The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [184]
I accepted his outstretched hand and we sat not quite facing each other. “Yuhbo,” I said, “Since you’ve been home, there’s much I’ve wanted to tell you.”
The moon swelled as the evening advanced. Its silvery light shone through the clear glass windows and diffused the shadows between us.
Historical Note
WHILE THE CALLIGRAPHER’S DAUGHTER IS A WORK OF FICTION, IT TAKES place in a country whose antiquity, often alluded to in the novel, might be unfamiliar to some readers. Korea is one of the oldest unified nation-states in history and is also one of the most homogeneous societies in the world. Two of Korea’s dynasties, including the most recent Joseon Dynasty * (1392–1910), are among the longest sustained monarchies in world history. Graced with peace, reformation and enlightenment, these monarchies also suffered strife: royal filicide, internecine coups, attempted rebellions, factionalism, invasions and oppression. It is the extraordinary longevity of Korean political, ethnic and cultural continuity that remains a wellspring of the nation’s proud identity.
Korea’s legendary origin is remarkably pinpointed to a specific day more than 4,300 years ago, October 3, 2333 BCE, and is a mythic saga of a heavenly visitation to a she-bear on a mountain who ultimately gives birth to Korea’s first king, Dangun. In the years leading to the Japanese occupation, the Dangun legend rose to importance as newspapers pitted Korea’s ancient heavenly heritage against the Japanese emperor’s relatively recent divine pedigree in a contest of primacy. But until the modern age, neither country disputed the supremacy and longevity of China.
In all of East Asia, China was regarded as the center of the civilized world. Those who were friends were like little brothers who, in exchange for loyalty, symbolic tributes and trade, benefited from Chinese military protection and advances in culture and civilization. Those who were enemies, like the Mongols and the Manchus, were considered barbarians.
Clearly China had a profound influence on the Korean peninsula, but over the centuries Korea transformed those influences into its own distinct advances in literature, art, ceramics, printing, philosophy, astronomy, medicine and scholarship. Korea invented movable metal type (c. 1230) more than two hundred years before Gutenberg. The world’s first self-striking water clock was constructed in 1434 at the dawn of the Joseon Dynasty, followed by the invention of new sundials, the precision rain gauge and several other astronomical and horological devices in Korea’s golden age of science (King Sejong’s reign, 1412–50). The most significant invention under King Sejong was the Korean phonetic alphabet, simple enough to be learned by all classes, yet so comprehensive it is still used today. In terms of philosophy, the establishment of Confucianism in the Joseon Dynasty as state policy, religion and social norm was so transformative it has been distinguished as Neo-Confucianism by historians. Also, Korea is the only nation in the world where Christianity first took root without the presence of priests or missionaries, but exclusively as a result of the written word—Bibles, translated into Chinese by Jesuits, that a Korean scholar-official brought home from a diplomatic trip to Beijing in 1631.
In contrast to Korea’s brotherly friendship with China, Korea and Japan shared a long-standing acrimony, exacerbated over the centuries by repeated Japanese pirate raids and the brutal Hideyoshi Invasions in 1592–98. China came to Korea’s defense, and that conflict ended in stalemate, but not before Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin