L.J. Writes

I learned yesterday that evidently a bunch of jingoistic pseudo-historians (let's call them JiPHs for short) who claim to be "patriots" helped put a halt to the Early Korea Project, a joint publication project by Harvard University and (actual) historians of ancient Korea. The JiPHs' complaint? That the project put the site of one of the major Chinese colonies, Nakrang, in the Korean peninsula, as opposed to the Chinese continent where the JiPHs insist Nakrang was located.


Different theories on the location of Nakrang: Most South Korean scholars (green), North Korean scholars (blue), so-called "irregular" scholars, i.e. JiPHs (red)

The JiPHs' argument, as always, is total baloney. The historical and most crucially the archeological evidence points to Nakrang being on the peninsula, around what is now Pyeongyang, North Korea. (Green area of map above) The JiPHs, however, insist that Nakrang was in modern China to the west of the Liao River (Red area of map) because Reasons because Korea wasn't centered on the Korean peninsula we were a continental power dammit and the Chinese could never have had a presence on the Korean peninsula and it's colonialist to say otherwise and wahhhhh why are their dicks so small.

That's their entire thing, that ancient Korea has to have been a continental power, no, a continent-spanning empire in order for our history to have any worth, the evidence must only be interpreted to support this conclusion, and any scholarship that says otherwise is imperialist treason to the Korean people and ughhhh I feel slimy just typing this wanky nonsense.

Like mainstream historical scholars tend to, I've regarded the JiPHs with amused tolerance because I assumed they were harmless though annoying cranks. But now, realizing they can get valuable, serious research shut down with their pseudoacademic crap and get members of the national legislature on their side, I realize they are a serious threat and need a stompdown.

This gives me more incentive than ever to finish and publish my novel which places Nakrang, obviously, squarely in the Korean peninsula where it belongs. I want with all my heart for this novel to gain enough influence that the idea of Nakrang in Pyeongyang becomes popularized and the JiPHs can only scream and cry while their "theory" goes down the toilet where it belongs. That's not the only JiPH sacred cow I'm slaughtering, so may their cryfest be bitter and long.

And sure, if that happens they'll start their usual campaigns of smears and harassment, tactics that people with actual proof and logic on their side don't have to resort to. And you know what? Bring it. I am so ready for these liars and cowards. They have gone too far and this means war.

My heroine, the Lady Soseono, is a famous figure in Korean history and one of the most prominent women from ancient Korean history. She has appeared in numerous works of historical fiction, usually as a supporting character by her second husband's side but more rarely as a protagonist in her own right. Obviously I couldn't neglect the market research in this area, and I felt a combination of trepidation and anticipation as I searched for novels starring Soseono for comparison with my own ideas.

What I found, to my disappointment and admittedly a small thrill of delight, was that these novels did not in any way do her justice. Some combination of the words trashy, offensive, and pointless applied to all of them, and none of them showed the depth of linguistic and historical research that I was hoping for. Here are some of the works I've looked at, or at least skimmed because my patience only goes so far. I did get some ideas for my own novel from these, mostly in terms of what not to do, so at least it wasn't a complete waste of time.

( Three novels, many non-graphic mentions of rape because ugh. )

Even aside from quality issues, these books don't accurately portray the language or society of ancient Korea. "Soseono," for instance, was unlikely to be her given name but was probably a place name or title. Then again this lack of research is a flaw in all Korean historical fiction, not just these three novels, and that's something I hope to correct with my own work. These novels taught me what to do and especially what not to do along the way.

I'm reading a book called Ancient Korean Conceptions of Life and Death (고대 한국인의 생사관), which turns out to be a little bit of a misleading title--in fact the author Na Huira frankly admits that we can't know for sure how ancient Koreans viewed life and death. We have a better idea once they took on more cosmopolitan (and better-documented) beliefs, most prominently Buddhism. This doesn't help me a whole lot, though, since my story takes place centuries before Koreans became Buddhists. Besides, culture probably played a role even after the changes in religious faith, differentiating a Korean Buddhist's beliefs from, say, those of her Vietnamese co-religionist.

( One wedding and one funeral, except not really? )

So this book, while slender and speculative out of necessity, is providing me with some good material. More than the information, though, I like the feel for the ancient Koreans I get from reading. The discussions give me the means to knit together information I already know, like with the Bear Woman myth and marriage as death-rebirth. For some reason I never thought of the myth in terms of a wedding ritual before, though the connection is obvious once I think about it. I look forward to what more I can learn.

Also I dug up a whole bunch of books on the details of Goguryeoh life, and I'm hitting the library so hard once I get a free day. Snoopy dance!

( Yay! )

I keep blowing my self-imposed deadlines on the novel, so I've decided to work on it a little every day--specifically at least one hour a day. I'll be blogging about that work, both as a way to leave notes to myself and to show that hey, it's alive!

( She didn't eat rice, at least not a lot of it. )

I ended up checking out one book I hadn't seen before but had marked in my research notes, Traffic Routes and Footholds in Ancient China-Korea Relations. I need to get serious about spatial relations and trade/military routes and bases. I've placed most of the major locations in the story, but haven't figured out a pivotal one--the seat of the heroine's first husband. I do have a site I like very much, but I'll need to check and see if it's feasible.

As noted at the end of the notes on ancient names post, our modern pronunciation of ancient names probably doesn't match the way the ancient Koreans themselves pronounced these names. Either Chinese characters were used for their meaning instead of their sound, or the letters fulfilled phonetic functions that didn't involve sounding out the full letter.

For this reason the name of my heroine was a mystery for the longest time, and not just to me. Literally, in Chinese, it means call-west-slave (召西奴), but it's pretty obvious the letters were used to transcribe the sound of a Korean name and weren't used for their meaning.

( Theorizing, googling, then inspiration! )