박지원의 금강산 유람과 창작

Abstract

Starting in the latter half of the 17th century, Korea under the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) was swept by a fashion for excursions to Mt. Kumgang, known as the Diamond Mountain. Countless sightseers set out for the mountain, thus leading to a flood of verse and prose travelogues. In 1765, Park Ji-won (1737-1805; pen name: Yeonam) likewise traveled to Mt. Kumgang together with his friends, Sin Gwang-on(申光蘊, 1735-1785) and Yu Eon-ho(兪彦鎬, 1730-96), and Yu Eon-seon(兪彦䥧, 1722-1776) the last companion’s elder brother. “Seeing the Sunrise at Chongseok Pavilion” (Chongseokjeong Gwanilchul, 叢石亭觀日出), a poem in classical Chinese, and “The Tale of Kim the Daoist Immortal” (Kim Sinseonjeon, 金神仙傳) are his representative works addressing the experience. Moreover, even in various prose works and Jehol Diary (Yeolha Ilgi, 熱河日記), Park repeatedly reminisced on his excursion to Mt. Kumgang. Although it was thus an important literary event, the trip to Mt. Kumgang has been little studied in existing research on Park. After widely excavating related materials and concretely reconstructing the process of Park’s excursion at the time, with this as the background, the present study sought to examine in depth “Seeing the Sunrise at Chongseok Pavilion” and “The Tale of Kim the Daoist Immortal,” two masterpieces yielded by the tour of Mt. Kumgang. Such an attempt will help to study the innumerable verse and prose travelogues that were composed as a result of the fashion for excursions to Mt. Kumgang during the latter half of the Joseon Dynasty.