Pyŏn Yŏngman (San’gang;
1889-1954) – Colonial Korea’s Alternative Modernity?
One of the questions that often baffle a student of
You have dragged
the three monsters of our times into everybody’s sight
Tossed them
over, turned them about, and exposed their bowels and intestines.
When you, just a
boy, [worked] with your arms and head [to enter] the literary society, it was
as miraculous as if it was spirits’ work.
But I won’t call
[your] Sisaejǒn a great work.
Albeit you never
mastered the great skills of the Blossoming
How could you
fall to the level of scribbling the letters for simple amusement?
Widang is gone,
but you, San’gang, remained with us.
That meant that
those wishing to obtain some [worthy] pieces of writing did not have to roam
about in vain.
And now – where
shall we find a great ray of rainbow-like light?
Much of this text looks enigmatic for these unfamiliar
with Pyŏn Yŏngman’s literary production, the knowledge of which was
obviously de rigueur for the part of
the intellectual public Ch’oe Namsǒn was addressing. It will be explained
further in this presentation. What catches a readers eye here immediately, is
equating of Pyǒn Yŏngman with Widang – that is, Chǒng Inbo (1893-1950),
the last rightful heir to later Chosǒn’s Kanghwa lineage of Wang Yangming
philosophy, who was universally acclaimed as colonial Korea’s most
representative scholar of both Chinese and Korean classics, and also achieved prominence
as a nationalist historian (Hwang 1996). That somebody of Ch’oe Namsǒn’s
stature could easily mention Pyǒn Yŏngman as Widang’s equal, shows
quite well what Pyǒn’s perceived standing was in his own days. It is also important
to mention that Pyǒn, Ch’oe’s editorial associate from the time when Ch’oe
published his journal, Tongmyǒng
(Eastern Light: 1922-1923), was
denouncing him after 1945 for the pro-Japanese collaboration in the colonial
times and lack of sincere atonement after the Liberation (PYMCJ vol. 3, 297), and
the personal relationship between the two men appears to have been almost
completely broken by the early 1950s. Thus, Ch’oe’s appreciation of Pyǒn’s
importance for
One of the reasons for Pyǒn’s “low visibility” was
probably that, for
Another, and deeper trouble with Pyǒn for the
modern scholars may be the fact that, in the humanitarian studies’ universe so
neatly divided into the realms of “national literature” (kungmunhak) and “Chinese literature and Chinese classics’
scholarship” (hanmunhak), into the fields
of the research upon “Communist/socialist”, “anarchist”, and “nationalist”
movements and ideologies, Pyǒn’s legacy is too elusive of any precise, unambiguous
categorization. Writing in both vernacular Korean and classical Chinese and
even auto-translating some of his favourite pieces from one language into another
– Sisaejǒn, mentioned above by
Ch’oe Namsǒn in a depreciating way, was, for example, written in 1931 in
classical Chinese and then translated with certain textual changes by Pyǒn
himself to be serialized in monthly Tonggwang
(October 1932, January-February 1933) entitled “Isanghan tongmu” (“Strange
Comrades”) – Pyǒn freely traversed boundaries between what was supposed to
be “national” Korean literature, and what was often disparagingly referred to
as “leftover of Chosǒn Dynasty’s Sinophilia”. Unrelated to the orthodox
academic lineages dating back to the Chosǒn times, and polemizing actively
against his good friends in the established world of classical Chinese scholarship,
such as Cho Kǔngsǒp (Simjae: 1873-1933), who reduced the realm of the
literature to simply “representing the Way in the letters”, Pyǒn still
believed in the validity of the “old” as an antidote to the unparalleled
barbarity of the “new world” – and at the same time mastered European
literature and thought to a degree rarely seen in the intellectual world of colonial
Korea (Sin 2003, 428-429). While today’s scholarship on colonial
In this article, I will limit myself primarily to the
socio-political and philosophical aspects of Pyǒn’s writings, beginning
with his public debut in the late 1900s and including both his work during the
colonial period and the fragmentary notes he wrote – but mostly did not publish
– after 1945. I will try to show how he evolved from being a rather ordinary -
although unconventionally radical in his anti-imperialist rhetoric – participant
in the late 1900s westernizing “enlightenment” movement and a firm believer in
the potential of capitalist development and modern nation-building, to becoming
an acute critic of most modern institutions and ideologies, both Western
capitalism and Bolshevik version of socialism included. I hope that shedding
new light on Pyǒn’s evolution between the 1900s and the 1950s will help to
nuance and complicate the existing picture of Korea’s modern ideological
development, by highlighting the diversity of the colonial time visions of
nation and nationhood, and the degree to which subversive views upon modernity,
its conventions and institutions, were common among prominent and influential
thinkers of the colonial time. There is no denial, of course, that the “nationalist”
(as distinguished from “leftist”) part of the colonial spectrum of
socio-political beliefs, with which Pyǒn was loosely associated both
personally and ideologically, in general coalesced around the Social
Darwinism-based vision of building up “national strength” by accelerating the
development of “national” industrial capitalism and “reconstructing the nationals”
into being good bourgeois – thrifty, industrious, public-minded, engaged in
learning and sports (Pak 1997). But, as Pyǒn’s case convincingly shows,
this mainstream right-wing vision of the “national” and the “modern” also had
its discontents “from within” – that is, outside of the rival ‘leftist” camp.
And the fact that Pyǒn’s discontent was based upon a very original attempt
to combine the classic East Asian tradition with the “new” learning is
important for understanding how diverse and non-conventional the constructions
of the “traditional” might be in early modern times.
Pyǒn was born in what is central Seoul (Ch’adong,
or Sunhwadong, near the Legation Quarters in Chǒngdong) now (Pak & Im 1966,
293)[2],
into a relatively obscure yangban
(gentry) family belonging to Ch’ogye Pyǒn clan, known, among others, for
producing the mother (1515-1597) to illustrious admiral Yi Sunsin (1545-1598).
His family owned some land in Puch’ǒn, to the south-west from
The two foreign books on imperialism he translated in
an abridged form being a somewhat special case, Pyǒn’s pronouncements on
the things modern in late 1900s hardly exhibited much of conceptual
originality, if seen in the context of the period’s dominant visions of
modernity. For example, one of his two contributions to the prestigious monthly
Kiho Hǔnghakhoe Wǒlbo (Monthly of Kiho Society for the Promotion of Learning;
Vol. 1, August 1908), entitled “Oh, How Great Education is!” (“Taehokyoyuk”),
gives the following picture of the contemporary world:
Let us try to
look! Should we say that the revival and reappearance on the world stage of
once weakened, divided
Let us try to
look! Should we say that the reunification and European predominance of once
ruined
Let us try to
look! Should we say that Japan’s vigorous reform of the old institution, its
Restoration, its success in joining the club of the civilized and becoming one
of the powers, and its ability to prevail upon Russia’ strength were simply
brought by 2-3 party politicians? In fact, it was nothing else but the
so-called warlike education forming the spirit of the nation (kukhon) (PYMCJ vol. 3, 91).
Admiration of the nationalist (kuksujǒk), spiritual (chǒngsinjǒk
– of course, “nation’s spirit” is meant), and warlike (musajǒk) ways of educating modern citizenry perceived as the
main secret of European and Japanese “wealth and power”, and ardent wish to
have the Korean citizenry too educated in statist (kukkajǒk), militaristic (sangmujǒk)
ways conducive to a success in the international struggles (segyejǒk punt’u) (PYMCJ vol. 3, 92)
– all this did not differ much from the conventions of the Social Darwinism-informed
views on the desirable trajectory of “national self-regeneration” and “catching-up
with the powers” prevalent in the nationalist milieu in that period. Following
the dean of the nationalistic “enlightenment”, Pak Ǔnsik, who even
entitled his editorial for the inaugural issue of the monthly Sǒu (Friends from the West[ern Region]; first published in December
1906) “Once Education is not Encouraged, the Survival Cannot be Achieved” (“Kyoyuk
i puhǔng imyǒn saengjon ǔl pudǔk”), and his friend Sin Ch’aeho,
who envisioned the “new” education as both patriotic and militaristic (Yun
2001, 86-158), Pyǒn viewed the modern education as a method of “transforming
the weak literati of Korea living in a sweet dream” into nationalist and physically
strong modern citizens.
Pyǒn’s early views on the capitalist development
are hardly original as well. In an article entitled “Commercial vigour” (“Sangǒpchǒk
punt’u”) and published in June 1908 in the 13th issue of Pǒpchǒng hakkye (World of Legal and Political Studies, a
small journal published by Posǒng
College’s students), he assured that the “commercial wars” were taking place of
the battlefield warfare of Napoleonic and Bismarckian kind and that the human
vigour, “the saintly [quality] which civilizes the world” should assume the commercial
character in the “epoch of commerce” (sangǒp
sidae), then praised the “blue-eyed Westerners” for concentrating their “mighty
brain power and brave spirit” upon the commercial enterprises, and stated that
the only way to turn the tables upon the Western invaders and begin the “westward
expansion of the East” will be to nurture East’s infantile industries under the
state protection, ensure the favourable balance of trade in the industrial
goods, and inculcate the merchants with patriotic, nationalist ideas (PYMCJ
vol. 3, 76-80). Another article, “On industry” (“Kongǒp e ch’wihayǒ
nonham”), in the 16th issue of the same journal (September 1908), against
stated that the only way to a successful commerce was protection of the
fledgling industrial production by the state able to extricate itself from the
ties of political dependency upon the foreign commercial forces (PYMCJ vol. 3,
93-95). This appeal to state interventionism and protectionism in spirit of Friedrich
List (1789-1846) might be deemed quite reasonable, given Korea’s lack of
industrial perspective under a free trade system with no tariff protection for
Korea’s fledgling industrial enterprises – if only too late, as Korean “protectorate”
state in 1908 lacked any real abilities to conduct an economical policy
independent of the Japanese power. Pyǒn’s protectionism probably suited
1900s Korea better that, for example, the attitudes of his father’s good
acquaintance Yu Kiljun (1856-1914), who, while maintaining that the state was
duty bound to protect and educate the traders, abstained, however, from appeals
to the direct state intervention aimed at boosting the emerging industrial
economy (Kim 1998, 210-265). But the criticism of the laissez faire economical liberalism as such was not something totally unknown in late
1900s
If we are to point out to a somewhat uncommon feature
of Pyǒn’s vision of modernity in the late 1900s, it was the ferocity with
which he castigated imperialism – the Western imperialism, first and foremost.
When Ch’oe Namsǒn wrote in his funeral poem that Pyǒn “has dragged
the three monsters of our times into everybody’s sight”, he was alluding to
what should be considered Pyǒn’s first real claim for fame – an
anti-imperialist book by a Westerner, whose name was translated in Chinese
characters as “Samil Kadǒngmun” (very possibly, Goldwin Smith, 1823-1910,
a classical Victorian liberal and opponent of imperialism and Social Darwinism,
who lived in Canada after 1871 and died there)[4],
which Pyǒn translated and published in visibly adapted form in March 1908
with Kwanghak sǒp’o Publishers in Seoul, under the title Segye samkwemul (World’s Three Monsters). The book was obviously out of sync with Pyǒn’s
otherwise protectionist and interventionist beliefs, as Goldwin Smith was an passionate
free trader and cited Adam Smith’s well-known views on the economical
inefficiency of the military expansion and colonialism (costs of maintaining
the colonial monopolistic arrangements exceeding their benefits) as an argument
in his attack on the late19th Century imperialism (PYMCJ vol. 3,
39). Then, while Goldwin Smith, a proponent of Christian charity and moral
philosophy, was polemizing against Spenserian Social Darwinism from a
moralistic position, calling the identification of the “stronger” with “the
fittest” and the legitimation of the “extermination of the different races” “a
barbarity” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 38-39), Pyǒn himself was elsewhere (for example,
in his essay “On industry”) still upholding the then fashionable Social
Darwinist understanding of the world as arena of the “struggle for survival”. In
another translated monograph, Isipsegi
chi taech’amgǔk chegukchuǔi (The
Great Tragedy of the 20th Century, Imperialism; printed by Kwanghak
sǒp’o Publishers in September 1908), loosely based upon the World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth
Century as Influenced by the Oriental Situation by Paul Reinsch (Reinsch 1900; this book was
already translated into Japanese as Rekkoku
Shinsei Shina Seijiron by Suzuki Toraō; Taihoku : Taiwan
Nichinichi Shinposha, 1904)[5],
Pyǒn faithfully translated Reinsch’s passage which showed that both Hegelian
teleological view of the historical mission of the state and the evolutionary
theory were simply used for legitimating the Machtpolitik of the European powers (PYMCJ vol. 3, 47-48)[6],
and added a separate concluding section, which mostly dealt with was Pyǒn
aptly characterized as “imperialism’s scientific basis” – that is, the Social
Darwinist theory. He wrote with palpable indignation that such scholars as Karl
Pearson (1857-1936), who considered interracial competition “the only way to
produce high-level civilization”, were in fact saying that humanism was a
deterrent to progress, as it checked the interpersonal and intergroup
competition. Then, he suggested that, as militarism placed heavy burden of the
military expenses upon the citizenry and undermined the democratic governance,
it had to be checked through strengthening of the democratic institutions.
However, from this fragment it does not appear that Pyǒn
was either able or willing at that point to challenge the view that “struggle
for survival” was an objective “scientific truth”; all he was claiming for, was
caution in “applying what might have been needed by the primitive humanity (“competition
for survival” – V.T.) to the situation of the humanity of today and tomorrow”
(PYMCJ vol. 3, 71). So, unlike Goldwin Smith, Pyǒn remained a Social
Darwinist to a certain extent in the late 1900s, if only because he was lacking
any systematic, coherent alternative to the Spenserian view of explaining the
laws of the biological and human realms.
But, despite all these contradictions in views, Pyǒn
still was enthusiastic about Goldwin Smith’s polemical piece against the “three
monsters” of plutocracy (kǔmnyǒk
chǒngch’i), expansion of military expenses (kunbi chǒngch’aek) and territorial imperialism (chegukchuǔi), as he needed
arguments for buttressing his own belief, well expressed in his Pǒpchǒng hakkye article
entitled “General View of Imperialism” (“Chegukchuǔi p’yesǒl”: Issue
20, January 1909), that imperialism represented the gravest danger for Korean
people’s survival in the 20th Century, and had to be opposed by
boosting Korea’s nationalism (minjokchuǔi).
As Pyǒn’s own foreword to Isipsegi
chi taech’amgǔk chegukchuǔi reveals, both imperialism and nationalism
were understood by him as indispensable expedient means for making a country
rich, strong and thus capable to survive in modernity’s jungles; but developing
Korea’s own imperialism, albeit an attractive dream, might require resources
Korea did not possess:
Was my intention
in translating this book to push our country onto the same imperialistic road
Great Britain, Russian, Germany and USA are all walking by today? There is a
perfect analogy between the actions by the individuals and by the states. If,
while bound and trapped by somebody else’s imperialism, you engage in arrogant
self-aggrandizing and proclaim an imperialism of your own, it only means that
you do not know [the limitations] of your resources. Generally, it is own
cherished dream that our own, Korean (Taehan),
imperialism would enter the world’s stage. Not for a day did my fantasies leave
this magnificent pavilion of
The vision of “the nationalism of the weak” as a method
of both fending off the foreign imperialisms and gradually nurturing one’s own,
pioneered by Liang Qichao (1873-1929) and then forcefully advocated in Korea by
Sin Ch’aeho in the last years of the 1900s (Sin 1981, 56-94), seems to have
convinced Pyǒn and made him a strong proponent of the “national unity for
the sake of survival”. He seemed,
however, to differ with Sin in being much more explicit on the fact that, by
its own intrinsic logic, nationalism develops into imperialism at a certain
point. In the editorial entitled “Imperialism
and Nationalism” (“Chegukchuǔi wa minjokchuǔi”: Taehan Maeil Sinbo, May 28, 1909) and purportedly written by Sin Ch’aeho,
the desirable form of nationalism is described as “expansive” (p’aengch’angjǒk), but any concrete
appeals to the “offensive as the best form of defence” are lacking (Tanjae Sin
Ch’aeho sǒnsaeng kinyǒm saǒphoe 1998 vol. 3, 108-109), although
Sin Ch’aeho spared no efforts to emphasize and praise the truly “imperial” territorial
greatness (possession of “Manchuria”) and military prowess of Korea’s ancient
states (Tanjae Sin Ch’aeho sǒnsaeng kinyǒm saǒphoe 1998 vol. 4,
232-243) . However, Pyǒn’s rather careful approach to the issue of
However paradoxically it might seem to a modern
reader, 1900s Korea, itself a victim of Japanese and Russian imperialisms,
regularly bullied and pressurized also by all the other signatories to the infamous
“unequal treaties”, had its younger generation of modernizing intellectuals
sharing with their Japanese and Western kindred spirits the belief in the
necessity and glory of expansion and conquests. The Social Darwinist logic of
the imperialist world system was dutifully internalized by the majority of
The final
complete demise of the Korean monarchy in 1910 came to Pyǒn as a major
shock on socio-political and intellectual levels and as a personal blow as
well. As he confined in a letter to Cho Kǔngsǒp
in 1923, in the immediate aftermath of the 1910 annexation of
If I die singing – the echo of my songs will
be spread around by the spring winds
If I will be buried into the earth in anger –
the remnants of my indignation will survive hanged upon the eagles’ claws
The mountains standing in silence with their
arms folded – are my reverent, reticent appearance
The waves on the waters and the whistle of
the winds – all show me gushing forth to the heaven.
The twinkling stars on the evening sky – are
my meditating look
And is not the sun rising every morning my
virtuous face? (…)
I do not have to mention the Buddhist theory
of incarnations into snakes and cattle to explain that I never die – not for a
moment. So, I do not have to lament death (PYMCJ vol. 1, 89-91).
In this pantheistic piece, human “I”, identified also
with the essence of the imperishable Tao, takes truly cosmic features. In yet
another philosophical essay, “I see it this way” (“Yǒsigwan”, 1909, first
published in 1923), Pyǒn adopted a pantheistic position on the
metaphysical issues claiming that everything in the universe, including its
divine, spiritual substance (yǒng),
is created from the primeval cosmic energy (inon),
and the death means just a reconfiguration of this energy; on the ethical
issues, he took an eudaimonical stand, considering altruism a logical
consequence of the humans’ desire to guarantee a more stable sort of happiness
for themselves by sharing it with the others (PYMCJ vol. 1, 646-658). The “spiritualism” of the unpublished
texts of the early 1910s is hard to discover in the published, vernacular
Korean writings of the 1920-30s in its pure form (although it is largely
preserved in the private letters to the friends), but the emphasis upon individual’s
“character”, spiritual efforts and abilities to transcend the mundane remained,
and developed into a particular sort of secular personalism based on a
synthesis of “modern” and traditional views of the individuality.
After approximately 6 years of itinerant life in China
and South East Asia (1913-1919: he worked successively in two pro-Yuan Shikai Beijing
newspapers, Huangzhong Ribao and Beijing Riri Sinbao, in 1913-1917, and
then travelled to Singapore and Malaysia in 1917-1918 together with his new
friend, Hong Myǒnghǔi: Ch’oe 2006, 199-220), Pyǒn, obviously
disappointed about the prospects of the émigré independence movement, returned
to Kyǒngsǒng, to an emphatically apolitical life, which combined
private tutoring in classical Chinese, close ties of friendship – and exchange
of polemical correspondence in classical Chinese – with Cho Kǔngsǒp
and his disciples, lots of poetizing both in Chinese and vernacular Korean (in
the from of sijo poems in
particular), and occasional contributions to Ch’oe Namsǒn’s Tongmyǒng, Ch’ǒndogyo’s Kaebyǒk, Pang Ǔngmo’s Chogwang and some other journals, as
well as to newspapers – basically, Tonga
Ilbo and Chosǒn Ilbo (Kim
2004, 22-38). Together with classical Chinese essays written for a small circle
of friends and circulated privately, these sporadic media contributions give us
an interesting portrait of the ideological evolution of the erstwhile denouncer
of the Western imperialism.
An avid student of the world affairs who made himself
a name in the late 1900s by translating two foreign monographs apparently from
their English originals, Pyǒn continued to search outside of
Westernization
is spreading throughout the whole world, with its exclusive worship of the
things material, and we Asians already began to feel disgust about those
calamitous developments and feel ill due to their harmful effects. Those
Europeans cut down the mountains, bore tunnels through the hills, and search
for the precious metals, iron and coal everywhere they reach, thus damaging the
surface of the earth to the extent that no part of earth is left intact any
longer. They also build their steam-powered factories everywhere and gather men
and women there to work day and night, so that the sooty smoke covers all the
four directions and the thunder-like roar reaches heaven. What are they going
to do in such a manner? If we observe their schemes attentively, we will
understand that they simply wish to strengthen themselves and oppress the
others, so that to prevail over everybody else in the whole world, without a
thought given to the well-being of the ordinary folks. If we really wish to
stop the flow of their violent domination and practice our upright ways, there
is nothing better than refusing to help them and simply doing whatever suits
us.
But, despite writing a private piece, which be called “proto-environmentalist”
from today’s positions and which visibly took issue with the nature of the
industrial modernity as such (and not simply with its colonialist extension),
and despite calling Gandhi’s intentions “bright, brilliant and great, certainly
of enormous help to his motherland” (PYMCJ vol. 1, 102-105), Pyǒn was also
stating explicitly that non-cooperation in the Indian manner would not work in
Korea under the prevalent circumstances of the day (PYMCJ vol. 3, 126). In an
ambitious opus entitled “In the End, the Emphasis upon the Personal Character –
if we are to revive ourselves” (“Kyǒlguk ǔn inkyǒk ponwi – uri
ga saranajamyǒn”, - Tongmyǒng,
Issue 34, April 1923), he somewhat belittlingly characterized all the efforts
of the contemporary nationalist movement at the encouragement of Korean factory
production, improvement of education and development of the national arts as “superficial”,
and then stated that, to encourage, improve and develop anything, Korea first
needed “real men” – not the physical “creatures of hair, bones and flesh”, but “the
hot-blooded, spirited, really brave people, prepared to sacrifice themselves to
the very last moment for the sake of what is really good and true, (…) prepared
to take the heavy burden and persistently go their way, if somewhat slowly, (….)
prepared to live the life under the national consciousness, discovering themselves
inside the nation and the nation inside themselves”. Apprehensive of being “mistaken
for a follower of Thomas Carlyle’s hero worship theory”, Pyǒn immediately
qualifies his paean to the “real men”, saying
that their “diligence, righteous indignation, compassion, euphoric joy,
ecstasy, prayers and activities will give birth to manifold people of equal
character”, and that the advent of the “real men” is possible “only among the
people who do not mistake obedience for disgrace, and understand that
overcoming oneself is a golden opportunity to set the course on freedom” (PYMCJ
vol. 3, 126-129). In a word, Pyǒn was hoping for a “moral regeneration” of
the whole Chosǒn society – a well-known topic for the modern nationalisms,
which tend to conceive of societies as “moral communities”.
Pyǒn’s piece entitled “First of All,
Reconstruction of our Character” (“Muǒt poda uri ǔi p’umsǒng
kaejo”, - Tongmyǒng, Issue 38,
May 1923), concretized his thoughts on what kind of “moral individual” he
considered a “prerequisite for our national existence”. In comparison with much
more famous piece on the “national reconstruction” (minjok kaejo) Yi Kwangsu (1892-1950) published a year earlier
(monthly Kaebyǒk, Issue 23, May
1922), Pyǒn appears to be a relatively liberal nationalist thinker. While
Yi asserted from the beginning that a “reconstructed” individual should eschew
the private (sa) in favour of the
public (kong), should exhaust
him/herself in the service of the society and should “love” the organization (tanch’e) he or she belonged to (be it state
or religious group) and obey its leader (chidoja),
Pyǒn put a somewhat more moderate demand – just to transcend the personal,
provincial, and regional loyalties in favour of the national “unity” (hwahap) (PYMCJ vol. 3, 135; Yi 1962, 206-209). While Yi was
envisioning a strong, cohesive (tan’gyǒltoen)
civic association based upon “sacred precepts” of morality (Yi 1962, 190-202),
Pyǒn listed “discipline” (kyuyul)
among the qualities Koreans supposedly “lacked”, but also added that he preferred
the liberal ways of the German post-war reconstruction under the Weimar
Republic to what he called the “procrustean methods of Bolshevik Russia” (PYMCJ
vol. 3, 135-136). Then, similar to Yi’s appeal to “nurture industriousness,
thriftiness and spirit of professionalism” (Yi 1962, 202-203, 205), Pyǒn
was urging his readers to cultivate “diligence” (kǔnmyǒn) – but at the same time, in a manner today’s
critic may judge to be almost anti-Semitic, was writing elsewhere that Koreans
should not model themselves after “the Jews who worship Mammon as their God and
work to increase their wealth day and night without having a thought about
decency or good reputation” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 126). In an intellectual milieu
which strongly tended to privilege the demand of the “collective” over the
freedoms and needs of the individual (Pak 2003, 137-140) Pyǒn was
stubbornly preaching the classical liberal maxim: “collective discipline should
be applied only to the degree it does not infringe upon the freedom of
collective’s every member” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 135).
A literary man to the very marrow of his bones, Pyǒn
attempted to buttress his liberal individualism by the reference to the role of
the individuality in literature. In the last chapter, entitled “Expression of
the Individuality” (“
The great and
golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and
the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation,
plagiarism, and bungling. Great inventors, in all ages,
knew this (…). The want of this
determinate and bounding form evidences the want of
idea in the artist's mind, and the pretence of the plagiary in all its
branches. How do we distinguish the oak from the
beech, the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we
distinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the bounding line and
its infinite inflexions and movements? What is it that builds a house and
plants a garden, but the definite and determinate? What is it that
distinguishes honesty from knavery, but the hard and wirey line of rectitude
and certainty in the actions and
intentions? Leave out this l[i]ne and you leave out life itself; all is chaos
again, and the line of the almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or
beast can exist (PYMCJ vol. 3, 155-156).
Pyǒn
explains that “line” here should be understood also in a more abstract, general
sense: as a boundary between different individualities, and also as an attempt
to visualize the individual, the personal, the peculiar. Only a harmonic unity
between necessarily different individualities produces “national literature”,
according to Pyǒn; and those, whose individuality is “childishly”
underdeveloped, do not have to overcome the non-existent differences, but are
also unable to produce anything creatively (PYMCJ vol. 3,
157). In addition to this, Pyǒn translated and
published in 1923 in Tongmyǒng
(Issue 29) Blake’s paean to human as a “thinking reed”, The Fly:
(….) If thought is life
And
strength and breath,
And the
want
Of thought
is death;
Then am I
A happy
fly.
If I live,
Or if I
die. (PYMCJ vol. 3, 441)
Once
creativity is rooted in the ability of the individual to think independently, to
defend his or her peculiarity from being leveled off by the “common standard”,
then, genial outsiders, even if seen as insane by the crowd, should be treasured
for their innovative uncommonness. That seems to be the logic beyond Pyǒn’s
deep interest in Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) – “great mad genius, perverse artist
of originality, sharpness, mysteriousness and sorrow, who ventured into the
previously uncharted waters” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 170), and whose “spirit” (hondam) Pyǒn identified in the stormy life and uncompromising character
of Sin Ch’aeho (PYMCJ vol. 3, 222). In his Tonga Ilbo article, “A Typical Madman” (“Chǒnhyǒngjǒk
kwangin”, - the 4th article in the series Saegangyǒng, serialized between March 24 – May 19, 1931), he
wrote down by memory, in a rather imprecise form, several quotes from
(apparently Chinese or Japanese translations of) Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887), Menschliches, Allzumenschliches
(1886) and Also Sprach
Zarathustra
(1883-85)[7].
The quotes were mostly dealing with the superior individuals – Übermenschen
– of the future – manly,
self-disciplined, able to overcome their imperfections and to “love the peace
as a way of preparing to the new battles”, free from the lower instincts of
pity and naive beliefs in the coming of a better, more humanistic society (PYMCJ
vol. 3, 170-171). It
looks as if in the world of colonial modernity – the world of boring, inhuman
discipline, systemized humiliation and daily battles for physical survival,
where teachers were reduced to being “school policemen” controlling and beating
the children and repressing those with stronger personalities and uncommon
desires, where overproduced school graduates were reduced to “slavishly”
begging for scarce jobs, where Christian preachers and elders used to indulge
in womanizing or interest themselves more in saving money than in following
Christ’s “revolutionary teachings”, and where the rich were completely alien to
any sort of social concerns (PYMCJ vol. 3, 202-218) – Nietzsche’s challenge
to the herd collectivity and modern
conventions appeared to Pyǒn a personal spiritual cure, if not a way of
saving those few who could be saved, from the oppression of Korea’s quotidian
life. Although, unlike many other intellectuals of colonial Korea, Pyǒn
was not a great fan of Kropotkin, his behaviour suggests a deep-seated
animosity to any externally imposed organizational discipline – he criticized
Stalin’s USSR in 1936 for “subjecting even the literature and arts to the full
state control after having liberated the masses from the yoke of the tradition”
(PYMCJ vol. 3, 277) and was consistently critical about the activity of Korea’s
Communists, both before and after 1945 (PYMCJ vol. 3, 303-305), but at the same
time the anecdotal evidences suggest that he was scathingly critical of Syngman
Rhee’s dictotarial rule as well, and of his brother Yǒngt’ae’s decision to
join Syngman Rhee’s camp (Pak & Im 1966, 282-290). As an “anarchist outside
of anarchism”, he might have seen in Nietzsche a theory that made sense of his
own behavioural practice – and became one of the very few Korean colonial
interpreters of the German philosopher.
A staunch believer in the individuality of the
persons, Pyǒn extended the same logic to the peoples and cultures as well.
As most nationalists elsewhere, Pyǒn believed in the existence of
essentialised “national characters”. That does not mean that he was fond of
writing laudatory accounts of “Koreanness” – on the contrary, not dissimilar to
Yi Kwangsu, he defined “Korean national character” in its contemporary
manifestation as a combination of “transcendent purity” with brutality, lack of
critical abilities, failure to submit oneself to an authority or a cause, and
weakness, Koreans “remaining prisoners of Hong Kildong-like utopian visions and
worshippers of [rebels like] Hong Kyǒngnae” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 174). In
contrast to this, Pyǒn emphasized “vitality” of the people of his “another
motherland”, China, - the people, who “are already the financial masters in the
British Malaysia and who are succeeding in New York in the same way they are succeeding
in home” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 187-188). But, despite all the criticism, Pyǒn remained
a patriot, both of the regional tradition – he considered the Confucian belief
in the “Great Unity” (datong) to be
superior to the “extremities of the modern communism” (PYMCJ vol. 3, 111) and
enjoyed the “earthly flavour” of Du Fu (712-770) poems just like he enjoyed the
“sorrowful beauty” of Turgenev’s novels (PYMCJ vol. 3, 160) – and of its Korean
version. Pyǒn’s
Amidst darkness
of the day, manifold sparrows are chirping,
On a white
night, a crane is singing.
Exhausting
yourself, you went your lonely way,
Why will you
bother yourself with the thoughts of your posthumous repute?
The above lines from Pyǒn’s poem in memory of Sin
Ch’aeho (PYMCJ vol. 1, 490) show quite well his view of what a worthy
individuality should be: ability to plod the lonely, difficult path without
concerning oneself with whatever the “sparrows” around might be thinking. This
view, solidly grounded in the Confucian understanding of individual dignity and
freedom (Chan 2002, 290), had also its modern Western underpinnings – Western
non-conformists from the literary and philosophical worlds, Blake and Nietzsche
among them, took their places of honour in Pyǒn’s personal pantheon. Pyǒn
did not reach these conclusions overnight. It took him more a decade of
witnessing old
While having earned, already from the time of
translating into Korean the two Western books on imperialism in 1908, quite a
formidable reputation in the cultural circles, Pyǒn was a marginal man in
the political sense of the world, his lack of close connections with any
significant political grouping being one explanation for the fact that he had
been ignored by the South Korean scholarship until the 1990s. He was an odd
bird for more mainstream “cultural nationalists” on the right, such as Ch’oe
Namsǒn, who condemned him for “scribbling the letters for simple amusement”
even on such an occasion as Pyǒn’s funerals, and he was completely ignored
by both Communists and anarchists on the left, his visible sympathy towards more
egalitarian ways of distributing wealth notwithstanding. But now, as the
marginal critics of the modern realities are attracting more interest both from
scholars and from the wider public, it remains to be hoped that Pyǒn’s
voice, tragically solemn when he spoke on the fate of those few who “extricated
themselves from the flow of the current mundane life” and paid a price for
this, and acrimoniously ironic when he talked about the unbearable vulgarity of
conventional life in colonial Korea, will be heard at last.
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Abstract: The article
deals with Pyǒn Yǒngman (1889-1954)
- a man, who had the reputation of one of the sharpest
critics of Western modernity in early modern
Korea and one of the brightest literati, well-versed both in traditional
Sino-Korean and Western learning, during the colonial period. However, after
his death he was mostly ignored by the
South Korean scholarship, partly because he consciously positioned
himself outside of the main political and cultural fractions of the days and was consequently alienated from them. He was an odd bird for more mainstream “cultural nationalists” on
the right, such as Ch’oe Namsǒn, who condemned him for “writing for simple amusement”, and he was completely ignored by both
Communists and anarchists on the left, his visible sympathy towards more
egalitarian ways of distributing wealth notwithstanding. However,
he managed to develop a consistent logic of the criticism against the modern
life from a position, which may be characterized as a sort of “spiritual
individualism”, and which drew both on Nietzsche’s ideas and on age-old “moral
individualism” of the Confucian tradition.
Keywords: modernity, Social Darwinism, Nietzsche,
Blake, individualism.
Vladimir Tikhonov (Pak Noja) received his MA in Korean History
from
[1] First academic articles on Pyǒn emerged only in
early 1990s (Ch’oe 1992), and the translation of his “Collected Works”
(hereafter referred to as PYMCJ) into modern Korean was completed and published
very recently, in July 2006 (Sǒnggyun’gwan University, Daedong Institute
for Korean Studies 2006).
[2] This quarter was outside of
[3] Pyǒn’s mother was reported to be a devout
Christian (Han 2006, 280) – a fact, which may be an additional explanation for
Pyǒn’s early interest towards the things Western.
[4] A biographical account on him is accessible on the
net: http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=41197
(accessed February 2, 2007).
[5] Another,
rather abridged translation, was published even earlier, in December 1901,
under the title Teikokushugiron (On Imperialism), by Tokyo Senmon Gakko’s (Tokyo Specialist Schhol; to become
[6] In fact, Reinsch mentioned Social Darwinist
legitimation for imperialism only after having elaborated on more than 3 pages
on the Machiavellian influences in the modern international politics (Reinsch
1900, 14-17). As Machiavelli was relatively unknown in the late 1900s in
[7] A pioneering Korean translation by Pae Sangha of some
fragments from Also Sprach Zarathustra appeared
in the 1st issue of Sinhǔng
in 1929. Nietzsche was mentioned by some Korean authors, who apparently
discovered him while studying in Japan, already in the early 1920s (for
example, by Pak Talsǒng in his piece “Kǔpkyǒkhi hyangsangtoe nǔn
Chosǒn ch’ǒngnyǒn ǔi sasanggye” in the Issue 2 of Kaebyǒk, July 1920) and sometimes
cited as a proponent of “superhuman” individualism, but otherwise paid
relatively little attention to (Kim 1980, 533-536). Only in the 1930s, Kim Hyǒngjun
(1908-?), a socialist activist who afterwards became North Korea’s
Vice-Minister of Culture and Propaganda in the early 1950s and then was purged
together with Pak Hǒnyǒng (1900-1955), wrote several articles on Nietzsche’s
philosophy in the monthly journal Nongmin
he was editing (for example, “Nich’e ch’ǒrhak esǒ pon ch’oin’gwan” –
Vol. 3, No.1, January 1932). Pyǒn Yǒngman was thus one of those
colonial Korean thinkers who may be credited with “discovering” Nietzsche on a
relatively early stage.