totally convinced about the new techniques and materials nor pleasingly accepted by Korean viewers. Therefore, this self‐portrait has also been interpreted as an indirect statement of Ko’s precarious situation as a professional artist (Kee 2013: 410–415). Notwithstanding such ambiguity, Ko was actively involved in promoting modern art in colonial Korea by teaching in high schools. As the only member practicing Western‐ style oil painting, his efforts were crucial to establishing the Association of Painting and Calligraphy (Kim Youngna 2005: 8–10). Eventually, however, Ko Hŭidong gave up oil painting and returned to the traditional East‐Asian medium of ink on silk or paper. Yet, the large numbers of his landscape output depicting Korean scenery attest to Ko’s familiarity with Western painting techniques and modern sensibility. Ko continued to exert considerable influence as artist, patron, and propagator of modern Korean art.

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Figure 15.2  Ko Hŭidong. Self‐Portrait. 1915. Oil on canvas. 61 × 46 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Kim Kwanho graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts the year after Ko Hŭidong’s return. Kim’s Sunset, done in 1916, gained the highest possible recognition in Japan by being awarded a Special Prize at the Ministry of Education Art Exhibition (J. Monbushō bijutsu tenrankai, or simply Bunten), the annual state‐­ sponsored ­exhibition in Japan. Yet to the Korean public, which had little exposure to modern art, the painting was particularly shocking, not only because of its uncommon technique but also because of its unconventional subject, nude women (Figure  15.3). Sunset ­followed the stylistic and aesthetic formula of French Symbolism and the Impressionism of Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898) as interpreted in Japan by Kuroda. Yet the subject was based on Kim’s recollection of a scene he had observed on the Taedong River in P’yŏngyang, his hometown. Kim’s award and his graduation as a top student ranked above his Japanese colleagues were big news, but for the sake of “public morality,” Korean newspapers would not publish this painting (Kim Youngna 2001: 128–129). In general, the Korean public agreed with censorship of such paintings based on Confucian morality. After presenting another nude painting in 1923 that was similarly rejected by the public, Kim stopped painting for thirty years. He only became active again in Impressionist oil painting in the 1950s in North Korea.



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Figure 15.3  Kim Kwanho. Sunset. 1916. Oil on canvas. 127.5 × 127.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Kim Ch’anyŏng was another skilled painter from P’yŏngyang who trained at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts during the mid‐1910s. Kim left a self‐portrait in the contemporaneous modes of plein‐air Impressionism and Romanticism for his graduation project in 1917. After returning to P’yŏngyang, he established the New Star Society (Saksŏnghoe) together with Kim Kwanho and taught Western‐style art to the next generation. Having witnessed collaborative movements of modern authors and artists in Tokyo, he also became involved with modernist writers’ groups and their literary publications in the early 1920s. Kim Ch’anyŏng wrote articles introducing Western art history and modern trends and designed cover pages for literary journals such as The Beginning (Kaebyŏk), Creation (Ch’angjo) and Spirit Ground (Yŏngdae) (Kim Hyŏnsuk 1998: 158–171). However, after the 1920s, he became more interested in collecting antiques than in oil painting or modern illustration. Thus, the establishment of modern Korean art during the 1910s was greatly inspired by Japanized modernism in technique and style. However, the colonial situation of their home country presented these pioneering artists with great challenges for their practice and display of Western‐style oil paintings. There are various reasons for the overall struggle of the first‐generation of Korean modern artists of the 1910s, including the lack of a positive reception of new trends from a conservative society, the difficulty in obtaining costly painting materials, and a lack of self‐confidence or

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commitment to being professional artists (Yun Pŏmmo 2000: 179–188). However, it is also apparent that initiating modern Korean art does not mean merely adopting new materials and applying Western styles in visual art. Whether painting in oil on canvas or with traditional ink on silk or paper, or whether engaging in painting or in literature, the pursuit of modernity required more than just the introduction of Western ­materials and techniques via Japan. Korean artists had to individually and collectively develop self‐conscious and unconventional ways within their colonial reality.

Quest for Modern Art in the 1920s The situation of the 1920s, when the second generation of artists who practiced Western‐style painting actively contributed to development of modern art in Korea, was closely related to the Independence Movement of March First, 1919 (Samil undong). A reaction to militaristic rule, this nationwide movement for Korea’s independence was violently quelled but changed the direction of Japan’s colonial policy. The colonial government replaced martial rule with a cultural assimilation strategy and allowed non‐governmental organizations and mass media to perform cultural activities. However, educational institutions and art exhibitions were strictly controlled so that Koreans would be assimilated into Japanese colonial culture. Paradoxically, this resulted in the rebellion of some Korean modern art groups. These newly formed groups engaged in exhibitions, art education and art criticism, debating their ideas of modernity and their identity under Japanese colonization. However, the power of cultural colonialism in the Korean art world grew stronger through state‐ sponsored exhibitions. In the 1920s, the numbers of artists pursuing Western styles increased in Korea due to the activities of the first‐generation modern artists who had returned from Japan and now taught at high schools, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), art institutions, and private studios. Students also went to Japan in increasing numbers to study new trends in Western oil painting and East Asian ink painting. The elite Tokyo School of Fine Arts, which required high qualifications and concentrated on teaching an academic style that was a mix of Neo‐Classical Realism and Impressionism, was still the preferred destination for Korean students. Nevertheless, other private schools in the Japanese capital with more liberal curricula also became attractive, such as the Tokyo Imperial Art School (J. Tōkyō teikoku bijutsu gakkō), the Pacific School of Fine Arts (J. Taiheiyō bijutsu gakkō), and the Cultural Institute (J. Bunka gakuin). Several Korean artists were also able to travel to Europe and the United States to experience Western‐style art directly. In accordance with Western trends and in contrast to East Asian tradition, they increasingly painted self‐portraits and nudes, subject matter that became emblematic of their understanding of being modern artists. Pae Unsŏng (1900–1978) was probably the first Korean who studied art in Europe. He worked as a servant for a wealthy Korean family but was able to study abroad by accompanying his master’s son to Japan and Germany. Pae studied economics at Waseda University in Tokyo from 1919, then moved to Berlin in 1922, where he



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turned to the study of European art and graduated as an honor student from the United National Schools of Free and Applied Arts (Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandte Kunst) in 1928. In 1927, one of his woodblock prints was selected for inclusion in the Salon d’Automne, the prestigious art exhibition held annually in Paris by the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Acedémie de peinture et sculpture). Pae continued to create woodblock prints and oil paintings of portraits and landscapes until his return to Korea in 1940. During the Korean War, he went to North Korea where he produced propaganda prints and paintings. Another painter who sought art education in Europe was Yi Chongu (1899–1979). After attending the Tokyo School of Fine Arts starting in 1918, he moved to Paris in 1925. There he studied Neo‐Classical oil painting, including the study of anatomy and the scientific compositional techniques for naturalism. Like Pae Unsŏng, Yi received an award at the Salon d’Automne in 1927 for his painting of a female nude and a still‐life with a doll. After returning to Korea in 1928, Yi passed on his experience in modern European painting to Korea’s art circles. Na Hyesŏk, known as the first woman artist in modern Korea, graduated from the Tokyo Women’s School of Fine Arts in 1917 and was involved in the March First Independence Movement of 1919. In 1921, she held a successful exhibition in Seoul. However, her style matured even more after she travelled to the West between 1927 and 1929, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and then the United States. Her landscapes of Europe and Korea in the manner of Fauvist Expressionism and Impressionism attest to her exposure to various modes of modern art. Na is also known as a feminist writer and activist, proponent of the so‐called New Woman (sin yŏsŏng), supporting the social and sexual liberation of Korean women. Along with intellectuals, women from other social strata, including school girls and even café women (due to their liberal attitudes towards marriage), called for change in the roles of women in the modernizing world of Kyŏngsŏng. The Fauvist self‐portrait in oil on canvas of 1928, in which Na presented herself as an independent, solemn New Woman, gives evidence of the social awareness of the time (Figure 15.4). One of the first Korean art students to study in the United States was Im Yongnyŏn (aka Im P’a, 1901–1950). Due to his participation in the March First Independence Movement, Im first escaped to China. In 1922 he started attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then moved to Yale University where he graduated as a top student. In 1929, he travelled to Europe and was recognized as a promising artist for his paintings of landscape and biblical narratives in the manner of Post‐Impressionism and Expressionism. While in Paris he met Paek Namsun (1904–1994), who was actively presenting her paintings to modern art group exhibitions. Paek was another woman artist who studied at the Tokyo Women’s School of Fine Arts in 1923 and painted landscapes and still lifes in oil on canvas in Korea. The two married and became known as a couple, engaging not only in modern art but also in the movement for national independence. After returning to Korea in 1930, they held numerous exhibitions and became influential mentors for young artists in P’yŏngyang. As mentioned above, the colonial government turned from military suppression towards measures of assimilation after the March First Independence Movement.

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Figure 15.4  Na Hyesŏk. Self‐portrait. 1928. Oil on canvas. 88 × 75cm. Photo: courtesy of the Suwon iPark Museum of Art. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

One such measure was the government sponsored and controlled Chosŏn Art Exhibition (Chosŏn misul chŏllamhoe, aka Chosŏn mijŏn, or simply Sŏnjŏn), established in 1922 and held annually until 1944. The show, modeled after the Ministry of Education Art Exhibition in Japan, was inaugurated for Japanese artists active in Korea but soon Korean artists’ works were also accepted. Selections were made by Japanese judges, mainly professors of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. Establishment of the Chosŏn Art Exhibition can also be regarded an act to counter activities of the aforementioned Association of Painting and Calligraphy led by An Chungsik, Cho Sŏkchin, and Ko Hŭidong, which started its annual exhibitions in 1921 to independently develop modern art and counter the impact of artists returning from Japan. The Chosŏn Art Exhibition was originally divided into three sections: Eastern‐ style or “Oriental” painting (tongyanghwa), Western‐style painting and sculpture, and calligraphy. The calligraphy section, included because of the traditional East Asian concept of a close relationship between painting and calligraphy, was eventually abolished and replaced by a craft section in 1932, following the structure of the Ministry of Education Art Exhibition which was then renamed as the Imperial Art Exhibition (J. Teikoku bijutsu tenrankai, or simply Teiten). Division of the painting sections into categories of Oriental and Western‐style painting, as well as



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the separation of painting from calligraphy, still affects understanding of and writing on modern Korean art. The Chosŏn Art Exhibition became a gateway to success for artists, and as such was the most influential site for transplanting Japanese art to Korea during the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition thus functioned as an instrument by which colonial authorities could implement cultural assimilation and influence the direction of modern Korean art. In the Western‐style painting section of the Chosŏn Art Exhibition, figure painting, still‐life, and landscape in the style of Japanese Academism (a kind of Neo‐Classical Impressionism), dominated and eventually resulted in Korean Academism. The Oriental painting section in the Chosŏn Art Exhibition was equivalent to the Japanese painting section in the Imperial Art Exhibition in Japan, but was named “Oriental” rather than “Korean” painting, reflecting the inclusive colonial concept. Selected artworks in this section were dominated by Japanese nanga and nihonga styles. For example, Kim ŭnho (1892–1979), who studied ink painting at the local School of Painting and Calligraphy in the late 1910s and then nihonga at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in the early 1920s, had a talent for sophisticated portraiture and received commissions from the royal family and high officials (Woo 2014: 289–293). Kim’s nihonga mode, characterized by delicately drawn brushwork, pastel colors, and an excessive attention to details and decorative patterns, often lacked vitality. Yet, because his works were often presented at the Chosŏn Art Exhibition, Kim’s idealized figure paintings became very influential. Later, during the Pacific War, Kim supported Japanese militarism through his paintings. After liberation, especially during the dictatorship of President Park Chung‐hee (1917–1979), he received official commissions for portraits of important historical figures. Nowadays, although his pro‐Japanese attitude and collaboration remains quite controversial, his influence on the later generation of Korean artists is undeniable. Meanwhile, art critics and theorists sought to counter the impact of colonial cultural policy by exploring the history and traditions of Korean art. The calligrapher and connoisseur O Sech’ang (1864–1953), son of the Chosŏn‐dynasty diplomat, Chinese interpreter, and collector O Kyŏngsŏk (1831–1897), built on nineteenth‐century elite culture in his art and completed the compilation of a History of Korean Painting and Calligraphy (Kŭnyŏk sŏhwasa) in 1917 (Lee 2012: 351–352). The text was published and distributed under the title Biographical Records of Korean Painters and Calligraphers (Kŭnyŏk sŏhwajing) in 1928 by the author and historian Ch’oe Namsŏn (1890–1957) and remains a major reference work for art historians. O Sech’ang and Ch’oe Namsŏn, who were political activists fighting against colonial rule and had led the March First Independence Movement, attempted to build a bridge between nineteenth‐century art criticism and the colonial art world to establish the legitimacy of an independent Korean art history (Hong 2013: 155). Another author, Pyŏn Yŏngno (1868–1961), published an essay on the “Theory of Oriental Painting” (Tongyanghwaron) in 1920, arguing that ink paintings following traditional methods should reveal the present zeitgeist, thereby encouraging other writers to present their own often polemical theories about how to define Korean art. Most authors agreed with the idea of modernization through adaptation of Western art and aestheticism, but there were also writers and artists who were concerned about Korean modernism simply being a transplant from

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the West and Japan. Such efforts and concerns also underlie the extensive exploration and documentation of Buddhist architecture, sculpture, pagodas, ceramics, and paintings by Ko Yusŏp (1905–1944). In the late 1920s Ko studied aesthetics and art history with Ueno Naoteru (1882–1973) at Keijō (K. Kyŏngsŏng) Imperial University in Seoul, where the faculty was entirely Japanese. Ko became director of the Kaesŏng Prefectural Museum in 1933 and is regarded as the first modern art historian in Korea (Kim Youngna 2010: 79–87). As a response to these efforts to explore and revive Korean traditions and as a reaction against new trends from Japan, a group of four young ink painters—Yi Sangbŏm (1897–1972), Pyŏn Kwansik (1899–1976), No Suhyŏn (1899–1978), and Yi Yongu (1904–1952)—formed the Society of Research Companions (Tongyǒnsa) in 1923. Its members aimed at a distinctly Korean form of ink painting, rejecting both the routine copying of ancient Chinese masters and the nihonga mode. They prompted a reform of Korean landscape painting by creating ink paintings of local scenery emphasizing individualized brushwork. Similar to the true‐scenery landscape painters of the late Chosŏn, these painters rejected ideal landscapes, concentrating on real places and the ordinary, humble, and everyday life of the countryside. Yi Sangbŏm, for example, attempted to break free from “conceptual” Chinese landscape formulae and searched for a new, ink painting mode that integrated the natural scenery of Korea with Western concepts of space and expressive shading. Most of Yi’s paintings reflect his hometown in the southwest of Korea with its fertile fields and low hills viewed in morning mist. Yi continuously produced such native landscape paintings infused profound Korean sentiments. He depicted ordinary scenes from daily life and portrayed the common people using short, sharp touches of the brush that resemble hooks. Starting in 1925, Yi’s work was also recognized by the jurors of the Chosŏn Art Exhibition, who continued to select the artist’s paintings for more than a decade. Pyŏn Kwansik, another member of the group, put less emphasis on naturalistic representation of the scenery than did Yi Sangbŏm and concentrated on exploring the formal properties of brush and ink. Pyŏn was a grandson of the aforementioned court painter Cho Sŏkchin and studied Japanese style “literati” painting (nanga) in Japan from 1925 to 1929, developing a distinct use of ink tonality. Starting out with painting landscapes with imaginary “ideal” motifs, he later turned to local scenery of mountains and villages on the Korean peninsula. His landscapes are characterized by free, rough, and dynamic brushwork, built through extensive use of dots and short strokes. In the 1950s and 1960s, Pyŏn painted a series depicting Mount Kŭmgang (Diamond Mountains) based on sketches he did during a visit there in 1937 (Figure  15.5). Through these works, he became known for his use of bold lines, unbalanced compositions with acute angles and no empty spaces, as well as for the small, humorous, yellow‐robed figures hiking in the landscape. With their concentration on local landscape scenery and emphasis on brushwork, members of the Society of Research Companions built on the eighteenth‐century true scenery tradition of Chŏng Sŏn (see Figure 11.1 in essay by Chin‐sung Chang) while integrating elements of modern painting. They thereby created a modern ink painting tradition that became the foundation for future generations of artists.



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Figure 15.5  Pyŏn Kwansik. Autumn at the Three Immortals Rock in Outer Mount Kŭmgang. 1966. Ink and light colors on paper. 125.5 × 125.5 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Diversity of Modern Art in Colonial Korea In Japan, the Taishō period (1912–1926) was an era of sociopolitical liberty that encouraged individualism and subjectivity in art and literature, which in turn stimulated the growing community of Korean artists in Seoul and other cities to try new modes and mediums. Korean artists presented their works in individual or small‐ group shows, but also in major exhibitions that concentrated on distinct manners such as Academic Realism, Impressionism or Post‐Impressionism, Social Realism, and the avant‐garde. Discourses in newspapers and literary magazines on modern Korean art intensified, particularly during the late 1920s, simultaneously addressing issues of modern individualism and the question of how to define a collective Korean identity under Japanese colonial rule. Controversial discussions of “Korean‐ness” within the pursuit of modernity and intense debates among critics over aestheticism versus realism provided the background and stage for the work of these artists. Some anti‐colonial activists raised their voices advocating nationalism through the pursuit of Social Realism. In the literary world, the first socialist writers’ group, KAPF (Esperanto: Korea Arista Proleta Federatio), was inaugurated in 1925 in opposition to the prevailing aesthetic position of “art for art’s sake.” Motivated by the success of

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the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, KAPF combined art and ideology, staging anti‐imperialist and anti‐colonialist events. In their opposition to art based merely on aesthetic ideas, which in their eyes was “decadent” and “parasitic,” KAPF artists focused on political goals. As a consequence of their verdict that art should be practical and useful, they mainly produced propagandistic cartoons, prints, and posters, and staged theatrical performances. Kim Pokchin (1901–1940), a pioneer in the newly introduced field of modern sculpture and an art critic, was a leader of the socialist movement. Kim studied sculpture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from 1920 to 1925, producing a wide range of works including traditional and modern subjects such as nudes, monumental statues of important Korean historical figures, and Buddhist sculptures. Because of his covert operations for the Communist Party, his commitment to Korea’s liberation from colonialism, and his fight for the people’s revolution against feudalism, he was imprisoned from 1928 to 1933. His fate is representative of that of many members of KAPF who were continuously hunted down by the Japanese imperial government until the group was disbanded in 1935. Still, this movement confronted colonial Korea with key issues of the oscillating relationship of modern art with nationalism and with avant‐garde aesthetics. During the same period, the colonial strategy of controlling Korean art also became obvious. The process of psychological assimilation and the ways in which the Japanese empire enforced suppression of art in the colony toward the end of colonial period can best be understood through “Pan‐Asianism,” originally advocated by Okakura Tenshin (aka Okakura Kakuzō, 1862–1913) who, in his 1903 book, The Ideals of the East, proclaimed that Asia should establish its own identity to stand against Western imperialism. Pan‐Asianism promoted cultural consolidation and collaboration among Asians and unmistakably argued for Japan’s pivotal role in Asia as manifested in colonial cultural policy. Encouraged by such ideas, many Korean painters endeavored to achieve modes distinct from Western art and find their cultural identities as a part of Asia, but this often resulted in nostalgic representations (Kim Hyŏnsuk 2001). An overarching concept of various modern art trends that began in the late 1920s was that of “Local Color” (hyangt’osaek or chibangsaek). While generally adhering to the idea of art for art’s sake in the purist, formalist sense, artists and advocates of Local Color also sought to express the atmosphere of Korea in terms of a unique color scheme but also in presenting local customs. In this respect, Local Color sought realization of a national art through representation of Korean scenes, spirit, and aesthetic sensibility. In 1928, artists opposing the KAPF’s socio‐political activities established the Green Country Society (Nokhyanghoe). Its main founders Kim Yongjun (1904– 1967), Sim Yŏngsŏp (born ca. 1900), and Kim Chugyŏng (1902–1981) defined themselves as purists, idealists, and bourgeois artists. Through Sim’s manifesto of 1928, the term Local Color became established in the art world (Sim 1928: 4). Another group was the Chosŏn Alumni Association of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tongmihoe), established in 1930 among Korean artists who studied at the prestigious Japanese art institute. Kim Yongjun, who was also a founder of this group, claimed: “Korean art should not imitate Western art nor express a politically



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nationalist perspective but should sing local emotion and discover its rhythm” (Kim Yongjun 1930: 4). The group sought to establish the uniqueness of modern Korean art through academic research on Western and Asian art while standing against the KAPF’s idea of using art merely as a political tool. Both groups, the Green Country Society and the Alumni Association of the Tokyo School, also questioned the colonial government’s right to evaluate art through the Chosŏn Art Exhibition. While Kim Yongjun’s anti‐colonial attitude was obvious in his refusal to present his work at the Chosŏn Art Exhibition, ironically the once‐innovative and original artistic trends of Local Color became popular at that very exhibition in the following decade. Local Color was promoted and favored by Japanese and Korean painters in the mediums of both Oriental ink and Western oil painting. Part of its domination was the taste of Japanese judges who not only preferred romanticized, bucolic scenes but also wanted them to be cheerful and colorful. For example, the self‐educated painter Kim Chunghyŏn (1901–1953) became well known for his Local Color paintings, which successfully combined Western‐ and Eastern‐style concepts and media. Key motifs in Kim’s paintings were ordinary people unaffected by foreign trends and thoughts, such as shamans and peasant musicians. Kim thus may be regarded as an advocate for restoration of native culture. Starting in 1925, the Chosŏn Art Exhibition awarded his works annually for nineteen years. Local Color, in spite of its anti‐colonial beginnings, became a trend that showed an idealized depiction of idyllic, bucolic, and nostalgic agrarian life, that romanticized the colonial situation and did not allow for criticism of its harsh reality. Although it continued to flourish, Local Color was criticized in the early 1930s for failing to reflect its original ideals and repeatedly presenting subjects superficially. Kim Yongjun, who understood Local Color from an abstract, conceptual, and philosophical viewpoint, warned of the danger of a simplistic choice of pastoral subject matter and argued that it could be neither realized through cheerful primary colors nor through specific Korean narratives. By contrast, Yun Hŭisun (1860–1935), an adherent of socialist realism though not related to the KAPF, criticized Local Color as decadent sentimentalism ignorant of colonial reality. Yun argued that a more critical perspective on themes of colonial reality was important, not catering to curiosity about the exotic to satisfy foreign travelers (Yun Hŭisun 1932: 5). Yi Insǒng (1912–1950) was one of the most influential painters of Local Color during the 1930s. Born in Taegu in southern Korea, Yi learned basic techniques of Western‐style painting from Sŏ Tongjin (1900–1970), a renowned watercolorist, and then studied at the Pacific School of Fine Arts in Tokyo from 1932 to 1935. Yi’s warm, poetic watercolors and oil paintings in Impressionist and Post‐ Impressionist modes were accepted not only continuously at the Chosŏn Art Exhibition but also gained recognition at the Imperial Art Exhibition in Japan. One of his most famous paintings in the mode of Local Color is One Autumn Day, which won a special prize at the Chosŏn Art Exhibition in 1934 (Figure 15.6). A young woman and a girl, the former half‐nude and both exceptionally dark‐skinned are shown in a withering tropical landscape with a dizzy array of plants and flowers. The motif and the use of intensive coloration remind one of Paul Gauguin’s (1848– 1903) depiction of Tahitian women and his employment of color as a medium

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Figure 15.6  Yi Insŏng. One Autumn Day. 1934. Oil on canvas. 96 × 161.4 cm. Photo: courtesy of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

through which to express subjective emotions. Meanwhile, Yi’s paintings also contain native Korean “colors” such as the reddish brown of the soil and the use of human figures that are easily recognizable as Korean in body type, facial shape, and hairstyle. While these features can be interpreted as Yi’s effort to find Korean‐ness, they have been seen as an opportunistic compromise. Undoubtedly innovative and modern in style, it also conforms to the Japanese colonialist strategy of encouraging nostalgic portrayals of an exotic Korea on the periphery of the advanced center of Japan (Kim Youngna 2000: 20–30). Works by followers of the nihonga ink painting mode are also counted under Local Color. Yi Yŏngil (1904–1984) and Kim Kich’ang (1913–2001), for instance, adapted the modern Japanese figure painting style with its opaque colors and often portrayed barefoot young boys or girls in idyllic rural scenery. They both became famous through the Chosŏn Art Exhibition. However, despite similarities in their subject matter and style during the 1930s, these two Local Color artists differed in their political views. Whereas Yi Yŏngil took an anti‐colonial stance, Kim Kich’ang supported wartime Japanese militarism during the early 1940s. Their example proves how difficult it is to categorize artists of the colonial period, whether through their styles, their subject matter, or their politics. Another important trend was Impressionism, and its main exponents were O Chiho (1905–1982) and Kim Chugyŏng. Both tried to achieve “Local Color” by discovering it in the brightness of the actual colors of nature and in their urban surroundings. O  Chiho studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Art from 1926 to 1931. Unlike



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other landscape painters who focused on form, line, and volume, O Chiho applied the theory and practice of Impressionism, that is the concept of light, time, and color, to his landscapes. With his bright colors and vibrant brushstrokes he intended to ­represent the vitality of the land and climate, which is different from that of Japan. O Chiho did not participate in the Chosŏn Art Exhibition; together with Kim Chugyŏng, he published the first color‐printed book of Korean Impressionistic paintings in 1938. The Korean avant‐garde, particularly artists who worked in the modes of Fauvist Expressionism, and Abstract art, rapidly developed in the 1930s, mainly as a result of inspiration from Tokyo where artists could experience contemporary European art. Opposing conservative Academism, Korean avant‐garde artists refused to participate in state‐sponsored exhibitions. Like their contemporary Japanese colleagues, they preferred one‐man shows or small group events. A major proponent was Ku Ponung (1906–1953), known as Korea’s first Fauvist and Expressionist artist. Ku had also been called the “Seoul Lautrec” due to his painting style and physique, reminiscent of the French artist Toulouse Lautrec (1864–1901). Ku entered the Pacific School of Fine Arts in Tokyo in 1930, where he was introduced to Fauvism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and other modern European art idioms. Holding his first solo exhibition in Seoul in 1931, Ku was a pioneer in exposing Korean audiences to these new styles. Ku’s paintings were presented in Tokyo in 1933 as part of several modern art exhibitions organized by independent groups such as the Second Division Society (J. Nikakai), the Year 1930 Association (J. Sen‐kyūhyaku‐sanjū nen kyōkai), and the Independent Art Association (J. Dokuritsu bijutsu kyōkai), all of which opposed state‐sponsored exhibitions. In Seoul, Ku also participated in independent exhibitions and in 1934 established a group called the Waiting for the Day Society (Mogirhoe) with like‐minded painters. They opposed the Chosŏn Art Exhibition and sought to revive the spirit of Chosŏn‐ dynasty literati culture. Although Ku mainly painted in oil on canvas, one element that relates to traditional ink techniques is his fast, strong calligraphic outlines in black, an effort to create “Korean‐style oil painting.” As an art critic, Ku challenged contemporaneous artists and the art world of Korea through publication of a considerable number of newspaper articles and essays during the 1930s. He also worked closely with contemporaneous writers by editing and publishing literary magazines. Championing art for art’s sake and supporting the idea of artistic subjectivity as found in Expressionism and Fauvism, Ku protested against the existing literary system working as a means of enlightenment and propaganda. Ku Poung’s Portrait of a Friend, done around 1935, is thought to depict his close friend, the avant‐garde writer Yi Sang (1910–1937) (Figure  15.7). He depicts Yi with an unshaven face, smoking a pipe and wearing a greenish‐blue hat and jacket, employing colors and black outlines in a dynamic, brisk manner and creating a thick, rough surface. The dark, somber atmosphere of the painting is relieved only by a couple of red and white highlights. Sharply contoured eyes and angular eyebrows in the impassive face seem to exhibit the cynical attitude of the modernist poet. Ku and Yi shared not only avant‐garde ideas and marginalized status as artists who opposed the mainstream, but also physical disabilities—Ku had a spinal deformity and Yi suffered from tuberculosis.

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Figure 15.7  Ku Ponung. Portrait of a Friend. Circa 1935. Oil on canvas. 65 × 54 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Yi Chungsŏp (1916–1956) is also regarded as a representative of Fauvist Expressionism. Yi first studied Western art under Im Yongnyŏn at the Osan School in P’yŏngyang and later under Tsuda Seishu (1907–1952) at the Cultural Institute in Tokyo, but realized the value of traditional aesthetics and tried to integrate them into his art. He was inspired by the mythical animal paintings in the ancient tomb murals of Koguryŏ kingdom (37 BCE–668 CE) in P’yŏngyang and by the bold black ­contours of George Rouault’s (1871–1958) works. As a participant in such Japanese avant‐garde exhibitions as the Independent Exhibition (J. Dokuritsuten) and Free Artist Association Exhibition (J. Jiyū bijutsuka kyōkaiten) between 1938 and 1943, he won recognition in Tokyo art circles. While joining the White Bull Society (Paeguhoe), a Korean artists’ group formed in Tokyo around 1937, Yi produced his famous Bull series on a subject he had long observed in Korea during his early years. Through representation of native subject matter and modernist style, Yi’s paintings combined the concepts of Local Color with the avant‐garde. He continued painting furious and bellowing bulls, done in dynamic brushwork and strong colors into the postcolonial era. His bull paintings reflected his personal struggle against poverty and loneliness but also carried a political meaning of protest, first against Japanese colonial rule and later against the suffering of the Korean War.



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Abstract art was another avant‐garde trend practiced during the 1930s. Kim Whanki (aka Kim Hwan’gi, 1913–1974) was a pioneer in this field. In his abstract paintings he developed concrete forms, for instance of human figures or still lifes, into geometric shapes. Inspired by Japanese avant‐garde artists such as Fujita Tsuguharu (1886– 1968) and Tōgō Seiji (1897–1978), Kim was involved early in the movement for  abstract art in Tokyo through group exhibitions such as the Free Exhibition (J. Jiyūten). His colleague Yu Yŏngguk (1916–2002) was active in the same circles and experimented with conceptual compositions of sculptural and purely abstract forms. Compared with the explosive and spontaneous expression of other avant‐garde artists, Kim and Yu’s geometric shapes can be understood as calculated yet contemplative experiments. Kim’s work of the 1930s is characterized by his attempts to amalgamate Cubism, Futurism, and abstract art, as shown in his 1937 painting Rondo (Figure 15.8). After his first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 1937, he returned to Seoul and held a solo exhibition in 1940 during the difficult period of the Pacific War. After Korea’s liberation in 1945, he formed the New Realism Group (Sinsasilp’a) with other artists who worked in the manners of abstract and surrealist art and promoted modernism in Seoul. Later, during the 1950s, Kim integrated such traditional motifs as symbols of longevity (moon, mountains, clouds, trees, plum blossoms, cranes) into his oeuvre. During the same period, he also used the shapes of Chosŏn white porcelain as graphic elements in his compositions. In the 1960s and 1970s in New York, he returned to purely abstract compositions and continued to play an important role in the art world.

Figure 15.8  Kim Whanki Rondo. 1938. Oil on canvas. 61 × 72.7 cm. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. Photo: courtesy of Whanki Foundation • Whanki Museum. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Art and Military Emergency The Korean pursuit of modernity became further complicated and compromised in the period of turmoil that began with the start of the Second Sino‐Japanese War (1937–1945). Countering Japanese attacks on other Asian regions, Western powers started to participate in what became the Pacific War. The atmosphere of wartime emergency dominated life not only in Japan but also in her colonies. Under Japan’s National Mobilization Law of 1938, artists were expected to engage in patriotic activities in support of the military effort. Independent artists’ groups and magazines were discontinued or placed under state control, and distribution of art supplies was limited to those who complied with the new rules. Pan‐Asianism provided a basis for the slogan “Japan and Korea are one body” (naesŏn ilch’e, J. naisen ittai). This propagandistic phrase demonstrates Imperial Japan’s eagerness to completely annihilate Korean identity. The reinforced assimilation policy not only resulted in mobilization of Korean troops but in the systematic material and mental exploitation of the country. From the late 1930s onward cultural assimilation turned into ethnocide policy. Many Korean organizations and intellectuals, acting in the name of Pan‐Asian nationalism or seeing Korea as one body with Japan, eventually collaborated – some out of conviction, others forced – with the colonial government. In the wartime art world of Korea, Academic Realism continuously dominated the Chosŏn Art Exhibition along with the trends of Local Color. Starting in 1938, the judges of the Chosŏn Art Exhibition used the term “emergency art” (siguk misul) specifically for works that supported Japanese militarism. Emergency Art was also promoted through many war art exhibitions from 1938 to 1944. The deteriorating situation led many Korean artists to go into retreat. However, others were compelled to use their talents to serve Imperial Japan in its wars, and some volunteered to do so. Collaboration with Japanese militarism resulted in ink paintings, oil paintings, sculptures, and posters that represented war‐related scenes from the military or the home front. Some contributed their talent and fame to mobilize Koreans for the war and supported the war effort through public media, creating cover designs, illustrations, and cartoons, and writing newspaper editorials. Others produced paintings of nostalgic themes such as rural landscapes or birds and flowers to encourage colonial officials (Yi T’aeho 1992: 320–324). However, in Korea and Japan during the 1940s, there were also individuals and groups of artists who resisted Japanese militarism or avoided collaboration, even if they were not explicitly anti‐Japanese. Such artists refused to join the Chosŏn Art Exhibition or any other exhibitions that supported the war. Yi Chungsŏp, for instance, organized the Chosŏn New Artist Association (Chosŏn sinmisulga hyŏphoe) in Tokyo in 1941 with Korean colleagues. During the war, the association held exhibitions in Seoul of works painted in various avant‐garde modes. At a time when most exhibitions in Seoul were war related, they introduced avant‐garde art to the peninsula. However, the group eventually began to compromise with Japanese military imperialism. This caused Kim Whanki, one of their most representative artists, to withdraw from the group in 1942. Similarly, after his literary magazine Munjang (Literature) was discontinued in 1941, Kim Yongjun retreated from all public activities. Many



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other writers and artists fell silent as a way of expressing their disagreement with Japanese militarism. Eventually, Japan’s defeat in 1945 brought Korea’s liberation from colonial rule. To this day, however, the contribution of Korean artists who worked under Japanese colonial rule and their political attitudes and behavior towards the colonial government generates discussion. In their effort to come to terms with colonial history, art historians have identified “collaborators” in The Pro‐Japanese Biographical Dictionary (2009), where twenty‐six pro‐Japanese painters, sculptors, and illustrators are listed. The simple dichotomy between resistance and collaboration, however, does not suffice to give credit to the personal, financial, intellectual, and political difficulties artists faced during that problematic, often chaotic period. The first half of the twentieth century was a particularly important period of Korean art in many ways. Artists met challenges of Westernization in science, technology, and culture affecting their daily lives. They dealt with entirely new “modern” materials and styles of Western art and at the same time, encountered subjugation of their country to colonial rule. In this period of constant challenge and suppression, modern Korean art emerged and produced an array of aesthetic ideas and styles, a reevaluation and integration of local traditions alongside the introduction of new idioms and techniques. Although there had been contacts with the Western world mostly via China or Japan from the mid‐eighteenth century onward, it was in the 1910s and 1920s that modern art took shape in Korea, when the first generation of Korean painters started employing new ideas and techniques of Western‐style art in their works. They had learned and adopted a new approach to art during their Japanese education, which provided indirect contact with Europe or the United States. However, the most critical time for modern Korean art was during the late 1920s and the decade that followed, when the discourse of modern individualism became most intense, occurring simultaneously with a search for a collective Korean identity. Until the end of the colonial period, the dichotomous yet complex controversies between traditional and modern, Eastern and Western, Social Realism and “art for art’s sake,” colonialism and nationalism, and resistance and collaboration continued. They still cast their shadows on Korean postcolonial modern, and contemporary art, while also illuminating paths of inspiration.

References Ahn, En Young. 2009. “When was Modernism in Korean Art?” In Global Korea Old and New: Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Conference Korean Studies Association of Australasia. Sydney: University of Sydney: 15–26. Ch’inil inmyŏng sajŏn p’yŏnch’an wiwŏnhoe. 2009. Ch’inil inmyŏng sajŏn [Pro‐Japanese biographical dictionary]. Seoul: Minjokmunje yŏn’guso. Ch’oe Yŏl. 1998. Han’guk kŭndae misul ŭi yŏksa [History of modern Korean art]. Seoul: Yŏrhwadang. Chung Hyung‐min. 2006. Modern Korean Ink Painting. Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym International Corp.

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Eckert, Carter J., Ki‐Baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, et al. 1990. Korea Old and New: A History. Seoul: Ilchokak Publishers. Hong Sunpyo. 2009. Han’guk kŭndae misulsa [History of modern Korean art]. Seoul: Sigong Art. Hong, Sunpyo 2013. “The compilation of Kŭnyŏk sŏhwasa and the publication of Kŭnyŏk sŏhwajing.” Archives of Asian Art 63 (2): 155–163. Horlyck, Charlotte. 2017. Korean Art: From the 19th Century to the Present. London: Reaktion Books. Kee, Joan. 2013. “Contemporary Art in Early Colonial Korea: The Self Portraits of Ko Hui‐dong.” Art History 36, no. 2: 392–417. Kim Hyŏnsuk. 1995. “Han’guk kŭndae misul 1920 nyŏndae kichŏm siron” [Modern Korean art since 1920]. Han’guk kŭndae misul sahak 2: 6–37. Kim Hyŏnsuk. 1998. “Kim Ch’anyŏng ŭi chakp’um segye” [Art of Kim Ch’anyŏng]. Han’guk kŭndae misulsahak 6: 134–174. Kim Hyŏnsuk. 2001. “Han’guk kŭndaemisul esŏŭi tongyang chuŭi yŏn’gu: Sŏyang hwadanŭl chungsimŭro” (Orientalism in modern Korean Art: Focusing on Western‐ style paintings). PhD Diss., Hongik University, Seoul. Kim Yongjun. 1930. “Tongmijŏn ŭl kaech’oehamyŏ (1)” [Holding the Tongmijŏn (1)]. Tonga ilbo (4.12–13): 4. Kim, Youngna. 1993. “Modern Korean Painting and Sculpture.” In Modernity in Asian Art, edited by John Clark, 155–168. Sydney: Wild Peony. Kim, Youngna. 2000. “Yi In‐song’s Local Colors: Colonialism or Nationalism.” Oriental Art 46 (4): 20–30. Kim, Youngna. 2001. “Artistic Trends in Korean Painting during the 1930s.” In War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia, 1920–1960, edited by Marlene Mayo, Thomas Rimer and Eleanor Kerkham, 121–146. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i. Kim, Youngna. 2005. Modern and Contemporary Art in Korea. Translated by Diana Hinds Evans. Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym International Corp. Kim, Youngna. 2010. “The Achievements and Limitations of Ko Yu‐seop, a Luminary in Korean Art History.” Archives of Asian Art 60: 79–87. Kim, Yunsu. 1975. Han’guk hyŏndae hoehwasa [History of Korean contemporary painting]. Seoul: Han’guk ilbosa. Kwŏn, Heangga. 2011. “King Gojong’s Portrait and the Advent of Photography in Korea.” Journal of Korean Art & Archeology 5: 58–69. Lee, Joohyun. 2012. “Wu Changshu and Modern Korean Painting.” In Shifting Paradigms in East Asian Visual Culture: A Festschrift for Lothar Ledderose, 352–367. Berlin: Reimer. Moon, Dongsoo. 2014. “The Reception of a New Culture and Establishment of a New Visual System in Korea’s Modern Era.” In Treasures from Korea: Art and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910, edited by Hyunsoo Woo, 69–78. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. O Kwangsu. 2000. Han’guk hyŏndae misulsa. [History of contemporary Korean art]. Seoul: Yŏrhwadang. Sim Yŏngsŏp. 1928. “Misulmanŏ‐Nokhyanghoe rŭl kyŏlsŏnghago” [Art talk– after organizing Nokhyanghoe]. Tonga ilbo (12.15–16): 4.



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Sŏ Sŏngnok. 1994. Han’guk ŭi hyŏndae misul [Contemporary Korean art]. Seoul: Munye ch’ulp’ansa. Woo, Hyunsoo, ed. 2014. Treasures from Korea: Art and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392–1910. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Yi Kyŏngsŏng. 1998. “Han’guk kŭndae misulsa sŏsŏl” [Introduction to history of modern Korean art]. Han’guk kŭndae misulsahak 6: 22–23. Yi, Sŏng‐mi. 2015. Searching for Modernity: Western Influence and True‐View Landscape in Korean Painting of the Late Chosŏn period. Seattle and London: Spencer Museum of the Art and the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, University of Kansas in association with the University of Washington Press. Yi T’aeho. 1992. “1940 nyŏn dae ch’oban ch’inilmisul kwa kun’gukchuŭi chŏk kyŏnghyangsŏng” [Pro‐Japanese artists and the tendency toward militarism in the early 1940s]. In Kŭndae Han’guk misul nonch’ong [A collection of treatises of modern Korean art], edited by Ch’ŏngyŏ Yi Kuyŏl sŏnsaeng Hoegap kinyŏm nonmunjip palgan wiwŏnhoe [Compilation Committee for Festschrift for Ch’ŏngyŏ Yi Kuyŏl’s 60th birthday], 320–360. Seoul: Hakkojae. Yun Hŭisun. 1932. “Che sibil hoe sŏnjŏn ŭi hyŏnsang” [Phenomena at the 11th Chosŏn Art Exhibition]. Maeil sinbo 6.1–6.8: 5. Yun Pŏmmo. 2000. Han’guk kŭndae misul [Modern Korean art]. Seoul: Han’gil art.

Glossary An Chungsik [An Jungsik] 安中植 bijutsu (J.) 美術 Bunka gakuin (J.) 文化學院 Bunten (J.) 文展 Chang Sŭngŏp [Jang Seungeop] 張承業 Ch’angjo [Changjo] 創造 chibangsaek [jibangsaek] 地方色 chin’gyŏng [jin’gyeong] 眞景 Cho Sŏkchin [Jo Seokjin] 趙錫晉 Ch’oe Namsŏn [Choe Namseon] 崔南善 Chosŏn [Joseon] 朝鮮 Chosŏn mijŏn [Joseon mijeon] 朝鮮美展 Chosŏn misul chŏllamhoe [Joseon misul jeollamhoe] 朝鮮美術展覽會 Chosŏn sinmisulga hyŏphoe [Joseon sinmisulga hyeophoe] 朝鮮新美術家協會 Dokuritsu bijutsu kyōkai (J.) 獨立美術協會 Dokuritsuten (J.) 獨立展 Du Fu (C.) 杜甫 Fujita Tsuguharu (J.) 藤田嗣治 Hŭngsŏn taewŏn’gun [Heungseon Daewon’gun] 興宣大院君 hyangt’osaek [hyangtosaek] 鄕土色 Im P’a 任波 Im Yongnyŏn [Im Yongnyeon] 任用璉

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Imo 壬午(軍亂) Jiyū bijutsuka kyōkaiten (J.) 自由美術家協會展 Jiyūten (J.) 自由展 Kabo [Gabo] 甲午(更張) Kaebyŏk [Gaebyeok] 開闢 Kapsin [Gapsin] 甲申(政變) Kim Ch’anyŏng [Kim Chanyeong] 金讚泳 Kim Chugyŏng [Kim Jugyeong] 金周經 Kim Chunghyŏn [Kim Junghyeon] 金重鉉 Kim Chun’gŭn [Kim Jun’geun] 金俊根 Kim Kich’ang [Kim Gichang] 金基昶 Kim Kwanho [Kim Gwanho] 金觀鎬 Kim Pokchin [Kim Bokjin] 金復鎭 Kim Ŭ nho [Kim Eunho] 金殷鎬 Kim Whanki [Kim Hwan’gi] 金煥基 Kim Yongjun [Kim Yongjun] 金瑢俊 Ko Hŭidong [Go Huidong] 高羲東 Ko Yusŏp [Go Yuseop] 高裕燮 Koguryŏ [Goguryeo] 高句麗 Kojong [Gojong] 高宗 Ku Ponung [Gu Bonung] 具本雄 Kŭmkang [Geumgang] 金剛(山) Kŭnyŏk sŏhwajing [Geunyeok seohwajing] 槿域書畵徵 Kŭnyŏk sŏhwasa [Geunyeok seohwasa] 槿域書畵史 Kuroda Seiki (J.) 黒田清輝 Kwanghwamun 光化門 Kyŏngbok [Gyeongbok] 景福(宮) Kyŏngsŏng [Gyeongseong] (J. Keijō) 京城 Meiji (J.) 明治 Meng Haoran (C.) 孟浩然 Mi Fu (C.) 米芾/ 米黻 Mi‐dots 米點 Mi Youren (C.) 米友仁 misul 美術 Mogirhoe 牧日會 Monbushō bijutsu tenrankai (J.) 文部省美術展覽會 Munjang 文章 Na Hyesŏk [Na Hyeseok] 羅蕙錫 naesŏn ilch’e [naeseon ilche] (J. naisen ittai) 內鮮一体 nihonga (J.) 日本畵 nanga (J.) 南畵 Nikakai (J.) 二科會 No Suhyŏn [No Suhyeon] 盧壽鉉 Nokhyanghoe 綠鄕會 O Chiho [O Jiho] 吳之湖



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O Kyŏngsŏk [O Gyeongseok] 吳慶錫 O Sech’ang [O Sechang] 吳世昌 Okakura Tenshin/ Kakuzō (J.) 岡倉天心/覚三 Pae Unsŏng [Bae Unseong] 裵雲成 Paegak [Baegak] 白岳(山) Paeguhoe [Baeguhoe] 白牛會 Paek Namsun [Baek Namsun] 白南舜 Park Chung‐hee [Pak Chŏnghŭi, Bak Jeonghui] 朴正熙 Pyŏn Kwansik [Byeon Gwansik] 卞寬植 Pyŏn Yŏngno [Byeon Yeongno] 卞榮魯 P’yŏngyang [Pyongyang] 平壤 Qing (C.) 淸 Saksŏnghoe 朔星會 Samil undong 三一運動 Sen‐kyūhyaku‐sanjū nen kyōkai (J.) 千九百三十年協會 siguk misul 時局美術 Sim Yŏngsŏp [Sim Yeongseop] 沈英燮 sin yŏsŏng [sin yeoseong] 新女性 Sinsasilp’a 新寫實派 sirhak [silhak] 實學 Sŏ Tongjin [Seo Dongjin] 徐東辰 sŏhwa [seohwa] 書畵 Sŏhwa hyŏphoe [Seohwa hyeophoe] 書畵協會 Sŏhwa misulhoe [Seohwa misulhoe] 書畵美術會 Song (C.) 宋 Sŏnjŏn [Seonjeon] 鮮展 sŏyanghwa [seoyanghwa] 西洋畵 Sunjong 純宗 Taedong [Daedong] 大同(江) Taehan cheguk [Daehan jeguk] 大韓帝國 Taiheiyō bijutsu gakkō (J.) 太平洋美術學校 Taishō (J.) 大正 Tang (C.) 唐 Teikoku bijutsu tenrankai (J.) 帝國美術展覽會 Teiten (J.) 帝展 Tōgō Seiji (J.) 東郷青兒 Tohwa imbon [Dohwa imbon] 圖畵臨本 Tŏksu [Deoksu] 德壽(宮) Tōkyō teikoku bijutsu gakkō (J.) 東京帝國美術學校 Tonghak [Donghak] 東學 Tongmihoe [Dongmihoe] 東美會 tongyanghwa [dongyanghwa] 東洋畵 Tongyŏnsa [Dongyeongsa] 同硏社 Tsuda Seishū (J.) 津田清周 yanghwa 洋畵

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Yi Chongu [Yi Jongu] 李鍾禹 Yi Chungsŏp [Yi Jungseop] 李仲燮 Yi Haŭng [Yi Ha’eung] 李昰應 Yi Insŏng [Yi Inseong] 李仁星 Yi Sang 李箱 Yi Sangbŏm [Yi Sangbeom] 李象範 Yi Yŏngil [Yi Yeongil] 李英一 Yi Yongu 李用雨 yōga (J.) 洋畵 Yŏngdae [Yeongdae] 靈臺 Yu Yŏngguk [Yu Yeongguk] 劉永國 Yun Hŭisun [Yun Huisun] 尹熙順

16

The Long Breath: Postwar Korean Art Joan Kee

Standing before us is a man in a Panama hat. He wears a bright blue turumagi, a traditional Korean overcoat (Figure 16.1). In his left hand are a palette and a clutch of brushes, familiar props indicating his occupation. In his right hand is a fine-tipped brush that resembles something that might be used for ink painting. Behind the man is a fairly anodyne scene of what could pass as a generic Korean landscape. It looks, however, like the backdrop of a stage, a suspicion borne out by the highly geometricized figures in the background. Near the left-hand edge of the painting, women wearing a short jacket over a long, billowing skirt known as hanbok carry jars on their faceless heads, their figures rounded enough to blend in with the background. The ribbon-like fastenings of the man’s overcoat appear to flutter in the wind, but the background looks like he is indoors, not outdoors. Where exactly is our artist, whose pointed yet strangely unfocused stare defy any attempts at reciprocation? Painted in Seoul sometime in the late 1940s, this is a self-portrait by Yi Quedae (1913–1965), an artist who perhaps best encapsulated the deep contradictions of his time. Born into a wealthy provincial Korean family three years after imperial Japan finally succeeded in capturing the long-coveted kingdom of Chosŏn (1392–1910), he passed through the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where Realism (an approach to painting based on depicting common workers in ordinary surroundings especially popular in France during the mid-nineteenth century) seemed fated to live forever. By 1946, however, the story had changed dramatically. From 1945 to 1948, the southern half of Korea was under U.S. military rule. Like so many of his colleagues in the Korean art world (the community of individuals and groups involved in the making, display, promotion, reception and sale of fine art), Yi sided with nascent organizations that would soon be absorbed into the new Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Figure 16.1  Yi Quedae (1913–1965). Self-Portrait with Blue Jacket. 1948–1949. Oil on canvas. 72 × 60 cm. Photo: courtesy of private collection. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

[North Korea] founded in 1948. To him, the leftist ideologies seemed better equipped to deliver on a promise of a new independent Korea, one not beholden to former dynastic class systems. But the self-portrait shows that Yi was perhaps less confident in his convictions than his professional activities might otherwise suggest. He holds his brush almost defensively, as if reluctant to make further contact with the canvas, a special irony given that he was the one painting the canvas. Yi seems unwilling to move in the world outside the pastoral paradise he so clearly illustrated as nothing more than a fiction, a stage set erected to give the illusion of being grounded in a particular time and place. The direction of his turumagi fastening seems to pull him in one direction, yet his body remains still. Situated in the immediate foreground of the picture, Yi appeared to have imagined himself standing at the very precipice of a world, one where the urbanite’s dreams of an unchanging agrarian existence was literally a distant memory. It was a world that in the late 1940s was fraught with acute uncertainty. There is frankness in Yi’s eyes. But there is no comfort. His eyes look out from a face so pale as to recall the pallor of a corpse: are they looking ahead into the terrible abyss of war that would come to pass a few years later?



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Reconstruction and Representation Yi painted his portrait of uncertainty when the Korean art world began to regroup around two key institutions: the National Art Salon, or the Kukjŏn (Taehanmin’guk misul chŏllamhoe) and the university, specifically university art schools. In structure and format, the National Art Salon closely resembled the Chosŏn Art Exhibition, or the Sŏnjŏn (Chosŏn misul chŏllamhoe), the juried annual exhibition of artists established by the Japanese imperial government in 1922. Although any artist could submit work for consideration, entrance into the National Art Salon was competitive, overseen by juries of established older artists. From its inception in 1949 until the early 1960s, the National Art Salon was South Korea’s most important venue for contemporary art. At its height in the late 1950s, it attracted upwards of four hundred thousand visitors in a single month. The National Art Salon continued the Sŏnjŏn tradition of dividing art according to artistic medium (the materials used in making a given work). Oriental painting (tongyanghwa) included paintings made with ink, paper, and water according to techniques developed in Korea, China, and Japan. Western-style painting (sŏyanghwa) referred to oil paintings executed on canvas according to techniques of shading, illumination, and spatial perspective originating in Western Europe. Also prominent was sculpture, a medium that in Korea before the early 20th century was mostly associated with religious objects. Divisions between various artistic media were rigorously enforced in both the National Art Salon and in university art schools established shortly after Korea won its independence from Japan at the end of World War II in 1945. The most prominent of these were the public Seoul National University, the nation’s flagship institution of higher learning, and the private Hongik University, also located in Seoul. The restructuring of the Korean art world was abruptly cut short, however, by the Korean War that began in 1950 and resulted in a devastating separation between the northern and southern halves of the Korean peninsula. Thus, while 1945 is commonly the year from which “postwar art” is said to begin in the United States, Europe, and Japan, the physical and psychological destruction caused by the Korean War suggest that “postwar” in a Korean context should begin from 1953, the year that a ceasefire agreement was signed by the United Nations General Command, North Korea, and China. In the immediate wake of the war, reconstruction (chaegŏn) was a priority. The word held special weight for the South Korean art world, which in many respects was far worse off than it had been after the end of World War II in 1945. Many of the colonial art world’s brightest stars, including Yi Quedae and Kim Yong-jun (1904– 1967), had voluntarily moved to North Korea, where the Soviet-supported economy was stronger than that of the South. Further hindering reconstruction was the infighting within the South Korean art world. A mere four years after the war had ended, numerous artists boycotted the National Art Salon, accusing its jury of corruption and favoritism (Oh 1995). Most challenging of all, however, was the artistic question of how to produce art for a time and place that could not be adequately illustrated. Consider, for instance,

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Figure 16.2  Limb Eung-sik (1912–2001). Looking for Work. 1953. Silver gelatin photograph. 50.5 × 40 cm. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

what might be the most frequently reproduced photograph in postwar Korean history, Limb Eung-sik’s (1912–2001) Looking for Work (Figure 16.2). Published in the newspaper Dong-A Ilbo in 1953, it shows a young man, his downcast face obscured by a floppy-brimmed hat, slumping against the glossy side of the Midopa Department Store, one of the few tall buildings in downtown Seoul. A sign tells us he is looking for employment, an all-too-common situation in what at this time was among the world’s most impoverished countries. Although the photograph is structured around the man, his plight is best emphasized by what might look like superficial details, namely, the well-dressed pair of men in the background. The photograph belonged to a different kind of realism, a term that in Korea alluded to socially-minded art promoted in the late years of colonial Korea and to what many Korean artists saw as their responsibility to make their works socially relevant. Among photographers, the commitment to realism intensified with the Seoul opening of “The Family of Man” in 1957. A seminal 1955 exhibition of over five hundred photographs from around the world, it was organized by American photographer Edward Steichen (1879–1973) and intended to stress the human experience as



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a universal condition. The United States government saw the exhibition as a prime opportunity for promoting its image overseas, especially in politically fraught parts of the world like South Korea. Realist photography would continue to dominate the teaching of photography in Korea, particularly at Seoul National University and at Sŏrabŏl Arts College, the first tertiary institution in South Korea to offer a four-year university degree in photography. The institution would later be absorbed into the department of photography at Chung-Ang University in Seoul in 1973, eventually producing several notable photographers. Painters were likewise concerned with the issue of how best to represent a world that was defined by destruction on the one hand, and by reconstruction on the other. Many took as their subjects profoundly humble scenes or objects, depicting them with great care. The extraordinary detail of these works perhaps reflected a heightened appreciation of being alive. In the mid-to-late 1950s, memories of the war were so painfully fresh as to make any act of depiction a highly fraught endeavor. Ink painter Park Raehyun (1920–1976) presented images of commonplace events and things that seemed to dissolve and merge into each other (Figure 16.3). For her, the world could never look as it did before, nor would it be possible to pretend that it could.

Figure 16.3  Park Rae-hyun (1920–1976). Owl. early 1950s. Ink and colors on paper. 81 × 57 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Korea University Museum, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Figure 16.4  Park Seobo (b.1931). Work No. 1. 1957–1958. Oil on canvas. 95 × 82 cm. Photo: courtesy of Yoo Seung-pil collection, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Such also was the attitude of Park Seobo (b. 1931), who like many Western-style oil painters educated in the 1950s was versed in ink painting as well as oil painting. Work No. 1 was executed in 1957, when Park was looking to overcome what he saw as the moribund conservatism of the National Art Salon (Figure 16.4). It is a rectangular canvas that looks like a rough grid composed of different skeins and passages of color. The paint is so thick as to make the work seem like an accumulation of pigment. Work No. 1 underscores what was then Park’s interest in thinking about painting more as objects in the round, an interest he would continue to pursue in the 1960s by vigorously manipulating canvases so that their surfaces became records of protrusions and indentations.

Abstraction and Medium The works of artists like the two Parks foregrounded the question of artistic medium, which since at least the early twentieth century had been the primary idea around which the Korean art world revolved. Until at least the 1980s, painting was by far the most popular and prestigious of all media in Korea. Sculpture, in contrast, was



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considered a lesser art due to its associations with craft and the physical demands of working with wood, metal, plaster, and stone, the materials from which sculpture was made in Korea (Choi 2010: 561). Divisions between different media were not only set in institutional stone, but were further reinforced by a renewed interest in abstraction. The emergence of abstraction in Korea is often tracked back to the generation of Korean artists who studied and exhibited Western-style oil painting in Japan in the 1930s, when abstraction was specifically called “modŏn at’ŭ” (modern art) (Bang 1965: 348). At that time, “modern art” in the United States and Western Europe referred to art that seemed to reject traditionally accepted forms and techniques as a response to various social and political changes like industrialization. In Korea, it referred to art explicitly related to the present as well as art produced according to styles and techniques associated with mainstream Western culture from the second half of the nineteenth century such as realism. Well-known examples falling into this category included the works of Yoo Young-kuk (1916–2002), namely his arrangements of geometric wooden shapes, and those of Kim Whanki (1913–1974), featuring lines and dots worked into various configurations, often on large monochromatic backgrounds. Yet abstraction in Korea also stemmed from another trajectory, one best summarized by the artist Nam Kwan (1913–1990) in 1953: “ink painting is, at heart, abstract.” (Nam 1953: 264) Lee Ungno (1904–1989) took a flexible approach to ink painting that drew as much from photography and newspaper cartoons as it did from Chinese paintings made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. His postwar works hinted at these earlier interests through his approach to space, which took form through staged oscillations between flatness and depth. Later works showed how the mark made by a brush could relay a sense of energy throughout pictorial space. In a similar vein were paintings by Park Bong-su (1916–1991) and Park Re-hyun, both of whom were less concerned with copying images from life than with taking apart the physical space of a painting and putting it back together as a set of parts or pieces. But thanks in part to the promotional savvy of Park Seobo and critics like Bang Geun-taek (1929–1992), abstraction in Korea came to be synonymous with gestural abstraction made with oil paint. Such works were reminiscent of Art Informel, a form of abstract painting popular in France in the 1940s and 1950s, and Abstract Expressionism, the first American artistic movement to exert worldwide influence. That Park, Bang, and certain other Korean viewers saw works like No. 1 in the same context as those made by Abstract Expressionists like Willem de Kooning (1904– 1997) was not coincidence. On one level, the formal resemblance demonstrated the fluency of Korean artists and critics in what by the late 1950s was a well-established notion of abstraction as the language of the international art world. Information about overseas artistic developments was difficult to obtain, although copies of Art News or Time could be accessed at United States Information Service offices. Few artists and critics were fluent in English or other European languages; more common was fluency in Japanese, a reflection of Korea’s colonial past. Yet the ban on Japanese imports made it difficult to acquire copies of art magazines. Strict government control over precious foreign currency reserves combined with the difficulty of obtaining exit and entry visas made overseas travel almost impossible even for the handful of

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well-connected artists and critics. Indeed, one of the awards a National Art Salon entrant might hope to win in the 1960s was a trip overseas. Artists who did travel abroad often dispatched reports of what they saw to newspapers in Korea, which until the appearance of art magazines in the mid-1970s was a leading outlet for art criticism. Many artists pored over what they did have access to, particularly anything having to do with French art and the Parisian art world which held a special fascination (Chung 2003: 32; Yi Ku-yŏl 1984: 49). Significant attention was paid to Un art autre (Art of Another Kind), a 1952 book written by critic Michel Tapié (1909–1987). He championed “Art Informel” (unformed paintings), so named because its representative works seemed to have been made by informal procedures. Tapié saw these highly gestural abstractions as “another kind” of painting because they appeared to break with longstanding traditions of painting. Korean artists too made similar forms of abstraction. Many were sent to represent South Korea in the burgeoning international festival circuit of the 1960s, and they appeared at major events like the Paris Biennale or São Paulo Bienal in Brazil. At home, gestural abstraction reached perhaps its greatest peak at the 1963 edition of the annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists sponsored by the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, which by this time had effectively supplanted the National Art Salon as the most important venue for contemporary art in Korea. Gestural abstraction eventually came to dominate college departments of Western-style oil painting in the 1960s. The Western-style oil painters who turned to gestural abstraction saw themselves as avant-garde, a military term originally referring to the part of an army that advances before the rest, but came to be used in Europe since the mid-nineteenth century to indicate pioneering forms of thinking and culture deemed so radical as to be ahead of their time. For painters involved in gestural abstraction, being “avant-garde” partly meant bringing the Korean art world up to speed with what was happening in Western Europe and the United States. Many artists working in gestural abstraction often referred to their works as Korean examples of “Informel” painting, in line with what had been taking place in France and the United States in the years after World War II (Yi Ku-yŏl 1984). Ink painters took a different view. As a medium, ink painting commanded respect because of its associations to an imagined tradition. Such a tradition was rooted in both elitist dreams of a cultured, aristocratic literati class and in a similarly idealized view of folk art. Commercially, ink paintings tended to outsell their oil painting counterparts, at least according to records of the Bando Gallery in Seoul, Korea’s primary commercial gallery in the 1950s and 1960s (Yi Tae-wŏn 1964: 44). Abstract, or more specifically, non-figurative ink painting emerged as a self-conscious practice in the early 1960s. Established ink painter Kim Ki-chang (1913–2001) welcomed the rising popularity of gestural abstraction, citing it as a useful opportunity to play with different materials and techniques (Kim Ki-uk 1962). Yet he also warned fellow ink painters against following Informel too closely; the materials of ink painting compelled a different approach to painting generally. The rapid ascent of gestural abstraction posed something of a challenge for a small, but ambitious group of younger ink painters concerned with how quickly “Korean Informel” seemed to



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monopolize discussions of contemporary art and abstraction in Korea (Kim Yŏng-ju 1958; Bang 1958). Active between 1959 and 1964, the members of the Ink Forest Society (Mungnimhoe), including Suh Se-ok (b. 1929), Min Kyung-kap (1933–2018), and Song Young-bang (b. 1936) produced and exhibited works that evoked the properties of ink painting’s core materials of water, paper, and ink. Interestingly, the emergence of abstract ink painting highlighted another strand of internationalism. Not only did members of the Ink Forest Society participate in national delegations to the many biennales and triennials of the 1960s, their works raised the ire of North Korean critics who condemned them as yet another example of “American imperialist invasion,” of internationalism gone astray (Ri 1963: 35; Han 1963: 41). Yet painting seemed to reach an impasse by 1965. A former journalist who numbered among the most diligent chroniclers of postwar Korean art in the 1970s and 80s, the critic Oh Kwangsu (b. 1938) reviewed the 1968 edition of the annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists. He condemned works that to him merely affirmed the “conventional idea that a painting must be contained by a canvas, drawing a clear line between painting and sculpture.” (Oh 1968: 36) Recent graduates of Western-style oil painting departments were particularly adamant in refusing to paint only images on flat upright supports, or in the words of one critic, works that “lay quietly against walls” (Kim Yŏng-uk 1990). A 1963 graduate of Hongik University, Choi Boong-hyun (b. 1941) seemed to openly mock the arbitrary gesticulations of Informel, translating painterly flourishes into short fragments of plastic tubing or metal wire attached on a monochromatic canvas, but which protruded wildly into space. His classmate Moon Bok-cheol (1941–2003) poked sly fun at the earnest pretensions ascribed to the idea of the monochrome, or painting executed in a single color, by attaching to a somber black canvas a row of gourd halves painted in bright reds, blues, and greens.

Adventures in Experimental Art That the prevailing artistic establishment was unable to accommodate such works was evident in these works being described as “experimental” (sirhŏm). By the mid-1960s, an unofficial network of small artists’ groups had emerged to fill the vacuum left by the establishment’s failure to accommodate new forms of depiction. Many of these groups issued manifestos, published their own limited-circulation journals and held exhibitions, the most important of which was the Union Exhibition of Young Artists Exhibition (Ch’ŏngnyŏn chakka yŏllipjŏn) held at the Information Center in Seoul in December 1967. Taking as one of its slogans a rejection of Informel (“It has given us nothing” said one artist), the show consisted of works from young artists’ groups. Many of these artists in fact opted to do away with painting altogether; as one participant, Jung Kang Ja (b. 1942) said, “we are friends with all materials.” The Union Exhibition of Young Artists marked the debut of performance art. Members of the Zero Group (Mudongin) and the New Exhibition Club (Sinjŏndongin) presented A Happening with a Vinyl Umbrella and a Candle. Participants held a vinyl umbrella and candle while singing “Blue Bird” (Saeya saeya p’arangsaeya) a popular

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folk song that allegedly began as a nationalist rejoinder to Japanese imperial ambitions towards Korea in the late nineteenth century (Lee Namhee 2007: 58–59). The umbrella was set aflame with the candle, then torn and destroyed. The artist Pak Yŏngnam (b. 1949) claimed that the participants of A Happening with a Vinyl Umbrella and a Candle did so partly to reject the canvas, and by extension, preexisting notions of what art was: “instead of producing only decorative works, they wanted their art to jump directly into the field of life.” (Pak 1981: 93) Though relatively small in number, performance-based works drew considerable attention from artists as well as the general press. In Korea, they were initially referred to as “happenings,” a term likely borrowed from American artist Allan Kaprow (1927– 2006), whom the Korean press described in 1968 as an artist who proposed “unifying visual art and theater in the context of an environment” and whose works stressed “the process of expression” over the “outcome of such expression” (Kŭgŭl Kŏnnŭn chŏnwi misul: Sŏul ŭi h’ap’ŭnning syo 1968). Happenings in Korea were variably defined as “spontaneously occurring incidents,” as “struggles to leave the world of art for the society around it” and as “scenarios taking place within a designated place in real time” (Kŭgŭl Kŏnnŭn Chŏnwi Misul: Sŏul ŭi h’ap’ ŭnning syo 1968). Conventional definitions of painting and sculpture would continue to exist in universities and the National Art Salon. But the interest in working beyond these definitions was what gave rise to the many artists’ groups that proliferated in the late 1960s and early 1970s including the A.G., S.T., Esprit, Noncol, 35/128, Origin, and Chongae. The most prominent of these was the A.G., abbreviated from “AvantGarde.” Founded in December 1968 by a group of artists and critics who either graduated from, or taught at, Hongik University in Seoul, the short-lived, but influential group was committed to “the investigation and creation of a new plastic order” that would “contribute to the development of Korean artistic culture.” Its ranks also included critics like Kim In-hwan (1937–2011), Oh Kwangsu (b. 1938), and Lee Yil (1932–1997), the French literature aficionado-turned-art critic who would be the postwar Korean art world’s most prolific writer. Members belonging to the A.G. circle reflected long and hard on emblems associated with Western modern art, including grids (a configuration of perpendicular lines to form a pattern of squares or rectangles), monochromatic painting (literally, painting executed in a single color) and seriality (the state of putting objects in a sequence). Yet rather than reproduce what little Western art they had seen in foreign publications or had heard about from the few Koreans who were able to travel overseas, member artists of the A.G. approached the emblems of Western modernism without sacrificing the materials they had at hand and knew how to use. Suh Seung-won (b. 1942), for example, used plain mulberry-bark paper typical of traditional ink painting to present a different kind of monochrome painting. The A.G. published an eponymous journal that became an important source of information not only for its members, but also for others interested in thinking about contemporary Korean art in an international context. The journal featured articles on the works of Christo (b. 1935), Marcel Duchamp (1887– 1968), and Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), as well as some examples of Land Art, or artworks using the land or the natural landscape as their means of creation.



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Despite the widespread influence of Minimal Art in the United States and Western Europe, the two places that set the standard for what Koreans regard as ‘international art,’ it had little appeal to early Korean artists working in modern modes. A movement that began in the United States and Western Europe during the early 1960s, Minimalism’s best-known works featured hard industrial materials and avoided overt symbolism. In contrast, Korean artists, especially those belonging to the A.G. circle, favored soft, or pliable natural materials like reeds, dirt, cloth, and stones. Another group professing a strong interest in overseas artistic developments was the S.T., short for “Space and Time,” which ran from 1969 until 1980. Artists of the S.T., like their slightly older counterparts in the A.G., held regular members’ exhibitions that were open to the public. The S.T. also hosted seminars moderated by the critic Yu Kŭnjun (b. 1934) on various topics selected by the critic Kim Bok-young (b. 1942). A popular topic was conceptual art, or art that stressed ideas over a finished, physical product. According to this definition, anything could theoretically be art, an openness to which many younger Korean artists weary of the hierarchical nature of the art world were deeply attracted. Studying and making conceptual art allowed S.T. members like Kim Yong-min (b. 1943), Chang Sugwŏn (b. 1952), and Sung Neungkyung (b. 1944) to ask what art was and could be, a refreshing change from the strict divisions separating different media and the accompanying insistence on mastering technique that characterized the National Art Salon and the universities. Of special interest were the writings of American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945) and those of Japan-based Korean artist Lee Ufan (b. 1936), both of whom emphasized the role of language in art (Lee Kun-yong 2013: 231). That their writings were translated into Korean further spurred S.T. members to explore language in their own works. Lee Kun-yong (b. 1942), for example, invented phrases with English loan words like “logical-event” to impart a distinct identity to their works and distinguish them from their overseas analogues.

The Role of the State By the mid-1960s, the National Art Salon no longer wielded the same influence it once did. Yet the state continued to play a major role in the Korean art world, particularly after 1961 when the army’s General Park Chung-hee seized control of the government. Park’s government spared no expense in developing the nation and promoting a sense of national unity. This included expanding what since the mid1950s had been a fairly consistent project of erecting commemorative statues. For many sculptors, these statues represented an important source of income in a time where the art market was too small to allow artists to live by private sales alone. In a country whose per capita income was less than $100 when it joined the World Bank in 1955, even those who graduated from the most prestigious art schools found it difficult to make a living in their fields of training. A lucky few managed to secure coveted positions as university professors, but most taught at the secondary school level. One gallery owner estimated that seventy percent of Korean artists taught art

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for living (Mun 1977: 36). Those who failed to secure teaching jobs often resorted to dressing windows for clothing and tailoring shops (Bang 1972: 84–85). In 1966, the South Korean government initiated the national documentary paintings project (minjok kirokhwa), the largest visual arts project ever undertaken by the Korean government in the postwar era. It was masterminded by Kim Jong-pil, one of the president’s closest aides and himself an amateur painter. Overseen by the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Office for the Production of National Documentary Paintings (Minjok kirokhwa chejak samuso) commissioned established artists, nearly all oil painters, to paint various idealized scenes of past military glory, industrial progress, and national unification. An invitation to participate in the project was considered an explicit badge of state approval by most Korean artists in the 1960s and the 1970s. Despite the relatively small percentage of artists selected to participate in the project, hundreds of art works were created. Most works were first hung in temporary exhibitions held at such centrally located venues as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Seoul, and then permanently installed in important government buildings. Many works were also reused as posters, illustrations for history textbooks, and even as postage stamps. As if in response to such images, the jurors of the National Art Salon, increasingly gravitated towards selecting similar works, particularly those glorifying the workforce or the economy. The state also supported the multidisciplinary cultural journal Konggan, or Space, which throughout the late 1960s and much of the 1970s was the leading venue for art criticism in Korea. First published in 1966 and still in operation today, it was founded by the architect Kim Swoogeun (1931–1986) and initially funded by his personal friend Kim Jong-pil (Yun 130). Kim Swoogeun was virtually the Korean government’s official architect, entrusted with numerous major commissions. These included the Hilltop Bar for the Walker Hill leisure complex in eastern Seoul intended to attract foreign investment, the Korean pavilion for the World’s Fair in Osaka in 1970 and the Tower Hotel just south of downtown Seoul. Due to the ties of its founder, Space was largely uncensored. Yet in keeping with the government’s promotion of representations of economic development and construction, the journal devoted considerable attention to championing urban development and those involved in it. Pursuant to this development was considerable debate over how and whether to build a separate museum for contemporary art. Large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art, including the National Art Salon, took place on buildings constructed in the Japanese colonial era located in the former royal residences of Tŏksu or Kyŏngbok Palaces in downtown Seoul. During the Union Exhibition of Young Artists, Choi Boong-hyun led some ten artists through the streets of Seoul, demanding, among other things, the construction of a museum of contemporary art. The Rockefeller Foundation, a U.S. charitable organization with Central Intelligence Agency ties, proposed a plan for a museum of contemporary art with a generous budget of four hundred million won. Despite these activities and initiatives, the South Korean government did not build a standalone museum of contemporary art until 1986, which itself was not located in Seoul proper but in a fairly inaccessible area as part of a largescale attempt to develop the capital beyond its borders.



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The state increasingly supported efforts to promote Korean art overseas during the 1960s. Established in 1961 as an umbrella group for all visual artists, the non-­ governmental Korean Fine Arts Association (Han’guk misul hyŏphoe) selected commissioners and artists to represent Korea in the many biennales and triennials then happening. State support was more explicit after South Korea and Japan reluctantly established diplomatic relations in 1965 at the explicit behest of a United States anxious to contain the threat of Communism posed by China and the Soviet Union (Yi Ki-jil 2002: 633–662). The South Korean government frequently loaned older artworks designated as national treasures to shows taking place in Japan, often at times of heightened political tension between the two former adversaries. In terms of ­modern and contemporary art, the South Korean state helped fund the 1968 group exhibition “Contemporary Korean Painting” (Kankoku gendai kaiga ten), then the largest overseas show of contemporary art from Korea. Featuring a wide array of paintings and sculpture, the exhibition, held in Tokyo at the National Museum of Modern Art, became especially notable for the discussions it sparked. Based in Tokyo, a young ­artist and critic named Lee Ufan criticized what he saw as the undue emphasis on cultural specificity in the promotion of Korean art. In January 1972 the government enacted the Cultural and Arts Promotion Law, yet another state directive aimed at helping “national culture flourish.” The law supported cultural preservation in the name of upholding Korean traditional culture but also established a central funding body, the Korea Culture and Arts Foundation. However, artists working outside the recognized categories of Western-style oil painting, ink painting, and sculpture received little government support. Many instead pooled their resources and formed unofficial support networks of their own. Largely self-funded, groups like the A.G. and S.T. held public exhibitions which, like any form of public display or opportunity for public assembly in authoritarian Korea, was subject to police surveillance. But these shows also attracted the notice of foreign audiences, a point not lost on a state eager to improve its perceived standing in a shifting world order. One of the goals of the Cultural and Arts Promotion Law was certainly to improve the quality of contemporary Korean art so that it could “hold” its “own in international cultural circles.” (Kim Yersu 1976: 38) Thus many so-called “experimental” artworks were permitted to represent Korea overseas. Despite the state playing a major role as the leading source of funds for artists and artistic institutions, several non-official initiatives began to appear. The annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists sponsored by the newspaper Chosun Ilbo gave rise to other newspaper-sponsored annual competitions. Non-governmental publications devoted regular attention to artists and art, particularly lifestyle magazines targeted to a relatively small, but rapidly growing Korean middle class. By the late 1970s, the art market was large enough to attract considerable popular attention. Several forgery scandals emerged, as did incidents of theft. Moreover, the Korean legislature proposed taxing the sale of artworks, a move bitterly criticized by critics and gallery owners. The Korean art world in 1979 may not have been as large or as free as its European or American counterparts, yet it was its own domain, one far less subject to national cultural policy than it was in 1953.

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Korean Art in Circulation One of the most internationally recognized Korean artists was Kim Whanki, whose thickly encrusted representations of cranes, round porcelain jars, mountains, and other images strongly associated with Korean culture drew considerable attention at the 1964 São Paulo Bienal. Lee Ufan’s presentations of untreated stones and rubber were likewise feted at the 1971 Paris Biennale and at numerous exhibitions in Western European museums and galleries during the 1970s. Lee, who had moved to Tokyo from war-torn Seoul in 1956, would become renowned in Japan as the leading theorist of Mono-ha, or in English, “School of Things.” Active from roughly 1969, the Mono-ha referred to a group of Japan-based artists interested in what Lee called the “encounter” of various materials such as rubber, steel plates, glass, cotton, paper, wood, rope, and stones. Artists saw themselves not as making finished works but rather facilitating and presenting experiences to viewers. Lee’s writings and works encouraged a small, but critical mass of Korean artists already disillusioned with the narrowness of the Korean art world’s outlook on artistic medium. Shim Moon-seup (b. 1942) and Kang Kuk-jin (1939–1992) more aggressively explored the possibilities of juxtaposing incongruent materials together. Wood tied with rope, or canvas wrapped with barbed wire, and stones underneath paper were but some of the combinations that emerged. Lee was also instrumental in the overseas promotion of contemporary Korean art, frequently introducing his Korean colleagues to Japanese critics and galleries. The still-recent memory of colonial occupation, however, meant that Japan was as much a source of anxiety as it was welcome access to the international art world. Even as Korean artists basked in newfound attention from their Japanese colleagues, they too were affected by a general unease over the forced political détente between Korea and Japan. The state vigorously promoting what it regarded as traditional was aspiration at its most earnest. Certain historical figures like the sixteenth-century female painter and calligrapher Sin Saimdang (1504–1551) and her younger contemporary, the naval hero Yi Sunsin were recuperated as evidence of Korean moral and military superiority, while new traditions like Taekwondo and the group fan dance were invented specifically for an international audience (Kim Su-jin 2008: 233–246; Ch’oe 2007: 52–68; Yu 2001: 43–44). Artistic representations of tradition or of a distant history were often chosen for the National Art Salon and, to some extent, for the national museums. Such works resorted to claims of inheritance for validation, as if that heritage of references could guarantee some semblance of vitality or cultural continuity. Artists and critics wrote extensively of how important it was to emphasize the uniqueness of Korean culture (Oh 1970: 223). The debate was especially fierce among ink painters who struggled to rid their works of any allusions to nihonga, a form of painting invented in late nineteenth-century Japan. Intended to reflect a singular Japanese identity, nihonga combined techniques drawn from older forms of Japanese painting as well as from Western-style oil painting. It was vigorously disseminated throughout the Japanese empire in the early twentieth century, including Korea.



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Many, if not most postwar ink painters studied under teachers who had formerly produced nihonga or nihonga-inflected works. To distinguish their works from examples of nihonga that tended to feature bright colors, ink painters like Song Su-nam (1938– 2013) worked exclusively with black ink. From the early 1970s, Song made paintings in various shades of black and gray which he then described as “Korean painting” (hangukhwa). But what in fact was Korean about such painting? Although some artists championed an imagined literati tradition, one that might serve as a worthy counter to Western ideologies, others turned to indigenous customs. In 1970, the state organized the Korean pavilion at the Osaka Exposition, or World’s Fair. Those responsible for the pavilion’s design and organization elected to have groups of folk dancers perform at the pavilion’s March 1970 opening. Its architect Kim Swoogeun described this performance as the opening’s “climax,” while Ch’oe Sunu (1916–1984), the curator of the National Museum and Kim’s close associate who contributed to Space numerous articles on traditional Korean art and architecture, suggested that foreign visitors were impressed by the “irrepressible flavor of the ordinary people” (sŏmin) as embodied by traditional farm dances (Yi Ku-yŏl 1970). Perhaps the most successful forms of promotion took place outside official ­channels. The example par excellence was the emergence of what in the 1980s would be known as Tansaekhwa, the first body of Korean art to be intentionally circulated overseas as the face of contemporary, or “recent” Korean art. Literally meaning “monochrome painting” and often referred to as “Korean monochrome painting,” Tansaekhwa refers to a loose constellation of mostly large abstract paintings painted in white, black, brown, and other neutral colors. Made by Korean artists living in Korea and Japan, such works first appeared from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. In many respects, Tansaekhwa emerged from the confluence of numerous approaches to materials and making explicitly undertaken in the name of abstraction. Process, or how painting was made by the repetition of certain actions, was central. For the series of works he called Écriture in French, meaning “writing,” Park Seobo pressed the dull end of a graphite pencil on canvases covered with grayish-cream oil paint. Ha Chonghyun (b. 1935) pushed thick daubs of viscous white paint from underneath a burlap support stretched horizontally across four points. More elaborate still was Chung Sang-hwa (b. 1932), a Korean resident of Japan who painted by laboriously applying and removing sections of paint from the canvas to create mottled and highly tactile surfaces. Many Tansaekhwa artists made a case for the centrality of ink painting to contemporary art by incorporating or referring to its material properties. Taking cues from his father-in-law Kim Whanki and his interest in the seeping and blurring of ink, Yun Hyongkeun (1928–2007) began a series titled Umber Blue featuring an admixture of turpentine and oil paint. The result was poured paintings that looked as if they were of black ink seeping into an absorbent paper support. Chung Chang-sup (1927–2011), himself trained in Western-style oil painting, turned to hanji, the paper traditionally used in Korea for ink painting and calligraphy, often embellishing its edges with flecks of black ink. The most radical may have been Kwon Young-woo (1926–2013), who

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Figure 16.5  Kwon Young-woo (1926–2013). Untitled. 1973. Korean paper on plywood. 161.92 × 122 cm. Photo: courtesy of private collection. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

was among the first generation of Korean artists to receive a university degree in ink painting. Since the mid-1960s, he largely bypassed ink and brush altogether, choosing to scratch, tear, or poke his paper supports directly, often with his fingers or hand (Figure 16.5). Tansaekhwa was thus art born from various investigations into how painting was made, a reason why many of its key examples were often discussed by Korean critics as questions of method (pangbŏp). Yet it was promoted by a small group of Korean and Japanese critics in group exhibitions like “Five Korean Artists, Five Kinds of White” held in 1975 at the Tokyo Gallery as emblems of ‘Korean-ness.’ Although never satisfactorily defined, Korean-ness or the “Korean spirit” was supposedly present via the distinctive neutrals used in many of the exhibited works. In addition, the deceptively simple processes of painting were seen as indications of a Korean affinity to nature incommensurable to anything found in the West. Though highly clichéd, such characterizations were intentionally strategic, aimed as much at turning the marginal position of Korean art into an advantage: the supposed primitivism of Tansaekhwa was celebrated as proof of its value as an example of a pure “Asian” art.



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For all the emphasis on a collective national spirit, few commentators recognized the absence of significant female artists. Female students far outnumbered their male colleagues in university art departments, yet few became full-time artists. As the critic Yi Kyungsung (1919–2009) pointed out in 1963, if there was “not one great woman artist [in Korea]” it was not because female artists lacked talent, but because they were routinely denied “opportunities for artistic creation” (Yi Kyungsung 1963: 240–241). Magazines and journals in the 1960s occasionally published features on “female artists” (yŏryu hwaga), but rarely did they pay sustained critical attention to individual artists and works. Contemporary art in Korea remained under the control of a small coterie of men despite a number of all-women artists’ groups that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s (Kim Hong-hee 1994: 197–205). A few exceptions in the dearth of postwar female Korean artists did exist. Educated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, the sculptor Kim Chung Sook (1917–1991) introduced welding to her Korean counterparts. The reputation of ink painter Park Re-hyun rivaled that of her husband Kim Ki-ch’ang while the figurative paintings of Chun Kyung-ja (b. 1924) were widely collected in postwar Korea. Kim Moon-ja, Kim Young-ja (b. 1941), and Jung Kang Ja were active in the performance art scene, producing or collaborating on some of the most important early works such as Murder on the Han River in 1968. Jin Okseon’s (b. 1950) allover masses of linear cubes were included in many Tansaekhwa shows. Though based in France, Kim Soungui (b.  1946) was frequently cited or included in exhibitions for her provocative conceptual works. In addition, Korea’s most financially successful gallery, Hyundai Gallery, although representing mostly male artists, was owned and operated by a woman, Park Myung-ja (b. 1943). Generally, however, the deeply chauvinistic and hierarchical Korean art world made it impossible for women to pursue full-time careers as visual artists. Artists like Paris-based Kim Soun-gui and Rhee Seundja (1918–2009) chose to live or travel overseas, a preference that would become even more apparent after the South Korean government eased travel restrictions in the years just before and after the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Encounters with the Everyday For the Union Exhibition of Young Artists in 1967, Kim Young-ja showed Match 111, a much-magnified recreation of a “UN,” or United Nations matchbox (Figure 16.6). The distinctive octagonal box was a common sight in 1960s Korea, as was the small reproduction of the white stone obelisk erected in 1959 to commemorate the efforts of United Nations forces during the Korean War. The size was just enlarged enough to render the box human scale. Indeed, both its height and the circumference of the center flap (which could be lifted) seem to correspond to that of an adult person’s waist. Match 111 was perhaps the best case any Korean artist made during the 1960s for the existence of a local strain of Pop, a highly influential artistic movement in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan but with little real presence in Korea.

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Figure 16.6  Kim Young-ja (b. 1941). Match 111. 1967, recreated in 2001. Mixed media. 90 × 130 × 130 cm. Photo: courtesy of the artist’s collection. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

As Choi Tae-shin (b. 1942) astutely pointed out, Pop was only possible when a certain level of industrialization had taken place. Barely a decade from the near-total destruction of the country caused by the Korean War, the economy was still rooted in an ethos of production, not consumption; the artistic turn to everyday objects reflected as much. But poverty offered its own opportunities, said Cho’s friend Yang Ch’ŏlmo (b. 1943) who noted the use of common objects, and particularly waste: corrugated cardboard, wrapping paper, discarded rubber washers, and cigarette butts featured in many works of art made at the time. Like her colleagues Jung Kang Ja and Chung Chan-seung (1942–1994) who also produced enlarged versions of images otherwise seen at a much smaller scale, Kim Young-ja was interested in what Jung Kang Ja would later described as the need to “connect with the masses.” In many cases, this meant using images that were familiar to large sections of society, including images drawn from folk culture. Several artists, for instance, used the five-color palette (red, blue, yellow, black, and white) associated with shamanism and Chinese cosmology. Another Union Exhibition participant, Lee Seungtaek (b. 1932) later stressed the necessity of discovering what is “ours,” which initially read as the need to identify what is uniquely “Korean.” He was perhaps more attuned to the ideologies underpinning the state’s promotion of Korean-ness than most. Lee began his artistic career painting portraits of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as a child living in Soviet-occupied Hamgyŏng Province, the northernmost region of prewar Korea. After moving to



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South Korea, he trained as a sculptor, often moonlighting for his professors involved in the design and production of commemorative statues of heroic figures commissioned by the government. But the “our” to which Lee referred was not the same as the idealized views of Korean-ness on which the state and a burgeoning populism then converged (Lee Seung-taek 1972: 19). He was frustrated by what he saw as a tendency in Korean discussions of art and culture to equate “Asia” with antiquity and the “West” with newness (Lee Seung-taek 1972: 19). “The purpose,” Lee continued, was “not to recuperate tradition,” but rather to keep oneself open to “the diversity of materialist expression.” Thus while the state carefully vetted and framed certain subjects as “traditional,” Lee tried to put a distance between his materials and the agendas that they might otherwise be made to serve. Fishing nets commonly used in rural coastal areas were stretched into taut banners that made viewers think less of the nets’ practical function and more about their texture, color, and shapelessness (Figure  16.7). Likewise, a stack of earthenware pots ordinarily used for storing kimchi and bean paste become units of a towering pillar that comes across as a tongue-in-cheek response to the massive commemorative statues made at the state’s behest. A different kind of everyday was depicted in photography, which occupied a space of limbo between so-called “high” art and mass market imagery. Many, if not most photographers in Korea worked as photojournalists or for advertising campaigns.

Figure 16.7  Lee Seung-taek (b.1932). Sound of Wind. 1974. Installation with fishing nets. Dimensions variable. Photo: courtesy of the artist’s collection. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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Yet they also entered the growing number of photography contests then being sponsored by newspapers, a trend coinciding with the official endorsement of photography’s fine art status through the creation of a separate photography category in the National Art Salon in 1964. Most were in black-and-white, largely because of what for many photographers was the prohibitively high cost of printing and developing color film. Several photographs appeared to take up the challenge of Limb Eung-sik, the influential teacher of photography who insisted that it be used as a tool for revealing the invisible struggles of the people. A case in point was Modernization, a photograph taken by Jun Min-cho (b. 1944) as part of his self-professed interest in capturing images of menial laborers, such as grave diggers and construction workers (Figure 16.8). Taken in 1969, it shows a sleeping porter in Kwanggyo-dong, one of downtown Seoul’s commercial thoroughfares. Rising in the background is the Samil Building, the glass-curtain wall skyscraper designed by Kim Choong-up (1922– 1988), a protégé of French architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965), who is internationally recognized as a pioneer of modern architecture. For almost a decade, the Samil Building was the tallest building in South Korea, its height and appearance celebrated

Figure 16.8  Jun Min-cho (b.1944). Modernization. 1969. Silver gelatin print. Dimensions variable. Photo: courtesy of the artist’s collection.



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by the government as a symbol of Korean urbanization. The sleek black glass office building strikes a sharp contrast with the mass of largely squat buildings clustered around its base. Jun aligns the head of the porter with the edge at which two sides of the Samil Building abut, hence drawing the eye upwards toward the building’s unfinished floors. The photograph consequently draws attention to the question of labor: to both the work needed to complete the floors and to those who might be charged with the task, such as the porter lying below. In the 1960s, the Korean government poured significant time and money into national and urban development, partly to alleviate what in Seoul was unprecedented population growth. But while the fruits of this development were widely hailed as monuments of progress, little attention was paid to the frequently poor working conditions of those who actually built them. For Jun, Modernization commemorated “the laborer who worked until his back broke but could never escape poverty as well as the image of a regime that inflicted mistreatment [on the people] in the name of economic development” (Jun 2000: 20). The state’s drive to industrialize the country in the name of progress became an implicit subject for numerous artists. Byun Young-won (1921–1988) and Kim Young-ju (1920–1995) made works alluding to the pace of urban development. In Kim’s case, he painted murals on one side of Sewoon sangga, a major commercial development designed by architect Kim Swoogeun in Seoul. Already known for incorporating into his paintings found materials taken while employed in one of the many textile factories on which Korean industry depended, Kim Ku-lim (b. 1936) joined his colleagues Jung Kang Ja, Chung Chan-seung to create The Meaning of 1/24 Second, an early important example in Korea of an experimental film, or a non-commercial and non-documentary film intended to be viewed as art. Named after the number of frames taken per second in an ordinary 16-millimeter film, the silent ten-minute film consists of a series of quick glimpse of life in a rapidly changing Seoul. Like most experimental films, the collaborative work was non-narrative yet its frenetic pace is abruptly checked by the regular appearance of durational shots of Chung yawning into a mirror or sometimes even directly into the camera. More than a sign of exhaustion or boredom, Chung’s yawns responded to what many critical of Seoul’s rapid urbanization saw as its profound banality. The scale and cost of industrialization were the implicit subjects of works featuring land, trees, and other natural phenomena. Corporal Term, by Lee Kun-yong, presents an uprooted tree trunk partly embedded in a cube of earth (Figure 16.9). Shown in 1971 at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, the single trunk sits majestically, if a bit precariously, on a cube of dirt placed directly on the floor. The height of the cube recalls the pedestals used for government statues, but here it is made of earth. The tree trunk was in fact salvaged by Lee, which, like so many trees, had been chopped down to make way for a new highway connecting Seoul to Pusan, Korea’s second-largest city. Lee had local residents haul the trunk into the museum, thus bringing into an official institution an object otherwise destroyed in the name of development. The work read as a memorial to Mother Nature which seemed to disappear at breakneck speed under the blades of bulldozers and the heavy tracks of cranes.

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Figure 16.9  Lee Kun-yong (b. 1942). Corporal Term. 1971. Tree trunk and earth. Dimensions variable. Photo: courtesy of the artist’s collection. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Art under Authoritarianism Corporal Term and other works had special bearing on Korean society at this time. In 1972, South Korean president Park Chung-hee declared martial law in the name of protecting South Korean citizenry from the Communist threat embodied by North Korea’s very existence. Euphemistically framed as a “Restoration,” or in Korean, “Yushin,” this period of martial law lasted almost seven years from October 1972 to October 26, 1979, the day Park was assassinated. In many respects, the Yushin declaration was but a symbolic benchmark, the culmination of what since the 1960s had been the steady expansion of government power and the commensurate diminution of alternate forms of authority. Life in Yushin Korea was irrevocably marked by the radical suppression of civil rights, including the right of public assembly, by a tightly controlled state elite. At the same time, the South Korean economy, helped in large part by the United States and its need for material support during the Vietnam War, was a major factor in national policy. The state was run by technocrats whose “paramount concerns were effectiveness and performance” and whose policies were intended to mold individual behavior to better achieve the economic goals it set (Hyun 2013: 234).



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But these were confusing, and often, dangerous times. It was not always clear, especially to artists, what in fact was acceptable. Government laws enacted in the spring of 1975 so expanded the latitude of state power as to effectively make any kind of independent action grounds for severe punishment. Making works of art for places outside a recognized exhibition space, for example, could result in an artist being watched, followed, or imprisoned by police. Artists who pursued the everyday and connections with the masses were particularly subject to scrutiny. Most viewers, including the state, persisted in treating art as apolitical and insulated from the concerns of everyday life and politics. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, younger artists disillusioned with what they saw as the corrupt and intellectually deadening nature of society and culture at large challenged this separation. In many cases, they succeeded—witness the many times police or museum officials cancelled exhibitions of works involving live performance art. But the state became even more controlling and punitive after 1972, going so far as to close down non-compliant universities, a major platform for artists. What artists could do under such circumstances became a primary subject. Few artists, if any, dared to make works that were direct expressions of protest or even outright political statements. Still, numerous artists made works that blurred the divide between how Korean viewers might have otherwise separated art from life, thereby making it more possible for intentionally artistic gestures to have an actual social and political impact. Many artists, for example, emphasized communication (sot’ong) with the general public (Sung 2010: 122). The emphasis was a thinly veiled criticism of the state’s idea of communication that some artists saw as little more than a cacophonous inventory of catchphrases and statistics. “Living in the Korea of that time, I had no idea what it meant to live in a post-industrial society,” recalled Sung Neung-kyung. State benchmarks like “a GNP over three thousand [US] dollars” had “absolutely no meaning [for me],” Sung further recalled (Sung 2010: 123). Not surprisingly, the newspaper became a popular artistic subject. Not only was it the most prevalent form of information dissemination in South Korea, it frequently took the lead in shaping public opinion. Accordingly, many were subject to government harassment and intimidation, especially newspapers critical of state power. Sung Neung-kyung and Choi Tae-shin produced works by cutting or painting over blocks of text printed in newspaper, an action that directly resonated with rampant censorship of the media (Figure  16.10). Yet, for Sung, cutting and pasting paper was as important as his choice of subject. How the newspaper looked and how Sung treated it encouraged audiences to reflect on the broader political context to which the work necessarily belonged. Performance and its emphasis on chance and spontaneity had special meaning for audiences living in a highly regulated society. Many performances consisted of daily activities that most people did and could do, an emphasis that carried significant political implications in a time and place when the state was constantly exhorting its citizens to be better than they ever could be. That performances were about audiences watching individuals undertaking even the most mundane activities also resonated especially for viewers accustomed to having their own quotidian routines monitored by various agents of the state. The goal for many artists was to have viewers think

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Figure 16.10  Sung Neung-kyung (b. 1944). Detail of Newspaper after the First of June 1974. 1974. Newsprint, ink on paper. 63 × 87 cm. Photo: courtesy of the artist’s collection. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

actively and consciously about life as something they practiced, rather than as a status or a condition over which they had no control. A case in point was Bar in a Gallery, a performance Lee Kang-so (b. 1943) held in 1973. A tavern was set up inside the Myongdong Gallery, the single most active venue for experimental art in Korea during the 1970s whose founder, Kim Mun-ho (1930– 1982), was a virtual patron for scores of younger artists. Bought from an actual restaurant, wooden tables with accompanying chairs were placed in the middle of the gallery. Brass kettles filled with makkŏlli, the treacherously delicious Korean rice wine sat on tabletops alongside dishes filled with typical bar snacks like dried squid, their contents waiting to be emptied. Signs advertising common dishes like stir-fried squid and clam soup were visible in the immediate foreground and the background. The first performance in Korea to make audience participation absolutely central to its execution, Bar in a Gallery was also the most effective in bringing forth the ambiguities inherent in the relationship between performance and social class. Although it took place for only a week, it drew a remarkably diverse audience in terms of occupation and age. The kinds of chairs and tables used recalled the chumak, the traditional pub-cum-inn that since the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) served as one of the few genuinely public places open to all regardless of social background. Lee actually used tables and chairs made from wooden boxes originally used by the U.S. military, the kind that would have been found in a chumak during the years immediately following the Korean War. The furniture belonged to humbler establishments serving a predominantly working-class clientele, one whose habits were distinctly at odds with the kind of affluent life widely promoted in general interest magazines. That performances like



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Bar in a Gallery took place in a museum or gallery setting ensured that they would be seen as art and not as political statements. It also guaranteed that the performance would not be mistaken as entertainment in the way that early performances were. Many works that could be read in political terms took place outside Seoul, where government scrutiny was somewhat less stringent than it was in the capital. Most universities, cultural exhibitions, and artists were based in Seoul. A series of “Contemporary Art Festival” exhibitions was launched to address this situation, the most important of these being the Taegu Contemporary Arts Festival. Located in the southeastern provincial hub of Taegu, the festival was a leading venue for experimental art from 1974 to 1979. Works exhibited included a giant ice pillar in front of the museum or strips of colored tape pasted onto large pieces of paper. Kim Moon-ja and Kim Soun-gui held performances, while their colleague Kim Young-se (b. 1952) tore finger-shaped lengths of paper attached to a wall and left them to dangle freely. Notable too was the emergence of video art, or works involving moving pictures, video data and television monitors. Its founder was New York-based Nam June Paik (1932–2006). Paik had left Korea at the onset of the Korean War yet remained a subject in the mainstream Korean press as the first artist of Korean descent to gain prominence in the international art world. Even more important was the rising visibility of television as a form of information dissemination within Korea. Trained in both painting and architecture, Taegu artist, Park Hyun-ki (1942–2000) began to work with television sets that same year, juxtaposing monitors with found stones. The first artist in Korea to consistently describe his works as installations, Park was interested in television for its ability to compress time, space, and even personal differences; in this he seemed to agree with Paik, whose works Park followed (Chang 1982: 77–79). By the early 1980s, Park became increasingly more attuned to the growing separation between what he saw as humanity and nature. In a 1982 work, he placed two monitors in a forest clearing where passerby illegally dumped trash. Projected on each screen were images of rocks, stones, and other natural phenomena, a poignant reminder to city dwellers just how removed they were from actual nature.

What Contemporary Art Means in Korean For much of the 20th century, considerable debate has taken place concerning the meaning of “contemporary art.” What does it include? When did it begin? In Korean, the word for “contemporary art,” or hyŏndae misul, is often interchangeable with “modern art,” or kŭndae misul. The English word “contemporary” became increasingly more prominent from the early 1960s, as major exhibitions like the Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists explicitly used it in their titles. During the many discussions taking place in the late 1960s over how and whether to have a separate National Museum of Contemporary Art (Kungnip hyŏndae misulgwan), a number of critics pointed out that to use “modern” in the manner of the Museum of Modern Art in New York would not be accurate; it would be more appropriate to use “contemporary” as the English translation.

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Figuring out when contemporary Korean art began proved even more challenging. Should it begin at the point when an infrastructure of art started to emerge through exhibitions, new terminologies, and new modes of depiction? In 1973, Yi Kyungsung wrote that the “modern and contemporary coexist without separation in today’s art world…in the dictionary the modern is defined as ‘a recent era that has taken place not too long ago’ while the contemporary is described as ‘the era of today.’” (Yi Kyungsung 1973) Then the director of the Hongik University Museum, Yi drew many of his observations from his experiences of having to organize the museum’s collection in an accessible manner. He argued that the history of contemporary art should not stress political events at the cost of thinking about artworks, no matter how important the events were on a national or international level. Instead, this history had to come from the art itself, by identifying particular approaches to form. The mid-to-late 1970s saw the emergence of a critical mass of writing on Korean art history, including the publication of The Situation of Contemporary Korean Art (1976) by Yi Kyungsung, and The Faultlines of Contemporary Korean Art (1978) by Oh Kwangsu. Oh briefly brought up the late eighteenth century as a possible starting point for modern Korean art, echoing proposals by literature scholars. Implicit in Oh’s suggestion was the need to address ink painting, a medium that by the early 1980s was conspicuously absent from many histories or exhibitions of contemporary art in Korea. Perhaps even more notable was History of Contemporary Korean Art (1975), a revised history of modern Korean painting written by the critic Kim Yun-su (b. 1936). Affected by the excesses of Park Chung-hee’s Yushin government which brought new urgency to the question of art’s political significance, Kim tried to explicitly track and evaluate art according to social and political events. In Korea, “contemporary art” is recognized not as a period or style, but an idea intrinsically defined by the need to accommodate contending priorities and values. As “contemporary art” expands in terms of volume and chronological breadth, a major challenge is for us to examine the criteria on which we think about its history. In practice, the contemporary is a veritable form of border control through which certain kinds of art either do not pass or must meet an unacknowledged set of criteria before gaining admission into certain institutions – the biennial circuit, the art fair, the whitecube gallery, the museum, or university syllabi. For artists, historians, and critics active in postwar Korea, “contemporary art” was not a period or style, but an idea intrinsically defined by the need to accommodate contending priorities and values. Eventually it became a call to think about contemporary Korean art as inherently global in nature, one that had much to offer to audiences at home and abroad.

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Nam Kwan. 1953. “Kukchemisuljŏnŭl chungsimŭro” [On international exhibitions]. Sinch’ŏnji 8 (5): 264. Oh, Kwangsu. 1968. “12th Annual Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists." Korea Journal 8 (6): 36. Oh Kwangsu. 1970. “Naeile ŭi t’usa wa hwakdae” [Projections and expansions of tomorrow]. Yesulgye 2: 223. Oh Kwangsu. 1995. Han’guk hyŏndae misul ŭi miŭisik [The aesthetics of contemporary Korean art]. Seoul: Chaewon. Pak Yŏng-nam. 1981. “Han’guk silhŏm misul 15 nyŏn ŭi palchach’wi” [Fifteen years of Korean experimental art]. Kyegan misul 17: 92. Ri Wŏn-gon. 1963. “Namjosŏn misul t’oep’esang kwa ‘ch’usangp’a’ ŭi pandongsŏng” [The decadent face of South Korean art and the reactionary nature of ‘Abstractionists’]. Chosŏn Misul 2: 33–35. Sung Neung-kyung. 2010. 22 myŏng ŭi yesulga, sidae wa sot’onghada: 1970 nyŏndae ihu han’guk hyŏndae misul ŭi chahwasang [22 artists in conversation with their times: A self-portrait of post-1970s contemporary Korean art], edited by Chung Young Baek, 122–127. Seoul: Kung Ree. Yi, Ki-jil. 2002. “In Search of a Panacea: Japan-Korea Rapprochement and America’s ‘Far Eastern Problem’.” Pacific Historical Review 71 (2): 633–662. Yi Ku-yŏl. 1970. “Minsok ŭi mŏt” [The flair of the folk]. Seoul Sinmun: March 23. Yi Ku-yŏl. 1984. “Hyŏndae han’guk misulsa ŭi aengp’orŭmel yŏlp’ung” [The rage for Informel in contemporary Korean art history]. Space 265: 49–52. Yi Kyungsung, 1963. “Han’guk yŏr yu misulga chonghoen’gi” [The odyssey of Korean women artists]. Yŏsang 6: 240–241. Yi Kyungsung. 1973. “Kŭndae wa hyŏndae ŭi ch’aijŏm” [The difference between modern and contemporary]. Kyŏnghyang Sinmun: October 4. Yi Tae-wŏn. 1964. “Hwarang sigam: pando hwarangŭl chungsimŭro” [Thoughts on the gallery: Bando Gallery]. Misul 1: 44. Yu Ok-jae. 2001. “Puch’aech’um ŭi munhwasajŏk ŭiŭi” [The cultural historical significance of the fan dance]. Muyonghakhoe nonjip 30: 43–44. Yun Seung-jung. 2006. “An’gukdong kosa” [The legend of Anguk-dong]. In Tangsini yumyŏnghan kŏnchukka Kim Su-gŭnimnikka [Are you the famous architect Kim Swoogeun?]. Seoul: Kim Swoo Geun Cultural Foundation.

Further Reading Chung, Hyungmin. 2006. Modern Korean Ink Painting. Elizabeth, NJ: Hollym. Provides an accessible overview of ink painting and ink painters in 20th-century Korea. Horlyck, Charlotte. 2017. Korean Art from the 19th Century to the Present. London: Reaktion. A survey of key developments in modern and contemporary art in Korea. Kee, Joan. 2010. “The Curious Case of Contemporary Ink Painting.” Art Journal 69 (3): 88–113. A brief survey of contemporary ink painting in Korea in the larger context of its absence from histories of contemporary art.



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Kee, Joan. 2009. “Longevity Studies: The Contemporary Korean Art Exhibition at Fifty.” In Your Bright Future: 12 Korean Artists. Houston and Los Angeles: Museum of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 16–28. A survey of important exhibitions of contemporary Korean art from 1953 to the present. Kee, Joan. 2013. Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. An examination of Tansaekhwa in the context of postwar Korean art and contemporary Asian art. Kee, Joan. 2015. “Why Performance in Authoritarian Korea?” Tate Papers 23. Retrieved from http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/why-performanceauthoritarian-korea. An exploration of performance art’s origins and significance in 1960s and 1970s Korea. Portal, Jane. 2005. Art Under Control in North Korea. London: Reaktion. Provides a survey of the history and production of visual art in North Korea.

Glossary Bando [Pando] 半島(畵廊) Bang Geun-taek [Pang Gŭnt’aek, Bang Geuntaek] 方根澤 Byun Young-won [Pyŏn Yŏngwŏn, Byeon Yeongwon] 邊永園 chaegŏn [jaegeon] 再建 Chang Sugwŏn [Jang Seogwon] 張錫源 Ch’oe Sunu [Choe Sunu] 崔淳雨 Choi Boong-hyun [Ch’oe Punghyŏn, Choe Bunghyeon] 崔朋鉉 Choi Tae-shin [Ch’oe T’aesin, Choe Taesin] 崔台新 Ch’ŏngnyŏn chakka yŏllipjŏn [Cheongnyeon jakka yeollipjeon] 靑年作家聯立展 Chosun Ilbo [Chosŏn Ilbo, Jeoseon Ilbo] 朝鮮日報 Chosŏn misul chŏllamhoe [Joseon misul jeollamhoe] 朝鮮美術展覽會 chumak [jumak] 酒幕 Chun Kyung-ja [Ch’ŏn Kyŏngja, Cheon Gyeongja] 千鏡子 Chung-Ang [Jungang] 中央(大學校) Chung Chan-seung [Chŏng Ch’ansŭng, Jeong Chanseung] 鄭燦勝 Chung Chang-sup [Chŏng Ch’angsŏp, Jeong Changseop] 丁昌燮 Chung Sang-hwa [Chŏng Sanghwa, Jeong Sanghwa] 鄭相和 Ha Chonghyun [Ha Chonghyŏn, Ha Jonghyeon] 河鍾賢 Hamgyŏng [Hamgyeong] 咸鏡(道) Han 漢(江) hanbok 韓服 hangukhwa 韓國畵 Han’guk misul hyŏphoe [Han’guk misul hyeophoe] 韓國美術協會 hanji 韓紙 Hongik 弘益(大學校) hyŏndae misul [hyeondae misul] 現代美術 Jin Okseon [Chin Oksŏn] 秦玉先

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JoongAng Ilbo [Chungang Ilbo, Jungang Ilbo] 中央日報 Jun Min-cho [Chŏn Minjo, Jeon Minjo] 田敏照 Jung Kang Ja [Chŏng Kangja, Jeong Gangja] 鄭江子 Kang Kuk-jin [Kang Kukchin, Gang Gukjin] 姜國鎭 Kankoku gendai kaiga ten (J.) 韓國現代繪畵展 Kim Bok-young [Kim Pogyŏng, Gim Bogyeong] 金福榮 Kim Choong-up [Kim Chungŏp, Gim Jungeop] 金重業 Kim Chung Sook [Kim Chŏngsuk, Gim Jeongsuk] 金貞淑 Kim In-hwan [Kim Inhwa] 金仁煥 Kim Jong-pil [Kim Chongp’il, Gim Jongpil] 金鍾泌 Kim Ki-chang [Kim Kich’ang, Gim Gichang] 金基昶 Kim Ku-lim [Kim Kurim, Gim Gurim] 金丘林 Kim Moon-ja [Kim Munja] 金文子 Kim Munho 金文浩 Kim Soun-gui [Kim Sun’gi] 金順基 Kim Swoogeun [Kim Sugŭn, Gim Sugeun] 金壽根 Kim Whanki [Kim Hwan’gi] 金煥基 Kim Yongjun 金瑢俊 Kim Yongmin 金容民 Kim Young-ja [Kim Yŏngja, Gim Yeongja] 金英子 Kim Young-ju [Kim Yŏngju, Gim Yeongju] 金永周 Kim Young-se [Kim Yŏngse, Gim Yeongse] 金永世 Kim Yunsu 金潤洙 Konggan [Gonggan] 空間 Kukjŏn [Gukjeon] 國展 Kungnip hyŏndae misulgwan [Gungnip hyeondae misulgwan] 國立現代美術館 Kwanggyo-dong [Gwanggyo-dong] 光敎洞 Kwon Young-woo [Kwŏn Yŏngu, Gwon Yeongu] 權寧禹 Lee Kang-so [Yi Kangso] 李康昭 Lee Kun-yong [Yi Kŏnyong, Yi Geonyong] 李健鏞 Lee Seungtaek [Yi Sŭngt’aek, Yi Seungtaek] 李升澤 Lee Ufan [Yi Uhwan] 李禹換 Lee Ungno [Yi ŭngno, Yi Eungno] 李應魯 Lee Yil [Yi Il] 李逸 Limb Eung-sik [Im Ŭ ngsik, Im Eungsik] 林應植 makkŏlli 막걸리 Midopa [Midop’a] 美都波(百貨店) Min Kyung-kap [Min Kyŏnggap, Min Gyeonggap] 閔庚甲 minjok kirokhwa 民族記錄畵 Minjok kirokhwa chejak samuso 民族記錄畵製作事務所 Mono-ha (J.) もの派 Mudongin 無同人 Mungnimhoe 墨林會 Myongdong [Myŏngdong, Myeongdong] 明洞(畵廊)) Nam June Paik [Paek Namjun, Baek Namjun] 白南準



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Nam Kwan [Nam Gwan] 南寬 nihonga (J.) 日本畵 Oh Kwangsu [O Kwangsu, O Gwangsu] 吳光洙 Pak Yŏngnam [Bak Yeongnam] 朴英男 pangbŏp 方法 Park Bong-su [Pak Pongsu, Bak Bongsu] 朴奉洙 Park Chung-hee [Pak Chŏnghŭi, Bak Jeonghui] 朴正熙 Park Hyun-ki [Pak Hyŏn’gi, Bak Hyeon’gi] 朴炫基 Park Myung-ja [Pak Myŏngja, Bak Myeongja] 朴明子 Park Re-hyun [Pak Raehyŏn, Bak Raehyeon] 朴崍賢 Park Seobo [Pak Sŏbo, Bak Seobo] 朴栖甫 Pusan [Busan] 釜山 Rhee Seundja [Yi Sŏngja, Yi Seongja] 李聖子 Saeya saeya p’arangsaeya 새야 새야 파랑새야 Samil Building/31 빌딩 Sewoon sangga [Seun sangga] 世運商街 Shim Moon-seup [Sim Munsŏp, Sim Munseop] 沈文燮 Sin Saimdang 申師任堂 Sinjŏn dongin [Sinjeon dongin] 新展同人 sirhŏm [silheom] 實驗 sŏmin [seomin] 庶民 Sŏnjŏn 鮮展 Song Su-nam [Song Sunam] 宋秀南 Song Young-bang [Song Yŏngbang, Song Yeongbang] 宋榮邦 Sŏrabŏl 서라벌(藝術學校) sot’ong [sotong] 疏通 sŏyanghwa [seoyanghwa] 西洋畵 Suh Se-ok [Sŏ Seok, Seo Se’ok] 徐世鈺 Suh Seung-won [Sŏ Sŭngwŏn, Seo Seungwon] 徐承元 Sung Neung-kyung [Sŏng Nŭnggyŏng, Seong Neunggyeong] 成能慶 Taegu [Daegu] 大邱 Taehanmin’guk misul chŏllamhoe [Daehanmin’guk misul jeollamhoe] 大韓民國美 術展覽會 Tansaekhwa [Dansaekhwa] 單色畵 tongyanghwa [dongyanghwa] 東洋畵 turumagi [durumagi] 두루마기 Yang Ch’ŏlmo [Yang Cheolmo] 梁哲模 Yi Kyungsung [Yi Kyŏngsŏng, Yi Gyeongseong] 李慶成 Yi Quedae [Yi K’waedae, Yi Kwaedae] 李快大 Yi Sunsin 李舜臣 Yoo Young-kuk, [Yu Yŏngguk, Yu Yeongguk] 劉永國 yŏryu hwaga 女流畵家 Yu Kŭnjun [Yu Geunjun] 劉槿俊 Yun Hyongkeun [Yun Hyŏnggŭn, Yun Hyeonggeun] 尹亨根 Yushin 維新

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Situating Contemporary Art of South Korea, 1980 to 2016 Young Min Moon

What is contemporary Korean art in the global era and in relation to the viability of “global art history?” Korean art is widely considered to have gained its contemporary currency through democratization and globalization in the 1990s. However, having the two words “contemporary” and “Korean” together is paradoxical, for the “contemporary” implies a sense of temporality shared globally, while the “Korean” connotes specific knowledge and experience of the local. While the contemporary has become synonymous with the global, in actuality it “encompasses disjunctive global temporalities we can never grasp” (Bishop 2010: 18). As an inherently unequal force that eradicates cultural differences, globalism as a premise to understand contemporary art may not be entirely plausible (Enwezor 2009: 33). After all, contemporary art is said to begin at different times depending on who defines it. Moreover, modernism, modernity, postmodernity, and contemporaneity all mean different things in different locations. In South Korea, there existed different kinds of modernities: colonial, militarized, and resistant. Hence, Korean art shall be introduced in the context of the successive violent ruptures and social upheavals in the twentieth century that define the nature of Korean modernity and contemporaneity: Japanese colonialism; the Korean War; the legacy of the Cold War; the tumultuous struggles for democracy; and the relentless drive for global competition, neoliberalism, and the inequitable life. Korean art since 1980 reflects the artists’ conscious efforts to articulate the collective identity as well as a tendency to diverge from it. It includes the dissident political art made in relative isolation under military state oppressions, socially engaged critical practices that interrogate the public sphere, community, and collective memory, as well as diverse kinds of art made in the wake of its sudden introduction

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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to postmodern art, proliferation of digital technology, and the rise of international biennials and the explosion in global art markets. In the era of global contemporary art, some Korean critics share the view that there isn’t any dominant movement in contemporary Korean art, given its sheer diversity. Yet this chapter attempts to identify widely varying but clearly distinct themes, concerns, and approaches to art by critically engaging with its local context, i.e. its historical, sociopolitical, cultural, and economic realities, rather than treating Korean art merely as an inclusive part of the myth of a ‘universal’ narrative in global contemporary art. Instead of subscribing to the “fiction” of global contemporaneity, it offers a self-reflexive inquiry into the recent historical past. Borrowing the notion of contemporaneity according to Giorgio Agamben, who defines it as a “relationship with time that adheres to it through a disjunction and an anachronism” (Agamben 2009: 41), the story of contemporary Korean art is told here in terms of “dialectical contemporaneity,” that is, “an anachronistic action that seeks to reboot the future through the unexpected appearance of a relevant past” (Bishop 2010: 61).

Historical Subjectivity Crisis and the Rise of Minjung In the modern era Korea has been a locus of vested interests of superpowers due to its significant strategic location. Although there had been anti-colonial struggles over nearly four decades of Japanese colonialism, Korea was liberated in 1945 by default due to Japan’s defeat in World War II. The collective consciousness of Koreans was marked by humiliation from observing the Chosŏn dynasty’s demise through a violent assault from Japan and the reclamation of sovereignty through United States intervention. The Korean War, a misnomer, was a proxy war carried out on behalf of the bipolar division of the world during the Cold War. As the historian Bruce Cumings put it succinctly, the United States holds a lion’s share of the national division, which remains intact today (Cumings 1997: 186). Importantly, the South Korean military regimes have violated the basic human rights through brutally oppressing its dissenters, at times eliminating them. Given this history, the historian Namhee Lee describes South Korean regimes as being as “equally [an] authoritarian military dictatorship” as North Korea (Namhee Lee 2007: 3). The concept “Minjung” (people or grassroots) emerged out of this context: the prolonged “crisis of historical subjectivity,” to borrow Lee’s words. The recognition of the continued “failure” of the common people to become the subject of their own history became the impetus for the formation of the Minjung movement. The intellectuals and students alike believed that it was the common people who were capable of overcoming the three-fold oppressions caused by the military regime, the corporate conglomerates, and the imperialist foreign powers (Namhee Lee 2007: 4–6). The Kwangju Uprising of 1980 was a watershed event in Korean history. The protestors rose up against the military coup of Chun Doo-hwan but were cruelly oppressed by the military, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. The operation was carried out with a tacit approval of the United States, contributing to the



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growing anti-American sentiment among the populace. Fueled by the aftermath of the uprising, the Minjung movement emerged through solidarity across the nation. Toward the establishment of a parliamentary government in South Korea in 1993, it was fundamental for the Minjung movement to encompass collective efforts to achieve democracy, involving workers, students, and intellectuals not only through public demonstrations but also literature, rituals, theatrical performances, music, dance, and visual art.

The Emergence of Minjung Art In the 1970s there were a number of different artistic tendencies, such as photorealism, attempts to revive traditional Korean ink painting, as well as various experimental vanguard practices. However, it was monochromatic abstract painting, or Tansaekhwa, that had hegemony over the art world. By the end of the decade Minjung art would emerge as the counter-hegemonic force in response to both the oppressive regime and the silence of the Tansaekhwa abstractionist artists. Although Tansaekhwa has become a subject of renewed interest in recent years, Minjung artists had found monochrome abstraction largely as vacuous, and assessed that there was a significant failure of communication between modern art and the public, and that the restoration of the communicative potential of art was an urgent task. Swiftly attaining dominance in the midst of the social unrest, Minjung art was an integral part of the pro-democracy social movement. Minjung art resists definition due to its complex, multifarious, and seemingly contradictory nature. It reflected various aspects of modernism, conceptual art, and socialist realism, and incorporated popular culture, as well as traditional forms of visual and performing arts. Some Minjung artists have practiced social engagement and community-based art in pursuit of communal values. In short, as the art historian Park Shin Eui succinctly put it, Minjung art “cannot be defined as a style; it was more a cultural movement than an art trend” (Park Shin Eui 1997: 37). Manifesting a wide variety of forms over two distinct generations of artists in the span of fifteen years, Minjung art has raised many important questions for future generations: How might one understand the contradictions seemingly inherent in the history of Minjung art? What is the nature of Minjung art’s relationship to modernism and popular visual culture? How has Minjung art been received, at home and abroad? What were its shortcomings and lasting legacy, and in what ways is Minjung art relevant today?

The Two Phases of Minjung Art For the general public, which has witnessed the democracy movement in the 1980s, the impression of Minjung art remains shaped by the prints disseminated at rallies and the enormous banner paintings that covered up the facades of buildings on university campuses. Known as kŏlgae kŭrim, the banner paintings were produced by the second generation of Minjung artists, who created them after photographs or by enlarging

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woodblock prints bearing the images of heroic demonstrators. Most notably, Choi Byungsoo’s (b. 1960) banner paintings depicted the victims of the riot police crackdown and were carried in public funerary processions. The majority of the general public may not be too familiar with the first generation of Minjung artworks that were shown in galleries. Today, many South Korean youths have never even heard of Minjung art. For decades Minjung art has not been mentioned in the official art history textbooks for K-12 grades in Korean schools. Historically, the state had shut down a number of important Minjung art exhibitions, confiscated the artworks, and arrested and imprisoned the artists. In the universities, art professors who were staunch defenders of modernism revealed their distaste for figurative art, including Minjung art. In short, Minjung art was persecuted during its day, and remains marginalized in the narrative of Korean art history despite its significance. Ironically, Minjung art has a substantial history of exposure outside of Korea: in Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan. Artist Bahc Mo (1956–2004) and curators Um Hyuk and Sung Wan Kyung organized Minjung art exhibitions at the A Space in Toronto and at the Minor Injury in Brooklyn, New York in 1987, and at the Artist Space in New York in 1988. Entitled Art Toward the Society: Realism in Korean Art 1945–2005, Minjung art was the subject of a touring exhibition to five museums in Japan in 2005. Also, in 2005, Beck Jee-sook curated for the Frankfurt Book Fair, The Battle of Vision, which juxtaposed Minjung art with the critical practice of a younger generation of artists who are on track to continue its legacy. Discussing the history of Minjung art requires an examination of its two distinct phases. The first phase, known as “Critical Realism” (pip’anjŏk hyŏnsiljuŭi), began in 1979 and was spearheaded by a number of artists’ groups based in Kwangju and Seoul. It was founded in the aftermath of the Kwangju Uprising― the Reality and Utterance (Hyŏnsil kwa parŏn) in 1979, the Kwangju Artists Research Association (Kwangju chayu misurin hyŏpŭihoe) in 1980, and the Imsool Year (Imsullyŏn) in 1982. The second phase, known as “Minjung Realism” (minjungjŏk hyŏnsiljuŭi), emerged in 1984. It was not that the earlier “Critical Realism” phase had disappeared by 1984, but rather that the later “Minjung Realism” phase became the dominant artistic paradigm in concert with the democratic movement that was gaining momentum. Minjung art’s relationship to modernism is fraught with contradictions. Many firstgeneration Minjung artists, especially those associated with the Reality and Utterance group, utilized various tropes of modernism. But the second-generation Minjung artists consciously rejected all forms of modernism, including conceptualism, in an effort to reconnect and reestablish the cultural heritage negated during the previous decades of state violence. It is crucial to recognize that while the first-generation Minjung artists of the “Critical Realism” phase strove, as a group, to recognize social reality and to give it artistic form, as individuals they had varied interests. While many of the earlier artists practiced realism, a substantial number of them also used conceptualism, collage, montage, and the readymade, in their representations of the local people, history, and land. A case in point is the photographic montage DMZ: Photographs from Dongducheon



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Photo Salons by Kim Yongtae (1948–2014). Arranged to form the three letters DMZ (for ‘Demilitarized zone’), each of some 180 collected salon photographs taken in the camp towns of American military bases in Korea reveals the microcosm of individual pride, desires, and longings of American GIs and Korean club workers (Figure 17.1). Simultaneously an objet-trouvé of souvenir photos and synecdoche of uneven power relations, DMZ documents the intimate moments of the social underclass of the two anti-communist allies of the Cold War. Park Buldong (b. 1956) is another example whose sharp-witted photomontage series entitled The Nightmare (Electoral Campaign Posters) consists of pseudo-posters offering stinging satires of corrupt domestic politicians and imperialists from Japan and the United States. Shin Hakchul (b. 1943) made photomontages as well, but used them as a basis for making his ambitious mural-scale oil paintings for The Modern History of Korea series, which are powerful representations of the successive turmoil of Korean modernity and the grassroots experience. In 1987 the state falsely accused him of having breached the National Security Law for making a pro-North Korean statement through his painting entitled Rice Planting, which depicts farmers pushing out into the sea

Figure 17.1  Kim Yongtae. DMZ: Photographs from Dongducheon Photo Salons. 1980. Chromogenic print re-mastered as digital print. Private Collection. Photo: courtesy of Kim Young Soo. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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various icons of military and cultural imperialism. The painting, which represents a longing for unification of the two Koreas, has been confiscated. Shin was tried and found guilty, and his appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Council has had no effect on reversing the verdict. While many Minjung artists made history paintings, they were equally concerned with the disintegration of the traditional community of farmers and the countryside, which they regarded as utopia in light of the onslaught from cultural imperialism. In addition to their more ambitious works depicting Korean history and urban reality, Shin Hakchul, Lim Ok Sang (b. 1950), and Lee Jong-Gu (b. 1954) painted the local peasants and community members against the forlorn background of farmland. The latter’s use of grain sacks in lieu of canvas reinforced a sense of the economic reality of farming. The Reality and Utterance group of early Minjung artists critically engaged with their immediate surroundings. Their art reveals certain ambivalence in regard to the then newly available mass-produced goods and images that characterized the urban experience. Their critique of popular culture is clearly evidenced in a painting series by Oh Yoon (1946–1986) entitled Marketing—Hell, which combines Buddhist paintings of hell with signs for popular commodity items. It is also seen in works by Shin Hakchul, which reveal his aversion to all things plastic, and in paintings by Kim Jeong Heon (b. 1946), which highlight the dissonance caused by large billboards for vinyl flooring and other advertisements that loomed large over humble urban shantytowns. The artists found a certain attraction to popular culture as well, as their iconoclastic images afforded them a sense of liberation and pleasure (Shin 2013: 49). Reality and Utterance artists embraced the vulgar and the philistine in order to critique Korean modernism. The early works of Min Jeong-ki (b. 1949), known as “Barbershop Paintings,” are deliberate copies of amateur paintings made for barbershops. While the paintings reflect an anti-art spirit in rejecting established art academies and their values, they are to be distinguished from the appropriation art of postmodernism as Min actually identified with the aesthetics of the common people. Min believed that modern Korean art had failed Korean society because it provided neither pleasure nor affect. A maverick and largely a self-taught artist, Joo Jae-hwan (b. 1941) produced mixed media works that offered biting critique of Korean society and the authoritarian posturing of modern Korean artists. Roh Wonhee (b. 1948) has steadfastly depicted forlorn people on public streets. As a founding member of Reality and Utterance, Oh Yoon, whom I introduced earlier, exerted profound influence among the second generation of Minjung artists, many of whom adopted his commitment to printmaking as a means of depicting grassroots experience, and to the development of pedagogical models for printmaking that involved common people as essential partners in making art. His best-known prints depict traditional cultural themes, folk musicians, or working-class people (Figure 17.2). It was the political, cultural, and psychological reality of the people that Oh Yoon endeavored to represent in modest yet powerful ways. The later generation of Minjung artists tried to emulate his example and sought to coproduce art with common people. There is a paucity of art historical treatise on “Minjung Realism,” or second phase of the Minjung movement, due to the sheer lack of preserved works and the anonymity



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Figure 17.2  Oh Yoon. Father. 1981. Woodblock print. 36 × 35 cm. Photo: courtesy of Kim Ickgu.

of the artists. This situation owes to the very position of the artists, best represented by the group Doorung, meaning “levee,” cofounded by Kim Bong Joon (b. 1948). The Doorung artists shunned Western aesthetics and the norm of art as unique objects. They mostly considered their own art as political activism. In fact, most of Kim’s works had been used in the context of cultural or political activism, rather than shown or sold in galleries (Lee Young Chul 1993: 33). They strove to dismantle the myth of the individual artist as genius by developing with various local communities the ‘minor’ genres of woodblock printmaking, illustration, graphic diary, cartoon, political satire, banner painting, and murals. Although lacking professional sophistication, the collective art of Doorung exalted the people’s desire to tell their stories in humble yet direct language (Sung Wan Kyung 1999: 73). Their efforts in disseminating the idea of everyone as an artist and writer had garnered wide support at colleges and factory complexes across the nation (Sung Wan Kyung 1999: 95–96). The significance of the second phase of Minjung art, as exemplified by the Doorung collective, lies in the transition from the autonomy of art to the improvement of societal relations and the democratization of the aesthetic experience. Doorung was ­correct that farmers should not be the subjects of spectacle, and they succeeded in

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involving common people as makers of art by relinquishing individual authorship and engaging in collaborative work. However, as Sung Wan-kyung assessed, Doorung’s reliance on traditional methods of representing a transcendental world with primitive and mythical imagery in order to depict working-class struggles proved to be problematic. The paradoxical sociopolitical reality required an activation of the agency of the people as participants, so as to examine how they could restore and conserve the agricultural community that had dissolved. Instead, Doorung’s solution was somewhat illustrative of transcendental space in which the actual social contradictions became diluted, or even evaporated (Sung Wan Kyung 1999: 74–76). In their pursuit of social practice, the artists of the second phase of Minjung art have been criticized for producing political kitsch. Ironically, they also shared the same tenets or values as contemporaneous Western artists who were practicing conceptual art—e.g. critique of institution and of the autonomy of art objects— even though their motivations for critique was different from their Western counterparts. The common critique of Minjung art as a case of formal regression may be grounded in the perceived naivety associated with the earnest depictions of farmers, in the images of urban life as a disturbing new reality that tainted the ‘purity’ of the premodern communal life, or in the reliance on traditional folk painting as representative of the will of the people. However, formal regression cannot be applied as a blanket term to all Minjung art. Especially, the products of the Reality and Utterance artists stand apart from the dominant stereotype of Minjung art as political kitsch. Under the aegis of the then new democratically elected government, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Gwach’ŏn, just outside of Seoul, held an unprecedented event in 1994: a retrospective exhibition of Minjung art after the decades of suppressing it. Yet, even many of Minjung artists and supportive critics concluded that the exhibition had failed to deliver a comprehensive and in-depth look at Minjung art and to offer new perspectives for Minjung art in the 1990s. The exhibition purported to be all-inclusive when in fact it did not include women artists. It is ironic that many Minjung artists disregarded the first feminist art exhibitions held in the 1980s, basing their antagonism on their misinformed view of feminists as catering to Western ideas. Let Us Push for a Breakthrough (Uri ponmulŭl t’ŭja), an exhibition of four women artists, explored the themes such as the reality of oppressed women in society, women’s consciousness and discovery of self, and motherhood and sisterly love. The exhibition was largely ignored by the art world and remains buried in history (Kim Hyeon-joo 2009: 80–87). Recognition of women artists emerged in the following decade. The question of the ways in which art intersects with politics has proven to be an unresolved challenge for Minjung artists. Indeed, many Minjung artists had failed to adapt to the rapidly shifting geopolitical world order, respond to the rise of popular culture, and offer a new vision in the impending arrival of civil society. This was especially true in the case of the second phase Minjung artists, in part owing to their misunderstanding of modernism, which they consciously rejected (Sung Wan Kyung 2002: 122). Had they been more attuned to the minutiae of the everyday, and offered different ways of intervention they might have remained more relevant today (Kim Suki 2008: 215).



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Alternatives to Polarity and Debates on Postmodernism Albeit dominant, Minjung art was not the only form of resistance against the hegemony of monochromatic Tansaekhwa painting. In the 1980s some artists maintained alternative positions by belonging to neither the Tansaekhwa nor the Minjung art movements. Some artists imagined ways of making art that was neither explicitly political nor reductive in nature. Hong Myung-Seop (b. 1948) interrogated the very condition of making work and gave form to his observations, while incorporating Buddhist learning to conceptualism. A former protégé of the major proponents of Tansaekhwa, Kim Yong-ik (b. 1947), denounced teachers and sustained a critical interrogation of modernism. Even though he remained an abstract painter, Kim closely identified with the values of Minjung art. In 1981, the grim year immediately following the brutal massacre in Kwangju, Kim spontaneously decided at his exhibition not to unpack the boxes containing his abstract paintings. Choosing to exhibit his works still packed in their boxes was both an act of resistance and an open admission of vulnerability and helplessness of the artist confronted by the massacre. Simultaneously participating in the exhibition but refusing to exhibit the art, this gesture was reflective of his internalization of both the promises and limitations of modernism as a subversive language. Such political dimension explored through the means of modernism could also be found in the work of Choi Byung-so (b. 1943) and Sung Neung-kyung (b. 1944), who both challenged reality as presented in daily newspapers. Using thousands of ballpoint pens, Choi laboriously covered up the newspaper sheets completely, coalescing his performative actions, materiality of the medium, and the political gesture into one entity. Although performed in 1974, Sung’s deliberate incisions of every printed word in the newspaper and the display of what remained in a vulnerable form reflect the then oppressive social milieu and may be regarded as parody on the internalization of censorship. By the late 1980s some critics who had been supportive of Korean modernism championed the then new forays into assemblage and installation art as providing “alternative” positions to both Korean modernism and Minjung art. The conservative critics advocated a notion of pluralism that excluded realism and Minjung art in particular, for its perceived instrumentalism and lack of artistic autonomy (Park Shin Eui 1993: 131). However, the critics associated with the Research Collective of Art Criticism (Misul pip’yŏng yŏn’guhoe) of 1989 to 1993, including Shim Gwang Hyun, Park Shin-eui, Lee Young Chul, Lee Young Wook, and Kim Sugi, had inherited the criticality of the Reality and Utterance group, and openly questioned the appropriateness of postmodernism in South Korean society. They regarded Korean postmodern art claimed in the late 1980s as essentially formalist modernism in disguise, for it was deemed closer to late modernism rather than Western postmodern art. In short, the dispute between postmodernism and Minjung art had supplanted that between modernism and Minjung art (Park Shin Eui 1993: 120–122). The mutual criticism against and rebuttals from both sides revealed that the terms of their arguments were mutually exclusive and ultimately irreconcilable (Lee Young Wook 2008: 53; Park Shin Eui 1993: 141).

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The discourse of postmodernism in Korean art was inherently problematic for several reasons. First, amid the limited understanding of postmodernism in South Korea, it was reactionary postmodern art, rather than critical and resistant postmodern art from the West that was most commonly introduced through exhibitions and arbitrarily chosen as illustrations in art magazines. Second, this pivotal period of sociopolitical change evidenced postmodern tendencies in Korean society at large, such as multinational capitalism, full-fledged consumerism, and the rise of popular culture, but this did not necessarily mean that Korean art of the said period is postmodern. Rather, Korean postmodernity consisted of a convoluted coexistence of late capitalism with the Third World specificities (Park Shin Eui 1993: 133; Mun 2015: 15). Third, discussion of postmodernism entails that of modernism, but the meaning of both terms remains elusive in South Korean society. While the debate had been held principally between modernists and Minjung critics, a few critics made their contributions from abroad. Hong Kai, Um Hyuk, and Bahc Mo, each then residing in the United States, pointed out that the Korean reception of postmodernism had been misguided. They argued the importance of distinguishing postmodernism as critical theory and as an aesthetic category. Echoing the left-leaning critics at home, they stressed that debates on postmodernism according to the First World’s perspective would be futile in the South Korean context, for the efforts to attain democratic society must be carried out in tandem with the efforts to overcome the legacy of imperialism (Park 1993: 137–138). They emphasized the urgency of realizing a Third World subject position as more fundamental to Korean art than discussions of postmodernism (Mun 2015: 120). An especially influential contributor to the debate, Bahc Mo argued that, “Considering the historical specificities of non-Western society, refusal to use the term [postmodernism] itself, or refusal to periodize according to the Western convention, would be our most authentic ‘post’-modern position” (Bahc Mo 1993: 165). The debates on postmodernism quickly waned around 1993. Despite the intensity of the dispute, its influence on actual production of art was not so significant. Much of the art championed by postmodernist critics during the period was not directly informed by its theories (Mun 2015: 183–184). However, there were notable exhibitions that actually reflected an understanding of postmodernism and paved the way for new directions in the new millennium. Those associated with the Research Collective of Art Criticism, such as Beck Jee-sook and Park Chan-kyong (b. 1965), focused on micro-politics of the everyday and urban realities in their curatorial endeavor to organize the exhibit City, Public, Culture. Um Hyuk, Kim Jinsong, and others organized the exhibition Apgujeong-dong: Utopia, Dystopia, with a catalogue jointly published by Hyŏnsil munhwa, a pioneering publisher in visual culture in Korea. These activities engaged the new Gangnam district in Seoul as an emblem of Korean postmodernity characterized by simulacrum, pastiche, and the hyperreal (Kim Jinsong et al. 1992: 8). Using the deconstructive strategies of critical postmodernism, many of the works investigated the politics of image and desire, demythologized the artist as genius, and critiqued the rigid institutional practice of art. Such probing into the visual culture of the everyday was an effort to overcome the impasse of Minjung art, and to forge a new direction by expanding



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the field of inquiry beyond the confines of the fine arts and into the then unconventional territory of visual culture.

Fast Forward: Cultural Turn and the Heterogeneity of Individual Voices Apart from the colonial era when Western art was introduced to Korea as part of the imperial Japanese acculturation, the 1990s has witnessed the most profound changes in the history of Korean art. If Korean art of the 1980s can be distinctly characterized as strife between artistic autonomy and political art, that of the 1990s makes a clear break from the constraints of the previous decade. The sheer diversification of ideas, media, and methods in Korean art in the 1990s was precipitated by the significant turn of sociopolitical events at home and abroad: The fall of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, the establishment of parliamentary democracy in 1993, and a new geopolitical order in the age of globalization. Around the time of the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics many societal restrictions were lifted, allowing an ease of travel abroad and access to previously banned books on Marxism and socialism. The rise of popular culture and media technology in a society of consumerism and the influx of contemporary art from abroad had aided in the dissolution of the existing hierarchy in every constituency of art, including museums, galleries, and academia. Also challenged were the rigid dichotomies between the high culture and the lowbrow, and of the existing ideological bipolarity in the art world. Artists returning from studies abroad, along with other like-minded individuals, effected changes in infrastructures and diversified the discourse through collaborative practices and publication of critical journals, such as the influential forum A, which mounted a campaign for critical discourse deemed lacking in the Korean art scene. At first there was euphoria over the imminent political and social changes, but it quickly turned into disillusionment. The fundamental changes in the 1990s stem from the shift of power from the authoritarian state to the logic of the globalized neoliberal market. The phenomenal rise of popular culture was intimately tied to the logic of capitalism (Lee Young Wook 2008: 65; Seo Dong-jin 2005: 174). In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis in 1997 the issues of survival became the most pressing concern for many people. In many regards, speed and contradiction may aptly characterize the latter half of twentieth-century Korean society. The national policy of industrialization implemented at the breakneck speeds resulted in urban disasters, such as the collapses of Sungsu Bridge on the Han River and the Sampoong Department Store, claiming hundreds of lives. The vicious cycle of corruption that tainted the bureaucratic and economic system is the underside of the miracle of Han River (Park Shin Eui 1997: 39). In the 1990s there was an eclectic array of practices carried out by abstractionists, the last contingent of Minjung artists, and younger artists experimenting with expanded forms of painting, sculpture, and media art. The artists of this so-called New Generation, most notably Lee Bul (b. 1964) and Choi Jeong Hwa (b. 1961), among others, quickly became prominent representatives of the 1990s. In the decline of both the modernist paradigm and political aesthetics, the arrival of a new

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generation of artists saw the rise of individualism, which shunned the pursuit of nationalistic identity, collective fervor, and overt seriousness. Instead they revealed anarchic, transgressive, and subversive tendencies in regard to the norms of fine art and good taste. Their art launched assaults on the senses of austere modernism as well as on the lofty values of political realism. Both Lee and Choi grappled importantly with disillusionment and the myth of progress, or, what Walter Benjamin described as the dialectic of the glamour of modern society and its discontents. Choi did this through fakery, kitsch, and the vernacular; Lee through representations of the body, dystopia, and ruins (Lee Young June 2007; Shin Chunghoon 2011). Choi, well known for his work as an interior designer for fashion boutiques, cafes, discotheques, and other spaces of material and sensual desire, claimed that the Nanjido landfill in Seoul brought him overwhelming sensations and that his experience of the site is an important source of inspiration (Shin Chunghoon 2011: 336). Often described as kitsch, fake, and disposable, many of his sculptures derive from amassing huge quantities of cheap, brightly colored, plastic objects. Lee Bul first broke into the conservative Korean art scene by confronting head on the patriarchal world of Korean art. She staged a series of bold performances, including Abortion (1989), in which she had herself tied up nude and suspended in midair, making a ‘confession’ of her trauma. Lee manifested her characteristically rebellious attitude when she was invited to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she presented Majestic Splendor, using real fishes embellished with sequins, beads, and fake flowers, displayed in transparent plastic bags on a grid. Due to the repugnant odor, the exhibition was shut down shortly after its opening despite the artist’s protest. Being wary of the Western expectation of her as representative of Asian woman artist, Lee took the bold gesture of presenting the putrefying bodies of fish and their foul smell as a substitute for an exotic female body. Through such a subversive gesture Lee complicated the discourse on the body, on Orientalism, and on “critique of institution.” In her subsequent works Lee incorporated a multitude of references from popular culture in productions such as Live Forever (featuring sleek karaoke-capsules), the Cyborg series, and various sculptural monuments. These seemingly disparate bodies of work all attest to the failed visions of utopia, the idealized body, and the traumatic memory as the underside of the modernist myth of progress (Woo 2012). If Lee and Choi had forcefully revoked the terms of collective fervor and the formalist investigation of the 1980s, other artists of their generation led the transition into the post-nationalist aesthetics in the 1990s in different ways. Bahc Yiso, Jung Seoyong (b. 1964), and Kim Beom (b. 1963), all spent considerable periods of time studying art abroad, and their approach to social reality was far more subtle than that of Choi or Lee. These artists shared a conscious rejection of artistic grandeur, authoritarianism, and academicism. They also had an affinity for using humble everyday materials, eccentric language, and severe austerity to make conceptual objects, videos, and installation art. In doing so, they raised critical awareness of reality via humor, allegory, ambiguity, and translation across cultures. Crucial to the rise of all these artists was the cutting-edge platform ArtSonje Center in Seoul and its curator Kim Sunjong who played an important role in presenting contemporary Korean art in specific local contexts.



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One of the most influential Korean artists of his generation, Park Chul Ho renamed himself Mo Bahc upon his arrival in the United States. “Mo” means “anonymous” in Korean. The act of renaming himself as such was an acknowledgment of his status as an invisible other, a form of ritual to erase his self so as to realign himself with the marginalized (Lee 2006: 20). Bahc directed Minor Injury, a pioneering alternative space largely for local artists and people of color in Brooklyn, New York, where he helped finance and host various exhibitions, workshops, screenings, readings, concerts, and community gatherings. Bahc’s deep involvement with the community of the marginalized must be seen in the context of the Asian-American consciousness in the wake of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement, which sought to defy the racial stereotypes and social discrimination entrenched in the social structure and the mass media (Lee 2006: 101). Bahc’s early work in the New York years were reflective of his awareness of the loss of cultural tradition, regarding East Asia from a long distance, or the seeming impossibility of translation across cultures, exemplified by his “dumb calligraphy” paintings that parodied the Eastern tradition, or his intentionally awkward phonetic transliteration of English words into Korean in his installation Speak American (1990), respectively. After his permanent return to Korea in 1995 Bahc renamed himself Bahc Yiso. His Buddhist-inflected attitude and his fundamental doubts about progress and competition may explain his choice of common construction materials and the relative lack of finish in his work. Your Bright Future (2002) is a seemingly haphazard assembly of light bulbs shining on a blank white wall. The irony in the title may refer to the empty promise uttered by a superior to his subordinates, or found in a textbook or commercial advertisement, or reflective of a critical view on the state of affairs in the two Koreas, which are in many respects mirror images of one another (Figure 17.3). Bahc was concerned not so much with production per se but rather with the “leftovers” or the “margins.” (Jung Hunyee 2005b: 37) Bahc devised a makeshift passageway in his exhibitions, which turned out to be a premature exit to the outside of the gallery, perhaps symbolizing art as a possible exit from meaninglessness of life (Jung Hunyee 2005a: 270). Or perhaps it was meant to connote futility in all contrivances, including art itself. Unfortunately, Bahc’s life ended abruptly at the height of his career in 2004.

Korean Art Within and Beyond the Borders In 1993, Korean art at home and in the diaspora was given a rare exposure in the United States. Co-curated by Lee Young-chul and Jane Farver for the Queens Museum in New York, the exhibition Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and KoreanAmerican Art brought together for the first time two marginalized groups of artists: Minjung artists from back home and diasporic Korean artists in the U.S and Canada, who represented their experience as immigrants. The latter group included Mo Bahc (Yiso), Sungho Choi (b. 1954), David Chung (b. 1959), Michael Joo (b. 1966), Byron Kim (b. 1961), Yong Soon Min (b. 1953), and Jin Me Yoon (b. 1960), among others. Yet, there were more differences than similarity between the two groups. While

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Figure 17.3  Bahc Yiso. Your Bright Future. 2002. Installation of lamps, wood, and wires. Variable dimensions. Photo: courtesy of the estate of Bahc Yiso. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

the Korean artists investigated a wide range of issues, including collective subjectivity, feminism, and pop culture, their North American counterparts focused on sharing their cross-cultural experience of uprooted-ness and constant negotiation of identity. The latter group’s works are necessarily fragmentary in dealing with their loss of cultural heritage (Farver 1993: 8). Although their work was initially seen in the context of multiculturalism and politics of identity in the 1990s, the key themes in the work of diasporic Korean artists, such as language, translation, subjectivity, alterity, and hybridity, are integral part of reality that cannot be simply considered passé. They presented simultaneously identities as diasporic Korean artists and as global citizens acutely aware of the intricacies of memory and history, the politics of representation, and of their status as racialized minority artists in a host country. The artist missing from this exhibition, perhaps due to her untimely death, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982), is one of the most complex artists of the Korean diaspora in the past century. Her work operated at the intersection of translation and subjectivity, probing the politics of universalism and particularism, and calling into question the process of identification. Her magnum opus, Dictee, is an experimental work in book form that incorporates aspects of biography, poetry, and historical narrative. Structured around the nine Greek muses, the book is polyphonic in its juxtaposition of narrative accounts of her mother and historical heroines, dictation exercises, film scripts, and creative writing imbued with poetic lyricism. It is historically specific yet deconstructive: alluding to specific historical figures and events while resisting the documentary impulse (Cheng 2001: 145). In such a way Dictee presents the dialectic of belonging and unbelonging: “What is true of all exiles is not that home and love of home are lost, but that loss is inherent in the very existence of both” (Said 2001: 148).



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Globalization, Biennales, and Alternative Spaces Crucial to the process of internationalization and diversification of Korean art in the 1990s was the proliferation of mega biennales in Kwangju, Busan, and Seoul. Prior to the launching of Korean biennials, however, the highly controversial 1993 Biennial from the Whitney Museum of American Art was mounted at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwach’ŏn, which remains the only occasion in which the Whitney Biennial has travelled abroad. Widely disparaged at the time, the Whitney Biennial was notorious at home for its supposedly blatant representation of the politics of identity by a large number of minority artists. Arranged by Nam June Paik (1932–2006), the import of the Whitney Biennial stirred up the Korean art world as well. Ironically, the 1993 edition represented salient examples of critical postmodernism, but it arrived in Seoul after the postmodernism discourse had virtually ended in South Korea. Many critics, including some of the most progressive ones, criticized the hosting the American biennial as a form of cultural imperialism. However, the biennial yielded concrete impact on the local art scene. First, Korean artists were exposed to various ways of engaging with the sociopolitical reality without strictly relying on realist representation. Second, the substantial portion of the 1993 biennial consisted of new media and installation art that struck a chord with Korean artists, who felt compelled to take up experimental approaches in their work. Third, the biennial inspired young Korean artists to become audacious in confronting the then conservative art world and the academy (Kim Jina 2007). Paik was also instrumental in the inauguration of Gwangju [Kwangju] Biennale in 1995 in its namesake city, now synonymous with the spirit of democracy. Seeking to situate Korean culture within the global community, the government intended to “artistically sublimate the spirit of resistance of Kwangju people and to promote Kwangju as a sacred site of democracy” (Jung Hunyee 2005a: 256). Over the past two decades, the Gwangju Biennale has become widely recognized as an important venue of its kind by offering philosophical ruminations on the human condition at the juncture of globalization, border-crossing, and ecological crisis. In 2000 the Seoul Metropolitan Government created the MediaCity Seoul, a biennial project to promote the city of Seoul as a hub of media technology. Launched subsequently were the Busan Biennale in 2002 and the Anyang Public Art Project in 2005. As celebrated as they are, these biennials are not without challenges. Despite all the good intentions and intellectual framework for the exhibitions, all too often they are mired in political controversies and administrative glitches. They are also criticized for failure to make meaningful connections with their host cities and with local audiences. Like most other major biennials worldwide, these mega events simultaneously showcase global contemporary art circuits and struggle to remain relevant to local contexts. This challenge is rooted in the ambition of these events that seek to embrace simultaneously the values of democracy and globalization, which are inherently at odds with one another (Jay 2003: 83–5). Accommodating the new visions of emerging artists, the arrival of alternative spaces was another important feature of the global era. Many of the important artists who are now in their forties and fifties have emerged from alternative spaces, such as the

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now legendary Ssamzi Space (1999–2010), directed by Kim Honghee, followed by Alternative Space Pool, Loop, Project Space Sarubia, and the state-funded Insa Art Space, among dozens of others. Some of the best examples, such as Pool, succeeded in running its space as a site of knowledge production (Kim Jang Un 2012: 14–20). Other venues, such as Stone and Water, and Space Beam, were primarily focused on supporting community-based art. These venues offered a radical unsettling of the ways in which galleries had previously operated in Korea.

Korean Photography in Recent Decades Like visual art, photographic practices became diversified in the late 1980s in line with rapid changes in the sociopolitical and economic realms. The major turning points were the 1993 Whitney Biennial in Seoul and the 1995 Gwangju Biennale that included substantial amounts of photography, which had compelled the younger generation of photographers to duly recognize photography as an art form. From the late 1990s into the new millennium, a large number of young photographers began to digitally manipulate photographic images, but at the expense of certain disconnect from tradition and local context. In light of both increasingly wider use of digital image processing and the continued practice of ‘fine art photography’ that emphasizes inner subjectivity, an important shift has occurred in the new millennium: the return to the fundamental property of photography as document. The archivist and curator Lee Kyoung Min (b. 1967) has made a significant contribution to Korean photography by archiving, exhibiting, and publishing photography from the Japanese colonial era. Lee’s remarkable publications include: an index collection of newspaper headlines dealing with photography during the colonial period; an archive of the photographs of Korean ichthyology conducted by Japan; an analysis of the construction of Gisaeng; and a collection of snapshot photos from the personal albums of the victims of the Kwangju Uprising to commemorate their individual lives. The latter represents private photographs as a synecdoche of collective memory. While Lee does include “art” photography in his archive-based exhibitions, he sees art photography as alienating of the public, and recuperates the role of photography as common visual culture. Conceived by Kim Hak-ryang and co-curated by Lee Kyoung-min, Choi Bong Lim, and Lee Young June, the tripartite exhibition entitled Document, held at Seoul Museum of Art in 2004, exemplified a renewed emphasis on political, social and cultural documentary. An antidote to the pervasive disregard for rigorous observation and documentation, the exhibition shunned projections of cheap humanism and exaggerations of interiority. Instead, the exhibition foregrounded the photographic archive of Japanese colonial administration, the appropriation of the mode of social documentary, and the photographic documentation of modern industries in Korea. Indeed, many began to use photography as a tool for rigorous observation and probing documentation into Korean society. The title of the Ajumma series (1997) by Hein-kunh Oh (b. 1963) refers to a generic and subtly derogatory term for middle-age women. Viewers confront the well dressed, but palpably unhappy women,



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whose angst-ridden yet emotionally restrained gazes reflect psychological impoverishment and unmet desires. Kim Sang-gil (b. 1974)’s series The Internet Community Offline (2003) recorded the actual gathering of online communities that share obsessions with popular Western cultural commodities, such as Burberry fashions, Winnebago mobile homes, or The Sound of Music products. Portraiture has evolved to include the narratives of anonymous people who have been subject to historical change or trauma. Kim Soonam (1949–2006) dedicated his life to documenting shamanistic rituals throughout Korea for three decades, leaving behind some 17,000 photographs of the suppressed lives of shamans and their rare and disappearing spiritual and cultural traditions. Cha Jin-hyun (b. 1971)’s Portraits of 108 People (2007) are frontal, full body representations of former Comfort Women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army. Photographed against a black backdrop, this austere work represents Cha’s will to preserve their memories. The post-documentary practice of photography as sociological study is also widely explored in the urban space and landscape. Kang Hong Gu (b. 1956) recorded the traces of economic fervor in the radically altered cityscape by exploring the ruins of suburban villages and sites of urban redevelopment, while Area Park (b. 1972) portrayed the deeply fraught socioeconomic system of Korea and its impact on individual psyches by depicting bodies at labor sites. The ongoing condition of militarized Korean modernity is palpably felt in the photography of Kang Yong Seok (b. 1958) and Noh Suntag (b. 1971). Kang’s black and white photographs of Maehyang-ri, a bombing drill site for the U.S. Air Force in South Korea, are apocalyptic visions of a virtual North Korean terrain situated in the land of an American ally (Park Chankyong 2012). Originally a photojournalist, Noh has rendered the perpetual “state of emergency” that is South Korea today through his exacting snapshots of the police state, which capture displays of power and the struggles of the public to resist internalizing the state dogma to be blindly obedient.

Technology and New Media As elsewhere, the history of new media art in Korea in the late 1960s reflected its close connection to the vanguard practice of ephemeral, time-based performance art. Simultaneously there was the exploration of electronic hardware as a tool to not only exploit its inherent artistic properties but also to find new ways of representing the self and the body. Meanwhile, Nam June Paik, widely considered the father of video art, was already active in Europe and the United States, doing pioneering work in close association with avant-garde artists such as John Cage, Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement. His experimental collaborations with Charlotte Moorman and Merce Cunningham are well documented and studied. Indeed, Paik has been the subject of numerous international museum exhibitions and publications. In 1984, while the country was still under the grip of a fear-inducing military regime, Paik visited Korea to launch his ambitious global project Good Morning Mr. Orwell. This real-time telecommunication project proved to be a global media

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sensation, and Paik went on to make significant contributions to contemporary Korean art in the ensuing decades. One of his most significant works,Tadaiksŏn (the more, the better) dated to 1988 and consisting of 1003 video monitors, has been permanently installed at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Gwach’ŏn. In 2008, the Nam June Paik Art Center, a museum devoted to his legacy, was founded just outside of Seoul. MediaCity Seoul, the city-sponsored biennale held in the capital mentioned earlier, was launched in 2000 as Internet technology became widely available. Many Korean artists have explored various kinds of interactive platforms including real-time, webbased interactivity, kinesthesia, augmented reality, algorithmic game-based live performance, and improvisatory electronic music and performance, among others. There has been an overemphasis on the novelty of technological development in new media art in Korea, often at the expense of contextual insight or critical outlook. All too often interactivity was the most pronounced aspect of many works. The emphasis on interactivity is problematic because it assumes that traditionally static art objects, such as painting and sculpture, are not ‘interactive’ or only have fixed content or meaning. Also, there has been a lack of critical intervention regarding the capitalist exploitation of new media, “something of an active counterbalance to its excesses and injustices” (Green 2004: 8–11). However, there were exceptions to the shortcomings. A number of artists began to exploit the potentials of virtual space offered by web-based platforms in order to critique the socioeconomic context of the medium itself. Since 1999, Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries (Chang Yŏnghye Chunggongŏp), an online art duo between the Korean Chang and the American poet Marc Voge, has been coproducing Adobe Flash animations of fast-paced narrative text with synchronized, mostly original, jazz music. The work is available free on web browsers and exhibited in museums and galleries. They are the first to create digital literature in South Korea, and their textual references range widely from Mallarmé’s poem “Un Coup de Dés” (a throw of dice), to the Samsung conglomerate, and to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong II. While eschewing the latest forms of digital manipulation and interactivity unlike more common forms of net art, their work demands high levels of sustained alertness (Yoo Hyun-Joo 2005). Roh Jae Oon (b. 1971) is a data miner who manipulates and reinterprets found images and sound clips from films, the Internet, and historical materials, to bring into focus the three realms of cinematic images, virtual reality, and historical-political reality (Kim Heejin 2009: 27). These artists tackle the motifs of powerful aesthetic regimes that simultaneously control and exploit the power of images, such as mega conglomerates, Hollywood industry, or Korea as divided nations. Importantly, their work is less an exploration of interactive features of technology per se as they begin from a critical position in regard to the media itself: that media is not free from political and economic power. Thus, the issues of hierarchy versus democratization are still at stake in the ‘virtual’ space. It is noteworthy that these artists all explore various ways of materializing their art in tangible forms within physical exhibition spaces, rather than keeping their work strictly in cyberspace. This may be an indication of the lessening of the gap between the real and the virtual, or perhaps the latter is actually an extension of the former, rather than a separate entity.



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Collectivism, Public Sphere, and the Precarious From the late 1990s onward, a new wave of art as activism and collectivism had emerged to reinvigorate the legacy of Minjung art by addressing its shortcomings. The disparate collectives, such as Seongnam Project, FlyingCity, and Mixrice, shared some principle concerns, namely, seeking a way of connecting art and life, redressing the meaning of public art by interrogating the existing public art, and probing for new ways of working in the public sphere, which often entailed some ephemeral activities. Instead of erecting large sculptures in a public plaza, they chose to work with socioeconomically marginalized communities, such as the evicted, the homeless, migrant workers, and children. In 1998 several activists from the forum A group formed the Seongnam Project, which sought engagement with the architecture and urban conditions of Seongnam, a satellite city of Seoul. The Seongnam Project was indebted to Minjung art in terms of recuperating their predecessors’ critique of urbanism and visual culture. But they used radically different means to do so. Whereas Reality and Utterance activists mainly relied on representational paintings, Seongnam Project deployed conceptual art, such as juxtaposing photo-text, diagrams, and archival imagery. The group identified the local peoples’ physical interventions in their living spaces out of necessity as the “residents’ art.” Despite the risk of “nostalgic impulses” inherent in the project, the interventions problematized the ostensible neutrality of the public space and exposed the ways in which the residents have actively reconfigured their socioeconomically marginalized space. By interrogating urbanism and the public space, the Seongnam Project accomplished a new kind of site-specific critique of urbanism that has heretofore been absent in Korea, opening up a new direction in research and communitybased practice (Shin Chunghoon 2010: 249). In 2003 the urban research group FlyingCity led by the artist Jeon Yongseok (b.  1968) began the Cheonggyecheon project, a critical response to the government’s restoration of the Cheonggye Stream in downtown Seoul. During the process of postwar modernization the rivulet had been covered over with asphalt and an elevated highway built in its place to generate an efficient traffic system. The restoration project was controversial because many criticized it as merely a redevelopment project for profit, which resulted in the eviction of a social underclass of street vendors and local hardware workshops. The Cheonggyecheon project was a collaborative effort between FlyingCity and the local workshops in resisting the official restructuring of the urban space, which was designed to eliminate the manual workers deemed undesirable in the new urban economy. The workshops operated on a close yet flexible, if seemingly chaotic, network of strong collaboration and mutual dependence to keep production costs low. Jeon refers to the workshops as centers for “drifting producers,” not only in reference to Situationist drifting, but also as a survival strategy of a self-initiated system of production that resists the dominant paradigm of mass production. FlyingCity’s output included photographic images and mapping of the workshops’ network system, and a labyrinthine architectural model of an imaginary reconstruction of the site where the users are imagined as participants in designing goods that meet their needs, and where work and play become

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fused into one (Shin Chunghoon 2010: 259–64). This project in remembrance of the displaced workers culminated in a collaborative exhibition featuring the workers’ industrial products, which was later thoroughly documented in a self-publication entitled Cheonggye Archive Iron Cloud (2009). Since 2002 the art collective Mixrice has been engaged in the theme of migration as historical, existential, and metaphorical journey and its entanglement with the logic of neoliberal capitalism. In solidarity with foreign migrant workers, many of whom were subject to deportation, the group participated in demonstrations against unjust labor laws that exploited cheap foreign labor in Korea. They devised collective rope jumping as an act of protest or baking pancakes embossed with text reading “Stop Crackdown,” which were both eaten at demonstrations as well as sent in bulk to immigration offices. For the Video Diary the workers were taught how to record and edit videos, and made their videos of themselves, featuring their experience in Korea. Mixrice’s intention was to overcome media depictions of migrants in a stereotypical and condescending, if humanitarian gaze, as inarticulate, vulnerable, and lesser beings. In recent years Mixrice found itself organizing and assisting cultural events initiated by migrant communities, such as group theatre or rock festivals. One culturally-alienated migrant community in the factory town of Maseok on the outskirts of Seoul has benefited directly from such intervention. The trajectory of Mixrice has ranged from dialogic social practice and political participation to the formation of contingent communities as well as to philosophical rumination. Is there not an analogy between humankind and plant life in its tendency to migrate and establish roots beyond borders? While the inquiry into urbanism in South Korea in the 1990s remained mostly theoretical, by the turn of the century artist collectives tackled the effects of neoliberal economy on precarious lives through playful interventions. In Minouk Lim (b. 1968) and Pidgin Collective’s performance New Town Ghost (2005), a young slammer and a drummer ride on a flatbed pickup truck, shouting and drumming, i.e. enacting the lost soul or ghost’s reaction to the increasingly gentrified neighborhoods around local shops. In their performances and installations, the collectives Part-Time Suite, Listen to the City, and Okin Collective use humor, metaphor, and satire to respond to the social effects of neoliberalism that result in vulnerable conditions for artists and workers alike. They arrange participatory actions and events in abandoned apartment buildings slated for demolition, and draw attention to sites in crises, whether ecological, urban, or social.

Re-inscription of Collective Memory and Anonymous Narratives South Korea’s incessant modernization projects under military dictatorship entailed violent obliteration of all those considered obstructive to the initiative. Among the oppressed were women, the social underclass, workers, physically disabled, racially mixed, queer, left-leaning intellectuals and politicians, shamans, and artists, among others. Another important strand in the post-Minjung era was how to grapple with collective trauma and amnesia, and how to recuperate the memories and narratives of the socially marginalized Other, or give voice to the “irreducible subjectivities” of



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those who are subalterns or anonymous. A cohort of artists emerging in the new millennium of the 2000s represented a force of resistance to a blanket ‘normality’ that disregarded the violence committed in the past, creating fissures in the state-­sanctioned collective memory. A leading voice in this endeavor is Park Chan-kyong, whose oeuvre extensively engages with the legacies of the Cold War. An influential artist, writer, curator, and filmmaker, Park devoted his practice to representations of the “Other” in Korean modernity, namely, the social underclass, North Korea, and spiritual traditions. His early works, The Sets (2000), Power Passage (2004), and Flying (2005) are deconstructions of media images to probe the mutual porosity between mass media and power, and blur the boundaries between fact, fiction, and fantasy. Sindoan (Figure 17.4), a breakthrough in Park’s oeuvre that signaled a major shift from the memories of the Cold War to the Asian sublime, is an experimental video tracing the lost community of hundreds of different religious sects in the Kyeryong mountains. Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2013) is a biopic combining archival footages and reenactment of the life of Kim Keum Hwa, an important shaman and Living National Treasure who has endured state oppression over several decades. These films underscore Park’s ongoing concerns: the death drive and the nightmares of the Cold War, possibilities of redemption, and the notion of Asian sublime by reengaging with shamanism, which has long been wrongfully regarded as superstition in Korea. Park believes that local religions have suffered the greatest oppression in the history of

Figure 17.4  Park Chan-kyong. Sindoan. 2008. Production still (Talisman of the backyard) video, 45 min. Photo: courtesy of the artist and Kukje Gallery, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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modernization in South Korea: “If modernity was a traumatic experience in the recent past, then tradition is the resulting wound” (Park Chan-kyong 2008: 9). Though belated, such urgency is shared by a number of artists who partake in consistently defying the official history and instead proffer the narratives of the anonymous, or the “illegitimate” knowledge of the oppressed. Their work recognizes the unsettled ghosts of the Cold War era that still haunt South Korean society, and reveals how such knowledge of the anonymous and the downtrodden people of “bare life” (as coined by Giorgio Agamben), can be recuperated and reintegrated into a history of the common people (Moon 2012: 105). At the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 2008, American audiences had a rare occasion to encounter non-Western art that directly entailed their own government’s foreign policy during the Cold War era. Curated by Heejin Kim, Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision showcased Dongducheon, a city of strategic significance for its location near the demilitarized zone and home to now defunct United States military bases. Dongducheon had been de facto a place of exception: the state had bypassed basic democratic procedures in essentially making the city a “military camp town” that became almost entirely dependent on the parasitical economy that served the American military base, including a state-sponsored sex industry. The Korean women club workers who catered to the American soldiers were simultaneously indispensable to the Korean economy for the foreign currency they earned, yet labelled with the derogatory nickname of “Yankee Princess,” reflecting the local contempt for their close relationship with and dependence on foreigners. In short, the residents were victimized for the greater cause, i.e., the survival of the state and the Korean race, yet simultaneously collectivized as a symbol of national humility. Thus Dongducheon was subject to systemic exclusion, “exception, negation, manipulation, isolation, oblivion, [and] invisibility” (Kim Heejin 2009: 4). Kim Heejin and the four participating artists, Kim Sangdon (b. 1973), Koh Seung Wook (b. 1968), Roh Jae Oon, and siren eun young jung (b. 1974), an artist who expresses her name in lower case letters, had undertaken extensive site visits and research on the history of Dongducheon. Notably, Kim Sangdon’s performancebased workshop Discoplan: Workshop for Regenerating the Returned Land of Camp Nimble (Figure 17.5) invited Dongducheon residents to build and launch DIY-style flying objects over the fence into Camp Nimble. The flying gadgets carried clover seeds, which would ideally land in the camp to slowly reverse the toxicity of the land that had been used as a vehicle maintenance facility by the Americans. However, most of these devices failed to deliver the seeds over the fence, conveying a sense of pathos involved in dealing with the politics surrounding the possible “return” of abused land. Importantly, the performance was preceded by a ritualistic trimming of the grass at the graveyard of Yun Kŭmi, a victim of a brutal murder by the American private Kenneth Markle. At times, the narratives of the oppressed cannot be heard, and the artists can only direct our attention to the silence of the subalterns. Urbanism, bare life, and the political economy of memory intersect in the work of Koh Seung Wook. In his performance pieces Koh often undergoes strenuous bodily activities that border on the absurd: digging holes and playing naked in an empty plot of land awaiting development, or pulling with strings attached to his ears a platform



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Figure 17.5  Kim Sangdon. Discoplan: Workshop for Regenerating the Returned Land of Camp Nimble. 2007. Documentation of performance and workshop video, objects, drawings, and an illustrated manual. Photo: courtesy of the artist and Insa Art Space, Seoul. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

on wheels carrying a pianist playing Beethoven. Whether recalling the memories of the evicted, or the national zeal for attaining high productivity that serves the cultural elite, Koh’s work embodies labor, endurance, and dark humor in local contexts. Recipient of Silver Lion Prize at the 2015 Venice Biennale, the documentary Factory Complex (2015) by Im Heungsoon (b. 1969) tells the stories of women laborers in South Korea and Cambodia: factory seamstresses, call center workers, flight attendants, and mega store workers who endure not only poor working condition but also their demoralizing circumstances and struggles to sustain the precarious state of their lives. Despite the depiction of people struggling in neoliberal systems, the film adds to Im’s overall oeuvre that evolves around the themes of family, love, and human dignity.

Diversity of Positions and Interests in the Twenty-First Century Although shadowed by the dominance of the Minjung art, diverse approaches to making art began to appear in the 1980s, and took on a significant presence by the turn of the new millennium. These tendencies include the efforts to push the

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boundaries of traditional ink painting, those who expand the tenets of abstraction, as well as the voices of social minorities such as women, feminists, gays and lesbians. While not without controversies and continuing political battles, the recognition of feminist art and women artists, though belated, has been one of the most significant changes. Since 1990, Yoon Suknam (b. 1939) mounted a sustained critique of Confucian oppression of women that is pervasive in South Korean society through her carved wood and painted sculptures of women (Figure 17.6). Activist art, dormant since the demise of Minjung art, had returned with a vengeance with works by women artists. In an attempt to destabilize the deeply entrenched patriarchal order of Korean society, the feminist art group Ipgim (Breath) attempted to occupy Jongmyo, the shrine dedicated to the royal ancestors of the Lee clan, by temporarily transforming the site into a celebration of radical feminist art. Populating the park with soft sculptures of female sexual organs, a line-up of pink skirts, and series of performances, the artists carried out their subversive actions to ‘contaminate’ the historically maledominant space. However, the Lee clan angrily shut down these interventions by force, which led to Ipgim’s protest and prolonged lawsuit against the clan, which the

Figure 17.6  Yoon Suk Nam. Genealogy. 1993. Acrylic on wood and paper. 250 × 150 × 279 cm. Collection of Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan. Photo: courtesy of the artist. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)



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artists eventually won. Significantly, Ipgim’s occupation was one of the first activist art projects that directly challenged the legacy of Minjung art, which remained malecentric even after democratization (Kim Junki 2016). Gender, sexuality, and the politics of visibility for women, gays, and lesbians are ongoing concerns for Oh In-hwan (b. 1964) and siren eun young jung. In his conceptual practice Oh In-hwan pits the politics surrounding queer sexuality against the process of interaction with his viewer-participants as he constantly negotiates the institutional boundaries of art. In his installation My Beautiful Laundromat Sarubia (2002) only male viewers could enter the enclosed Laundromat built inside the gallery. Over the duration of three hours or so, the participants were given ‘freedom’ as to what to undress in front of the artist who would wash, dry, and fold the items, and then photograph them before returning them to the participants. Elements of disclosure, trust, and discomfort unfolded inside the Laundromat, to be experienced only by the male artist and his male participants. Excluded from participation, the hetero-normative (female) audience could only surmise its experience. In her ongoing project on yŏsŏng gukgŭk (women’s national theatre), a type of Korean musical that enjoyed a brief prosperity in the past century, the queer and feminist artist siren eun young jung collaborates with the performers who constitute the all-female casts. From documenting the actresses “becoming” male through the process of applying cosmetics for live performances where they perform male characters, the work of “performative parody” in her Trans-Theatre unsettles the dominant patriarchal social order by challenging the limitations of conventional language and socially constructed notions of gender. Meanwhile, investigation of formalism has taken a different turn since the 1980s. As the history of Abstractionism has shown, abstraction may be regarded as an empty vehicle onto which one may inject meanings. Haegue Yang (b. 1971) assigns to it symbolic relationships among specific historical and literary figures, such as the anticolonial resistance fighter Kim San and the authors Nym Wales and Marguerite Duras. Yang’s sensory installation suggests a possibility of forming a temporary or contingent community. Her characteristic use of heat, wind, mechanically operated Venetian blinds and revolving lights, not only complicated the phenomenological experience associated with minimalism but also demonstrated a new way of injecting the narratives into what still remains essentially an abstract environment (Figure 17.7). Many artists increasingly defy categorization as they simultaneously grapple with a wide range of issues, processes, and media, encompassing object making, narrative, the body, site-specificity, social relations, and the institution of art. Characterized by tentativeness, Rhii Jewyo (b. 1971)’s sprawling installations of precariously built objects stem from awareness of her emotional and physical vulnerability, itinerant existence, and experience of immediate physical and social surroundings. Her work is a provisional but unique response to, and coming to grips with, the world around her. In his idiosyncratic practice, often in collaboration with David Michael DiGregorio, a.k.a dogr (b. 1979), Kim Sung Hwan (b. 1975) integrates drawing, music, film, performance, and architectural elements to generate polyphonic montages out of memories, with oblique references to history, poetry, and folktales. Within his increasingly immersive installation and theatrical performances of non-linear narratives, Kim reveals anti-authoritarian impulses and a penchant for metamorphosis.

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Figure 17.7  Haegue Yang. Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Blind Room. 2006. Installation of aluminum venetian blinds, powder-coated aluminum hanging structure, steel wire rope, Video Trilogy (2004–2006), MDF, spot-light, mirror, humidifier, infrared heater, timer, air conditioner, origami objects, photocopies, found objects, chairs, and scent emitters (Wood Fire, Fresh Linen). 400 × 817 × 664 cm. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2007. Photo by Gene Pittman. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

Shared Positionalities across Borders The modern history of Korea shares a similar trajectory of other decolonized nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Hence, in recent years several curators have not only grappled with the past as a compelling way to move forward, but also tried to engage with art from other modern nation-states that share similar historical traumas. Some of the more compelling Korean artists and curators engaged in the tripartite tasks of decolonization, deimperialization, and the undoing of Cold War legacies (Chen Kuan-Hsing 2010). Curated by Beck Jee-sook in 2004 for the Marronier Art Center in Seoul—now Arko Museum—A New Past juxtaposed the art of Korea and the Balkans to shed light on the “strange yet familiar nightmares” of their respective histories and the multiple and heterogeneous identities of the Other. Co-curated by Yong Soon Min and Việt Lê in 2008, transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix probed the triangulation of Vietnam, South Korea, and the United States, via representations of



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the shared history and trauma of the Vietnam War in popular culture. The exhibition opened at Arko Museum in Seoul, and subsequently traveled to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. For the SeMA Biennale-MediaCity Seoul of 2014, the artistic director Park Chankyong explored Asian modernity by emphasizing the lost traditions and overlooked voices remaining from the legacy of the Cold War that still haunt many Asian countries. The compelling exhibition title, Ghost, Spies, and Grandmothers—common through their being invisible yet knowledgeable—represents history and tradition, the legacy of the Cold War, and the narratives of women and time, respectively. The exhibition is an invitation to reconsider tradition, or what Park considers the “Other” in contemporary Korean society, as “tradition is not opposed to modernity but is an integral and living part of it” (Chen Kuan-Hsing 2010: 244). Significantly, in its investigation of Asian modernity, the exhibition shifted the points of reference from Europe and America to Asia and the Third World. In conceiving the exhibition, Park borrowed the notion of “Asia as method” after the ideas of thinkers ranging from Lu Xun to Takeushi Yoshimi to Chen Kuan-Hsing, who developed the ‘inter-Asian methodology’ as a way of overcoming the impasse within the Asian intellectual and cultural arena preconditioned by postcolonial reality (Chen Kuan-Hsing 2012: 317). These curatorial practices attempt to locate the heterogeneity and specificities of Korean art in local context while simultaneously connecting with the Other—by forging inter-Asian and inter-regional connections across the globe through articulation of shared experiences and of disruptions and ruptures in national histories due to ideological conflicts and violent foreign interventions. Such was one of the ways in which contemporary Korean art achieved its dialectical contemporaneity through both temporal and spatial movements. Grounded in the undeniable condition of modern nation-states while simultaneously moving beyond its geographical limitations, these exhibitions offered an alternative to the future by recuperating the forgotten narratives of the past and realigning unexpected common histories beyond borders (Bishop 2010: 55–62).

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Glossary ajumma 아줌마 Area Park [Pak Chinyŏng, Bak Jinyeong] 朴晋暎 Bahc Mo [Pak Mo, Bak Mo] 박모 Bahc Yiso [Pak Yiso, Bak Iso] 박이소 Beck Jee-sook [Paek Chisuk, Baek Jisuk] 白智淑 Cha Jin-hyun [Ch’a Chinhyŏn, Cha Jinyeon] 차진현 Chang Yŏnghye Chunggongŏp [Jang Yeonghye Junggongeop] 장영혜중공업 Cheonggyecheon [Chŏnggyech’ŏn] 淸溪川 Choi Bong Lim [Ch’oe Pongnim, Choe Bongnim] 최봉림 Choi Byung-so [Ch’oe Pyŏngso, Choe Byeongso] 최병소 Choi Byungsoo [Ch’oe Pyŏngsu, Choe Byeongsu] 최병수 Choi Jeong Hwa [Ch’oe Chŏnghwa, Choe Jeonghwa] 崔正和 Chun Doo-hwan [Chŏn Tuhwan, Jeon Duhwan] 全斗煥 Donggucheon [Tongduch’ŏn] 東豆川 Doorung [Turŏng, Dureong] 두렁 Gisaeng [Kisaeng] 妓生 Han 漢(江) Haegue Yang [Yang Hyegyu] 梁慧圭 Hein-kunh Oh [O Hyŏnggŭn, O Hyeonggeun] 吳亨根 Hong Kai 洪可異 Hong Myung-Seop [Hong Myŏngsŏp, Hong Myeongseop] 洪明燮 Hyŏnsil kwa parŏn [Hyeonsil gwa bareon] 현실과 발언 Hyŏnsil munhwa [Hyeonsil munhwa] 현실문화 Im Heungsoon [Im Hŭngsun, Im Heungsun] 任興淳 Imsullyŏn, [Imsullyeon] 壬戌年 Jeon Yongseok [Chŏn Yongsŏk] 田容錫 Jin Me Yoon [Yun Chinmi, Yun Jinmi] 윤진미 Joo Jae-hwan [Chu Chaehwan, Ju Jaehwan] 주재환 Jung Eun Jung [Chŏng ŭnjŏng, Jeong Eunjeong] 정은정 Jung Hunyee [Chŏng Hŏni, Jeong Heoni] 鄭憲二 Jung Seoyong [Chŏng Sŏyŏng, Jeong Seoyeong] 鄭栖英 Kang Hong Gu [Kang Honggu, Gang Honggu] 姜洪求 Kang Yong Seok [Kang Yongsŏk, Gang Yongseok] 姜龍錫 Kim Beom [Kim Pŏm] 김범 Kim Bong Joon [Kim Pongjun, Kim Bongjun] 金鳳駿 Kim Hakryang [Kim Hangnyang] 金學亮 Kim Heejin [Kim Hŭijin, Kim Huijin] 김희진 Kim Honghee [Kim Honghŭi, Kim Honghui] 金弘姬 Kim Hyeon-joo [Kim Hyŏnju, Kim Hyeonju] 김현주 Kim Jang Un [Kim Changŏn, Kim Jangeon] 김장언 Kim Jina [Kim China] 김지나 Kim Jinsong [Kim Chinsong] 金振松 Kim Jong II [Kim Chŏngil, Kim Jongil] 김종길



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Kim Junki [Kim Chun’gi, Kim Jun’gi] 김준기 Kim Keum Hwa [Kim Kŭmhwa, Kim Geumhwa] 金錦花 Kim San 김산 Kim Sangdon 김상돈 Kim Sanggil 김상길 Kim Soonam [Kim Sunam] 金秀男 Kim Sung Hwan [Kim Sŏnghwan, Kim Seonghwan] 김성환 Kim Sunjong [Kim Sŏnjŏng, Kim Seonjeong] 金宣廷 Kim Yongik 金容翼 Kim Yongtae [Kim Yongt’ae] 金勇泰 Koh Seung Wook [Ko Sŭnguk, Ko Seunguk] 고승욱 kŏlgae kŭrim [geolgae geurim] 걸개그림 Kwangju [Gwangju] 光州 Kwangju chayu misurin hyŏbŭihoe [Gwangju jayu misurin hyeobuihoe] 光州自由美 術人協議會 Kyeryong [Gyeryong] 鷄龍(山) Lee Bul [Yi Pul, Yi Bul] 李昢 Lee Jong-Gu [Yi Chongku, Yi Jonggul] 이종구 Lee Kyoung Min [Yi Kyŭngmin, Yi Gyeongmin] 李庚珉 Lee Young Chul [Yi Yŏngch’ŏl, Yi Yeongcheol] 李榮喆 Lee Young June [Yi Yŏngjun, Yi Yeongjun] 李瑛浚 Lee Young Wook [Yi Yŏnguk, Yi Yeonguk] 李永旭 Lim Ok Sang [Im Oksang] 林玉相 Maehyang-ri 매향리 Min Jeong-ki [Min Chŏnggi, Min Jeonggi] 閔正基 minjung 民衆 minjungjŏk hyŏnsiljuŭi [minjungjeok hyeonsiljuui] 民衆的現實主義 Minouk Lim [Im Minuk] 林珉旭 Misul pip’yŏng yŏn’guhoe [Misul bipyeong yeon’guhoe] 美術批評硏究會 Mun Hye Jin [Mun Hyejin] 문혜진 Nam June Paik [Paek Namjun, Baek Namjun] 白南準 Namhee Lee [Yi Namhŭi, Yi Namhui] 이남희 Noh Suntag [No Sunt’aek, No Suntaek] 노순택 Oh In-hwan [O Inhwan] 오인환 Oh Yoon [O Yun] 吳潤 Park Buldong [Pak Pulttong, Bak Bulttong] 박불똥 Park Chan-kyong [Pak Ch’an’gyŏng, Bak Chan’gyeong] 朴贊景 Park Shin Eui [Pak Sinŭi, Bak Sinui] 朴信義 pip’anjŏk hyŏnsiljuŭi [bipanjeok hyeonsiljuui] 批判的現實主義 Rhii Jewyo [Yi Chuyo, Yi Juyo] 이주요 Roh Jae Oon [No Chaeun, No Jaeun] 노재운 Roh Wonhee [No Wŏnhŭi, No Wonhui] 盧援喜 Seo Dong-jin [Sŏ Tongjin] 서동진 Shim Gwang Hyun [Sim Kwanghyŏn, Sim Gwanghyeon] 沈光鉉 Shin Chunghoon [Sin Chŏnghun, Sin Jeonghun] 신정훈

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Shin Hakchul [Sin Hakch’ŏl, Sin Hakcheol] 申鶴徹 siren eun young jung [Chŏng ŭnyŏng, Jeong Eunyeong] 정은영 Sung Neung Kyung [Sŏng Nŭnggyŏng, Seong Neunggyeong] 成能慶 Sung Wan Kyung [Sŏng Wan’gyŏng, Seong Wan’gyeong] 成完慶 Sungho Choi [Ch’oe Sŏngho, Choe Seongho] 최성호 Tadaiksŏn [Dadaikseon] 多多益善 Tansaekhwa [Dansaekhwa] 單色畵 Theresa Hak Kyung Cha [Ch’a Hakkyŏng, Cha Hakgyeong] 차학경 Um Hyuk [ŏm Hyŏk, Eom Hyeok] 嚴赫 Uri ponmulŭl t’ŭja [Uri bonmul eul teuja] 우리 봇물을 트자 Yong Soon Min [Min Yŏngsun, Min Yeongsun] 민영순 Yoo Hyun-Joo [Yu Hyŏnju, Yu Hyeonju] 유현주 Yoon Suknam [Yun Sŏngnam, Yun Seongnam] 尹錫南 yŏsŏng gukgŭk [yeoseong gukgeuk] 女性國劇 Yun Kŭmi [Yun Geumi] 윤금이

18

South Korean Cinema in the Age of Hallyu Kyung Hyun Kim

Three Films with Transnational Lens First: Wei Wei, a fifteen-year-old orphaned Chinese girl, stands in the coach’s box outside the first base in Chamsil Stadium in South Korea that had once served as a site of 1988 Seoul Olympics. In a crucial playoff game of the Korean professional baseball league, Wei Wei, in a baseball uniform that showcases the etchings of several Korean corporate logos, holds a whip in her hand to help navigate Ling Ling, an aging yet powerful gorilla, around the bases after he has hit a baseball. In the luxury box, Ling Ling’s Korean agent, surrounded by the owners of Japanese professional teams such as Yomiuri Giants and Chunichi Dragons, watches the amazing, wild swings of his most treasured client. The Korean agent intends to contract his prized slugger to either of the Japanese teams for an even bigger profit than a Korean team has paid him. Wei Wei yells in Chinese, in front of the sold-out Korean spectators, “pao!” while flailing her arms in order to motivate Ling Ling out of the batter’s box. Second: “Are you Namgoong Minsoo?” asks Curtis, who is played by Chris Evans, an actor known for his role as Captain America in The Avengers franchise that has been spun off from Marvel Comics, to a bearded Asian man who is waking up from a long reverie in the sleeping car of a sci-fi film. Such a scene reminds the reviewers of scenes from classic American sci-fi films like the Planet of the Ape where astronauts are placed in the bed capsules of spaceships for a long sleep. The difference here is that it is not a Westerner, but a Korean who is waking up from the capsule of a locomotive train, and that punctures a sense of rendezvous between old and new as well as between East and West. It registers as a renewed and yet nostalgic fusion of transnational screen identity. Because Namgoong Minsoo, played by Korean film star Song Kangho,

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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does not understand English, Curtis needs to speak into a translation device which asks him whether or not he is a key maker who can unlock the security system that bolts down cabin cars of a perpetually moving train after an ecological disaster has made the earth uninhabitable. Together, Curtis and Namgoong Minsoo will embark on a movement toward the head cabin of the train where the tyrannical train magnate resides. Hopefully, Curtis and his gang of insurgents will fulfill a revolution that will thwart the train’s engine and subvert the immoral system that has divided the train into two social classes: luxury passengers and tailgate passengers. Third: Li Xing, a young chef, walks into a café in Beijing set up for a pivotal climax in this sappy tearjerker. He sits down in the very seat from which he had once proposed to Qiao Qiao, his former sweetheart from college. While he is trying to come to terms with his post-separation grief, he hears from the café’s proprietor that Qiao Qiao may have not been truthful about her reasons for their breakup. Li Xing then whimsically decides to fly to Shanghai, where Qiao Qiao lives, in order to solve the puzzle behind the sudden breakup that has pained him. In Shanghai, he finds out that Qiao Qiao sought separation from Li Xing not because her love has dissipated, but because her love for him had been too strong. She has chosen to break up with Li Xing because, previously unbeknownst to him, she suffers from a rare form of stomach cancer, and has only several months left to live. These three scenes—though they may appear disparate—are all part of the contemporary landscape of transnational South Korean cinema. While they—all of them released in 2013—are shot in different primary languages—Korean, English, and Chinese—and signify diverse locales, they also serve as both a microcosm of world cinema today that germinates blockbuster genre conventions across the globe and as a macrocosm of Korean cinema that stretches itself beyond homogeneous linguistic and cultural borders. These scenes are instances of South Korean cinema’s desperate attempts to break out of the geographical grids that had once bound its identity, local specificity and audiences. As will be explored further, one of the limitations of Korean cinema, despite the commercial success it has achieved over the past couple of decades, is that it is dependent on a consumer base that understands Korean—both language and cultural specificity. Though Hallyu (Korean Wave) television and music content originating from Korea has found enormous successes overseas during the first fifteen years of the new millennium, Korean cinema, which must be subtitled in non-Korean languages before they can be screened in theaters overseas, has had its export numbers dwindle to disappointingly negligible figures during the same period. It was perhaps then no coincidence that the three scenes cited above are from transnational films. Mr. Go (2013) directed by Kim Yong-hwa (b. 1971), Snowpiercer (2013) directed by Bong Joon-ho (b. 1969), and A Wedding Invitation (2013) directed by Oh Ki-hwan (b. 1967), respectively, were all made by veteran Korean filmmakers with the main financial backing provided by Korean media conglomerates CJ Entertainment & Media and Showbox to help find audiences outside Korea. Quite possibly the most important film among these three international co-production films was perhaps a film that became one of the biggest commercial flops in Korea: Mr. Go. Not only were Korean exhibitors and distributors in China trying to open doors to the lucrative film market there, but also in China were Korean film



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technicians such as visual effects supervisors and digital animators who found themselves more competitive against Hollywood technicians. Bigger budget blockbusters in China and Korea have meant heavier reliance on digital characters and motion captures, and this bode auspicious opportunities for a Korean film industry that has been investing heavily in computer graphics and visual effects for the past several decades. Korean animation and motion picture industry had also accumulated decades of work experience through labor-intensive subcontracting work for American productions since the days of The Simpsons, which began its first broadcast on the peninsula in the late 1980s. Mr. Go, a joint venture between Showbox and Huayi Brothers Media Corp, two media giants in Korea and China, respectively, went on to pull a box office figure close to US$20 million in China, despite the fact that it had hardly made a dent in Korean theaters during the lucrative summer season in 2013 after spending close to US$5 million in marketing fees in Korea (Cremin 2013). Mr. Go was nonetheless significant because it was the first Korean film project made by Dexter Studios, a Visual FX company in Seoul headed by CEO Kim Yonghwa, who also served as its writer and director. The 3D film, centering on a gorilla who plays baseball, cost US$1.5 million, which was a hefty sum for only a short digital prototype of an animal who swings a bat. It eventually came in at a budget of US $22.5 million, which was then the second-largest budget ever spent on a Korean film. Dexter Studios partnered with LGN-Sys, which boasts being the largest corporation in the world among those that specialize in the IT-infra field, and received support of the rendering farm in order to process the cell data to make the fur of the computer-generated gorilla look real. Despite the disappointing commercial performance of Mr. Go, it was widely considered a technical breakthrough for Korean 3-D technology after a number of unsuccessful 3-D film projects such as Kim Ji-hoon’s Sector 7, which was an embarrassing project for CJ Entertainment, its main financier, when it was released in 2011 and failed to impress both the general audiences and the critics. Based on the technological success of Mr. Go, however, Dexter Studios was able to not only deliver visual effects technology to other Korean films, but also form partnerships with Chinese production companies for several other blockbuster films in 2014 including Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (dir. Tsui Hark, 2013) and The Monkey King 3D (dir. Cheang Pou-soi, 2014). These were both megahits in China that respectively grossed close to US$100 million and US$180 million internationally. The successes in China enabled Dexter to launch its Korean franchise film, Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (Sin kwa hamkke, 2017), directed by Kim Yong-hwa. Dexter Studios, which was initially created to benchmark Weta Workshop, a world-leading design and effects facility in New Zealand after having serviced notable Hollywood blockbusters such as the Amazing Spiderman 2 (dir. Marc Webb, 2014) and Avatar (dir. James Cameroon, 2009), is well on its path to become a powerful postproduction facility in Asia. This farming out of the Korean visual effects technology to service Chinese blockbusters can be perceived as a reversal of history when once upon a time the Korean film industry was on the receiving end of the cultural exchange as Chinese martial arts choreographers made their ways to help visualize Korean action films popular throughout the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s.

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Though Chinese (US $6.8 billion) and South Korean (US $1.7 billion) box office revenue together (US $8.5 billion) still fall below the size of theatrical markets of the top four English-speaking countries (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia), which currently stands at around US $14 billion (MPAA 2015), the SinoKorean alliance now represents a market size and share for homegrown movies that is respectable enough to compete against English-language films. Both China and South Korea boast box office shares for domestic films at over fifty percent in their respective markets. China and South Korea’s movie box office intake currently make up about twenty-two percent of the global film industry, each is expected to grow exponentially over the next two decades. In a global film culture where the size of capital investment, because of ever-rising cost of visual graphics and other film technological means, determines the taste and the preference of moviegoers, the Chinese market with its 1.4 billion people has not been unnoticed by Korean producers. The enormous consumer base in China both attracts and strains the Korean film industry, which shares its cultural and linguistic heritage, but risks also losing its own identity by completely morphing into Chinese production. Because aforementioned A Wedding Invitation, a joint venture developed by Koreans and Chinese, was so successful in the Chinese box office and proved to be much bigger than its South Korean counterpart, South Korean film companies headed by CJ Entertainment are developing eight to ten more projects in China to be released in the next couple of years (Frater 2013). One big market that has not been sufficiently targeted by China or South Korea is the North American box office. This does not mean that South Korea has yet to assert its power in the United States. CJ Entertainment has continually attempted to launch film projects in the United States by exploiting its Hallyu content power over the past ten years. A film project entirely shot in English, for instance, that casts the pan-Asian starlet BoA (Kwon Bo-ah) as the main actor, was bankrolled by the CJ group. Entitled Make Your Move (dir. Duane Adler, 2013), it stars BoA as a Korean dancer who falls in love with a poor white boy while trying to make it in Brooklyn. However, it failed to get attention from any American distributor, and theaters in both Korea and in the United States decided to ignore the poorly conceived film. On the other hand, Snowpiercer, a sci-fi film with a mostly Hollywood cast and English dialogue, was not a film that tried to bank on Korean idols’ dominance in Asia while trying to wield power in Hollywood. By relying on the financial wherewithal of CJ Entertainment, which accumulated wealth through its CGV theater chains and made giant leaps in South Korea, China, and Vietnam over the past fifteen years (Frater 2014), Snowpiercer was given a budget of US$40 million, even though its director Bong Joon-ho had established his reputation solely through films made in Korea. Though Snowpiercer became a hit in Korea and garnered critical accolades at international film festivals, it failed to make even a blip on the commercial circuit worldwide. One of the biggest reasons why Snowpiercer was not widely released in the United States was that its director, Bong Joon-ho, entered into a feud with its North American distributor, The Weinstein Company, which had suggested that the director’s cut (and the South Korean release version) be excised twenty five minutes. Acceptance of the cut would have transformed the cutting-edge sci-fi film into an



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action-thriller “more comprehensible to audiences in Iowa and Oklahoma.” (Rayns 2015) Even Harvey Weinstein, who has built his reputation by editing down foreign language films such as Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1994) and Suo Masayuki’s Shall We Dance? (1996) before releasing them through Miramax before he became independent and found his own company, however, could not get the Korean director to accept his suggestions for a shorter film. Snowpiercer, uncut, was given a limited U.S. release, and opened only in eight screens in the United States. Most audiences in Iowa and Oklahoma would not get the opportunity to see the film until its release on DVD and Blu-ray.

Only Icelanders Watch Movies at a Higher Clip than Koreans The development of digital technologies has generated a sense of global culture that now impacts how people interact with each other on a day-to-day basis. Now more than four billion people use the Internet (Internetlivestats.com 2018), which constitutes a little less than fifty percent of the world population. Korea not only boasts one of the highest percentages of Internet users, but probably also is the only country that has seen its movie attendance rate soar in the Internet revolution. The Korean cinema industry, despite its trouble exporting movies, has performed better than anyone could have guessed. Only Iceland boasts a larger movie-going rate per capita worldwide, at 4.28% of the population. The South Korea record in 2014 was 4.19% per capita. The Korean film industry now boasts the movie-going rate of around 4.2% per capita, among the highest in the world. The Korea Film Council protects its domestic production with an overwhelming majority of audiences voluntarily choosing to watch local movies over Hollywood’s. Korean cinema has also shot through the rankings as being among the largest local box office producers and exporters per capita in the world (KOFIC 2015). It has impressed both its local fans and Hollywood producers interested in remakes and global talents by taking less than a decade to go from a perilous state to one of the sturdiest film industries in the world. With US $1.74 billion grossed in 2014, which was a banner year even in Korea (Kim, J. 2014), Korea’s box office numbers might be even better than those of the UK, France, India, and Germany. On the dual fronts of digitization and globalization of the new millennium that have posed challenges to all national cinemas operating outside of Hollywood, Korean cinema has cleared the hurdle by developing and incorporating indigenous technology of computer-generated images and modifying and appropriating Hollywood genres such as thrillers, disasters, courtroom dramas, Westerns, and comedies to make its own blockbuster productions and releases. It has also adopted Hollywood-style release marketing strategies in recent years. In other words, Korea has not shied away from experimenting with spectacles and vertical integration where distributors practice monopolistic behaviors. Also, the routine invites of filmmakers such as Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-woon, Lee Chang-dong, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Ki-duk, and Hong Sang-soo to major film festivals around the world, strongly suggest that Korean cinema has put together a masterful stretch during the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century that may stand the test of time.

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Despite all recitations that signal the success of Korean cinema, however, something remains missing. If Korean cinema—within the span of about twenty years— has moved swimmingly beyond the limbo caught between tradition and modernity and splashed into a postmodern, global pool, why is it still difficult to say with unequivocal certainty that there must be something universal in the works of Korean cinema that render an “understanding” of it by consumers beyond the Asian market? Despite the fact that Korean cinematic art is achieving success in its domestic markets and in nearby Asian markets, its export numbers in other regions is negligible. According to the 2014 Annual Report published by KOFIC, the Asian market’s share of the entire Korean film export market is seventy-nine percent whereas the North American market’s share remains below twelve percent. If one looks beyond the commercial market and examines the academic field, it still is difficult to find more than just a short blurb on Korean cinema even in the latest introduction to cinema in widely used textbooks such as Mast and Kawin’s A Short History of the Movies (Mast and Kawin 2011). Would it be an exaggeration to say that Korean cinema still remains as a tabula rasa for most scholars of film and media studies today? Though there are now several English-language books on Korean cinema listed on Amazon.com, it is still difficult to spot a Korean single title on lists of the world’s greatest films. Nor has the New Korean Cinema been discussed in the same breath as other innovative world film movements such as the French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague), New German Cinema, Post-war Japanese Cinema, the Cuban Third Cinema, or the Chinese Fifth Generation. Why is this particular national cinema that is setting milestones in world film history not receiving the kind of notice that it deserves in contemporary film and media scholarship? One reason might be that the heyday of Korean cinema has arrived at a time when the role of cinema is going through a tremendous transformation. After all, action franchise blockbusters with climatic clichés and reboot imageries have come to dominate not only Hollywood, but also the Korean film industry. With global cinema vying for stories that appeal to lesser degrees of realist traditions and modern humanist sensibilities, Korean cinema has to circulate within the fandom of Hallyu, which mostly undercuts the value of local and national particularities of Korea’s unique culture. Often lost is the bold commitment to aesthetic movements or to the redetermination of cinematic expressions that are unfettered by commercial interests. Of course, these reasons make the films of Hong Sang-soo and Lee Chang-dong more exceptional when evaluating Korean cinema in the popular age of Hallyu.

The Beach in Hong Sang-soo and the Neighbors in Lee Chang-dong There is a temptation to think that many common themes bind the works of Hong Sang-soo and Lee Chang-dong. They are first and foremost the most representative Korean arthouse filmmakers of their generation whose films are guided by modernist impulses. Humanistic inquiries, traumatized characters struggling to find the meaning of life, and formal concerns with cinematic representation do commonly bind



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their work. However, nowhere are differences between the two more pronounced than in their conception of space. Though both tend to shoot dilapidated rooms and ordinary streets that are dimly lit or rely on natural lighting, the spatiality or use of space in their films differ radically. Han and Lee both share similar concerns for global versus local, neighborhood, and temporality, but in constructing spaces in their films to voice such concerns, they end up creating indexes that are entirely different from one another. In comparing the spatialities of Hong Sang-soo and Lee Chang-dong’s films, I am drawn to two concepts: the beach and the neighbor. Thinking back through the seven-year period from 2006 to 2012, it is the landscape of the beach that emerges as one of the most common settings in Hong Sang-soo’s work. Woman on the Beach (Haebyŏn ŭi yŏin, 2006), Night and Day (Pam kwa nat, 2008), Like You Know it All (Chal aljido mothamyŏnsŏ, 2009), Ha Ha Ha (2010) and In Another Country (Tarŭn nara esŏ, 2012) all either prominently feature the beach or were set entirely on the beach. The only Hong Sang-soo films during this period not set on the seaside were The Day He Arrives (Pukch’on panghyang, 2011) and Oki’s Movie (2010). In six films made before 2006, Hong Sang-soo rarely depicted the beach. The Power of Kangwon Province (Kangwŏndo ŭi him,1998), his second film, does take place partly in the Sokch’o-Kangnŭng seaside area, but never does it feature a shot that shows the open ocean. It could be argued however that some of the most iconic moments in Hong Sang-soo’s later work reveal the beach as a reconfiguration of his spatial as well as his temporal themes. The beachscape in other words, imposes both a setting and a community that encapsulates the main characters of his films. More than other natural landscape of mountains, paddies, and forests, or the dilapidated urban setting of tawdry motel rooms, cafés and office spaces, the Korean seaside in Hong’s recent depictions offer a distinct relationship with humans and nature that serves as a threshold between residences for service workers and tourism for urban dwellers. It is perhaps not surprising that the beach is a popular destination for the director who is often noted for his apolitical or post-political positions. The beach is not only a site of aimless flânerie, but also a site that resists monumental records of historical inscriptions and industrial remembrance. This is not to suggest that the beach is flaccid or flat. To the contrary, the dynamic textures and natural colors, the pounding waves, the calm sky, the golden sand, and the statue-like rocks conjure up a sense of space that is too glamorous, too rich and often too real, especially on the big screen. In other words, it is the hyper-real or the fantastic nature of the beachscape that has often drawn the interests of many auteur directors in world cinema, such as Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut of the past or Francois Ozon and Nuri Bilge Ceylan more recently. Hong Sang-soo is no exception here. Hong Sang-soo’s picturing of the beach in his films achieves three points: first, it replaces the city as the spatial center of modernity. Second, nostalgia, which is normally cloaked in temporal symptoms of melancholia, post-traumatic repression and national history (i.e., memories of the old country), transforms itself into a privatized feeling of hypochondria and leisure. When nostalgia becomes privatized, what was once a temporal configuration assumes a real spatial dimension. Third, probably most related to the topic of this essay is to think of the beach as a space that reshuffles the

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nexus between interiority and exteriority and consequently redefines the conception of the neighbor itself. Hong Sang-soo’s films, and Korean cinema in general, still strongly identify with Seoul. Despite the fact that the ambiguities of modernity are complexly interwoven in the urban setting depicted in Hong’s works, I propose that the beach operates as an ideal ambiguous site where not only civility and nature collide, but also where the beach—that is caught between land and sea—thematically and visually serves as a space of in-between-ness. This liminality best delivers the ambiguous modern anxieties of Hong’s characters who are often also caught between their commitment to jobs, marriage, and family obligations, and the desire to be released from it. The premise of Night and Day is a case in point. The painter protagonist Songnam is seeking refuge in Paris because he is wanted by the Korean authorities for having puffed one marijuana joint. He spends almost two months in Paris before his capriciousness urges him to try even a newer experience. Songnam, a married man with a wife in Korea, ends up sleeping with a young female foreign student (yuhaksaeng) not in Paris, but in Deauville, a famous seaside resort, where they travel for the second time in the movie. The beach serves as an intermediary that erases the boundary between family obligation and freedom, between reality and fantasy, and ultimately between nature and civility. Deauville in this movie is like the Korean seaside resorts of T’ongyŏng, Sindu-ri, Cheju, and Moang that are pictured elsewhere in Hong’s films, in that it enables the characters in his stories to flirt with being in a continuum that starts in the over-industrialized, ultra-modern urban milieu, detours through the seaside resort, and finally ends back at the starting point. This function of the in-betweenness of the beach reproduces the natural trajectory of an individual’s foray into a modern conundrum. As Svetlana Boym succinctly puts it, nostalgia is a condition that “caused the afflicted to lose touch with the present.” (Boym 2001: 3) Though the term ‘nostalgia’ has traditionally been associated with the displacement of residential home or the fatherland, the strong sensation of longing always has had a temporal dimension more than a spatial one. Unlike Lee Chang-dong, whose films are concerned by an irreversible sense of time that does feature a definite boundary between a beginning, a middle, and an end, Hong typically creates characters who are punted from a linear trajectory of time. Hong’s characters loiter around the beach as they resoundingly reject the Aristotelian model of a beginning, a middle and an end. Though the beach typically connotes images of indolent, lounging bodies basking in the sun, such erotic or spectacular imagery of the seaside is not recalled in Hong Sang-soo’s films. Instead it is the social and sexual dramas (without the eroticism) that concern him more. By disassociating the sexual tensions and anxieties from procreation or enactments of pre-marital rituals, Hong’s films punctuate a sense of time where only the present remains as the relevant temporality. This concern with the present negates nostalgia’s obsession with the past. The creation of a present or the unique sense of present tense (what Gilles Deleuze would call “sheets of the past and peaks of the present”) also denies in Hong Sang-soo’s work the possibility of reading a scene from the past as a “flashback” even when there are interjected scenes that take the drama back in time. This denial of ‘flashbacks’ in his films translates the symptoms of nostalgia into not an



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‘obsession with the past,’ but into a condition of the present filled with hypochondria, erectile dysfunction, and alcohol addiction. Precisely how these psychological or physical dysfunctions are connected to historical origins becomes a question impossible to answer since the past is irrelevant or moot. The beach, even its desolate form, presents a vestige of the carnivalesque and the pleasurable that enables humans to fall into a reverie or a fantasy (Figure 18.1). It is a setting where the borders not only between land and sea are crossed, but also where interiority and exteriority conflate. The urban dwellers seek refuge from the city, but rather than dunking themselves into the tidal waves or bathing alone under the sun in scant bikinis and tight pouches, they revel in the flux of a group. When I say ‘group,’ I am intentionally trying to distinguish this term from partnership, team, or neighbor. ‘Group’ is a horizontal distinction, rather than a vertical one, and one where the subscriptions to law, ethics, and social allegiances are much looser than other classifications designating a cluster of people. I am intrigued by the function of the groups where strangers and friends comingle to a point where friendships become awkward and intimacy replaces foreignness. In Another Country there is one scene that perhaps exemplifies this point. Anne, played by Isabelle Huppert, visits Moang, a nondescript

Figure 18.1  Poster for In Another Country. Directed by Hong Sang-soo. Produced by Kim Kyeong-hee and Hong Sang-soo. 2012. Photo: courtesy of Jeonwonsa. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

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seaside town without much in the way of landmarks other than a lighthouse that Anne insists on visiting. She accidentally meets a lifeguard-by-day, restaurant worker-bynight young Korean and ends up befriending him. Anne is bunking at a pension motel and the lifeguard lives in a tent camped on the beach, and their temporary residences are located within a walking distance from each other. Though they are technically neighbors in Moang, they both know that their arrangements are only temporary. In a crucial scene, Anne visits the lifeguard, played by Yu Chunsang, who speaks some passable English and offers him a letter. The problem is that Yu finds the letter written in elementary English illegible. He begins to read with a heavy Korean accent, “Deer ra-i-peu-ga-deu, Ai olways asked i-pu you would…” He cannot continue reading because he finds her handwriting closer to a graphic sign than to a decipherable script. This illegibility, which purely demonstrates the tension between speech and writing, constantly shuffles writing’s subordination to the voice— to a point where the demarcation between writing and speech becomes nullified. I argue that the liminal identity of the illegible letter produces not only a sense of in-between-ness between writing (English) and speech (Korean pronunciation of English), but also a liaison between self and the “other” that produces theater between an arrogant old French woman with marital problems and a virile young Korean loafer living in a tent on the beach. The border between the two has become blurry to the point where their relationship consummates in sex (even though Yu Chunsang and Huppert naked under the same blanket takes place in another tale in this omnibus film, her name is known consistently as Anne and his role as a lifeguard remains unchanged). Because the incomprehensible handwriting is not intentional by the French woman nor is the letter insultingly dismissed by the Korean man, the illegible letter while retaining a certain degree of irrationality, becomes the centerpiece of communication between the two. It also becomes the central doctrine constituting what Jacques Derrida would term ‘undecidability’ between presence and absence as well as one between love and hate. This blurring of boundaries helps to remediate the very nature of subjectivity, responsibility and community that profoundly structures the essence of the term, ‘neighbor.’ It is perhaps no coincidence that Lee Chang-dong has never featured one shot of a beach in any of his films thus far. However, water or the watery realm is a significant motif in Lee Chang-dong’s films. Metaphors of ocean seen from afar (Peppermint Candy), river (Poetry), brook (Peppermint Candy and Green Fish), oasis (Oasis), and reservoir (Secret Sunshine) figure heavily in many of his films as iconic sites of grief and loss. Water is also pictured as a place of public martyrdom (Poetry), personal meditation (Secret Sunshine or Oasis), communal reunion (Peppermint Candy), or childhood memories (Green Fish) that inject remembrance or a reckoning of historical trauma to reconcile the tension between life and death, between present and past and between rationality and spirituality. Beach shorelines—however—and its visualization of relaxation, spectacle, and in-between-ness most likely do not fit into the austere themes explored by Lee Chang-dong in his films. Lee Chang-dong’s ‘apologetic man’ such as Young-ho in Peppermint Candy resonates deeply within recent Korean film history as a site where traumatic repression and historical remembrance clash. The figure of apologetic man and the trope of ‘apology’



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are embedded in a compressed and finite temporality rather than in a temporality that assumes the shape of a Mobius strip where the beginning, the middle, and the end are twirled in a non-linear sequence. In Lee Chang-dong’s films, however, his finite sense of historiography forces his characters to be placed in a flow of time that is kept in a linear continuum rather than a circular one. Lee’s linear trajectory of time, I argue, is intimately connected to a sense of moral commitment that operates on a principle of neighborly-love, which is more significant than any other value. The freeze-framed image of Yong-ho reminds us that the death is going to happen and simultaneously invokes that this will be and this has been (Choe 2008; Kim Soyoung 2006). In almost every film Lee Chang-dong has directed to date, the dictum in the Old Testament (Leviticus) to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ literally functions as the central law or the modus operandi for humans. In Oasis, as you may recall, it is the failure of Kongju’s neighbors to truly care for the unfortunate disabled woman in their midst that leads to the tragedy at the end of the film. In Poetry, it is the entire rural community located at the outskirts of Seoul that is caught up in scandal when a young schoolgirl commits suicide after she becomes a victim of gang rape by several of her classmates. One of them happens to be Wook, the grandson of the septuagenarian protagonist, Mija is confronted with this hard truth by the father of one of Wook’s friends. In the end, her neighbors in the small town turn out to be just as selfish as strangers in dealing with each other. In a film that is simply titled “Poetry,” it isn’t exactly the written word that impresses the viewers. Because Poetry is not a book, but a film, it is capable of maximizing the potential of cinema by filming both non-professional actors and professional actors to recite their poetry in a quasi-documentary format. Scattered throughout the film is a section called “the most beautiful moment of my life.” What grabs viewer attention is the ways in which many of the casts’ real life experiences are transposed into words, recited in their own voice before the camera, and imparting a visual trace while recollecting buried memories. The combination of the word “Poetry” and the real voices and real facial expressions of cast, all combine to produce exquisitely sublime moments in “the most beautiful moment in my life” section of the film. Even in an age of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook where we are inundated with superfluous number of amateur performances of songs, commentaries, and even poetry, this section impresses us because of its cinematic ability to sublimely transcend the boundaries between real and fiction, between private and public, between immanence and transcendence, and between interiority and exteriority—all which cannot be achieved through writing alone (Figure 18.2). Despite the fact that there is such eruption between “interiority and exteriority” in this section and several more, I feel that Poetry continues to follow the premise that Lee Chang-dong has followed throughout his career: policing of the boundary between self and “other” and between interiority and exteriority. A turning point takes place toward the end of the film when Mija adopts for herself behavior that is imperceptibly masculinist. This happens when she visits the disabled Chairman to ask for the five thousand dollars she needs to pay off the victim’s mother. She intrudes into a family gathering held in the living room, only to be led to the interior of the house to discuss privately the matter of money with the Chairman. Here in the most

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Figure 18.2  Poster for Poetry. Directed by Lee Chang-dong. Produced by Lee Joon-dong. 2010. Photo: courtesy of PineHouse Film. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

intimate mode, the film features for the first time a shot of Mija’s notebook in which she has been depositing traces of her “poetry.” Instead of poetry, however, the viewer gets a glimpse of the memo in which Mija has desperately written in her ordinary handwriting, “Please give me five million won. I beg you, don’t ask why.” (Figure 18.3) I repeat this passage in Korean because it remains uncertain whether this writing achieves a non-phonetic moment that steals the spirit (and thereby femininity) away from Mija or one that ironically fulfills it. She has been forced to participate in the cover-up scheme concocted by the fathers of the other accused boys (her neighbors) that rules out the possibility of a pure apology that may properly reconcile with the trauma of the memory of the rape and the death of the girl. Instead, what is maintained is the status quo by simply paying off the victim’s mother. By writing down the simple letters “five million won,” is the film suggesting that both the act of sex that took place by mutual consent between Mija and the Chairman earlier in the film and the act of pushing and pulling that is now required in an apology communicated from the perpetrators to the victim’s mother be construed as a value equivalent to the hush money? The invocation of money, numbers, and letters in this scene “sterilize or immobilize,” to employ Jacques Derrida’s words, the spiritual or poetic



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Figure 18.3  Scribbled note appearing on full screen in Poetry. Directed by Lee Chang-dong. Produced by Lee Joon-dong. 2010. Photo: courtesy of PineHouse Film. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure.)

potentials that could lead to remembrance and reconciliation with history and trauma. Derrida wrote: “What writing itself, in its non-phonetic moment, betrays, is life. It menaces at once the breath, the spirit, and the history as the spirit’s relationship with itself. It is their end, their finitude, their paralysis. Cutting breath short, sterilizing or immobilizing spiritual creation in the repetition of the letter, in the commentary or the exegesis, confined in a narrow space, reserved for a minority, it is the principle of death and of difference in the becoming of being.” (Derrida 1968: 25) Could any sum of money ever be enough to repay a debt that involves the rape and death of a young girl—much like the comfort women who are now either aged or deceased, with their demand to be properly recognized now almost forgotten? And how could it also ever be equivalent in value to the sex that had occurred between Mija and her employer? When the now aged Chairman demands to know whether or not this is a form of blackmail, Mija simply responds that it could be or it could not be. But the moment she writes down the sum of money in her notebook for the Chairman to pay, we know that her writing is no longer a poetic act, but an act that belongs to the tradition of insufficient and cowardly men or to the nation that has failed to properly reconcile with history. In other words, the writing down of the ‘five million won’ disentangles the poetry of the voice that so remarkably characterized Mija thus far; it now strips away her spirit. The stripping of Mija’s spirit eventually will pave the path to her finite place of entombment, a place where her final words will be etched through a voiceover over the shot of the river where the young girl committed suicide. Once she receives the money from the Chairman and throws it into the pot of communal money to be used to settle the “rape and suicide” incident, there can be

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no turning back. Unlike Hong Sang-soo’s films where ‘undecidability’ prevails, Lee Chang-dong’s conclusion is a decisive one—despite the fact that he cannot summon up the courage to actually film the final scene where the suicide of Mija takes place. Mija’s spirit can never be the same—becoming much like the men’s. Just as much as the turning back of the ‘clock’ is conjectured as an impossibility in Peppermint Candy, the debt of the death of the young girl can never be wholesomely settled. Mija’s fate is placed on the same plane as Young-ho’s in Peppermint Candy where the obsession with the past cannot be overcome and consequently nostalgia determines the present. The flowing water of the river sets both the temporal and spatial registers of Mija’s existence.

Conclusion Is the current condition of Korean cinema showcasing what I have in another essay called an “impossible postmodernization?” (Kim Kyung Hyun 2016) The mixed results generated by films attempting to retain national pride while pursuing transnational production, such as Snowpiercer and Mr. Go, coupled with the inarguable commercial success achieved by films that have completely abandoned Korean identity, such as A Wedding Invitation, has left Korean cinema in a quagmire. It is caught between national cultural sensitivity and transnational commercial viability. Lee Chang-dong and Hong Sang-soo, despite their films being steeped in global modern identities, both self-reflexively came to terms with the scarred pasts of their protagonists and rearticulated the themes of melancholic national history. But, despite these efforts by these auteurs, Korean cinema’s ascendance in the early part of the twentyfirst century will not be remembered for its auteurs. It will be remembered for its commercial renaissance that ended up influencing Chinese cinema as it aimed to compete with Hollywood. Because its powerful neighbor continues to buy both its film content and its advanced technology, Korea is spared from having to rely on fulfilling sales quotas in order for its film industry to survive. Just a casual stroll around the newly built media city of Sangam-dong on the outer skirts of Seoul, which has effectively replaced both Gangnam and Chungmuro as the metonymic marker of film industry in the past century, with its glitzy skyscrapers, parked Chinese tourist buses, and infinite number of street filmings, would make one recognize that this is the moment of Korean cinema’s rise. However, the question remains: could the prerequisite of a national cinema without the political and linguistic power of a major nation, such as Korean cinema, be the stripping of its own national identity? The partnership forged between Korea and its mighty Chinese neighbor certainly allows for a better forecast for Korean cinema, which a mere several years ago could afford to only shoot B-comedies, introspective melodramas and horrors. However, it was all produced in no other language than in Korean, whereas now several languages might coexist in a Korean film. Whether this would eventually mean a threat to Korean national identity as stamped into South Korea’s own films is actually a subset of a larger question that asks whether a culture with a minor language can survive the twenty-first century.



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References Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Choe, Steve. 2008. “Catastrophe and Finitude in Lee Chang Dong’s Peppermint Candy: Temporality, Narrative, and Korean History.” Post Script 27 (3): 132–144. Cremin, Stephen. 2013. “Mr. Go hits home run at China Box Office.” Film Business Asia July 20. Derrida, Jacques. 1968. Of Grammatology. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Frater, Patrick. 2013. “Jeong Tae-sung: International Executive You Should Know.” Variety Oct. 30. Frater, Patrick. 2014. “South Korean Exhibition Giant CJ-CGV Aggressively Expands Empire.” Variety Jan. 24. Internetlivestats.com. 2018. Retrieved from http://www.internetlivestats.com/ internet-users/ Kim, June. 2014. “Korean Film Industry Records USD 1.74 Billion Revenue in 2013.” KOFIC News. Feb. 10. Kim, Kyung Hyun. 2016. “South Korean Cinema Story in the Digital Age: 21st Century Success on a 20th Century Medium?” In Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society, 206–217. New York and London: Routledge. Kim, Soyoung. 2006. “Do Not Include Me in Your ‘Us’.” Korea Journal 46 (1): 69. KOFIC [Korean Film Council]. 2015. 2014 Annual Report. Busan: Korean Film Council. Mast, Gerald and Bruce Kawin. 2011. A Short History of the Movies. Boston, MA: Pearson. MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America]. 2015. 2015 Theatrical Market Statistics. Washington, DC: Motion Picture Association of America. Rayns, Tony. 2013. “Blockage on the Line: Snowpiercer vs. Scissorhands.” In Sight and Sound. Accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sightsound-magazine/features/blockage-line-snowpiercer-vs-scissorhands.

Glossary Bong Joon-ho [Pong Chunho, Bong Junho] 봉준호 Chal aljido mot hamyŏnsŏ [Jal aljido mot hamyeonseo] 잘 알지도 못하면서 Cheang Pou-soi (C.) 鄭保瑞 Cheju [Jeju] 濟州 Chen Kaige (C.) 陳凱歌 Haebyŏn ŭi yŏin [Haebyeon ui yeoin] 해변의 여인 Hallyu 韓流 Hong Sang-soo [Hong Sangsu] 홍상수 Kangnŭng [Gangneung] 江陵 Kangwŏndo ŭi him [Kangwondo ui him] 강원도의 힘 Kim Jee-woon [Kim Chiun, Kim Jiun] 김지운 Kim Ki-duk [Kim Kidŏk, Kim Gideok] 김기덕 Kim Yong-hwa [Kim Yonghwa] 김용화

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Lee Chang-dong [Yi Ch’angdong, Yi Changdong] 이창동 Moang 모앙 Oh Ki-hwan [O Gihwan] 오기환 Pam kwa nat [Bam gwa nat] 밤과 낮 Park Chan-wook [Pak Ch’anuk, Bak Chanuk] 박찬욱 Pukch’on panghyang [Bukchon banghyang] 북촌방향 Sin kwa hamkke [Sin gwa hamkke] 신과 함께 Sindu-ri 薪斗里 Sokch’o [Sokcho] 束草 Song Kangho [Song Gangho] 송강호 Suo Masayuki (J.) 周防正行 Tarŭn nara esŏ [Dareun nara eseo] 다른 나라에서 T’ongyŏng [Tongyeong] 統營 Tsui Hark (C.) 徐克 yuhaksaeng 留學生 Yu Chunsang [Yu Junsang] 유준상

Index

Note: ‘Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. For the transliteration of Korean names and terms in this volumes the McCune‐Reischauer system has been employed. In addition, in the lists of characters following the texts of every chapter, terms in square brackets represent Korean words according to the Revised Romanization System of the South Korean government. Chinese names and terms are transcribed following the Pinyin system, and Japanese following the revised Hepburn system. abalone shell  242 abhiṣeka ritual  175 Abiji 93 Abstract Expressionism  439 abstraction  423, 425, 438–41, 447, 489 gestural  439, 440–1 monochrome  467, 473 Academic Realism  411, 419, 426 Across the Pacific: Contemporary Korean and Korean‐American Art exhibition (1993) 477–8 activism  471, 483, 488–9 Afghanistan 35 afterlife 372 guidance in the  124, 128 sustenance in the  121

A.G. (Avant Garde)  442, 443, 445 Agamben, Giorgio  466 Album of Genre Paintings (1778)  296 Album of Old Paintings in the Yun Family of Haenam 308 Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (film, 2017) 499 altars (Buddhist)  383–6, 389 relic altars  211 “three‐altar ritual” system  384–5 Alternative Space Pool  480 alternative spaces  477, 479–80, 482 Americas  321, 491 see also United States

A Companion to Korean Art, First Edition. Edited by J.P. Park, Burglind Jungmann, and Juhyung Rhi. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Amitābha Buddha  9, 66–7, 67, 78, 199, 223, 224, 248 Amitābha Triad 187, 188, 200 Buddha Amitābha with the Eight Great Bodhisattvas 196–7 Buddha Amitābha Triad  375, 376, 379, 384, 388 Descent of Amitābha 187, 188, 192, 195, 196 Kamsansa  69–70, 71–2, 71 Koryŏ paintings  185, 186–8 Kyeyu Amitābha triad stele  66–7, 67 Pure Land of  379 statues 172–3, 173–4, 376–8, 377, 386, 387, 390 Amnok River  7, 11 Amoghavajra 188 An Chungsik  366, 408, 409–11, 416 Spring Dawn at Mount Paegak (1915) 409, 410 An Kyŏn  263, 270–4, 280–2, 286, 348, 350–1 Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land (1447)  270, 271, 272–3, 276, 348 An Lushan  359 Anak Tomb  3 37, 38, 39, 40, 41–2, 43 Anapchi Pond  10 ancestral portraiture  267–8 ancestral rites  137 ancestral shrines  268 ancestral spirits  267–8 ancestral tablets  268 ancestral worship  263, 267–8, 372 Anhong 94–5 Anige 227 animism  9, 10 Anp’yŏng, Prince  270–3, 276, 348, 351 Ansan 300 anti‐American sentiment  467 anti‐art spirit  470 anti‐Buddhist campaigns  265, 344, 348, 371, 380

anti‐colonialism  409–11, 419–21, 426–7, 466 Anyang Public Art Project  479 “apologetic man” figure  506–7 Appenzeller, Henry  407 Ara Kaya  122 archeology  30–1, 32, 47, 88, 89 architecture Neo‐Gothic 407 Neo‐Renaissance 407 Three‐Kingdom tombs  108 timber‐framing 206 Western influence on urban  407 see also Buddhist architecture Area Park  481 Arita kilns, Kyushu  329, 337–8 Arko Museum, Seoul  490–1 armor  107, 110 “art for art’s sake”  419–20, 423, 427 Art Informel  439, 440–1 art markets, global  466 art schools, public  409 Art Toward the Society: Realism in Korean Art (1945–2005) 468 arthouse filmmakers  502 ArtSonje Center, Seoul  476 Asaoka Okisada  278 asceticism 197 Ashikaga Yoshimasa  201 Ashikaga shogunate  264 ashlar structures  77 Asia  321, 337, 491 association with antiquity  451 Central  58, 60, 63, 69, 76, 184 and cinema  499, 500, 502 northeast  3, 29 West 124 see also East Asia “Asia as method”  491 “Asian sublime”  485 Assembly on the Vulture Peak (1886)  388 assimilation policies  426 Association of Painting and Calligraphy  409, 411, 416 auspicious emblems  336–7

Index

authoritarianism  20–2, 445, 454–7 Avalokiteśvara (Bodhisattva)  61, 66, 72, 75, 169, 171–2, 175, 187, 191, 192, 199, 200, 239, 248 Chosŏn paintings  379, 380 Chosŏn statues  375, 376, 386, 390 Kannonji 169 Koryŏ paintings  185 Mount Kŭmgang 175 Naksansa 171 Thirty‐two Manifestations of Avalokiteśvara (1550)  380 Triad 200 Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvaras 185, 186, 191, 192, 193, 194–5, 196, 198, 199, 239 White‐Robed Avalokiteśvara 200 Avant Garde (A.G.)  442, 443, 445 avant‐garde  419, 420, 423–5, 426, 440 Bahc Mo  468, 474 “dumb calligraphy” paintings  477 Speak American (1990)  477 see also Bahc Yiso Bahc Yiso  476, 477 Your Bright Future (2002)  477, 478 see also Bahc Mo bamboo, depictions of  276, 278–80, 279, 281, 283, 349, 364 Bamboo Curtain  42 Bamiyan caves, Afghanistan  76 Bando Gallery, Seoul  440 Bang Geun‐tack  439 banner paintings  386–8, 467–8, 471 Banquet of Queen Mother of the West (19th century screen)  357, 358–9, 359 banquet tableware  333, 333 bar pods  128 baseball 497 Battle of Vision, The exhibition (2005) 468 beach settings  503–6, 505 beads  115, 116, 119, 125 Beck Jee‐sook  468, 474, 491 Begram 35

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Beijing  176, 273, 306, 311, 353, 362 bells 176–7 bronze temple  241, 243, 244, 244, 251 throat 172, 173 belts  49, 110, 117–18, 117 Benjamin, Walter  476 Beuys, Joseph  481 Bhaiṣajyaguru Buddha Changgoksa 169, 170 Chosŏn  378, 380, 381, 384, 386, 387 Triads  378, 380, 381, 384 Bird, Isabella  365 birth rites  331–3 Birthday Banquet for Grand Queen Dowager Sunwŏn (1848)  303 blackglazed ware  142 BoA 500 Board of Rites  306, 348 Bodhisattvas  9, 61, 62, 63, 224, 228 Eight Great  75, 187–8 pensive 63–4, 64, 65 bone, incised decorations  31 Bong Joon‐ho  498, 500–1 Borovoe, Kazakhstan  76 bottles celadon 143–4, 143, 150, 192 inlaid bronze  248, 251–2, 253 punch’ŏng ware drum‐shaped bottle with peony design  328, 328 with silver stopper  247, 247 bowls 124 bronze 250 celadon 138, 138, 139, 143–4, 147–8, 148, 151, 152, 153 Chosŏn bowl with Kraak‐type design  338, 338 Chosŏn porcelain lidded bowl  324, 324 with Chrysanthemum design and Naesŏmsi inscription  326, 327 foot 138, 138, 139 gold 240, 240 silver repousse  63 tea  136, 142, 329–30 box office revenue  499, 500, 501

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boxes Buddhist text‐holding  253–4, 254 celadon 249 inlaid 249 lacquered 253 lobed 248–9 Boym, Svetlana  504 bracelets  110, 118–19, 119 bracketing systems  206 chusimp’o  373–4, 384 column‐head 218 ikkong style  384 intercolumnar  221, 222 kongp’o  373–4, 384 multi‐brackets 221 tap’o  373–4, 384 Brahmā 190 brass wire inlays  242, 250, 253 Braun, Georg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum 310 bronze, supplies  251 Bronze age  4, 5, 31, 126 bronzeware  4, 5, 148 buried in tombs  144 incised decorations  31–2, 31 inlaid  248, 251–2 Koryŏ 235–8, 241, 242, 243–4, 246, 248, 250–3 rattles 9 ritual 331 Taejŏn bronze plaque  31–2, 31 vessels 124–5 see also gilt‐bronze brushes, five lacquer‐coated  32–3, 33 brushwork 32 Buddha Land  70 Buddha mountains  80 Buddha from Ttuksŏm 59 Buddha from Ŭiryŏng 59, 60 Buddhas  9–10, 14, 59–63, 60, 62, 66, 69–75, 71, 73, 77–8, 80–1, 159, 177, 189, 205, 214, 228, 250, 389 Chosŏn  372, 374–80, 377, 381, 384–6, 385, 387, 388, 390, 392, 392

enshrinement  206, 219–21, 221, 223, 224 Koryŏ 161–5, 162–4, 167–70, 185, 186–8, 191, 192, 199 Kwangju Iron Buddha  161, 162 Mount Kaya Buddha triad  61–2, 62 Myŏngju Buddhas  164–5, 169 relics  87, 95, 96, 98, 160 Thousand Buddhas  59–60 twin 103 Wŏnju Buddhas  162–4, 164 Buddhas of Three Bodies (banner painting, 1832) 387 Buddhism  9–10, 47, 108, 237, 244, 292 arrival in Korea  57–8 cosmology 100 and funerary art  43 ideology 45 Koryŏ 14 Sino‐Tibetan 226 “state‐protecting”  10, 14, 96, 98–9, 100, 205 tantric 226 see also altars (Buddhist); specific types of Buddhism Buddhist architecture  9, 65, 73–80, 87–104, 418 Buddhist monk‐architects  393 Chosŏn  205–8, 210–11, 218, 220–2, 224, 227–8, 371–93 Koryŏ 205–28 see also Buddhist monasteries; Buddhist temples Buddhist art  9, 10, 29, 88, 103, 237, 265, 295, 418 ch’obon use  359 Chosŏn  358, 371–93 iconography  344, 359 Koryŏ 14, 183–202, 374–5, 376, 379, 380 sculpture 57–82 Sino‐Tibetan  160, 175–7 statue head relics  72 see also Buddhist painting; Buddhist sculpture

Index

Buddhist artifacts  242, 243, 246–8 relics  87, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 102, 160, 191 Buddhist ceramics  14–15 Buddhist craft items  128–9, 129 Buddhist miraculous stories  191, 192–3 Buddhist monasteries  41, 47–8, 48, 159, 206–7, 354 and the Chosŏn dynasty  371, 381–4, 389, 391–2 main halls  382–3, 384–5 mountain area  214–18, 265, 382 Buddhist monks  14, 16, 43, 63, 66, 70–2, 78, 80–1, 94–5, 97, 99–100, 136, 141, 163, 213, 215–17, 219, 223–4, 241, 252 and Buddhist architecture  206 Calligrapher‐monks 251 Chosŏn dynasty  373, 381–2, 386–93 and Confucianism  265 missionary  57–8, 87, 89 monk‐architects 393 monk‐artists  69, 386–7, 388, 389–93 pilgrim  76, 175 scribes 202 Buddhist painting  9, 265, 418, 470 Chosŏn  16, 348, 379–80, 384–9, 391–2 iconography 344 Koryŏ 183–202, 351, 379, 380 techniques 351 Buddhist priests  142, 184, 195, 196–7 Buddhist rites and rituals  213, 220 Chosŏn period  382, 384–7 Nectar Ritual paintings  385, 386 prohibition 265 Suryukchae 384 Yesujae 384–5 Buddhist sculpture  9, 57–82, 418 black stone eye inserts  168–9 Chosŏn  16, 374–9, 383–6, 389–90 Japanese 173–4 Koryŏ 159–78 materials found within  160, 171–5, 173, 174, 178

◼◼◼

517

Buddhist temples  58–61, 69–72, 76–81, 88–90, 93, 94, 95–104, 163, 177, 178, 195, 205–7, 209, 210–16, 218–20, 237, 265 and the Chosŏn dynasty  344, 371, 373, 381–7, 389–93 layout 206 main halls  382–3, 384–5 one‐pagoda‐three‐hall style  88 and tea consumption  141–2 twin pagoda‐style  98–104 Buddhist texts  58, 61, 71, 78, 89, 159, 160, 199 boxes for  253–4, 254 Mahāyāna 14 Bureau of Elder Statesmen (Kiroso)  299, 300, 353 Bureau of Landscape Remediation  207 burial pits, pre‐historic  4 burials cairn  40, 42, 46, 108 female 49 kurgan‐like burial mounds  48, 49, 109 pre‐historic  3, 4 sacrificial  109, 110 see also tombs Byun Young‐won  453 Cage, John  481 cairn burials  40, 42, 46, 108 calligraphy  34, 37, 272, 416–17 camera obscura  310 Canada 468 Cao 38 Cao Zhao  155 capstones, lotus form  77 carp depictions  336, 337, 358 caskets  172, 173, 174 caste system  10–11 Catholicism  362, 406, 407 cauldrons 124 cave temples  59–60, 76, 80, 81 ceilings domed 77 lantern‐roof   37, 108 vaulted 46

518

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

celadon  108, 109, 125, 192, 235 boxes 249 buried in tombs  142–4 carving technique  147–8 with copper‐oxide red designs  334 decorative methods  147–52 inlaid  147, 149–50, 150, 152, 155, 246, 248, 326 kilns 137 Koryŏ 135–55 manufacturing techniques  144–7 painting technique  147, 150–1 pisaek‐colored 144–7 and punch’ŏng  326, 327 ritual 139 transportation and circulation  152–5 Celebration of King Hŏnjong’s Wedding 303 censer, silver  245 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)  444 Central Office for the Royal Household 242 ceramics 121–4 Buddhist 14–15 Chosŏn  17, 121, 321–39, 425 earthenware  4, 139, 143 Koryŏ 14–15, 135–55, 327, 334 for royal celebrations  332–3 white ware  136, 137, 142–3, 146, 155, 323, 325, 328, 329 see also celadon; porcelain; pottery ceremony screens  357–61 Ceylan, Nuri Bilge  503 Cha Jin‐hyun, Portraits of 108 People (2007) 481 Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung, Dictee 478 ch’aekko ̆ri (books and things) screens  361, 362, 363, 364 Chajang  69, 95 Chan Buddhism  136 Chan Monasteries  217 Chang Hanjong  361–2 Ch’ang, King  129 Chang Sugwŏn 443 Chang Sŭngŏp 408

Chang’an 209–11 Changansa, Mount Kŭmgang 177 Ch’angdŏk palace  345–6, 345, 365 Hall of Benevolent Governance  346 Injŏngjŏn Hall  303 Ch’anggyŏng palace  345–6, 345 Changhŭnggo bureau  326 Ch’anghwa 393 Changli 38 Changsha kilns, Hunan Province  135 Changsu, King  41, 108 Changyuksa, Yŏngdŏk 375 chasing techniques  110, 246 Chassijŏn 214 Chasusa  382, 385, 389 Chavannes, Puvis de  412 Ch’ejun 392 Chemul’po 408 Chen Kaige  501 Cheonggyecheon project  483 chestlaces  110, 115–16 Chi Unyŏng 365 chiaroscuro techniques  300, 306, 312, 362, 408 Chigwang 163 Chi’iljido (Seven‐Branched Sword)  128 Chijangjŏn 384 Ch’ilbo, Mount  353 Ch’ilchangsa, Ansŏng 386 Chillye‐gun 252 chimeras 49 China  1, 3, 5–7, 10–11, 14, 19, 23, 30, 236, 248, 264, 408 advanced technology  136–7 art techniques of  435 blackglazed ware  142 and Buddhism  9, 58–61, 63, 66, 68, 70, 72, 76–7, 88, 89–90, 95, 97, 103 and Buddhist architecture  227 and Buddhist paintings  195–6 and Buddhist sculpture  160, 171, 173, 175–6, 177 and celadon  135–9, 145–8, 151, 152, 154–5

Index

and Chŏson court art  358–9, 362 and Chŏson court painters  267 and cinema  498–500, 510 and Communism  445 and Confucianism  13, 16 cosmology of  357 early Korean painting  29, 34–6 early painting of  32 and geomancy  206 and kiln technology  137 Korean ceramics  336, 337–8 and the Manchus  18 metal vessels  124 monasteries 217 Mongol 144 and pagodas  90, 96–7, 98 and palace layouts  346 and perspective  310, 311 porcelain of  125, 321 position of artists in  68–9 and ritual ceramics  331 ships of  152 and tea  141 and Three Kingdoms period tombs/ grave goods  107, 108, 124, 125 and trade  136, 146, 155 tributary system of  273, 306–7 see also specific dynasties Chinbong, Mount  208 Chinch’ŏl 393 Chinese army  66, 243, 406 Chinese coins  33, 109 Chinese collectibles  362 Chinese cosmology  450 Chinese craftsmen  68–9 Chinese tombs  108 Chin’gwansa 384 Chinhan confederacy  109 Chinhŭng, King  89 Chinp’a‐ri Tomb No. 7, P’yŏngyang 127 Chinp’yŏng, King  70, 90 Chinul  216, 217 Chinyŏl  389, 391 Chinyŏl‐Sanjŏng school  389, 391 Chion’in, Kyoto  196, 379, 380

◼◼◼

Chisan‐dong burial ground, Koryŏng  109, 112–13 Tomb No. 32 112–13 Tomb No. 44 110 Tomb No. 45 110, 115 Cho Chungmuk, Portrait of King T’aejo 269 Cho In’gyu  152 Cho Sŏkchin  408, 409, 411, 416, 418 Cho Sujin  166 Cho Yŏngsŏk  295, 296 ch’ŏnmin (low‐born people)  343 ch’obon (iconographic sketch)  359 Ch’oe Kirhoe  139 Ch’oe Kyŏng 266 Ch’oe Namsŏn 417 Ch’oe Puk  311 Ch’oe Rip  278 Ch’oe Sunu  447 Ch’oe family  216 Chogye, Mount  216 Chohŏn 393 Choi Bong Lim  480 Choi Boong‐hyun  441, 444 Choi Byung‐so  473 Choi Byungsoo  468 Choi Jeong Hwa  475–6 Choi Tae‐shin  450, 455 Ch’ŏllyu 393 Chōnen 175 Chŏng Chiun  283 Chŏng Sihan  74 Chŏng Sŏn  18, 292–5, 418 Album of Mount P’ungak (1711)  292, 293 Complete View of Mount Kŭmgang (1734) 294, 294 Chŏng Tojŏn 346 Chŏng Yagyŏng  310, 354 Ch’ŏngam‐ri earthen wall fortress, P’yŏngyang 110 Ch’ŏnghŏn 389 Chŏnghye kyŏlsa 216 Chŏnginsa 373

519

520

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Chŏngjo, King  295, 303–6, 346, 349–56, 358, 362, 382, 386, 393 Chŏngnimsa, Puyŏ 212 Chŏngnŭngsa, P’yŏngyang 88–9, 88 Chŏngŏbwŏn nunnery  372 Chongsŏng 275 Chongzhen era  338 Ch’ŏnhŭngsa, Ch’ŏnan  243, 244 Ch’ŏnjŏlli 31 Chŏnju  269, 351 Kyŏnggijŏn Hall  268, 269 Ch’ŏnmach’ong (Heavenly Horse Tomb)  111, 112, 115–16, 119, 127 Chonŭng 390 Ch’ŏnŭnsa, Myŏngbujon  384, 385 Chosadang, Pusŏksa  218, 224 Chosŏn Alumni Association  420–1 Chosŏn Art Exhibition (Sŏnjŏn) 1922–1944  416, 417, 418, 421–3, 426, 435 Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910)  13–19, 17, 90–2, 144, 155, 169, 173, 176, 177, 199, 242, 255, 406 Administrative Code  266 and animal/plant symbolism  276–80, 283 anti‐Buddhist sentiment of  344, 348 and the artistic documentation of royal events  349–50, 353–6 and Buddhist architecture  205–8, 210–11, 218, 220–2, 224, 227–8, 371–93 and Buddhist art  371–93 and ceramics  17, 121, 321–39, 425 and China  5, 18 class system of  343–4 and Confucianism  15, 16–17, 18, 22 and court art  343–66 and documentary paintings of literati gatherings 280–3 and Japan  18–19, 433, 466 and landscape painting  270–6 and Ming China  273 popular culture of  292, 297 and porcelain  321, 322–6, 425

and portraiture  267–70, 349 and the printing/dissemination of Confucian teaching  283–6 and Western culture  407 see also early Chosŏn dynasty; late Chosŏn dynasty Chosŏn elites  264, 266, 292, 296–8, 300–1, 303, 312–13, 315, 324, 329, 339, 343–4 Chosŏn New Artist Association  426 Chosun Ilbo (newspaper)  440, 445 Christianity  20, 22, 306–7, 365 Christo 442 Chronicles of Japan 89 Chuch’e ideology  22 Ch’ugyŏn 393 chumak (pub‐cum‐inn)  456 Chun Doo‐hwan, military coup of  466 Chun Kyung‐ja  449 Chung Chan‐seung  450, 453 The Meaning of 1/24 Second 453 Chung Chang‐sup  447 Chung, David  477 Chung Sang‐hwa  447 Ch’ungchŏng  165, 166–9, 166, 168, 170, 173, 174 chungin (middle people)  344, 349, 350 Chungjong, King  275, 277, 278, 371, 380 Ch’ungmok, King  177 Ch’ungnyŏl, King  184, 198, 250–1 Ch’ungok, King  390 Ch’ŭngsŏn, King  184, 198 CIA see Central Intelligence Agency cinema 22 and digital technology  499, 501, 510 experimental 453 and Hong Sang‐soo  501, 502–6, 510 and Lee Chang‐dong  501, 502–3, 504, 506–10 South Korean  497–510 with a transnational lens  497–501, 510 cintāmaṇ i 191 City of Great Peace, The (c. 1820)  313, 314

Index

civil service, Confucian  13, 14, 16, 264, 282, 292 Cizhou ware  151, 328 CJ Entertainment & Media  498, 500 class system  10–11, 297–8, 301, 313, 343–4, 445, 472 clay  137, 139, 147, 150–3 clocks 306 self‐striking  307, 313–14 coffins  4, 109, 110, 127 coins, Chinese  33, 109 Cold War  465, 466, 469, 485–6, 490–1 collective memory  465, 480, 483–7 collectivism  465, 466, 483–4 comfort women  481 common people  470, 471–2 subjectivity 466–7 Communism  20, 445, 454 Communist Party  420 Complete Map of the Myriad Countries of the World (1708)  307 conceptualism  443, 468, 473 Confucian elites  278 Confucian ideals  16 Confucian literati  263–5, 267, 270, 273, 275, 278, 280, 283, 335 documentary paintings of literati gatherings 280–3 Confucian morals  263, 265, 276, 285 Confucian tastes  349 Confucian virtues  348, 349, 362, 382 Confucianism  10, 63, 93–4, 244, 255, 272, 303, 366, 406 and ancestral worship  263, 267–8 and art  265–7 and Buddhism  264, 265, 381 and the Chosŏn dynasty  15, 16–17, 18, 22 civil service  13, 14, 16, 264, 282, 292 court painters  265–7 ethics  16, 265, 271, 284–6 and the founding of a Confucian state  263–5 and funeral rites  265, 268 and gender etiquette  356, 361

◼◼◼

521

and the Japanese colonial period  19, 20 Koryŏ 13, 14, 16 and morality  263, 265, 276, 285, 412 and nature  276 norms of  297–8 and palace hall naming  357 and porcelain design  324, 339 printing/dissemination of  283–6 rites/rituals of  265, 266, 268, 283, 324, 331–3 and women  356, 361, 488 contemporaneity, dialectical  466, 491 contemporary Korean art  465–91 and activism  471, 483, 488–9 and alternative spaces  477, 479–80, 482 and alternatives to debates on postmodernism 473–5 anonymous narratives of  483–7 and collective memory  465, 480, 483–7 and collectivism  465, 466, 483–4 cultural turn  475–7 and digital technology  466, 481–3 diversity of positions  487–90 and globalization  475, 479–81 and the heterogeneity of individual voices 475–7 and the historical subjectivity crisis  466–7 and international biennials  466, 479–80 meaning in Korea  457–8 and Minjung art  467–75, 483, 487–9 and new media  481–2 and photography  480–1 and the precarious  483–4 and the public sphere  465, 467–8, 483–4 rise of Minjung  466–7 and shared positionalities across borders 490–1 within and beyond the borders  477–8 Contemporary Korean Painting  445 copper 236 copper oxide underglaze  15

522

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

corbelling technique  108 corruption  18, 344, 475 cosmology  100, 357, 450 Coste, Eugene  407 Council of Notables  9 court art, Chosŏn dynasty  343–66 iconography of  344, 357, 361, 366 and male and female quarters  361–4 and modernity  364, 365–6 painting  303–6, 343–66 painting institutions  348–51 portraiture 351–3 screens  350, 353–4, 355–6, 356, 357–61 court artists  343–4, 349–50 Confucian 265–7 examinations  349, 362 salaries  350, 366 craft decorations  29–40 crown ornaments  110–13, 114 crowns  49, 110–13 bodhisattva  171, 175, 187 cap‐shaped, 110–13, 113 gilt‐bronze 110 headband  111, 112, 112 imperial 167 sun disc  63, 84 Cultural and Arts Promotion Law  445 cultural turn  475–7 culture Chosŏn  292, 297, 321–39 folk 450 Korean  2–3, 5, 9–10, 19, 20–3, 446 popular  292, 297, 475, 476, 490–1 Sino‐Korean 292 tea  136, 140–2, 144 tomb 107 Cunningham, Merce  481 cups  63, 124–5 currency silver standard  144 see also coins Dadu  226, 227 daggers  3, 4, 63, 76, 126

Daifang  38, 39 daimyō (warlord) families  200–1 Daitokuji, Kyoto  201 dancing, fan  446 Daoism  10, 14, 108, 128, 191, 295 and Chosŏn art  358, 366, 372 and Confucianism  265 and the Queen Mother of the West theme 358 Daoming 190 Day He Arrives, The (film, 2011)  503 de Kooning, Willem  439 death rites  195, 331–3 decolonization 490 deimperialization 490 democracy  22, 465, 467, 474, 475, 479 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea  433–4 democratization 471 Derrida, Jacques  506, 508–9 Dexter Studios  499 dharma halls  216–17 Diaries in the Mountains 74 diasporic Korean artists  477–8 digital technology  466, 481–2, 499, 501, 510 DiGregorio, David Michael  489 Ding ware  139, 146, 147 Discourse on the Stages of Concentration Practice 72 dishes 125 mounted  122, 124 diversification of Korean art  479 Document exhibition  2004 480 dolmen 4 Dong Qichang  300 Dong Shou  37–40, 38 Dong‐A Ilbo (newspaper)  436 Dongducheon: A Walk To Remember, A Walk to Envision (2008) exhibition  486 Doorung 471–2 draftmanship 45 Du Fu Spring View 410 “Welcome Rain on a Spring Night”  299

Index

Duchamp, Marcel  442 Dunhuang 186 Duras, Marguerite  489 d’Urfé, Honoré, L’Astrée 135 Dutch East India Company  338 early Chosŏn dynasty art and architecture  372–80 ceramics 329–31 painting  263–86, 306 earrings  110, 113–15, 114, 116 earthenware  4, 139, 143 East Asia  9, 10, 18, 34, 39, 41, 43, 47, 67, 74, 97, 171, 199 auspicious motifs of  337 and Buddhism  59, 87, 96, 100, 189 and Confucianism  93–4, 264 and court paintings  267 and Europe  307 and handscrolls  272 and landscape painting  270 and literati artists  343 and monasteries  217, 218 and pagodas  98 and palace layouts  346 East Lower Tomb, Nŭngsan‐ri 47 East Sea  295 Eastern Bloc, fall of  475 Eastern Jin  58 Eastern Palaces (Ch’angdŏk palace and Ch’anggyŏng palace), Seoul  345–6, 345, 365 Eastern Qin  125 Edo period  200, 201, 311, 329, 337 education 408 Eight Immortals  358 Eight Kinds of Being  75 Elegant Gathering in the Western Garden theme 359 elites Buddhist  10, 215 Confucian 278 Japanese colonial period  19 Koryŏ 13–14, 142, 159, 246

◼◼◼

523

military 9 see also Chosŏn elites; yangban elite “emergency art”  426 epitaph tablets, ceramic  331 epitaphs  37, 38–9, 40, 41, 46, 79, 109, 223–4 equestrian scenes  35–6, 36, 41 Erudite Examination (munkwa)  264, 282 Esoteric Buddhism  178 ethnocide policies  426 Euclid, Elements 306 Eurasia  29, 31, 49, 108, 123 Eurasian Steppes  109 Europe  11, 306–12, 321, 337, 338, 491 court art  343 and Chosŏn architecture  354 and Chosŏn court art  362, 364 Western  439, 440, 443 Evans, Chris  497–8 ewers, celadon  151–2 experimental art  441–3 Expressionism  415, 423, 424 Abstract 439 falcon images  278 “Family of Man, The” exhibition, Seoul  1957 436–7 fan dancing  446 Farver, Jane  477 Fauvism  415, 423, 424 Feilaifeng grottos, Hangzhou  175, 177 feminist art  488–9 fengshui 207 Ferocious Dog (19th century)  308, 308 filial piety  34, 74, 79, 268, 284, 285, 382 filigree 110 “fine art”  409 firing methods  330–1 biscuit 144 glaze 144 Five Buddhas’ Assembly, Ch’ilchangsa, Ansŏng 386 Five Directions, Deities of the  99 Five Dynasties  136, 138, 146, 149 Five Rites of the State (1474)  283

524

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Five Sacred Peaks  80 flashback technique  504–5 Flower Garland Sutra  78, 185–6, 188, 238, 253 Fluxus movement  481 FlyingCity 483–4 flywhisks, mother‐of‐pearl inlayed  249 folk art  440 see also ‘folk painting’ (minhwa) folk culture  450 folk life illustrations  408 folk music  442 folk painting (minhwa)  350, 364–5, 366, 472 folklore 191 Fontana, Lucio  442 foot (for celadon ware)  138, 138, 139–40 footrests 127 Forbidden City  307 formalism 489 Former Qin  41, 58 Former Yan  37, 39, 41 forum A (journal)  475, 483 Four Commanderies  33 Four Gentlemen  263, 277 Four Heavenly Kings  75, 100, 190 Four Numinous Sites  80 Four Spirits  45, 46–7 French Academy of Painting and Sculpture 415 French culture  408, 411, 412–13, 415, 421–3, 439, 440 French forces  406 Fu Jian  41 Fuji, Mount  311 Fujita Tsuguharu  425 Fujiwara‐kyō 210 funeral rites  195 funerary epitaphs  37, 38–9, 40, 41, 46, 79, 109, 223–4 funerary murals  29, 31, 35–7, 36, 40–7, 44, 49–50, 51, 108, 110, 119, 424 Fuyu 124 Gandhāra 72 Gaozong, Emperor  100

Gauguin, Paul  421– gender notions of  489 in the Three Kingdoms period  92–7 in the Unified Silla period  92–7 see also women genre painting  295–8, 407 geography of Korea  3 geomancy  205–6, 207–10, 345, 349 Germany 468 gilded pagodas  214 gilded ware  236, 250 gilt‐bronze  108, 110 belts 117 Buddhist craft items  128 Buddhist sculptures  59, 60, 60, 63, 64, 65, 169, 172, 175, 216, 376, 377–8, 386 coffins 127 crowns 110–13 horse trappings  126–7 miniature pagodas  214, 215 shoes 119–20 vessels 124 gilt‐silver ware bottle 247, 247 Buddhas 376 glass decorative  110, 115, 126 vessels  63, 121, 125 glazes 144 stoneware 321–2 global art history  465 globalization  475, 479–80 gold  108, 109, 110, 115, 235, 236, 246, 251 belts  117, 118 bracelets 118 decorated weapons  126 decoration 246 earrings  110, 113–15, 114 granulation  115, 119, 126 horse trappings  126–7 inlays 248 painting with  47, 150, 152, 154, 184–5, 195, 197, 251, 380

Index

rings 119 vessels 124 Gordon, Henry  407 government workshops  241–3 Grand Code for State Administration (Kyŏngguk taejŏn) 266 granite 292 grapevine designs  335, 336 grave goods prestige  107–8, 121 Three Kingdoms period  107–29 grave pits  142 Great Korean Empire  406, 407 Great Tomb Park  48 Great Tumuli complex, Kyŏngju 109 Green Country Society  420–1 Guo Xi  271, 272 Guo Ziyi  357, 358, 359–61, 360, 364, 366 Ha Chonghyun  447 Ha Ha Ha (film, 2010)  503 Hach’ŏn 390 Haegue Yang  489 Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Blind Room (2006)  489, 489 Haeinsa, Hapch’ŏn 382 Haenam 150 Haesim 390 hairpins gilded ware  250 gold 111 Hallyu (Korean Wave)  498, 500, 502 Haman 126 Han dynasty  5, 7, 15, 109, 128, 191, 206 Han empire  41 art 34 Eastern  34, 40 and trade  33 Western 34 Han River  282, 345, 356, 475 Han River region  45, 66, 121 Han Sigak, Special National Examination for Applicants from Northeastern Provinces (1664)  353, 354

◼◼◼

525

Hanam 224 hand axes  3 Han’guk, Princess  198 Han’gŭl script  2, 19, 286, 339 Hangzhou  146, 147 hanji paper  447 Hansongsa, Kangnŭng 165 Hansŏng  45–7, 108, 111, 122, 125, 264, 266, 269, 344 see also Paekche Hanyang (now Seoul)  291, 293, 297, 310, 312, 313, 322, 344 Hapch’ŏn 126 Happening with a Vinyl Umbrella and a Candle, A 441–2 harnesses  29, 49 Hase‐dera, Kamakura  192 Hasŏngwi Chŏng Hyŏnjo 378 headrests 127 Hebei Province  147 Heijō‐kyō 210 hemp, as canvas  379 History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa)  141, 152, 154, 159, 198, 211, 213, 214, 239–40, 241, 243, 251 History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi)  15, 39, 40, 41, 57, 87, 89, 94, 100, 107 Hoeamsa, Yangju  373, 380 Hogenberg, Franz, Civitates Orbis Terrarum 310 Hōjūin, Osaka  380 Hollywood  499, 500, 501, 502, 510 Hong Kai  474 Hong Myung‐Seop  473 Hong Sang  380 Hong Sang‐soo  501, 502–6, 510 Hong Taiji  291 Hŏngjong, King  303 Hŏnjong, King  339 horse trappings  107, 110, 126–7 Hōr yūji 219 Huayan tradition  224 Huayansi, Datong  170 Huayi Brothers Media Corp  499 Hŭijang  389–90, 391

526

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Hŭijong, King  143, 216 Huimo people  93 Huizong, Emperor  144, 235–6 Hŭksŏksa, Yŏngju 376, 377, 378 human sacrifice burials  109, 110 Hŭngboksa, Kimje  373 Hŭngbŏpsa, Wŏnju 163 Hŭngch’ŏnsa, Seoul  198, 372, 373, 387 Hŭngsŏn Taewŏn’gun 382 Hŭngwangsa, Kaesŏng  213–15, 252 hunting scenes  41–2 Huppert, Isabelle  505–6 Hwangnam taech’ong (Great Tomb at Hwangnam)  109, 111, 117–20, 124–57 Hwangnyongsa (Imperial Dragon Temple), Silla  79, 89, 93, 94, 95–6, 212, 220 Hwaŏmsa, Kurye  220 hwarang  10, 63 Hwasŏng  305, 354, 355, 356 hwawo ̆n (painting officials)  266 Hyegyŏng, Lady  350, 354, 356 Hyehŏ 200 Hyehŭi  386, 390 Hyemyŏng 167 Hyeŭmwŏn 141 Hyojŏng, Queen  303 Hyŏllyungwŏn, Suwŏn 386 Hyŏnbuk‐ri 48 Hyŏnhwasa, Kaesŏng 224–5 Hyŏnjin 389 Hyŏnjin‐Ch’ŏnghŏn school  389, 391 Hyŏnjong, King  243, 382 Hyŏnsil munhwa  474 Hyoso, King  81 Hyujŏng 373 Hyundai Gallery  449 Ibullansa 88 Ich’adon 87 iconography of Buddhist art  220–1, 344, 359 of Chosŏn court art  344, 357, 361, 366 Koryŏ 183, 184–90, 191, 199, 220–1

Idu  31, 50 Ikeuchi Hiroshi  42 Iksan 111 illusionism 407 Illustrated Guide to the Three Human Bonds, The 284–6, 285, 348, 349–50 Illustrated Record of the Xuanhe Embassy to Koryŏ  141, 144, 236, 238 Illustration of the Sixteen Contemplations of the Sutra 196–7 Illustration of the Sutra on the Descent of Maitreya 192, 194, 195, 196–7 Ilsŏp 393 Im Heungsoon, Factory Complex (2015) 487 Im Yongnyŏn  415, 424 Imhan 392 Imjin War  198, 270, 291, 329 Imperial Art Exhibition, Japan  416, 417, 421 Impressionism  411–15, 419, 421–3 Imyŏng, Prince  276, 278 In Another Country (film, 2012)  503, 505–6, 505 incense burners  128, 129 bronze  244, 245, 245, 248, 249, 252 celadon 144–5, 145, 148, 149, 152 inlaid 248, 249 stand for  253 incised/carved designs  110, 147, 327–8 income per capita  443 Independent Art Association  423 India  58, 63, 66, 69, 70–2, 76–7, 177, 238 individualism 476 Indra 190 industrialization  22, 444, 450, 453, 475 In’gaksa, Kunwi  238 In’gyun 390 Injo, King  291 Injong, King  143, 143, 144, 146–7, 236, 283, 380, 386 Tomb of  143, 143 ink 344 Ink Forest Society  441

Index

ink painting  414, 417, 417–18, 421 abstract 440–1 and contemporary art  488 postwar  437–41, 445–7, 449 inlays  242–3, 248–9 mother‐of‐pearl  236–7, 242–3, 246, 249–50 with precious metals  248 silver  149, 248, 251, 252, 253 white slip  327 Inmok, Queen  386 Inner Mongolia  97, 154, 155 Insa Art Space  480 Insŏng, Queen  380 Institute of Archaeology of the North Korean Academy of Social Science  139 Insusa  382, 385, 389 “inter‐Asian methodology”  491 interactivity 482 international biennials  466, 479–80 Busan Biennial (2002)  479 Gwangju Biennial (1995)  479, 480 SeMA Biennale‐MediaCity Seoul (2014) 491 Whitney Biennial (1993)  479, 480 internationalism  441, 443, 479 Internet  482, 501 Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists  440, 441, 445 Ipchŏm‐ri Tomb No. 1, Iksan  120 Ipgim 488–9 Iron Age  4, 31 iron work  5, 6, 128 Buddha sculptures  161–4, 162 iron‐painted designs  328 Iryŏn  57, 78, 191 Isonokami Shrine, Nara  128 jade 114, 115–18 Japan  1, 3, 6, 90, 95, 128, 192, 250, 253, 264, 366, 446, 447 annexation of Korea (1910)  365, 406 and Buddhism  61, 89 and Buddhist art  169, 173–5, 178, 197–202

◼◼◼

527

and Buddhist sculpture  160 and Buddhist temples  218, 219, 221 and the Chosŏn dynasty  18–19, 267, 329–31, 433, 466 and Chosŏn court painters  267 cross‐cultural inspiration  23, 334, 336, 337–8 and early Chosŏn ceramics  329–31 Imperial  42, 365, 406, 420, 426, 435 and Kaya  8–9 and Koryŏ Buddhist painting  197–202 and linear perspective  310, 311 and Minjung art  468 and modern art techniques  435 and the National Mobilization Law 1938 426 and pagodas  90, 98 and the Russo‐Japanese War  406 and the Sino–Japanese Wars  365, 406, 426 and South Korea  445 and Three Kingdoms tombs/grave goods  107, 108, 123 and urban planning  209, 210 and Western‐style oil painting  439 and Yi Am  278 Japanese Academism  417 Japanese archipelago  50, 64, 123, 329 Japanese army  198, 270, 291, 406 Japanese artists, modern  408 Japanese ceramics  123, 336, 337–8 Japanese colonial period (1910–1945)  19–20, 22, 77, 327, 330, 345, 444, 465–6 end of (1945)  406, 407, 427, 435, 466 and modern Korean art  405–27 photography from  480 resistance to  489 Japanese invasions (1592–1598)  163, 270, 278, 286, 291, 336, 345, 372–3, 381–2, 389 Japanese Wa  109, 110, 113, 126, 128 jars blue‐and‐white dragon  333, 333 celadon  135–6, 139, 140, 144

528

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

jars (cont’d) ceramic wine  144 Chosŏn bamboo and blossoming plum tree designed  325–6, 325 copper‐oxide red porcelain  335 funerary 135–6 with grapevine design  335, 336 kimchi storage  322 long‐necked  121, 122–3, 123 “moon jar”  334, 335 Neolithic earthenware  4 ointment 236 placenta 332 Jeon Yongseok  483 Jesuits  306–7, 362 painters 353 jewel beetle wings  110, 127 Ji’an 88 stele 40–1 Ji’an tombs, Jilin, China  117 Jiankang 37 Jilin, China  46, 47, 88, 108, 117 Jin dynasty  139, 141, 144, 154, 160, 250 Eastern  37, 39 Western 37 Jin Me Yoon  477 Jin Okseon  449 Jingdezhen kilns  323, 337, 338 Jininglu 155 Joe Jae‐hwan  470 Joo, Michael  477 Jun Min‐cho, Modernization (1970)  452, 452, 453 Jung Kang Ja  441, 449, 450, 453 The Meaning of 1/24 Second 453 Jung Seoyong  476 jung, siren eun young  486, 489 Jurchen people  11, 17, 146, 311 Kabo Reforms  408 Kaegyŏng (now Kaesŏng)  136, 159, 161, 163, 177, 205, 207–10, 226 city gates  209 city walls  209 road system 208 urban planning of  206, 207–10, 208

Kaesimsa, Yech’ŏn  169, 224 Kaesŏng  136, 139, 141–2, 153–5, 205, 224–5, 236, 246, 251–2, 269, 351 see also Kaegyŏng Kaet’aesa triad, Nonsan  168 Kaeunsa, Seoul  169 Kagami jinja, Karatsu  194, 198 Kagwŏn 393 Kaifeng 140 Kakurinji 200 kalavinka 121 Kamakura period  200, 221 Kamsana, Kyŏngju 161 Kamsansa Buddhist statues  69–70, 70, 71–2, 71 Kamŭnsa pagoda  90 Kang Hong Gu  481 Kang Hŭian 273 Lofty Scholar Contemplating Water 273 Kang Hŭiŏn 311 The Northern Palace Bathed in Fog 311 Kang I’o  310 Kang Kuk‐jin  446 Kang Sehwang  299–300, 310–11, 352–3, 352 Enjoying Leisure in a Thatched Pavilion (1748) 300 Journey to Songdo  300, 310 Self‐Portrait (1782)  300, 301 Kang Yong Seok  481 Kang Yung  177, 226 Kanghwa Island  141 Kangjin  139, 146, 148, 149 Kangmin 393 Kano School of Painting  201 Kanō Tan’yū 201, 278 kaolin (china clay)  322 KAPF see Korea Esperanto: Artista Proleta Federatio Kaprow, Allan  442 “Kara” 201 Karak‐dong Tomb No.1 122 karamono (“Chinese Things”)  200, 201 Karatsu‐ware kilns  329 Kawin 502 Kaya  6, 7–9, 8, 48–50

Index

Kaya Confederacy  50, 107–10 ceramics  121, 122–3 tombs and grave goods  108–10, 112–13, 115, 118, 121–3, 125–6, 128 Kaya tombs  128 kayagŭm (Korean zither)  10 Khitan empire  136, 139, 146 Khitan people  11, 14, 15, 95, 159, 209, 247, 311 Khublai Khan  154 Ki, Empress  177, 226 Kijŏn 393 Kikutake Jun’ichi  184 Kilchu 353 kilns brick  137, 138, 139 celadon  137, 138–40, 142–4, 147–51, 153, 155, 327 Chosŏn  322–3, 326, 328, 330, 335, 338, 339, 350 firing methods  330–1 Jingdezhen  323, 337, 338 Karatsu‐ware 329 Koryŏ 15 mud  137, 138, 139, 146 structure 330–1 white ware  142, 146 Yue ware  145, 146 Kim, Byron  477 Kim Allo  275 Kim Beom  476 Kim Bok‐young  443 Kim Boon Jong  471 Kim Ch’anyŏng  411, 413 Kim Chip  276 Kim Chisŏng  69, 72 Kim Choong‐up  452 Kim Chosun  387 Kim Chugyŏng  420, 422–3 Kim Chung Sook  449 Kim Chunghyŏn 421 Kim Chun’gŭn 408 Kim Chuwŏn 165 Kim Hak‐Ryang  480 Kim Hant’ae  313

◼◼◼

529

Kim Heejin  476 Kim Hongdo  18, 295–7, 300, 306–8, 350–1, 362 Genre Scenes/Scenes from a Journey 296 Kyujanggak (1776)  346–8, 347 Landscapes of the Diamond Mountains and East Sea Region  295, 311–12 Portrait of a Scholar 313–15, 315 Royal Visit to the City of Hwasŏng (1795) 353–4, 355, 356, 357, 366 “Village Women on Their Way to the Market” 296, 297 Welcoming Ceremonies for the Governor of P’yŏngan 305 Kim Honghee  480 Kim Hŏnjŏng 79 Kim Hŭi 275 Kim Hwa  285 Kim Hyŏp 241 Kim In‐hwan  442 Kim Inhu  282, 283 Kim Jee‐woon  501 Kim Jeong Heon  470 Kim Ji‐hoon  499 Kim Jinsong  474 Kim Jong Il  482 Kim Jong Un  22 Kim Jong‐pil  444 Kim Keum Hwa  485 Kim Kich’ang  422, 440, 449 Kim Ki‐duk  501 Kim Ku‐lim, The Meaning of 1/24 Second 453 Kim Kwanho  411, 412–13 Sunset (1916)  412, 413 Kim Moon‐ja  457 Kim Mun‐ho  456 Kim Pokchin  420 Kim Pusik  57 Kim San  489 Kim Sang‐gil, The Internet Community Offline (2003)  481 Kim Sangdon  476 Discoplan: Workshop for Regenerating the Returned Land of Camp Nimble (2007) 486, 487

530

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Kim Si  273, 275–6 Boy Pulling a Donkey (Late 16th century) 274–5, 274 Kim Sik  276 Kim Siyang  275 Kim Soonam  481 Kim Soun‐gui  449, 457 Kim Sugi  473 Kim Sung Hwan  489 Kim Sunjong  476 Kim Swoogeun  444, 447 Sewoon sangga murals  453 Kim Taesŏng  74, 77, 78–9 Kim Tŏkha, Yellow Dog 307–8 Kim Tŭksin  296, 305 “Royal Retinue in Sihŭng Returning to Hanyang”  304 Royal Visit to the City of Hwasŏng (1795) 353–4, 355, 356, 357, 366 Kim Turyang, Black Dog 307–8 Kim U 194 ˘ nghwan 295 Kim U ˘ nho 417 Kim U Kim Whanki  425, 426, 439, 446, 447 Rondo (1938)  425, 425 Kim Wŏnyong 165 Kim Yanggam  202 Kim Yong‐hwa  498, 499 Kim Yong‐ik  473 Kim Yong‐jun  435 Kim Yong‐min  443 Kim Yongate, DMZ: Photographs from Dongducheon Photo Salons (1980)  468–9, 469 Kim Yongjun  420–1, 426 Kim Young‐ja  450 Match 111 449, 450 Kim Young‐ju  453 Kim Young‐se  457 Kim Yun‐su, History of Contemporary Korean Art 458 kimchi containers  322, 451 Kimhae 126 Kim family  22, 48 King Mich’u district, Kyŏngju 116 kingdoms, evolution  7

kirin (qilin) 49 Kiroso  299, 300 kisaeng class  297–8 Kizil cave 69, Xinjiang  76 Ko Hŭidong  366, 411, 416 Self‐Portrait (1915)  411, 412 Ko Yongbong  177, 226 Ko Yusŏp  326, 418 Koa‐dong tomb, Koryŏng 50, 51 Kŏdonsa, Wŏnju 163 Kodori, Iksan  167 Koejŏng-dong 31 KOFIC Annual Report  2014 502 Kofun period  50, 123 Kogugwŏn, King  39 Koguryŏ 7–8, 8, 15, 18, 29–30, 37–50, 60, 66, 92, 107, 191, 389 and Buddhism  9, 14, 57–8, 59, 87, 88–90 and ceramics  121–2 and the mid‐Yalu basin  42–5 and Silla  7–8, 10, 94, 96, 99, 109 tombs/grave goods of  108, 110–13, 115–18, 121–2, 124, 125, 127, 424 and the “Valley of the Kings”  42 Koh Seung Wook  486–7 Kojong, King  250, 365, 406, 408 Kokubunji, Yamaguchi  379 Kŏlgae kŭrim (banner paintings)  467–8 Konggan (Space) (journal)  444, 447 Kongju 111 Kongmin, King  202 Konju 89 Kōrai jawan (Koryŏ tea bowls)  330 Korea Culture and Arts Foundation  445 Korea Esperanto: Artista Proleta Federatio (KAPF) 419–21 Korean Academism  417 Korean Buddhist Paintings of the Koryŏ Dynasty 184 Korean Central History Museum  34 Korean Empire era  382 Korean Film Council  501 Korean Fine Arts Association  445 Korean identity  1–2, 15, 19–20, 22–3, 409, 414, 419, 420, 426

Index

Korean Informel  440–9 Korean National Treasures  63, 64 Korean War  22, 270, 406, 415, 424, 435, 449–50, 456, 457, 465, 466 Korean Zhe School  273–6, 277 “Korean‐ness” (“Korean spirit”)  448–9, 451 Koryŏ Buddhist architecture  205–28 capital city  210–14 geomancy  205–6, 207–10 mountain monasteries  214–18 wooden halls  206–7, 218–24 Yuan influence on pagodas  224–8 Koryŏ Buddhist art  14, 374–5, 376, 379, 380 see also Koryŏ Buddhist painting; Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture Koryŏ Buddhist painting  183–202, 351, 379, 380 and icons/iconography  183, 184–90, 191, 199 in Japan  197–202 materiality 191–7 secular elements  191–7 Koryŏ Buddhist sculpture  159–78 new aesthetic of  165–9 regional diversities of  161–5 and retaining tradition  161–5 Sino‐Tibetan styles of  160, 175–7 sophistication of  169–75 Koryŏ Bureau of Painting  265–6 Koryŏ ceramics  14–15, 121 celadon  135–55, 327 copper‐oxide red designs  334 Koryŏ craftspeople  239–41, 248, 250–61, 254–5 government‐employed  240–2, 244, 245–6 low‐ranking (so) 241 temple workers  241 Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392)  11–15, 12, 16, 18, 30, 62, 80, 82, 265 architecture 374 and Buddhism  344, 371 and the Chosŏn transition  263, 264 class system of  343

◼◼◼

531

lacquer ware  235–55 metalware 235–55 Mongol invasions  389 Mongol occupation  160 and painting  183–202, 351, 357, 379, 380 Koryŏ elites  13–14, 142, 159, 246 Koryŏ tombs  142–4 Koryŏ Tripitaka  14, 199, 250 Kōr yūji 64 Kosuth, Joseph  443 Koxinga 311 Kōzenji, Komagane  380 Kraak ware  338, 338 Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva  187, 188–90, 189 Chosŏn paintings  379, 384, 385 Chosŏn statues  375, 390, 391 Koryŏ Buddhist painting  185 Kṣitigarbha and the Ten Kings of Hell 190, 190 Ku Ponung (“Seoul Lautrec”)  423 Ku Ponung, Portrait of a Friend (c. 1935) 423, 424 Kuan‐Hsing Chen  491 Kublai Khan  226, 227, 253 Kŭm River  46, 47 Kumagai Nobuo  184 Kŭmgang, Mount (“Maple Peaks”/ Diamond Mountains)  177, 292, 293, 294, 295, 418, 419 Kŭmgangsa, Puyŏ 212 Kŭmgwanch’ong, Kyŏngju  111, 112, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119 Kŭmryŏngch’ong (Gold Earring Tomb), Silla  120, 124, 125 Kŭmsansa, Kimje  212, 224 kuṇ ḍikā (flask)  185, 187, 191, 238–9, 239, 246, 248 Kungnaesŏng 42 Kŭngnakchŏn hall, Pongjŏngsa  218–22, 219, 220, 221, 224 Kunlun, Mount  35 Kunsu‐ri temple site, Puyŏ 122 kurgan‐like burial mounds  48, 49, 109 Kuroda Seiki  411, 412

532

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

K’waemin 392 K’waeyŏn 393 Kwanch’oksa Bodhisattva 165–7, 166, 168 Kwanggaet’o, King  40–1, 108 stele of  7 Kwanggyo‐dong, Seoul  452 Kwanghaegun, King  278, 382, 385, 386 Kwangjong, King  161, 162, 167, 210, 211 Kwangju  161, 322, 323, 330, 335, 468, 473, 479 Kwangju Iron Buddha  161, 162 Kwangju Uprising  1980 466–7, 468, 480 Kwanŭmsa, Mount Ch’ŏnsŏng 376 Kwisinsa, Kimje  390 Kwon Young‐woo  447–8 Untitled (1973)  448, 448 Kyech’o 386, 387, 389, 391 Kyerim‐ro Tombs No. 14, Kyŏngju 126 No. 30, Kyŏngju 122, 123 Kyeryongsan kilns  328 Kyeyu Amitābha triad stele  66–8, 67 Kyo Buddhism  159, 206, 216, 372, 373 Kyŏngan, Prince  386 Kyŏngbin 388 Kyŏngbok Palace, Seoul  339, 345, 372, 409, 444 Kwanghwamun 409–10 Kyŏngch’ŏnsa pagoda  177, 225, 225, 226, 226–8 Kyŏnggi area  387–8, 393 Kyŏnggi Hall, Chŏnju  268, 269 Kyŏnggi Province  136, 142, 143, 153 Kyŏnggi Provincial Office 305–6, 305 Kyŏngjin 241 Kyŏngju  10, 48, 49, 62, 65, 69, 74, 76, 82, 89, 97, 99, 101, 109, 135–6, 159, 160, 207, 210, 269, 351 Kyŏngmun, King  95 Kyŏngnim 390 Kyŏngsŏng 415 Kyŏnsang 392–3

Kyŏnsŏngam, Namyangju  388 Kyŏrŭng 224 Kyujanggak Library (Royal Library)  346, 349, 350, 362 Kyushu, Japan  329, 330, 337–8 labor shortages  13–14 lacquer 236–7 lacquerware  29, 46, 49, 146 Chosŏn 337 Coromandel screens  358 harnesses 31 headrests/footrests 127 inlaid  149, 249, 253 Koryŏ 235–55 lacquer‐painted basket  34, 35 Lelang 34–5 “ramie‐cored dry‐lacquer” tray  34 vessels 31 lalitāsana 375 Lamaist style  226 Land Art  442 Landor, Henry  408 landscape painting  334, 362, 415, 418 An Kyŏn tradition  270–4, 271 Chŏson period  18, 263, 270–6 European inspiration  310 Korean Zhe School  273–6 modern  409–10, 412, 417 perspectival 310 “True‐Scenery”  292–5, 299, 300, 312, 407, 409, 418 Laozi 358 late Chosŏn dynasty art and architecture  380–8 court painting  303–6 and Europe  306–12 and painting  291–315 and the visual poetics of selfhood  298–303 Later Koguryŏ (901–918)  11 Later Paekche (892–936)  11, 168 Later Silla  191 Later Three Kingdoms period (892–936) 136

Index

Lautrec, Toulouse  423 Le Corbusier  452 “leaning toward the inside” technique 223 Lee Bul  475–6 Abortion (1989)  476 Majestic Splendor 476 Lee Chang‐dong  501, 502–3, 504, 506–10 Lee Jong‐Gu  470 Lee Kang‐so, Bar in a Gallery (1973) 456–7 Lee Kun‐yong  443 Corporal Term (1971)  453, 454, 454 Lee Kyoung Min  480 Lee Seungtaek  450–1 Sound of Wind (1974)  451, 451 Lee Ufan  443, 445, 446 Lee Ungno  439 Lee Yil  442 Lee Young Chul  473 Lee Young June  480 Lee Young Wook  473 Lee Young‐chul  477 Lee clan  488–9 Lelang (now P’yŏngyang) 5–7, 6, 8, 15, 34–6, 41, 59 Let Us Push for a Breakthrough exhibition 472 LGN‐Sys 499 Li Bai  358 Li Cheng  271 ‘Li‐Guo tradition’ 271, 272 Liang China  46, 68, 109 Liao dynasty  89–90, 97, 136, 139–42, 160, 168–70, 236, 243–5, 247, 250 craftspeople  244–5, 247 Liao invasion  243 Liao River basin  42 Liaodong peninsula  154 Licentiate Examination  264, 280, 282 lifelikeness 351 Like You Know it All (film, 2009)  503 Lim, Minouk  484 Lim Ok Sang  470

◼◼◼

533

Limb Eung‐sik  452 Looking for Work (1953)  436, 436 Ling, Empress Dowager  97 Listen to the City  484 Literary Sinitic  19 literati 298–303 Confucian  263–5, 267, 270, 273, 275, 278, 280–3, 335 tastes 348 Literati Gathering (1542)  280–3, 281 literati painting  152, 200, 263, 267, 273, 275, 278, 298–303, 343, 344, 364, 418, 440 Southern school  408 Liulichang 307 Local Color  420–2, 424, 426 local, the  503 Longxingsi 61 Loop 480 lost wax method  63 lotus blossom artifacts  244, 245, 245, 247, 248, 252 Lotus Lantern Festival  211, 213 Lotus Sūtra  102–3, 186, 192 Lotus Treasury World  78 Lowell, Percival  365, 408 Lu Xun  491 Ma Yuan  299 Mahābodhi temple Buddha, Bodhgaya  77–8 Mahāsthāmaprāpta Bodhisattva  66, 187, 188 Mahāyāna Buddhism  9, 61, 66, 238, 253 scriptures 14 Mahan 32 Maitreya Buddha  9, 61, 63, 64, 90, 189, 192, 216 Chosŏn 380 Kamsansa 69, 70, 72 Make Your Movie (film, 2013)  498, 500 Manchu invasions (1627 and 1636)  17, 291, 336, 372, 381 Manchuria  2, 7, 10, 29, 33, 57, 108, 124 Manchus 311

534

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Mañjuśrı ̄  80, 376, 378, 378 mantra 248 Manwŏltae (royal palace of Koryŏ) 210 maps  306, 307 Maranant’a 58 March First Independence Movement, 1919 414, 415, 417 marginalized, the  468, 477, 484–5, 488–9 Markle, Kenneth  486 martial law  454–6 Marxism 22 Maseok 484 Mast 502 Matsuo‐dera, Nara  197 MediaCity Seoul  479, 482 meditation  63, 136, 159 Mediterranean  63, 125 Meiji Restoration  406 Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa)  15, 57, 63, 69, 74, 77–80, 87–8, 90, 95, 99–100, 101, 191 Meng Haoran  276 Spring Dawn 410 ‘merit subjects’, portraits of  349 metalware 143 inlaid  149, 248 Koryŏ 235–55 state‐mandated prohibition  324 vessels  121, 124–5 see also bronzeware; iron work Mi Fu  299 Mi Youren  409 “Mi‐dots” 409 Mich’ŏn, King  38, 39 Mich’u, King, Tomb of, Kyŏngu 123 mid‐Yalu basin, Koguryŏ 42–5 military dictatorship  466, 484 millet 4–5 Min Jeong‐ki, “Barbershop Paintings”  470 Min Kyung‐kap  440 Minch’ŏnsa, Kaesŏng 198 “mind landscapes”  298, 299

Ming dynasty  18, 22, 176, 198, 264, 299, 311 Buddhist statues of  373, 376 ceramics of  322, 328 and Europeans  307 influence on Chosŏn royal fashion  352 and painting  266 tributary system of  273 and the Zhe school  275 Min’gwan 393 Minimalism 443 Ministry of Rites  266 Ministry of Works  266 Minjung art  467–75, 483, 487–9 Critical Realism phase  468–9 as formal regression  472 Minjung Realism phase  468, 470–1, 472 persecution and marginalization  468 and political kitsch  472 Minor Injury  477 Minyŏl 393 Miraculous Stories about the Lotus Sutra  192–3 Miramax 499 mirrors  109, 241–2, 242, 246, 250 Mirŭk taewŏn, Ch’ungju  167 Mirŭksa, Iksan  90–2, 91, 92, 93, 136, 212 mishima (punch’ŏng) 329 missionaries  365, 406, 407 Mituoshan 97 Mixrice  483, 484 modern Korean art  439, 457 Japanese colonial period  405–27 modernism Korean  470, 473, 474, 475–6 and Minjung art  468, 472 modernity  364, 365–6, 465, 469, 481, 485–6, 491, 503–4 modernization of Korea  19–20, 405, 406, 415, 452–3, 484, 486 Mohe people  95 Mokchong 243 mold‐impressing technique  147–8

Index

Monastic Codes of Chan Monasteries 217 Mongol empire  225 Mongol invasions  95, 141, 144, 154, 163, 172, 236, 250, 255, 389 Mongol occupation  160, 176, 225–6 Mongolia 35 see also Inner Mongolia Mongols  11, 12–13, 15, 18, 159, 184 see also Yuan dynasty Monkey King 3D, The (film, 2014)  499 mono‐ethnicity 30 Mono‐ha (“School of Things”)  446 Moon Bok‐cheol  441 Moorman, Charlotte  481 morals, Confucian  263, 265, 276, 285 Moranbong 22 mother‐of‐pearl 246 inlays  149, 236–7, 242–3, 246, 249–50, 253, 254 Mount Nam  62, 80–1 seated bodhisattva 81 mountains, sacred  80–2, 81 movie attendance figures  501 Mŏngch’on earthen wall fortress, Seoul 121 Mr. Go (film, 2013)  497, 498–9, 510 Mu, King  90, 92, 358, 359 mudrā  59, 80, 100, 165, 187, 375 bhūmisparśa  161, 162, 223 bodhyagrı ̄ 161 earth‐touching  74, 77, 376 Mukhoja 58 Munduru ritual  99–100 Munjang (literary magazine)  426 Munjong, King  213, 237, 241, 244, 245, 246 Munjŏng, Queen Dowager  275, 348, 372, 373, 380 Munmu, King  68, 99, 100 Munsŏng 393 Munsusa, Sŏsan 172–3, 173, 174 Munsusa, Mount Odae  378 Munyŏng, King  46 murals  29–40, 471 Buddhist 47–8, 48, 379

◼◼◼

535

cave temple  59–60 funerary  29, 31, 35–7, 36, 40–7, 44, 49–50, 51, 108, 110, 119, 424 Muromachi period  201 Murong Huang  37, 39 Muryangsujŏn hall, Pusŏksa  218, 220, 222–4, 222, 223 Muryŏng, King  46, 109, 111, 113–16, 118–20, 125–7 Tomb of  109, 111, 113–16, 118–20, 119, 125, 126, 127 music 22 folk 442 pop 22 Muwisa, Kangjin  375, 379 Muyŏm 390 Muyŏm school  389, 390 Muyŏl, King  99 My Fu  409 Myoch’ŏng 11 Myoch’ŏng, rebellion of  146 Myŏgnang 99 myŏllyugwan 167 Myomanji, Kyoto  196 Myŏngbin 376–8 Myŏngjong, King  143, 348, 372, 373, 380 Myŏngju Buddhas  164–5, 169 Myŏngok 391 Myŏngsŏng, Queen (Queen Min)  365, 382 Myŏngsuk, Princess  380 Na Hyesŏk  411, 415 Self‐Portrait (1928)  415, 416 Naesŏmsi bureau  326, 327 Naju 111 Naktong River  48, 49, 50 Naktong watershed  29 Nam June Paik  22, 457, 479, 481–2 Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984)  481–2 Tadaiksŏn (1988)  482 Nam Kwan  439 Namgyewŏn 224–5 Namgyŏng 153 Namin faction  298

536

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Namjŏng‐ri 34 Nanchansi, Kyoto  219 nanga 417 Na’ong 199 narratives, anonymous  483–7 National Art Salon (Kukchŏn)  435, 438, 440, 442–4, 446, 452 National Cultural Properties Research Institute of Korea  92 national documentary painting project (minjok kirokhwa) 444 national identity and cinema  498, 500, 510 Korean  1–2, 15, 19–20, 22–3, 409, 414, 419, 420, 426 National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Kwach’ŏn 472, 479, 482 National Museum, Seoul  31, 95, 145, 152, 161, 175, 177, 238, 241–2, 243, 246, 248, 253, 292, 296, 299, 300, 302, 303, 305, 307, 308, 310, 311, 313, 337, 345, 375, 380, 385, 447 nationalism  419, 420, 427 Pan‐Asian 426 Nawŏn‐ri pagoda, Kyŏngju 97, 98 necklaces  110, 115–16 Nectar Ritual paintings  385, 386 Neo‐Confucianism  16, 17, 199, 264, 266, 303, 321, 331, 339, 344 and Buddhism  371–2 didactic content art  349–50 Neo‐Gothic architecture  407 Neo‐Renaissance architecture  407 neoliberalism 484 Neolithic age  3–5 New Exhibition Club  441–2 New Generation artists  475 New Korean Cinema  502 New Past, A exhibition (2004)  490 New Realism Group  425 New Star Society  413 New Woman (sin yŏsŏng) 415 newspapers  436, 440, 445, 455, 473

Night and Day (film, 2008)  503, 504 nihonga painting  417, 418, 446–7 Nihonmatsuyama kofun, Kyushu  113 Ningbo  146, 199 No Suhyŏn 418 nobi caste  13–14, 16 Noguk 202 Noh Suntag  481 Noin Ula  35 normality, “blanket”  485 Noron faction  298–300 North Korea  20–3, 21, 30, 89, 161, 205, 415, 481 authoritarianism 466 and Communism  454 and the Korean War  435 postwar  435, 441 Northern Dynasties of China  60–1 Northern Qi  63–4 Northern Song dynasty  141, 144, 146–8, 160, 235–6, 244, 271, 272, 328, 409 Northern Steppes  109, 117, 124 Northern Wei dynasty  59, 96, 103 Noseo‐dong tomb, Kyŏngju  115, 118 nudes 412, 413, 415 Nüdi people  95 O Chaesun  309–10, 309 O Chibo  423 O Kyŏngsŏk 417 O Myŏnghang 331–2 O Sech’ang  417 Biographical Records of Korean Painters and Calligraphers (1928)  417 Oasis (film)  507 Oba Tsunekichi  35 Odano Naotake, Shinobazu Pond 311 Office for Buddhist Sutra Translation  373 Office of Eunuchs  194 Office for Metalworking  241 Office for Production and Supply  253 Office of the Yi Royal Family  409 ogival frames  251–2 Ogong, Mount  208, 209 Ogwan, Mount  208

Index

Oh, Hein‐kunh, Ajumma series (1997)  480–1 Oh In‐hwan  489 My Beautiful Laundromat Sarubia (2002) 489 Oh Ki‐hwan  498 Oh Kwangsu  441, 442 The Fault lines of Contemporary Korea Art 458 Oh Yoon Father (1981)  470, 471 marketing–Hell 470 oil painting  366, 444 and abstraction  439 Japanese hybrid style  411 Korean Western‐style  407, 411, 413, 414, 421 Korean‐style 423, 424 Western‐style  438–41, 445–7 ointment jars  236 Okakura Tenshin  420 Okchŏn Tombs  125 No. M1, Hapch’on  118 Okin Collective  484 Oki’s Movie (film, 2010)  503 Okisada, Asaoka  200 One Vehicle world theory  78 onggi ware  322 openwork  110, 112, 118, 120, 127, 250 Oriental painting  417, 421, 435 Osaka Exposition, Korean pavilion  447 Other  484–5, 490, 491, 506, 507 oxen imagery  49 Ozon, Francois  503 Pacific War  406, 417, 425, 426 Pae Unsŏng 414–15 Paegak, Mount  409, 410 Paek Namsun  415 Paekche 7–8, 8, 15, 18, 29, 30, 45–8, 50, 58, 60–1, 62, 93, 107, 136, 212, 389 and Buddhism  9, 14, 87, 89, 90 capitals 108 ceramics of  121–2 craftspeople of  118–19

◼◼◼

537

and pagoda building  224 tombs and grave goods  108–11, 113, 115–16, 118–19, 119, 121–2, 125–9, 129 “Paekche smile”  61, 62 pagodas  87–104, 177, 205–7, 210, 212, 214, 224, 418 golden 214 Kyŏngch’ŏnsa 225, 225, 226–8 miniature 97, 98, 214, 215 octagonal  89–90, 225 stone 90–2, 92, 93, 102, 103, 211, 214, 224, 373, 375–7, 386 twin 98–104 wooden 224 Yuan influence on  224–8 painting banner,  386–8, 467–8, 471 birch‐bark 49 Chosŏn Buddhist  379–80, 384–9, 391–92 Chosŏn court art  303–6, 343–66 Chosŏn landscape  270–6 Chosŏn late  291–315 Chŏson early  263–86, 306 Contemporary Korean  445 court  303–6, 343–66 ‘folk’ 364–5, 366, 472 genre  295–8, 407 in gold  47, 150, 152, 154, 184–5, 195, 197, 251, 380 Koryŏ Buddhist  183–202 “life‐likeness”  300, 309–10 and linear perspective  310–11 Minjung 469–70 Nectar Ritual  385, 386 nihonga  417, 418, 446–7 Oriental  417, 421, 435 postwar 437–8 still‐life 308 Western‐style  407–9, 411, 413–17, 421, 423, 435 see also Buddhist painting; landscape painting; literati painting; oil painting; portraiture

538

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

painting and calligraphy (sŏhwa) 409 Pak Chega, Koxinga and His Mother 311 Pak P’aengnyŏn 270 Pak Yŏngnam 442 Paleolithic age  3 Pan‐Asianism  420, 426 pan‐Korean region  30 Pan’gudae drawings  5 Parhae  10, 11, 89–90, 121, 210 Paris  415, 440 Paris Exposition  1900 408 Park Bong‐su  439 Park Buldong  469 The Nightmare 469 Park Chan‐kyong  474, 485–6, 491 Sindoan (2008)  485–6 Park Chan‐wook  501 Park Chul Ho see Bahc Mo; Bahc Yiso Park Chung‐hee  417, 443, 454, 458 Park Hyun‐ki  457 Park Myung‐ja  449 Park Raehyun  437, 438 Owl (1959)  437, 437 Park Re‐hyun  439, 449 Park Seobo  439 Écriture 447 Work No. 1 (1957–1958)  438, 438, 439 Park Shin Eui  467, 473 parrot motifs  147, 148 Part‐Time Suite  484 paste‐on‐paste technique  150, 151 patriarch hall  216–17 peasant movements  406 pedestal vessels  122 pendants belt  117, 118 necklace 116 pentad groupings  175 peony depictions  337, 357, 362, 363–4, 363 Peonies (19th century screen)  357, 363 Peppermint Candy (film)  506–7, 510 percussion instruments  243 performance art  441–2, 449, 455–7, 481, 486–7, 488, 489

personal ornaments of fine metalwork  109, 110–21 grave goods  107, 109, 110–21 perspective  308, 310–12 linear  310–11, 409 one‐point  306, 312, 362 petroglyphs 31 photographic portraiture  365, 408 contemporary 480–1 Social Realist  436–7, 436 photography contemporary 480–1 fine art  480 Minjung 468–9 postwar  436–7, 451–2 as sociological study  480–1 photojournalism  451, 481 photomontage 468–9 Piamsa, Sejong  391 Picture of the Mandate of Heaven 283 Pidgin Collective  484 pilgrims  76, 77, 177, 185 Piraesa, Taejŏn 390 pirates, Japanese  198–9 placenta jars  332 plant symbolism  276–80, 283 plates, gold inscribed  90, 92 plein–air school  411, 413 Poetry (film, 2010)  507–10, 508, 509 Pogam‐ri Tomb No. 3, Naju  120 pokchang materials  160, 171–3, 173, 174, 178 political kitsch  472 political monuments  90, 92–9 pommels 126 Pŏmnyŏng 390 Pŏmnyŏng school  389, 390 Pŏmŏsa, Pusan  389–90 Pomun‐dong burial, Kyŏngju  115, 116 Pŏnchŏn‐ri kilns, Kwangju  330 Ponggan 388 Pongguksa, Kwangju  382 Ponghyŏn  386, 391

Index

Pongjŏngsa, Andong  379 Pongjŏngsa bodhisattva  169, 171, 172 Pongnyŏng, Princess  240 Pongsŏnsa, Namyangju  386, 387 Pongŭnsa, Seoul  382, 388 Pool 480 Pŏp, King  90 Pop movement  449–50 pop music  22 Pŏpchong 391 Pŏpch’ŏnsa, Mount Chŏngam 376–7 Pŏpchusa, Poŭn 389 Pŏphŭng, King  58 popular culture  292, 297, 475, 476, 490–1 Pŏp’yŏng, Five Buddhas Assembly (1628)  388 porcelain  108, 146, 155 austere 324–5, 324, 339 blue‐and‐white ware (Chosŏn) 325–6, 325, 333, 333, 334, 336–9 Chosŏn 321–6, 325, 330–1, 333, 333, 334–9, 425 cobalt blue  323, 325, 326, 337 copper‐oxide red  334–5, 337 imported 125 iron‐oxide painted  336 kilns 330–1 Kraak‐type design elements  338, 338 for rituals  331–2 as state project  322–3 portraiture  362, 408 ancestral 267–8 Chosŏn  16–17, 267–70, 308–10, 313–14, 351–3 court art  351–3 lifelikeness 351 royal 268–70 see also photographic portraiture Posalsa, Ch’ŏngju 391 postmodern art  466, 470, 473–5 postmodernism  474, 479 postwar Korean art  433–58 and abstraction  438–41 and authoritarianism  454–7

◼◼◼

539

and the everyday  449–53 experimental 441–3 Korean art in circulation  446–9 and the meaning of contemporary art in Korean 457–8 medium 438–11 reconstruction (chaegŏn) 435–8 representation 435–8 and the role of the state  443–5 “potbelly flow” technique  222–3 pottery incised decorations  31 Neolithic 3–4 painted 31 sueki pottery  123 vessels 121 see also ceramics Pou  373, 380 Power of Kangwon Province (film, 1998) 503 powerful lineages (hojok) 136 Powŏnsa 161, 163 Prabhūtaratna Buddha  102 Prabhūtaratna pagoda  101–2, 103, 104 Practical Learning (Sirhak)  406–7 prehistoric cultures  1, 3–5, 31 prestige items  315 grave goods  107–8, 121 Pro‐Japanese Biographical Dictionary, The 427 Project Space Sarubia  480 propaganda  415, 423 “Japan and Korea are one body” slogan 426 Protestants  20, 407 proto‐Korean languages  30 Proto‐Three Kingdoms period  107, 128 Psy 22 Puan  139, 146, 148, 149 Pugak, Mount  345 Pulguksa  10, 74, 78–9, 90, 101–4, 102, 103 Śākyamuni pagoda  101, 102, 102, 104

540

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

punch’ŏng (ceramic)  321, 322, 324, 326–30, 337, 339 decorative techniques  326–9 kilns 330–1 minimalist aesthetic  328–9 for rituals  331 p’ungmul (farmers’ music)  22 Punwŏn  322–3, 326, 330–1, 335, 336, 338, 350 Punwŏn‐ri 323 Pure Land  379, 384, 385 Pure Land Buddhism  185, 186–7 Purilsa temple site  211–12, 213 Puryŏngsa, Ulchin  390 Pusan  126, 291, 311, 330, 408 Puso, Mount  177 Pusosan  47, 48 Pusŏksa, Yŏngju  218, 220, 222–4, 222, 223 Puyŏ 7, 46, 89, 128, 212 P’yoch’ungsa 248 P’yohun  78, 79 Pyŏn Kwansik  418 Autumn at the Three Immortals Rock in Outer Mount Kŭmgang (1966)  418 Pyŏn Yŏngno, “Theory of Oriental Painting” 417 P’yŏngyang  5, 34, 35, 41, 42, 88, 99, 212, 269, 351, 412, 413, 415, 424 see also Lelang Qianlong period  307 Qin Emperor  77 Qin’ai, Empress Dowager  97 Qing dynasty  18, 406 and Korean art  334, 337 tributary system  291 Qingzhou 64 Queen Mother of the West  357, 358–9, 359, 364 queer sexuality  489 “raised ears” technique  223 Reality and Utterance group  468, 470, 472, 473, 483

reconstruction (chaegŏn) 435–8 “Record of the Formation of Eastern Capital” 94–5 “Record of the Investigation of Crafts” 209 refined style  169–70, 175 relic altars  211 relic casket  95, 96 relics (Buddhist)  87, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 102, 160, 191 enshrined in pagodas  87, 96 reliquaries, Buddhist  95, 97, 128–9, 172, 173 Remion, Léopold  408, 411 repoussé 110, 111, 246, 247 Research Collective of Art Criticism  473, 474 resistance  473, 474, 479, 489 Rhee Seundja  449 Rhii Jewyo  489 rhyta cups  63 Ricci, Matteo, Complete Map of the World (1602) 307 rings  110, 118–19 Risshōji 200 rites ancestral  331, 332 Confucian 331–3 military 331 for reception of foreign envoys  331 for royal ceremonies  331, 332–3 sacrificial 331 for state funerals  331 ritual objects  127–9, 197 Confucian 265 rock carvings, Three Kingdoms period 61–3 Rockerfeller Foundation  444 Roh Jae Oon  482, 486 Roh Wonhee  470 Rohmer, Eric  503 rosary 191 Rouault, George  424 roundels, painted  49, 50

Index

Royal Bureau of Painting (Tohwasŏ)  265–6, 267, 278, 295, 303, 306, 326, 335, 348–9, 379 entrance examinations  349 Royal Procession to Hwasŏng 303–5, 304 Ru ware  144, 147 Russia  30, 125 Russo‐Japanese War  406 Ryōkaku 198 Ryōken 198 Ryūjōin, Kōchi 380 Sabi  47–8, 108, 111 Sach’ŏnwangsa (Four Heavenly Kings Temple), Kyŏngju  69, 99–101, 101 sacrificial burials  109, 110 saddles 126–7 Sado, Crown Prince  354–5, 382, 386 tomb of  386 Saengnan 390–1 Saengnan school  389, 390–1 saggars (lidded clay containers)  139, 144, 330 Śākyamuni Buddha (Prince Siddhār tha) 9, 41, 63, 70, 74, 77–81, 92, 102, 223, 372, 376–80, 386, 387 Śākyamuni Assembly (1725)  392, 392 Śākyamuni pagoda, Pulguksa  101, 102, 102, 104 triad  161, 390 Śākyamuni pagoda, Pulguksa  101, 102, 102, 104 Salon d’Automne  415 salvation, art of  183–202 Samantabhadra Bodhisattva  78 Samil Building, Seoul  452–3 Samin 390 Samnŭng area, Paedong  135–6 Sangam‐dong 510 Sanggyŏm 393 Sanggyŏng 210 Sangjŏng  389, 391 Sangnyun 391 Sangsik 386

◼◼◼

541

Sanguozhi (text)  32 Sangwŏnsa  376, 378, 378 Sanjang, bodhisattva  384 Saongwŏn (branch of central government) 322 Saro‐guk 109 Sartaq, Marshal  236 Sasanians  63, 121 Sat’aek Chŏktŏk 92 saucers 125 scabbards 126 School of Painting and Calligraphy  409, 417 screens, Chosŏn  350, 353–6, 356, 357–66, 359, 360, 361, 363 Scripture on Making Images  173, 175 scrolls Koryŏ Buddhist painting  183–90, 186–90, 192, 193, 194–6, 194–6, 200 landscape paintings 271, 272 sculpture postwar  438–9, 445, 449 of Silla  57–82, 169 Three Kingdoms  57–82 see also Buddhist sculpture Scythian art  43 “Animal Style”  49 sea routes  152–4 Second Division Society  423 Second World War  20, 435, 466 Sector 7 (film)  499 Segwan 392 Seiryōji 173–5 Sejo, King  273, 325, 371, 372–3, 378 Sejong, King  19, 239, 271–3, 276, 285, 322, 324, 331, 348, 371–4 Sekino Tadashi  42, 92 Selected Writings of the East 159 self‐cultivation  278, 283, 298, 362 SeMA Biennale‐MediaCity Seoul 2014 491 Sennyūji, Kyoto  170 Sensōji, Tokyo  199, 200 Seongnam project  483

542

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Seoul  153, 351, 373, 405, 411, 419, 423, 425–6, 433, 468, 479 and cinema  504, 510 Gangnam district  474 MediaCity Seoul  479 palaces of  344–8 urbanization 453 see also Hanyang Seoul Metropolitan Government  479 Seoul Summer Olympics  1988 475, 497 Sewŏn 393 sgraffito  147–8, 327–8 Shamanism  9, 10, 14, 87, 292, 450, 481, 485–6 Shandong  61, 64 Shen Zhou  299, 300 Shiba Kōkan 311 Shim Gwang Hyun  473 Shim Moon‐seup  446 Shimazu family  200 Shin Hakchul Rice Planting 469–70 The Modern History of Korea series  469 shipwreck excavations  152–3, 153, 155 Shizu, Emperor  226 shoes  110, 119–21, 120 spikes 119–20 Showbox  498, 499 Shun, Emperor  177 Shundao 57–8 Shundi, Emperor  226 Silla 7–9, 8, 15, 18, 29, 30, 47, 48–50, 57–82, 107, 159, 212 and Buddhism  9, 10, 14, 58, 87–90, 92–101 and Buddhist architecture  218, 220, 224 and Buddhist sculpture  169 ceramics of  121, 122, 123, 123, 136 painting bureau of  348 sculpture of  57–82, 169 and the Tang dynasty  7, 10, 99, 100–1 tombs/grave goods  108–9, 111–13, 112–13, 115–24, 116, 117, 120, 123, 125, 126 unification wars  63, 64, 66, 80, 99, 107, 109

and urban planning  210 see also Later Silla; Unified Silla Sillŭksa, Yŏju 383 Patriarch Hall  373–4, 374 silver  108, 109, 110, 236 belts  117, 118 crowns 111 decorated weapons  126 horse trappings  126–7 inlays  149, 248, 251, 252, 253 Koryŏ 235–6, 241, 245–6, 251 pagoda frames  214 painting in  380 vessels 124–5 see also gilt‐silver ware silver standard  144 Sim Sajŏng 299 A Night on the Riverbank (1747)  299 Sim Yŏngsŏp 420 Sin Saimdang  446 Sin Sukchu  272, 348 Sin Yunbok  297–8 Album of Genre Paintings 297–8 Sinan Shipwreck  152, 155 Sinboksa, Kangnŭng 165 Sindŏk, Queen  372 Singnich’ong, Kyŏngju 120–1, 120 Sin’gyŏm 391 Sinhaeng 79 Sinhyosa 198 Sinicization 40 Sinjŏng, Queen  382 Sinmun, King  80 Sinnoin 192 Sino–Japanese Wars  365, 406, 426 Sino–Korean culture  292 Sino–Tibetan Buddhist works  175–7, 375–6 Sinsŏn 387 Sixteen Arhats  390 Sixteen Visualizations  379, 380 slip inlays 248 white  147, 149, 150–1, 321, 326–9 Snowpiercer (film, 2013)  498, 500–1, 510 Sŏ Tongjin  421

Index

Sŏbongch’ong  111, 124 Sobuk faction  299 Social Realism  419, 421, 427, 433, 436–7 socialism  20, 22 Society of Research Companions  418 sodo (sottae) sanctuary  32 Sŏgwangsa, Hojimun  373–4 Sŏgyŏng 207 Sohŏn, Queen  372 Sohyŏn, Crown Prince  386 Sŏkchangsa clay tiles  69 Sŏkkuram  61–2, 73–80, 73, 75, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 169 Sŏkpulsa 74 Sŏl Ch’ung  379 Sŏn Buddhism  141–2, 159, 206, 207, 217–18, 372, 373 Sŏn monasteries  215–17 Sŏnak, Kaesŏng 241 Sŏndŏk, Queen  70, 93–6 Sŏng, King  47, 61 Song dynasty  16, 136, 139–40, 146–7, 170, 193, 202, 211, 217, 221, 236, 247, 250, 264, 266, 298 Buddhist art of the  185, 192, 373, 375 Song Fazhi  77 Song Kangho  497–8 Song Sangnae  279 Song Su‐nam  447 Song Young‐bang  441 Songak, Mount  208, 209, 210 Songgwangsa (Susŏnsa), Sunch’ŏn  216–17 Avalokiteśvara Hall  386 Kwangwŏnam 390 Sŏnggyun’gwan 141 Sŏngin 386 Sŏngjong, King  243, 266, 278, 378, 380 Sŏngmin 392 Sŏngmunsa 88 Songsan‐ri burial ground, Kongju  46–7, 122 Sŏnhwa, Princess  90, 92 Sŏnjo, King  283, 382, 386

◼◼◼

543

Sŏnŭimun 209 Sŏnwŏn Hall, Kyŏngbok Palace  270 Sŏrabŏl Arts College  437 Soron faction  298–9 Sŏsan  61, 161, 162 Sosurim, King  88 South Han River  163 South Korea (Republic of Korea)  20–3, 21, 30, 89, 161, 264, 345, 433, 437, 451 and authoritarianism  466 and Biennials  479 cinema of  497–510 and martial law  454–6 and the Minjung movement  467, 468 and modernism  474 and modernization  486 postwar  435, 437, 440, 445, 452–6 and urbanism  484 and the Vietnam War  490–1 and women  487, 488 Southern Dynasties of China  60–1, 109 Southern school literati painting  408 Southern Song dynasty  145, 146, 154, 160, 170, 171, 199, 236, 299 Soviet Union  20, 23, 445 soybeans 4–5 Space Beam  480 spaces, alternative  477, 479–80, 482 spangles  110, 120, 127 spatialities, of Korean cinema  503–6, 510 spikes, shoe  119–20 spindles, painted stone  49 Ssamzi Space  480 Ssangbongsa, Hwasun  390 S.T. (Space and Time)  443, 445 Stalin, Joseph  450 stamp‐application 327 State Workshop of the Guanghan Commandery 34 Steichen, Edward  436 steles  7, 40–1 Buddhist  59–60, 64, 66–8, 67, 161 Kyeyu Amitābha triad stele  66–8, 67 stone cist tombs  4 Stone and Water  480

544

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

stoneware  121, 135, 321–2, 326, 329–30 see also punch’ŏng (ceramic) Sūtra of the Pure Light Dhāraṇ ı ̄ 97, 102, 103 Sūtra on the Ocean of Samādhi 78 subjectivity crisis  466–7 Successful Life of Tang General Guo Ziyi (19th century screen)  357, 358, 359–61, 360 Sudhana 185 sueki pottery  123 Suh Se‐ok  440 Suh Seung‐won  442 Sui dynasty  96, 209 Sujongsa, Namyangju  376, 377–8, 386 Sukchong, King  240, 358 Sukhāvatı̄ 71–2 Sukpi  194, 198 Sukpin 380 Sumeru, Mount  100 Sun, Moon and Five Peaks theme  356, 356, 357, 364 Sunbin 388 Sung Neung‐kyung  443, 455, 473 Newspaper after the First of June 1974 (1974) 455, 456 Sung Wan Kyung  468, 472 Sunggari 46 Sungho Choi  477 Sŭngho school  389, 391 Sŭngil  389–90, 391 Sunginmun 209 Sŭngwŏn 393 Sunhŭng 49–50 Sunhwagung Palace  339 Sunjo, King  387 Sunjong, Emperor  358, 408 Sunwŏn, dowager queen  303 Suo Masayuki  499 Sūtra of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas  188 Suyang, Prince  273, 276 Suyŏn  390, 391

Sŭyŏn school  389, 390 Suzhou  310, 358 swords Chi’iljido (Seven‐Branched Sword) 128 decorated  109, 110, 126 Tae Kaya  109, 110, 115 Taedong delta  29, 34, 36–42, 45 Taedong River  412 Taegu Contemporary Arts Festival  457 Taegwan Hall  141 T’aejang‐ri 50 T’aejo, King see Yi Sŏnggye T’aejong, King  376–7 Taejosa, Puyŏ 167, 168 Taejŏn bronze plaque  31–2, 31 Taekwondo 446 T’aemyo (Grand Ancestral Shrine)  139 Taesŏng 74 Taesŏng‐dong burial ground, Kimhae  109, 218, 219, 220, 224 T’aewŏn  389, 391 Taewŏnsa 164 Taho‐ri, Ch’angwŏn, Tomb  1 32, 33, 33 Taiping Laoren  145, 146 Taishō period  419 Taizhou 175 Taizong 94 Tajima Mizuru  248–9 Takeo 329 Takeushi Yoshimi  491 Tang dynasty  47, 66, 68–9, 70, 74, 94, 97, 136, 138, 140, 142, 175, 186, 193, 199, 201, 209–10, 227, 238, 245, 389, 410 foot measurement  77 and Silla  7, 10, 99, 100–1 Tang Taizong  99 Tan’gun  15, 18 Tanhosa, Ch’ungju  164 Tani Bunchō 200 Tanii Saiichi  47 T’anmun 161–2

Index

Tansaekhwa (“monochrome painting”)  447–8, 449, 467, 473 tantric Buddhism  226 Tanŭng‐T’angmil school  389, 391 Tanzan‐jinja shrine  192 Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming)  303 Peach Blossom Spring 271 Tapié, Michel, Un art autre (1952)  440 Tari 118–19, 119 Tayler, Constance  408 tea ceremony  329 Tea Chamber  141 tea culture  136, 140–2, 144 tea utensils  136, 137, 140–2 tea bowls  136, 142, 329–30 teahouses  140, 142 Ten Kings of Hell  189, 190, 190, 379, 384, 391 Ten Symbols of Longevity  336–7, 357–8, 359, 364 terracotta 69 armies 77 guardian deity reliefs  100, 101 Third World  491 Three Jewels  384 Three Kingdoms period (892–936)  7–9, 8, 13, 29–30, 212, 240, 246 and Buddhism  57, 371 and Buddhist architecture  87–104 and Buddhist art  265 and sculpture  57–82 tomb art and artifacts of  107–29 see also Later Three Kingdoms period (892–936) Three Major Mountains  80 tiancai technique  149 Tianqi era  338 Tiantai Pure Land sect  199 Tibetan Buddhism  176, 374, 375 “tiger and magpie” designs  336, 337 timber‐framing architecture  206 time, linear trajectory  507 Tobong Academy, Seoul  197 Tōgō Seiji  425 Tohwa imbon (art textbook)  408

◼◼◼

545

Tojam  389, 391 Tŏkchong, King  266 Tŏkhŭng‐ri tomb  40–2, 43 Tŏksasa, Ch’ŏngdo 391 Tŏksu Palace, Seoul  407, 444 Tokyo  445, 446 Tokyo School of Fine Arts  411–17, 420–2, 433 Tokyo Women’s School of Fine Arts  415 Tomb of the Circular Patterns  44–5, 46 Tomb of the Dancers  42–4, 44 Tomb of the Four Spirits  45, 47 Tomb of the General  108, 120 Tomb of the Great King  108, 110 tomb guardian statues  109 tomb murals  29, 31, 35–7, 36, 40–7, 44, 49–50, 51, 108, 110, 119, 424 tomb objects  250 celadon ceramics  142–4 ceramic epitaph tablets  331 Tomb of the Scattered Lotus Flowers  42, 45 Tomb of the Wrestlers  42–3, 44 tombs 9 Anak Tomb  3 37, 38, 39, 40, 41–2, 43 brick‐chamber  6, 36 Chinese 108 dolmen 4 inlaid boxes from  249 placenta 332 stone cist  4, 142 stone‐chambered  36–42, 46, 50, 108, 142 stone‐lined 142 stone‐mounded  108, 109 Three Kingdoms period  107–29 wood‐chambered 109 see also specific tombs; tumuli Tong Shou  37 T’ongdosa, Yangsan  392 T’onggu Tomb No. 12, mural  119 Tongmyŏng, King, tomb of  88–9 Tŏngnyŏng 177 Tongsa  59, 224 tortoiseshell  242, 246, 250, 253

546

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Tosŏn 207–8 totalitarianism 20–1 Toyotomi Hideyoshi  198, 270, 291 To Yuho  37 trade  5, 8, 63, 108–10, 113, 116, 125–6, 136, 139, 155, 312, 337–8 Central Asian  76 Chinese  136, 146, 155 maritime 199 Twelfth century  246 trade routes  152–4 transcendental 57 transnational cinema  497–501, 510 transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix ­exhibition  2008 490–501 Trāyastriṃs á  79 Tribute Mission to China (after 1789)  307 Tripiṭaka  159, 373 “Eighty‐thousand Tripitaka’ 382 Koryŏ 14, 199, 250 tripods 124 trompe l’oeil  362, 363 “True‐Scenery” landscape painting (chin’gyŏng)  292–5, 299, 300, 312, 407, 409, 418 Truffaut, Francois  503 Tsuda Seishu  424 Tuman River  11 tumuli 77 see also tombs turban snail shell  242 turumagi  433, 434 Tuṣita Heaven  69, 72 ˘ ch’ŏn (Wang Hu)  237 U Ueno Naoteru  418 ˘ ibin 376–7 U ŭigwe (records of court c­eremonies)  332–3, 344, 350, 351, 353, 364 ˘ igyŏm 391–2 U Śākyamuni Assembly (1725) 392 ˘ Uigyŏng 373 ˘ igyŏm 392 U ˘ isang  69, 78, 191, 222, 224 U ˘ isuk, Princess  378 U

Ulju (Ulsan)  31 Ulsan 5 Um Hyuk  468, 474 ˘ mnae‐ri 50 U underglaze copper oxide  15 copper‐red technique  150, 151–2 iron‐brown technique  150–1 UNESCO World Heritage sites  108 ˘ nghye  389–90, 391 U Ungjin  46–7, 50, 108–9 ˘ ngnyŏl 391 U ˘ ngsang 392–3 U ˘ ngsŏ 393 U ˘ ngwŏn 390 U ˘ ngwŏn‐In’gyun school  389, 390 U Unhye 390 Unified Silla (668–935)  7–8, 10–11, 57–82, 161, 170, 177, 235, 240 architecture of  87–104, 224 and Buddhist art  376, 389 capitals  163, 164 and ceramics  136 and gender  92–7 and Koryŏ 245 and metalware  243, 246, 248 and politics  90, 92–9 and the Queen Mother of the West theme 358 Union Exhibition of Young Artists  441–2, 444, 449, 450 United Nations  449 United Nations General Command  435 United States  20, 22, 23, 437, 439, 440, 443, 445, 454, 466–7, 474, 477, 490–1 and Korean cinema  500–1 military rule of South Korea  433 and Minjung art  468, 469 and the Vietnam War  491 university art schools  435 Unjongga 314 urbanism  484, 486 urbanization 453 urns, celadon funerary  135–6

Index

Vairocana  78, 385–6, 385, 390 Vaiśravaṇa 100 Vajrapāṇi 75 vases celadon 152 Chosŏn 333 vessels 121–5 celadon  109, 125 ceramic 121–4 glass  63, 121, 125 gold 124 horn‐shaped ceramic  123 lacquerware 31 metal  121, 124–5 pedestal 122 pottery 121 silver 124–5 video art  22 Viêt Lê 490–1 Vietnam  490–1, 500 Vietnam War  454, 491 virtual space  482 Visual FX 499 Voge, Marc  482 Vos, Hubert  408 Vulture Peak Assembly  384, 388, 391 Waiting for the Day Society  423 Wales, Nym  489 Wang Kŏn (King T’aejo)  136, 139, 205, 207, 210–1, 212 seated image of  211, 212 “Ten Injunctions”  207 Wang Xu  34 Wang Xuance  77 Wanghŭngsa, Puyŏ 128–9 Wang family  11, 12–13 Wanli reign  338 water droppers  152 Water‐Moon Avalokiteśvara 185, 186, 191, 192, 193, 194–5, 196, 198, 199 watercourse storehouses  154 weapons, decorated  109, 110, 126–7 Wedding Invitation, A (film, 2013)  498, 500, 510

◼◼◼

547

Weinstein, Harvey  501 Weinstein Company  500–1 welding 449 West, and Korea  365, 366 West General Fort  356 Western cultural influence  406, 407, 411, 427 pre‐Japanese colonization  407–9 Western Paradise  186, 187, 195, 224 Western Pure Land  67, 69, 72, 196, 224 Western Qin  125 Western Workshop of the Shu Commandery 34 Western Xia dynasty  191 Western‐style painting (sŏyanghwa)  407–9, 411, 413–17, 421, 423, 435 oil  438–41, 445–7 Weta Workshop  499 White Bull Society  424 white copper  241 White Pagoda, Miaoyingsi  227 White Pagoda of Qingzhou  97 white ware  136, 137, 142–3, 146, 155, 323, 325, 328, 329 Widŏk, King  128 Wŏlchŏngsa, Mount Odae  165, 225, 228 Wŏlsŏn Pavilion, Kongsan  280 Woman on the Beach (film, 2006)  503 women  472, 491 of the Confucian world  16, 356, 361–4, 488 and female chastity  356 labourers 487 oppression 488–9 voice 488 “Yankee Princesses”  486 women artists  476 contemporary  486, 488–9 postwar 449–50 Wŏn’gaksa, Seoul  373, 376 Wŏn’gwang 69 Wŏnhyo  66, 69, 191 Wŏnsalli kiln site, Paech’ŏn  137, 139 Wŏnsan 408 Wŏnt’ongbojŏn, Pŏpchusa 390

548

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

woodblock prints  102, 159, 358, 415, 468, 471 wooden buildings  206, 373 working‐class struggles  472 Wŏr wŏn 393 writing, Korean  2, 6, 7, 19 Wu 46 Wu Daozi  199 Wu Di  33 Wu Yue  160 Wu Zeitan  97 Wu school  275 Wudu Guiwang  190 Wuyue kingdom  95 Xia Gui  299 Xia Huayansi, Datong Bodhisattva 169 Xianbei 124 Xiangguosi 202 Xiaoming, Emperor  97 Xin 34 Xindu Prefecture  41 Xing ware  136, 139 Xinjiang 76 Xiongnu burials  35 Xiwangmu (Queen Mother of the West)  35 Xu Jing  141, 144–5, 152, 235–8, 240, 246–7, 249 Xuanhua 142 Xuantu 39 Xuanzang  77, 177, 227 Xuanzu, Emperor  211 Yakhyo 388 Yak’yo 393 Yalu River  37, 38, 39–40 Yanagi Sōetsu 364 Yang Ch’ŏlmo 450 Yang Xuanzhi  97 yangban elite  264, 267, 292, 296–8, 300–1, 303, 312–13, 315, 331, 343, 349–50 yangin/yangmin (commoners)  343

Yangji 69 Yangzi River  35, 46 “Yankee Princesses”  486 Yaozhou ware  148 Yejong, King  144, 146, 240 Yesŏng river  246 Yi Am  276–8 Puppies, Birds and Blossoms (Mid–16th century) 277–8, 277 Yi Chaegwan, Portrait of a Scholar 310 Yi Chagyŏm  11, 146 Yi Chasil, Thirty‐two Manifestations of Avalokiteśvara (1550)  380 Yi Ching  273 Yi Chongrin  380 Yi Chongu  415 Yi Chŏng  278–80, 283 Bamboo in Rain (1622)  279, 279 Yi Chŏnggŭn 273 Yi Chungsŏn 377 Yi Chungsŏp  424, 426 Yi family  255 Yi Family Royal Museum  408 Yi Haŭng (Hŭngsŏn taewŏn’gun) 406 Yi Hŭiyŏng 307–8 Yi Hŭngson 377 Yi Hŭngyo 273 Yi Hwang  264, 283 Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning  283–4, 284 Yi Hyŏngnok Books and Scholarly Accouterments 312 Books and Scholarly Implements (19th century screen) 361, 362–3, 366 Yi I 264 Yi Inmun  350 Royal Visit to the City of Hwasŏng (1795) 353–4, 355, 356, 357, 366 Yi Insang  300–3 Dying Chrysanthemums 303 Pine Trees in Snow (Mid‐18th century)  302–3, 302 Yi Insŏng, One Autumn Day (1934)  421–2, 422

Index

Yi Kiyang  310 Yi Kyŏngyun 274 Yi Kyubo  142, 171–2, 246, 251 Yi Kyungsung  449, 458 Yi Maenggŭn 379 Yi Myŏnggi 399 Portrait of Kang Sehwang (1783)  352–3, 352 Portrait of O Chaesun 309–10, 309 Portrait of Yu O˘ nho 309 Yi P’ilsŏng 311 Landscapes of Shenyang Pavilion 311 Yi Quedae  433–4, 435 Self‐Portrait with Blue Jacket  433, 434, 434, 435 Yi Sang  423 Yi Sangbŏm 418 Yi Sangjwa  349 Yi Sŏnggye (King T’aejo)  237, 255, 263–4, 344, 374 and Buddhism  372, 373 and portraiture  268–70, 269, 351–2 “Ten Injunctions” of  159, 237 Yi Sŏngnin, Korean Embassy’s Journey to Edo 311 Yi Sunsin  446 Yi Tongju  184 Yi Yŏngil 422 Yi Yongu  418 Yi Yunmin  312 Yijing (Book of Changes)  238, 357 Yingyou Island  95 Yogācāra monks  99–100 Yŏm Sŭngik 200 Yŏnboksa, Kaesŏng  174–5, 251 bell 251 Yong Soon Min  477, 490–1 Yŏn’ga 59 Yŏngch’ŏl 390 Yonghŭngsa  248, 269, 351 Yonghwa, Mount  90 Yŏnghwan 393 Yŏn’gi 66

◼◼◼

549

Yŏngjo, King  295, 354 Yongjusa, Hwasŏng  354, 382, 386, 387, 387, 393 Yongmunsa, Yech’ŏn 390 Yŏngnak 40 Yongningsi, Luoyang  96–7 Yŏngsanjŏn, Kŏjoam  218, 220 Yongsu, Mount  208, 209 Yongsun, Aruk  37 Yŏngsusa, Chinch’ŏn 391 Yongwŏn‐ri Tomb, Ch’ŏnan 125 Yŏnhong 393 Yŏnsan’gun 371 Yoo Young‐kuk  439 Yoon Suknam, Genealogy (1993)  488, 488 Yoshimochi 199 yŏsŏng gukgŭk (women’s national theatre) 489 Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (film, 2013)  499 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) 414 Young‐hae Chang Heavy Industries  482 Youzhou 41 Yu, Queen  161–2 Yu Chunsang  506 Yu Kŭnjun 443 Yu Ŏ nho 309 Yu Sŏkchin 286 Yu Suk  296, 351 Portrait of King T’aejo  269 Yu Yŏngguk 425 Yuan dynasty  144, 152, 154–5, 160, 175–7, 184, 192, 198, 202, 236, 250–1 and architecture  207, 222 and Buddhist statues  373 invasions 250 and pagodas  224–8 and porcelain  322 Yuan invasions  250 Yuanfeng era  140 Yuanxiang 95

550

◼ ◼ ◼ I n d e x

Yue ware  136, 137, 139, 145–7 Yuezhou 125 Yujŏng 373 Yun Hŭisun 421 Yun Hyongkeun, Umber Blue series  447 Yun Tusŏ 295, 308–9 Self‐Portrait 308–9 Yungang Caves, China  169 Yushan 45 twin tombs  42–3 Yushin Korea  454–6, 458 Yu family  164

Zero Group  441–2 Zhang Gongyou, tomb of, Xuanhua  245 Zhang Hong  310 Zhang Sigong  199–200, 201 Zhao Xian  100 Zhejiang Province  14, 136, 137, 146, 147, 154, 175, 199, 273 Zhen 40 Zheng Zhilong  311 Zhiyan 224 Zhou Fang  186 Zhou dynasty  97, 358