尹錫鳳의 사상과 민족운동

Abstract

Yun Seok-bong is a Confucian scholar of the Hwaseo school and was taught by Kim Pyeong-muk and Ryu Jung-gyo. In 1890, he left his hometown, Yangju, Gyeonggi-do, and hid himself in a mountain near Boryong, Chungchongnam-do, because he decided to live in retirement instead of actively fighting against Japan during the invasion. When Ryu In-seok, whom he had studied with under the same teachers, rose up righteous army against Japanese oppression for the cause of our country’s independence, he did not participate. Instead, he established a shrine called Jipseongdang, where the portraits of Zhu Xi and Song Si-yeol were hung and endeavored there to train younger students along with the local residents of Boryong. Not until the Eulsa(1905) Treaty between Korea and Japan was concluded in 1905 did he start to come forward to anti-Japanese movements. In January 1906, he attended a public lecture hosted by Choi Ik-hyun at the Gwollisa Shrine and discussed the way to cope with our country’s miserable situation. He sent a letter to King Gojong twice, appealing to him to severely punish five traitors who were in favor of the Eulsa(1905) Treaty and not to allow the conclusion of the agreement. However, the letter was not even delivered to the king and he deeply deplored the fact. After that incident, he participated in the Hongju Righteous Army in May 1906 in accordance with Min Jong-sik’s suggestion. As a military officer (?), he wrote appeals to Gojong on his behalf. However, while Japan was conducting a series of attacks across the Hongjuseong Fortress resulting hundreds of victims, he was arrested on May 30, 1906. After being transported to Seoul, he was confined by Japanese military command. In prison, he abstained from eating to protest Japan, saying, “I’d rather starve to death than eat a bit of Japanese food.” He always believed in Sinocentrism: that China is the center of the world. Advocating for the Defending Orthodoxy and Rejecting Heterodoxy Theory, he strongly opposed building a relationship with Japan and the West and also proposed to sever relations with the Qing Dynasty. When Gojong ascended to the throne as emperor and then changed the name of ‘Joseon’ to the Korean Empire, he criticized it as ‘presumptuous behavior’. He had a worldview more focused on Tao than on the nation itself. Before he witnessed the horrible situation of the Hongjuseong Fortress thoroughly destroyed by Japan, his national consciousness seems to have been faint. Likewise, under the Japanese occupation, he strived to follow Zhu Xi’s Tao in the mountain of Boryeong at first, but later participated in the Righteous Army, practicing what he said. His life clearly showed the agony of Confucian intellectuals who lived in the late Joseon Dynasty and early Korean Empire.