2023 “Commemoration in Early Chosŏn Political Culture: How Kim Sisŭp Became a Loyal Official.” In Lives and Legacy of Kim Sisŭp: Dissent and Creativity in Chosŏn Korea. Edited by Vladimir Glomb and Miriam Löwensteinová. Brill
https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/62481
Abstract
As one of the Six Surviving Subjects (saengyuksin), Kim Sisŭp has long been identified with loyalism, but such a multifaceted figure resists reduction to a single label. This chapter examines the construction of Kim Sisŭp’s memory as a loyalist figure during the Chosŏn period, one which coalesced only gradually over the centuries after his death. By dissecting the process of Kim’s elevation, it teases out critical aspects of early Chosŏn political culture, in particular the shifting ground between Confucian moral ideals and the authority of Korean kingship, as well as the domination of the sarim-centered narratives in the historiography of early Chosŏn history. They point to how the Chosŏn past has been filtered by the agendas of historical actors that framed political conflict in moral terms. The result was in a historical record that is less documentary than recursive—that is to say, how historical memory became site of repeated revisionism is what explains Kim Sisŭp’s eventual apotheosis as an exemplary loyalist.
About the Book
The Lives and Legacy of Kim Sisŭp (1435–1493) offers an account of the most extraordinary figure of Korean literature and intellectual history. The present work narrates the fascinating story of a prodigious child, acclaimed poet, author of the first Korean novel, Buddhist monk, model subject, Confucian recluse and Daoist master. No other Chosŏn scholar or writer has been venerated in both Confucian shrines and Buddhist temples, had his works widely read in Tokugawa Japan and became an integral part of the North Korean literary canon.
The nine studies and further materials presented in this volume provide a detailed look on the various aspects of Kim Sisŭp’s life and work as well as a reflection of both traditional and modern narratives surrounding his legacy. Contributors are: Vladimír Glomb, Gregory N. Evon, Dennis Wuerthner, Barbara Wall, Kim Daeyeol, Miriam Löwensteinová, Anastasia A. Guryeva, Sixiang Wang, and Diana Yüksel.