Examples Of Sin Ch Aeho In Korea Between Empires

Summary 2
Anna Kim 2015461011
Korea between Empires, 1895-1919 Schmid.

1. How Sin Ch’aeho and other early Korean nationalist intellectuals criticized the conventions of received histories? Compare heir attitudes toward Tan’gun and Kija with those of their predecessors. 1-2) why did Sin Ch’aeho try to exclude Kija from Korean nation’s history? What role was assigned to Kija by the king of Pyuo according to Sin?

During colonization and after, Korean historians were interested in nation and independence. One of the main tasks of that time was to identify “minjok”, explain historical past of Korea and show its independence and uniqueness. Sin Ch’aeho was a pioneer in reinventing Korean history, who wrote “A New Reading of History” in a different way than existed before. One of the main features of Sin Ch’aeho is that he wrote a lot about mijok and criticized previous historians arguing that they
First, he wrote that historians did not even suspected about “minjok” existence (p.188) and that is why they paid much attention to foreigners who lived in Korean territory. Second mistake that Sin Ch’aeho wrote is that it was inappropriate to mention Kija, who was a foreigner, a refugee, as one of the most important ancestors of Korean nation just because he was from China being at the same time the best example of Confucianism and morality. Sin thought that it is not right to place a foreigner by following Confucian ideals, arguing that Korean are a single minjok with no other foreign nations. As we can find Sin wrote: “Why, would the Korean people submit at first glance to a stranger who did not even speak their language or know their customs?” (p.189). That is why Sin Ch’aeho tried to exclude Kija from Korean nation’s history to create more autonomous history. While originally, Kija played important role for Korean to justify that