春睡堂 鄭秀民의 삶과 학문

Abstract

Chunsudang Jeong Soo-min was born as a great-grandson of Ildu Jeong Yeo-chang at a head family based in Gaepyeong village. Jeong Yeo-chang was taught by Kim Jong-jik and later became a master of monarch Yeonsangun. But he was involved in a political purge, or muosahwa, and killed in Baeso. Even, his body was put out from his coffin and slashed into pieces when another political purge, or gapjasahwa occurred. He was reinstated after a political turnover, so-called Jungjong Banjeong. Nevertheless, however, the fact that Jeong Soo-min was a great grandson of Jeong Yeo-chang became dark clouds heavily hanging over the former's life. By the way, it seems that Jeong Soo-min voluntarily chose to accept the clouds. Thus, he gave up going into government service and, instead, compiled 『Munheongong Silki』 under full responsibility for recording the later life of Jeong Yeo-chang. However, Jeong Soo-min made an great deal of accomplishments so that it's not enough to just say that he was a great-grandson of Jeong Yeo-chang or organized records about the later life of his great-grandfather. Among the accomplishments, the most important thing is that Jeong Soo-min restored the personal records of Jeong Yeo-chang, which were fully disappeared when he became a victim of the above two political purges, by compiling 『Munehongong Silki』. In addition to being important to a particular family, the compilation was so meaningful in that it was to preserve the records of such historical figure that might have been permanently disappeared. The second important accomplishment is that Jeong Soo-min revealed how competent he was a human geographer by compiling the journal of Hamyang-gun, that is, 『Cheonryeongji』 which was the first literature on local geography that was edited by a person of the private sector. The third is that he left a collection of writings, 『Chunsudangjip』 in which we can see and understand how his world of literature was, how he lived, how was exchanges that he made with others and how was the times that he lived. In conclusion, Jeong Soo-min may be regarded a figure of sambulhu, which means the three never-rotten things in accordance with 『Chunchu Jwajeon』, respectively dubbed as ipdeok, ipgong and ipeon.