조선왕조의 長久性과 한중관계

초록

Historians have attributed the longevity of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910), which spanned several centuries of world history, to its stability as a political entity. They have interpreted its prolonged existence from different perspectives; Japanese scholars in the colonial period of the early 1900s explained the longevity as evidence for the stagnation of Korean civilization, while Korean scholars in the late 1900s explained the stability as evidence for the steady progress of a dynasty that had successfully established a high-level government system and a ruling ideology based on Confucian values. This article first critically reviews the concepts of two historical terms, longevity and dynasty, and analyzes where the Chosŏn dynasty should be positioned in world history with regards to these terms. Furthermore, it expounds on the main factors in the stability of the Chosŏn dynasty from both internal and external perspectives. The Chosŏn dynasty was managed by the ruling elite group called sajok, commonly known as yangban, which monopolized political, economic, and social privileges as well as Confucian knowledge. This article analyzes the ruling mechanism of the sajok class and explains it as a primary internal factor for Chosŏn’s stability. This article also lays more emphasis on the East Asian world order dominated by the empires centered in the northern region of China and the so-called tribute system. This article posits an interpretational theory that such an international order was possible because of the static ‘balance of power’ that lasted about two millenniums in East Asia until the late 1800s, when the new ‘modern’ powers destroyed the existing traditional order. Around the turn of the 1900s, when the ruling system of the sajok class was seriously challenged and the traditional order in East Asia was in its last phase, the Chosŏn dynasty subsequently perished together with the empire in China.

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