Two Millenia of Sinology: The Korean Reception, Curation, and Reinvention of Cultural Knowledge from China

The tale of Korean Sinology is as dramatic as that of Korea itself, which has moved from being a faithful periphery of the Chinese civilization to a newly rising economic power in the modern world. This article begins with a survey of some distinctive features of premodern Korean scholarly works by the end of the Chosŏn dynasty from the perspective of Sinology. Then it moves on to modern scholarship, focusing mostly on the field of Chinese history, which I think is the most active and innovative among the several different fields in today's Korean Sinology. The history of Korean Sinology is a telling case study that illustrates how humanistic learning is deeply connected to fundamental aspects of a society's politics, economics, and culture at a given moment in time.