연행록에 나타난 幻術認識의 변화와 박지원의 「幻戱記」

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the significance of Park Ji-won's "Hwanhuigi" within the traditional accounts of illusions and magic tricks that appear in Yeonhaengrok, literally, Beijing travelogues. Park Ji-won's "Hwanhuigi" is considered as the best among its kind. Chosun society had a negative conception of illusions in general. This trend translated to intellectual's perception of illusions as well. In sixteenth century, Heo Bong expressed the feeling of shame after watching a magic show, as if he had violated the principles of Fu Yi(傅奕) who was strongly against Buddhism. This can be said to have derived from the social conventions that identified magic illusions with Buddhism which were considered heretical in Chosun. In other words, illusions were considered as the product of unjustifiable tricks by heretics. Such negative perception, in turn, hindered people from reaching a concrete understanding of illusions, thus, making people treat them as a mere abstract object. Hence, most Yeonhaengrok that dealt with illusions focused on the performer's tricks and usually ended with the sense of mystery and confusion that they could not understand the techniques with which the performers deceived the audience. Such perception underwent some transformations as people had more chances to experience magic tricks and illusions. This does not mean that the negative perception has been fundamentally removed, but people started to treat illusions as an object of more serious thinking and discussion. Gwon Bok-in who sought the source of illusion-making in terms of the dichotomy between truth and falsehood is a case in point. However, extreme cases of reinforcing the social conventions also existed along with this trend. Gang Jae-eung who merely replaced the equation of Buddhism and illusion with that of Western Studies and illusion is a typical example of these cases. He did not pay attention to the forming principle by which the illusions are created, but dismissed them altogether as deceptive means of the Western Studies. Within this context, a peculiar degenerative idea of identifying Western science and technology with illusions emerged. Park Ji-won's "Hwanhuigi" was a very unique piece of writing that raised an entirely different question in this intellectual climate of Chosun. Instead of questioning the performer as the conventional writers and intellectuals did, he problematized the audience who were being cheated. This could be marked as an epistemological change to the perception of illusions in that Park thought of illusions and their forming principles in terms of universal perception. However, this does not mean that he went beyond the dichotomy between the truth and the falsehood. Zhao Guanglian's discussion of illusions brought on certain impact to Park Ji-won's such thinking. Zhao argued that things which constructed reality are no different from illusions. This chance encounter gave rise to a high-level discussion of illusions that is unprecedented in Chosun's cultural history as Park adopted this idea in his "Epilogue to the Hwanhuigi" Its significance lies in displacing the question of illusions with the epistemological and ontological theses.