Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan

By Maya K. H. Stiller

North Korea’s Kŭmgangsan is one of Asia’s most celebrated sacred mountain ranges, comparable in fame to Mount Tai in China and Mount Fuji in Japan. Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan marks a paradigm shift in the research about East Asian mountains by introducing an entirely new field: autographic rock graffiti. The book details how late Chosŏn (ca. 1600–1900 CE) Korean elite travelers used Kŭmgangsan to demonstrate their high social status by carving inscriptions, naming sites, and joining the literary pedigree of visitors to renowned locales. Such travel practices show how social competition emerged in the spatial context of a landscape. Hence, Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan argues for an expansion of accepted historical narratives on travel and mountain space in premodern East Asia. Rather than interpreting pilgrimage routes as exclusively religious or tourist, in Kŭmgangsan’s case they were also an important site of collective memory.

Embarking on a journey to Kŭmgangsan to view and contribute to its sites of memory was an endeavor that late Chosŏn Koreans hoped to achieve in their lives. Based on multidisciplinary research drawing on literary writings, court records, gazetteers, maps, songs, calligraphy, and paintings, Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan is the first historical study of this practice. It will appeal to scholars in fields ranging from East Asian history, literature, and geography, to pilgrimage studies and art history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Release date: Dec 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9780295749266

Maya K. H. Stiller

Maya K. H. Stiller is associate professor of Korean art and visual culture at the University of Kansas.

Book preview

KOREAN STUDIES OF THE HENRY M. JACKSON

SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Clark W. Sorensen, Editor

KOREAN STUDIES OF THE HENRY M. JACKSON

SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea, by Maya K. H. Stiller

The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea, by Hwisang Cho

Korean Skilled Workers: Toward a Labor Aristocracy, by Hyung-A Kim The Shaman’s Wages: Trading in Ritual on Cheju Island, by Kyoim Yun Top-Down Democracy in South Korea, by Erik Mobrand

Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets: The Culture of Objects in Late Chosŏn Korean Art, by Sunglim Kim

Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea, by Juhn Ahn

The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea, by Jisoo M. Kim

Wrongful Deaths: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea, compiled and translated by Sun Joo Kim and Jungwon Kim

Heritage Management in Korea and Japan: The Politics of Antiquity and Identity, by Hyung Il Pai

Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japan’s War, 1937–1945, by Brandon Palmer

Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, by Mark E. Caprio

Building Ships, Building a Nation: Korea’s Democratic Unionism under Park Chung Hee, by Hwasook Nam

Marginality and Subversion in Korea: The Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion of 1812, by Sun Joo Kim

Protestantism and Politics in Korea, by Chung-shin Park

The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty, by John B. Duncan

Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea, by Gi-Wook Shin

Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyŏngwŏn and the Late Chosŏn Dynasty, by James B. Palais

Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1945, by Carter J. Eckert, with a new preface by the author

Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925, by Michael Edson Robinson, with a new preface by the author

Over the Mountains Are Mountains: Korean Peasant Households and Their Adaptations to Rapid Industrialization, by Clark W. Sorensen

CARVING

STATUS AT

KŬMGANGSAN

ELITE GRAFFITI IN PREMODERN KOREA

MAYA K. H. STILLER

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON | Seattle

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan was supported by the 2020 Korean Studies Grant Program of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2020-P18).

Additional support was provided by a Research Excellence Initiative Award and a Friends of the Hall Center Book Publication Award, both from the University of Kansas, and by the Korea Studies Program of the University of Washington in cooperation with the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Copyright © 2021 by the University of Washington Press

Design by Katrina Noble

Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach

All photographs by author unless otherwise credited.

All maps and charts created by author. Sources of the basemap used in maps P1, 1.1, 1.2, and 2.1 are as follows: Esri, HERE, Garmin, Intermap, increment P Corp., GEBCO, USGS, FAO, NPS, NRCAN, GeoBase, IGN, Kadaster NL, Ordnance Survey, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community. Autographic inscriptions in the photographs were enhanced by Weitian Yan.

25 24 23 22 215 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in Korea

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2021006477 (print) | 2021006478 (ebook)

ISBN 978-0-295-74925-9 (hardcover)

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The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.∞

The Autographic Atlas of Korea, a digital companion to this book, can be found at www.aaok.info (DOI 10.6069/9780295749266.s001). Scan this QR code for quick access to the site:

CONTENTS

Preface: Where Is Kŭmgangsan?

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations and Language

INTRODUCTION

1 PRIVILEGED JOURNEYS

2 CARVING FOR DISTINCTION

3 KŬMGANGSAN AS SOCIAL BATTLEGROUND

4 VIRTUAL TRAVEL TO KŬMGANGSAN

CONCLUSION

Glossary of Sinitic Characters

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

WHERE IS KŬMGANGSAN?

The Kŭmgang Mountains (Kŭmgangsan) are one of the most storied mountain ranges of Korea. Before focusing on the Chosŏn (1392–1910) period history of this famous mountain range, let me clarify a few things about its location and its names.¹ Although there are several mountains named Kŭmgangsan or Little Kŭmgangsan (Sogŭmgangsan) in Korea, this book is about the Kŭmgangsan in northern Kangwŏn Province in present-day North Korea (map P.1).

A different Kŭmgangsan, also known as Sogŭmgangsan or as Northern Mountain (Puksan), was located in close proximity to the Silla capital of Sŏrabŏl (modern Kyŏngju). It was one of the four and later five sacred mountains of the Silla (trad. 57 BCE–935 CE) kingdom that received sacrificial rites from at least the mid-seventh century onward.² This Sillan Kŭmgangsan appears in a number of stories in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa), for example, the story about the Buddhist martyr Ich’adon’s (501–627 CE) head landing on the summit of Kŭmgangsan. Such stories, though fascinating, do not refer to the mountain range in northern Kangwŏn that is the primary subject of this book.³

The name Kŭmgangsan, which I prefer to translate as Adamantine Mountains, referred to this mountain range in Kangwŏn from around the late twelfth century onward, when Kŭmgangsan gained significance in the religious landscape of Korea.⁴ Before the late Koryŏ (918–1392), the Kŭmgangsan in northern Kangwŏn had many other appellations, such as the Maple Ridge Mountains (P’ungaksan) in reference to their beautiful autumn foliage and All Bones Mountains (Kaegolsan), referring to the skeleton-like physical structure of the mountains with their many crystalline-shaped rocks.⁵ After the destruction of numerous Buddhist monasteries during the Mongol invasions (1231–59), Koryŏ scholar Min Chi (1248–1326) advocated for their reconstruction, writing commemorative records for each of them that provided details about the monasteries’ histories and specific features. One of these records pertains to the reconstruction of Yujŏmsa, a monastery in southern Kŭmgangsan. In his Record of Events at Yujŏmsa in Kŭmgangsan (Kŭmgangsan Yujŏmsa sajŏkki), written in 1297, Min names the mountains Kŭmgangsan and connects them with the eighty-fascicle version of the Flower Ornament Sūtra (Taebanggwang pul hwaŏm-gyŏng, S. Avataṃsaka-sūtra), which mentions a bodhisattva named Dharmodgata (Pŏpki Posal) residing at Kŭmgangsan with a retinue of 12,000 followers.⁶

Map P.1 Late Chosŏn Korea, showing the location of Kŭmgangsan.

The naming of P’ungaksan/Kaegolsan as Kŭmgangsan exemplifies the ways in which Buddhist monks and their supporters were inspired by the Flower Ornament Sūtra when naming locations of Buddhist practice. Such naming conventions are prevalent throughout Korea. Several mountains are named Kŭmgangsan or Sogŭmgangsan, and numerous peaks are named after the main figure of this scripture, Vairocana Buddha, including Myohyangsan, Odaesan, Ch’iaksan, and Sobaeksan. Additionally, the enshrinement of a Vairocana was and still is a common occurrence in a Korean monastery’s main hall. It is therefore little surprise that the name of Kŭmgangsan’s tallest summit, Pirobong (Vairocana Peak), and images enshrined as the main divinity in its monasteries are also related to the content of the Flower Ornament Sūtra.⁷ However, the specific topography of Kŭmgangsan is additionally connected to an entirely different doctrinal tradition that has not yet been considered in Korean Buddhist scholarship.

The primary scriptural tradition in which the Bodhisattva Dharmodgata is one of the main protagonists is the Perfection of Wisdom (Panya Paramilta, S. Prajñāpāramitā) tradition. As early as the twelfth century, meditational practitioners residing at Kŭmgangsan worshiped Dharmodgata and identified the entire mountain range as the residence of that bodhisattva.⁸ In so doing, the monks were likely inspired by the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra on the Buddha-Mother’s Producing the Three Treasures (Pulmo ch’ulsaeng samjang panya paramilta kyŏng) or texts related to this scripture. Translated by the Indian monk Dānapāla (Shihu, ?–1017) during the Northern Song (960–1127), this scripture conveys that the Perfection of Wisdom is the ultimate path to awakening. It prescribes the path of bodhisattva practice and the accrual of merit to save all sentient beings. The protagonists of fascicles 30 and 31 of this text are the bodhisattvas Dharmodgata and Sadāprarudīta (P’aryun). Similar to the figure of the young boy Sudhāna in the Flower Garland tradition, Sadāprarudīta embarks on a truth-seeking mission to encounter Dharmodgata at his City of Fragrances (Chunghyangsŏng, S. Ghandavatī), where he listens to the bodhisattva preaching the Perfection of Wisdom.⁹ From the mid-Koryŏ onward, Buddhist monks residing at Kŭmgangsan not only studied Perfection of Wisdom texts and defined Kŭmgangsan as the residence of Dharmodgata, but also identified themselves with Sadāprarudīta as an expedient means to advance their meditational practice. By the fourteenth century, the inner region of Kŭmgangsan had become a devotional Buddhist pilgrimage site with Dharmodgata as the main protagonist. This bodhisattva continued to be worshiped at Kŭmgangsan’s monasteries throughout the Chosŏn period.¹⁰

Although various Buddhist scriptures have informed Kŭmgangsan’s name, topography, and ritual practices, the Diamond Sūtra (Kŭmgang panya paramilta kyŏng) is not likely among them. However, readers may associate Kŭmgangsan with the Diamond Sūtra based on the mountains’ popular English name Diamond Mountains. Perhaps influenced by Japanese interpretations of Korean Buddhist practices, late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Western and Japanese travelers erroneously associated Kŭmgangsan with the Diamond Sūtra, prompting the aforementioned English translation of the mountains’ name.¹¹ In accordance with Min Chi’s reference to Chengguan’s description of the mountains’ appearance, a more appropriate translation might be Adamantine Mountains. But, in order to avoid any misconceived notions or biases, including my own, I will refer to the range with its Korean name throughout this book.

The DOI 10.6069/9780295749266.s001 leads to an interactive website that allows for searching a relational MySQL database from which the data analysis in this book derives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book represents a pivotal juncture in my academic journey that began with a fascination with my mother’s homeland and gradually segued into a lifelong quest to research and teach about modern and premodern Korea.

I am humbly indebted to many generous friends and colleagues for their intellectual and emotional support. First and foremost, I must thank Robert Buswell for his dedicated support and guidance. I am also grateful to Burglind Jungmann and John Duncan for kindly providing me with invaluable resources and insightful advice. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Peter Lee for providing me with a list of primary sources about Chosŏn period Kŭmgangsan that jumpstarted my research.

My heartfelt thanks go to my colleagues in the History of Art Department at the University of Kansas, especially Amy McNair, Sherry Fowler, Maki Kaneko, and to department chairs Linda Stone-Ferrier and David Cateforis for their unwavering support of my three-year research leave at Harvard University.

During my fellowship work at Harvard, Sun Joo Kim and Yukio Lippit each generously invested precious time to support and mentor me. Susan Lawrence’s emotional and administrative support guaranteed a comfortable and productive work environment at Harvard’s Korea Institute. I am extremely grateful to Sun Joo Kim as well as Peter Bol, Sunglim Kim, Si Nae Park, James Robson, John H. Kim, John S. Lee, Matt Lauer, and Melany Park for dedicating valuable time out of their busy schedules to read draft chapters and provide critical and much-needed feedback. Sincerest thanks are also due to Korea Institute fellows Ji-Eun Lee, Nancy Lin, Charles LaShure, and Mike Prentice for many stimulating conversations. I also greatly appreciate the reading suggestions and constructive comments on my work by Jeff Hamburger, David Howell, Jinah Kim, Waiyee Li, Michael Szonyi, Karen Thornber, and Eugene Wang. My kindest thanks are also due to Wendy Guan and Jeff Blossom at Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis for their help with historical GIS data necessary to create the maps for this book. The warm support and encouragement of faculty, graduate students, and staff, tremendous library and museum resources, and the intellectually stimulating environment at Harvard were instrumental to the form and completion of this book.

Mikyung Kang, librarian for the Korean collection at the Harvard-Yenching Library, and Vickie Fu Doll, head of the East Asian library at the University of Kansas, spared no effort to locate and purchase my requested source material. I must also note the kind and supportive staff at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul and Ch’unch’ŏn, the National Folk Museum, the Gahoe Museum, the Seoul Museum of History, the Kyujanggak Institute of Korean Studies at Seoul National University, the Changsŏgak Archives, and the main library at the Academy of Korean Studies. Staff at these and many other public and private institutions in South Korea kindly led me to precious material from their collections that was critical for my research.

Many thanks to the two anonymous reviewers of this book as well as University of Washington Press executive editor Lorri Hagman and series editor Clark Sorensen for their thoughtful advice and astute reading of the manuscript. Much appreciation is owed to my graduate research assistants Melanie Leng, Weitian Yan, Dandan Xu, and Pinyan Zhu for their patience and attention to detail with seemingly endless files of travel accounts, poems, and photographs of rock inscriptions. The brilliant questions and suggestions from editor Jenny Gavacs helped me to refine the overall structure of this book. Any remaining errors and inconsistencies are, of course, mine.

Research funding for this book was generously provided by a Soon Young Kim Fellowship at Harvard University’s Korea Institute, an ACLS/The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, a Harvard-Yenching Library travel grant, an International Faculty Travel Award provided by University of Kansas (KU) International Programs, the KU General Research Fund, the New Faculty General Research Fund, the KU CLAS Research Excellence Fund, a faculty travel grant by the Hall Center for the Humanities at KU, and Academy of Korean Studies Research Fellowships in 2012 and 2019.

Finally, I would like to thank my family in Korea and Germany. Despite being separated by vast distances, working in distinctly different fields, and being at various stages of life, I know I can always count on them. Very special thanks go to my loving husband Robert Mihalik for closely accompanying me on this exciting journey.

ABBREVIATIONS AND LANGUAGE

Romanized terms are Korean unless marked otherwise:

C Chinese

J Japanese

S Sanskrit

This book adheres to the McCune-Reischauer system for the romanization of Korean terms, Hanyu Pinyin for Chinese, and Hepburn for Japanese. Sinitic characters can be found in the glossary. Unless otherwise noted, dates are provided according to the solar calendar. With the exception of a few of the most frequently mentioned sites at Kŭmgangsan, such as Manp’oktong (Ten Thousand Falls Ravine), Ongnyudong (Jade Stream Ravine), and Kuryong P’okp’o (Nine Dragon Falls), place names have not been translated into English. Names of temples, hermitages, and pavilions are romanized, for example, as Singyesa, Podŏgam, and Ch’ŏngganjŏng, or translated as Singye Monastery, Podŏk Hermitage, and Ch’ŏnggan Pavilion.

CARVING STATUS AT KŬMGANGSAN

Introduction

IN THE FOURTH LUNAR MONTH OF 1618, CHŎNG WŎN (D.U.), NA MAN’GAP (1592–1642), and Yi Sangjil (d.u.) traveled from Seoul to Yangyang to meet Chŏng Yŏp (1563–1625), the magistrate of Yangyang, who was Chŏng Wŏn’s grandfather and also Na’s father-in-law. The goal of their trip was to join Chŏng Yŏp on a journey to Kŭmgangsan. The tour was challenging despite the relatively short distance. In his travel account, Chŏng Yŏp describes the arduous four-day journey on horseback, during which they experienced physical exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and sweat, but he did not dare give up and return home. Since famous scholars and officials had seen and written about it, Chŏng felt obliged to visit the mountains:

Among famous government-officials, honorable and heroic men, there is no one who did not pick up his walking stick, fasten his shoelaces, forget his physical exhaustion, and endure hardship, fearing only that he might be unable to profoundly explore and admire Kŭmgangsan. . . . Whether then or now, whether one is noble or low, wise or foolish, all people have looked upon Kŭmgangsan untiringly, have talked about Kŭmgangsan until their mouths became dry, have composed and recited poems and published books about Kŭmgangsan so frequently that I do not know how many [have been composed, recited, and published]. Why is Kŭmgangsan world renowned and people so insanely obsessed with it?¹

While researching travels to Kŭmgangsan during the Chosŏn period, I asked myself the same question. Among numerous places on the Korean peninsula with attractive scenery such as Myohyangsan in P’yŏngan Province (P’yŏngan’do) or the river scenery of Tanyang in Ch’ungch’ŏng Province (Ch’ungch’ŏngdo), why did people choose to travel to Kŭmgangsan? Were travelers (yuin) like Chŏng simply tourists? Scholarship on Chosŏn travel has yet to provide substantive answers to these questions.

This book offers an understanding of mid- to late Chosŏn travel from the combined perspective of visual/material culture, literature, and social history. Previously unstudied material culture related to Kŭmgangsan reveals competition between micro layers of elites and near-elites for social recognition via publicly visible forms of social memory as opposed to administrative instruments of the royal court such as examination degrees and official positions, or local expressions of sajok (families of scholar-officials) power through membership in local rosters.² By focusing on nonreligious, social motivations for travel in the Chosŏn, this book hopes to broaden the understanding that Daoism and Confucianism became the hegemonic reading of mountain space.³ It also seeks to enrich Anglophone scholarship that has emphasized Kŭmgangsan’s modern and contemporary political and symbolic significance by looking at the mountains’ long history as a cultural destination where sophisticated travelers built sites of collective memory, creating artistic works for future travelers to admire.⁴

Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan complements conventional scholarship on Chosŏn travel that frequently discusses travelers’ political motivations.⁵ Different political factions among the elite created geopolitical power blocs, using Chinese and indigenous landscapes to express and promote their ideological convictions. Followers of Yi Hwang (1501–1570), Song Siyŏl (1607–1689), and Yi I (1536–1584) publicly exposed their cultural authority by claiming and constructing space at Ch’ŏngnyangsan in northern Kyŏngsang Province (Kyŏngsangdo), Hwayangdong in northern Ch’ungch’ŏng Province (Ch’ungch’ŏngdo), and Kosan in Hwanghae Province (Hwanghaedo).⁶ At these locations, their followers transformed local space into a locus of orthodox learning by building and maintaining schools and shrines, conducting rituals, and carving rock inscriptions to commemorate, perpetuate, and promote their teachers’ legacy.

Kŭmgangsan, however, transcended factional and regional boundaries. The elite neither built nor maintained any Confucian shrines at Kŭmgangsan, but the rocks they inscribed commanded the most powerful elite presence of any premodern travel destination in Korea. The fact that Kŭmgangsan attracted various layers of elite groups regardless of political affiliation explains the high concentration of autographs inscribed on the mountains. More than five thousand autographs (chemyŏng), carved by elite and near-elite (i.e., aspiring elite) travelers between the mid-sixteenth and late nineteenth centuries created and fortified the cultural link between higher social strata and Kŭmgangsan.⁷ However, it was not the ideological legacy of a scholar, as in the case of Song Siyŏl at Hwayangdong, but the cultural legacy of a renowned calligrapher, the mid-Chosŏn government official Yang Saŏn (1517–1584), whose outstanding inscription carved at Ten Thousand Falls Ravine (Manp’oktong) in Inner Kŭmgang contributed to the popularity of Kŭmgangsan among learned men.⁸ Varieties of calligraphy styles were one of the key criteria of distinction for inscriptions that the elites carved at the mountains.

Compared to other sites related to elite power blocs that developed in the Korean landscape, Kŭmgangsan is an unusual example of heterotopic space within a space largely dominated by the cultural elite. Hence, Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and Edward Soja’s notion of thirdspace are particularly effective in supporting the sociospatial emphasis of this book. Heterotopias or thirdspaces run counter to a conventional spatial order, provoking new ways of understanding social and cultural behavior. According to Foucault, heterotopia is a transgressive practice of space that represents counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia . . . in which all the other real sites that can be found in the culture are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Edward Soja reformulates heterotopia as thirdspace, which is an alternative envisioning of spatiality that challenges all conventional modes of spatial thinking.⁹ The concepts of heterotopia and thirdspace essentially describe a deconstruction of spatiality. Although spatial practices at Kŭmgangsan did not entirely invert social behavior, sajok and near-elites conceived Kŭmgangsan’s space as heterotopic space when carving their names, which upset the existing norms and customs of elite travel and shaped new modes of sociospatial demeanor.

Travelers’ sociospatial activities constructed their cultural world through a set of conventional and normative understandings of Kŭmgangsan as a space-place-landscape complex.¹⁰ According to Tilley, Meaningful spaces of landscape are constructed through the temporalities of historical acts. . . . past actions, events, myths and stories ‘color’ landscapes. Learning about landscape acts as a primary medium of socialization. Knowledge of landscape is bound up with the knowledge of the self. Knowing ‘how to go on’ in a landscape involves a practical mastery of space which is simultaneously a process of finding oneself and one’s social world . . . landscape plays an important role in the constitution of self-identity.¹¹

Landscapes such as Kŭmgangsan constituted a medium of cultural expression. Whereas rock inscriptions marked Kŭmgangsan as a place, the mountains provided the setting where place could be practiced, that is, where travelers integrated with the space of Kŭmgangsan through their movement, activities, and narratives of the sites they visited. Kŭmgangsan was a practiced place that became the subject of imaginary renderings of its landscape in sonic, performative, and pictorial narratives. The Chosŏn travelers’ performative engagement with the Korean landscape not only reveals their identity but in fact embodies it. By identifying particular places and particular histories of places, for example, Ten Thousand Falls Ravine in Inner Kŭmgang, and by carving names and pasting poems, travelers expressed their social identity in the spatial context of their travels.

The act of visiting a notable place and leaving inscriptions was part of a performance originally exclusive to the elite, which included oral, aural, and literary components. The Chosŏn literati engaged in such performances because they were socially obliged to respond to the literary creations of those who traveled to Kŭmgangsan before them. As a form of identity construction, they penned their own poems and prose travel accounts and carved their autographs to become members of the literary tradition associated with a particular cultural memory site. This discovery demonstrates that the sense of connectedness with the social elite was not only tied to knowledge of the Confucian Classics, the successful passing of government exams, or the display of literary skills, but was also linked to sociospatial performative activities in the landscape.

My interpretation of Kŭmgangsan as a practiced place aligns with the perspective that the Korean landscape resembles a text to be interpreted, commented on, and written about by travelers.¹² Nevertheless, although the viewing and appreciation of a landscape was determined by mental constructs comprising myths, legends, lore, poetry, histories, and other writings, my research focuses on interactive elements between traveler and landscape, and views the appreciation of landscape not only as a literary but also as a performative practice.

Elite Travelers?

In this book, the term elite denotes upper social strata segments, mostly sajok and pŏryŏl. In Chosŏn Korea, elites defined themselves by noneconomic qualities such as honor and the prestige of one’s kin. Being elite was an ascriptive status that one could only inherit rather than achieve. Pŏryŏl, also referred to as kyŏnghwa sejok, were the superstratum elite.¹³ They can be defined as forty to fifty higher-ranking hereditary aristocratic families who lived in and around the capital, Seoul (Hanyang). The pŏryŏl were able to maintain honor and prestige by producing a continuous line of descendants passing civil or military government exams and by holding ministerial rank official positions for several generations, an achievement that was diligently recorded in genealogical records (chokpo), which originally only elite families were allowed to have.¹⁴ In contrast, sajok who lived in the countryside only occasionally held lower-ranking positions. The generic administrative term yangban, originally referring to the civil and military branches of administration and their families, is another term referring to the elite strata of late Chosŏn society. Marginal yangban commonly referred to themselves as sajok.¹⁵ In the late Chosŏn yangban primarily came to refer to the civilian branch, to which the military branch was considered subordinate. Another term used to refer to the late Chosŏn elite is literati, a general reference to individuals who were literate in hanmun texts, which includes pŏryŏl and sajok as well as, to a certain extent, near-elites.

Both the central aristocracy and the local elite held government positions, but the positions of sajok were generally subordinate to those of the