기획논문: 대한제국기 가사에 나타난 이국 형상의 의미 / 논평: 조해숙

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the perception of the West during the Korean Empire(1897～1910) through two works of Kasa, <Seoyugyeonmunrok> and <Haeyuga>. Seoyugyeonmunrok, which deals the experience of travelling in Britain and Southeast Asia was written by a bureaucrat who'd participated coronation ceremony for Edward 7th as a diplomatic delegate. Haeyuga describes the experieces in Hawai and the US where the writer had been living for 6 years according to his own intention. As is well known, the period of the Korean Empire is the era in that diverse attempts to reach a modernity were planned and tried. In that period, the West didn't only means the whole strange space but also the new age of modernity. Seen in this perspective, two works of Kasa, written by old intellectuals in traditional writing style, could be viewed as a signature of the aspect of that era in which pre-modernities and modernities coexisted together. The West, expressed in two works was perceived as an aspect of strange other or the space of preoccupying the civilization. Their understanding of the West was displayed through the eyes of an observer or the experiences of an alien. Like what I was saying above, their views toward the West is differentiated from the eyes of the traditional literati who regarded the West as a world of vulgarity, while they demarcated themselves from the enlightened intellectuals who thought the West was the standard of civilization.