『山海经』在韓國的歷史接受與文化再造

Abstract

As a composite text of geography and mythology, Shan Hai Jing(山海經) has long been regarded as the mythological matrix of China and an archetype of the Eastern spatial imagination. However, its multilayered reception and reconstruction in the Korean(including pre-modern Joseon) context has not yet been systematically examined. This study traces the historical trajectory of Shan Hai Jing on the Korean Peninsula and in contemporary Korea, focusing on three dimensions:historical reception, epistemological transformation, and contemporary cultural reproduction. The findings reveal a continuous yet heterogeneous reception process. In antiquity, Shan Hai Jing followed a pattern of "iconic precedence and textual delay": its mythic motifs were first absorbed into Goguryeo mural imagery and ritual symbolism, whereas within the Confucian canon-centered knowledge system, it was excluded as a "fantastical" text and remained active only in literary allusion. During the Joseon period, the Silhak School rediscovered its empirical value for historical-geographical verification and even appropriated its decentered and outward-expanding spatial model-exemplified in the Cheonhado world map-to inscribe a Korean-centered worldview through the framework of an imported world-mapping paradigm. From the late twentieth century onward, Korean scholarship has re-evaluated Shan Hai Jing beyond philology, forming three major research orientations: (1) textual stratification and compositional structure, (2) mythological motifs and East Asian cultural intertextuality, and (3) symbolic systems and knowledge-history critique. In the contemporary cultural industry, works such as the film Decision to Leave, the webtoon Bingtanghulu, and the MMORPG TaegoM actively remake Shan Hai Jing's narrative prototypes and bestiary into high-recognition, cross-media East Asian fantasy IP, enabling the text to function as a mediating symbol for regional mythological circulation and cross-cultural dialogue. This study argues that the reception of Shan Hai Jing in Korea demonstrates a historical chain from symbolic absorption to scholarly epistemologization and finally to cultural-industrial regeneration. At the same time, the Korean case offers an alternative pathway-beyond the binary paradigms of China and the West-for reconstructing a shared East Asian mythology knowledge system.