性齋 許傳의 「外國記」에 관한 小考

Abstract

As Chinese translated books of occidental studies became popular in Chosun, the intellects could receive information about the West which had hardly been known previously. Along with the background of the time, texts written in a new way appeared. Those were the abstracts which dealt with only interesting information from a variety of Chinese translated books of occidental studies. Heo Jeon’s Oegukgi was also one of those texts. Heo Jeon wrote Oegukgi by quoting many parts from Haiguo Tuzhi written by Wei Yuan in the Qing Dynasty. If so, we many think that Oegukgi should be just the ‘summary’ of Haiguo Tuzhi. This study has revealed the list of books he referred to when writing Oegukgi other than the quotations from Haiguo Tuzhi and also has analyzed Oegukgi’s system and characteristics of description and learned that he changed the order of contents and added some contents to reorganize the knowledge in his own viewpoint. Heo Jeon added geographic information about Okinawa, Mongolia, or the east of Russia which is not contained in Haiguo tuzhi. Unlike the position of Wei Yuan from the Qing Dynasty, Heo Jeon from Chosun deemed that the force of those neighboring regions should be threatening. Also, Heo Jeon quoted what had been seen or heard by Chosun people about the foreigners they directly met to verify Haiguo tuzhi’s information. Oegukgi is not the text to select the latest information of the time and understand the international relations sharply. We may have to see that Oegukgi should be as one of the ways of writing shown by the intellect that lived in the 19th century when there was plenty of information about foreign lands.