제주도의 역사적 토포스 : 페리퍼리 그리고 프론티어

Abstract

The historical topos of Cheju Island has been formulated along the structure of binary perceptions. One is a Cheju Island, which is perceived by the central power, located at the periphery; and the other is a Cheju Island located at the frontier that offers points of contact with Japan and others. Based on The Chronicle of Choson Dynasty, in this article I examine the traditional and historical topos of Cheju Island from an angle of these binary perceptions. In terms of periphery, Cheju Island was, more than anything else, a front-base of national defense that was to protect the center. The Choson court, which imposed a nationwide maritime prohibition policy and paid utmost attention to the expulsion of "Japanese pirates," established Cheju Island as the frontal defense line against the Japanese pirates and, for that, employed relevant military and administrative measures. Second, Cheju Island was an economic periphery of exploitation by the center. Its residents were constantly forced to pay tribute such local staples as horses and maritime produce to the central government. Third, Cheju Island was defined by the center as an uncivilized periphery where the benefit of center's advanced culture hardly reached. During the Choson period, Cheju Island remained an object of Confucian enlightenment project promoted by means of cultural education and control. In contrast, from the perspective of Cheju residents' own stance, Cheju Island was a frontier of life as well as a front-base of adventurism, which had its own cultural tradition and customs and manners. The natural environments were not suitable for rice cultivation, and they drove the Cheju islanders to the arena of fishery and trade. Thanks to the castaways who drifted to foreign countries and returned back with experiences abroad, the Cheju residents acquired a wide range of new knowledge about the other, expanded their visionary outlook, and nurtured themselves in the spirit of frontier. Furthermore, those, including fishers and woman divers, who moved to the southern coastal areas of the mainland, carved out new spaces of life in many different ways and contributed to expanding the sphere of Cheju islanders' life activities. The historical topos of Cheju Island, which has stood on the binary perceptional structure of periphery and frontier, has produced the legacies that have juxtaposed the unilateral control of the center against the subjective way of life of the Cheju residents, who have tried to counter the control from above. These legacies still linger on in contradiction. But it should be emphasized that it is the Cheju people themselves who should make efforts to create and preserve the real historical topos of Cheju Island.