{"id":225,"date":"2020-08-04T01:15:46","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T01:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/?p=225"},"modified":"2025-04-01T11:35:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:35:35","slug":"chosons-office-of-interpreters-the-apt-response-and-the-epistemic-culture-of-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/chosons-office-of-interpreters-the-apt-response-and-the-epistemic-culture-of-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Chos\u014fn\u2019s Office of Interpreters: The Apt Response and the Knowledge Culture of Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>2020<\/strong> &#8220;Chos\u014fn\u2019s Office of Interpreters: The Apt Response and the Knowledge Culture of Diplomacy.&#8221; <em>The Journal for the History of Knowledge.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/journalhistoryknowledge.org\/article\/view\/11164<\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<p>From 1392 until its dissolution in 1894, Chos\u014fn Korea\u2019s Office of Interpreters managed diplomatic relations with its vastly more powerful Ming and Qing neighbors. The Office was originally conceived out of a bureaucratic strategy to formalize the training of its interpreters and manage the volatile knowledge they possessed. This bureaucratizing of diplomacy created a distinct socio-economic niche for these interpreters, facilitating their social reproduction. This paper argues that a distinct culture of knowledge also emerged in this process. Beyond language, interpreters also translated between multiple domains of knowledge. As experts of diplomatic protocol, they served as informants to their social and administrative superiors. As scholars, they produced compendia and handbooks that made their office legible to outsiders. As specialists, they asserted the dignity of their craft. And as diplomats, they were tasked with furnishing the \u201capt response\u201d that moved between local exigency and the demands of state ideology. Herein lies the central dilemma of bureaucratic knowledge: the skill to do so required both cultivated erudition as well as accumulated experience, but its timely execution could not be legislated through bureaucratic rules\u2014a tension between the desire to control and the need to preserve agency. The paper deliberately locates bureaucracy in a domain (diplomacy), place (East Asia), and a time (premodern) that was not supposed to \u2018have\u2019 bureaucracy in order to dispute the casual conflation of bureaucratization with modernization that has obscured the Korean Office of Interpreters in the global history of diplomacy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2020 &#8220;Chos\u014fn\u2019s Office of Interpreters: The Apt Response and the Knowledge Culture of Diplomacy.&#8221; The Journal for the History of&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/chosons-office-of-interpreters-the-apt-response-and-the-epistemic-culture-of-diplomacy\/\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Chos\u014fn\u2019s Office of Interpreters: The Apt Response and the Knowledge Culture of Diplomacy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-publications"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/JHOK-Office.png?fit=1334%2C587&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Nhqs-3D","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":88,"url":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/the-sounds-of-our-country-interpreters-linguistic-knowledge-and-the-politics-of-language-in-early-choson-korea-1392-1592\/","url_meta":{"origin":225,"position":0},"title":"The Sounds of Our Country: Interpreters, Linguistic Knowledge and the Politics of Language in Early Chos\u014fn Korea (1392\u20131592)","author":"Sixiang Wang","date":"August 31, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"2014 \u201cThe Sounds of Our Country: Interpreters, Linguistic Knowledge and the Politics of Language in Early Chos\u014fn Korea (1392\u20131592).\u201d In Rethinking East Asian Languages, Vernaculars, and Literacies, 1000\u20131919. Leiden: Brill. In the frequent envoy exchange between Chos\u014fn Korea (1392-1910) and Ming China (1368-1644), Korean court interpreters who mastered spoken Chinese\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Chapters&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Chapters","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/category\/publications\/book-chapters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":451,"url":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/the-korea-now-podcast-110-literature-series-sixiang-wang-the-politics-of-language\/","url_meta":{"origin":225,"position":1},"title":"The Korea Now Podcast\u00a0#110\u00a0(Literature Series) \u2013 Sixiang Wang \u2013 \u2018The Politics of Language&#8230;","author":"Sixiang Wang","date":"August 1, 2021","format":"audio","excerpt":"This episode of the Korea Now podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Sixiang Wang. They speak about the exchanges between Choson Korea (1392-1910) and Ming China (1368-1644), the Korean envoys and interpreters who mediated between the two dynasties, the need of these interpreters to master spoken Chinese,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Lectures, Talks, and Interviews&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Lectures, Talks, and Interviews","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/category\/public-lectures\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/r5xm7Mr00NM\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":155,"url":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/korean-eunuchs-as-imperial-envoys-relations-with-choson-through-the-zhengde-reign\/","url_meta":{"origin":225,"position":2},"title":"Korean Eunuchs as Imperial Envoys:  Relations with Chos\u014fn through the Zhengde Reign","author":"Sixiang Wang","date":"December 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"2019 \"Korean Eunuchs as Imperial Envoys: Relations with Chos\u014fn through the Zhengde Reign.\" Chapter 23 in The Ming World, edited by Kenneth Swope Introduction excerpt: The usual way to describe Ming relations with Korea is through the notion of the \u201ctributary system.\u201d The Ming emperor, with the moral and cultural\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Book Chapters&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Book Chapters","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/category\/publications\/book-chapters\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":297,"url":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/history-of-korea-1260-to-1876\/","url_meta":{"origin":225,"position":3},"title":"History of Korea, 1260 to 1876","author":"Sixiang Wang","date":"November 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Korea 180B in UCLA Registrar COURSE DESCRIPTION In 1260, after decades of intermittent warfare, the Kory\u014f dynasty of Korea capitulated to the Mongols, inaugurating a century of Mongol domination on the Korean peninsula. This period, which saw Korea's integration into the Mongol empire, also witnessed a number of changes, both\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Teaching&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Teaching","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/category\/teaching\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/K180B-Winter-2022-Poster.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/K180B-Winter-2022-Poster.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/K180B-Winter-2022-Poster.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/K180B-Winter-2022-Poster.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/K180B-Winter-2022-Poster.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/K180B-Winter-2022-Poster.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":290,"url":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/boundless-winds-of-empire-rhetoric-and-ritual-in-early-choson-diplomacy-with-ming-china\/","url_meta":{"origin":225,"position":4},"title":"Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chos\u014fn Diplomacy with Ming China","author":"Sixiang Wang","date":"November 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"2023. Boundless Winds of Empire: Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Chos\u014fn Diplomacy with Ming China. New York: Columbia University Press. For more than two hundred years after its establishment in 1392, the Chos\u014fn dynasty of Korea enjoyed generally peaceful and stable relations with neighboring Ming China, which dwarfed it in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Monographs&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Monographs","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/category\/publications\/monographs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Book Cover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Boundless-Winds-Cover.png?fit=441%2C662&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":157,"url":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/compiling-diplomacy-record-keeping-and-archival-practices-in-choson-korea\/","url_meta":{"origin":225,"position":5},"title":"Compiling diplomacy: record-keeping and archival practices in Chos\u014fn Korea","author":"Sixiang Wang","date":"December 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"2019 \"Compiling diplomacy: record-keeping and archival practices in Chos\u014fn Korea,\" Journal of Korean Studies (2019) 24 (2): 255\u2013287 The Chos\u014fn court kept meticulous records of its interactions with their Ming, and later, their Qing neighbors. These materials, especially those that predate the nineteenth century, survive not in the form of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Articles&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Articles","link":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/category\/publications\/articles\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/JKS-compiling-diplomacy.png?fit=973%2C558&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/JKS-compiling-diplomacy.png?fit=973%2C558&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/JKS-compiling-diplomacy.png?fit=973%2C558&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/JKS-compiling-diplomacy.png?fit=973%2C558&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chosonhistory.org\/SixWang\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}