The rise of China in Asia-Pacific has raised concerns about the future outlook of international relations in the region. While the United States is still strong enough to compete with China for regional dominance, middle powers are trying to manage their relations with China in ways that best serve their own national interests. If one tries to look for clues about how to deal with a powerful China, the history of the ‘century of humiliation’ has not much to tell: China was weak because of the twin crises of civil unrest and foreign invasion that had ushered in a series of calamities. However, before the ‘century of humiliation’, China was the hegemon in the region whenever it was unified in its history. Especially at its zenith during the dynasties of Ming and Qing, China powerfully reigned over East Asia without any peer competitors. Now, at the beginning of the new millennium, China has become strong again and thus more assertive in international affairs. It appears that China is revitalizing its glorious past—as advocated in its national slogan of ‘China Dream’. People worldwide may wonder: Will the Sinocentric order of pre-modern history re-emerge in the China-led Asia-Pacific in the twenty-first century?
Before answering the question, we should find out what the relations truly were between China and its vassal states in the Sinocentric order —to correctly predict what will happen in the future usually depends on clearly knowing what happened in the past. Among the states in East Asia, this book chooses to analyze Joseon Korea’s relations with Ming and Qing China (hereafter ‘Joseon’, ‘Ming’, and ‘Qing’ in this book)—as Joseon was popularly considered an exemplar vassal of Ming/Qing China in history. The focus of the book is the study of Sadae (serving the great, 事大), which was the core element of Joseon’s foreign relations with Ming/Qing China for five centuries.1 Sadae as a policy was formally initiated by Yi Seong-gye (Taejo, the first king of Joseon) when the dynasty was founded in 1392. From then on, Sadae became the guiding principle that defined the Joseon–Ming/Qing relationship.
As a practice that is well known to people in China and Korea, however, Sadae is interpreted differently nowadays. In China Sadae is viewed as a spontaneous move by the Koreans to serve China—driven by their admiration for China’s supremacy—whereas, in the eyes of the Koreans, Sadae is considered to be a pragmatic strategy employed by the Koreans in order to serve Korea’s national interests. Considering that East Asia is a region where the present is still linked to the past, it is not unusual that the past be interpreted in ways that serve present political needs. Nevertheless, how was Sadae truly practiced in history? Over a span of five centuries, was Sadae practiced invariably in all circumstances?
As a matter of fact, Sadae was not a single-dimensional concept; it was complex. Based on information drawn from primary sources, this book comprehensively discusses and analyzes the first-hand evidence, documented by the Joseon historiographers, related to the major events in Joseon–Ming relations, Joseon’s response to power transition from Ming to Qing, and Joseon–Qing relations. Instead of relying on the works that offer overgeneralized conclusions based on secondary literatures, this book provides a much more nuanced account of the Korean experience of dealing with great powers. It reveals that Sadae, as a dependent variable, was practiced differently according to the motives of the Joseon political elites, and that these motives were shaped by the competing independent variables at the system, unit, and individual levels. As many middle powers in the region are facing the rise of China and a trilateral dilemma caused by Sino–US rivalry nowadays, the implications of this study to contemporary international relations in Asia-Pacific should be of significant value to scholars, policy advisers, and policymakers.
In this book, The Ri Dynasty Annals of Korea (also known as The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty or Yijo Sillok; hereafter RDAK in all in-text references) have been chosen to serve as the chief primary source of research. The 1,893-volume Annals, listed in United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) Memory of the World Register, are the original records written by Joseon royal historiographers. On a daily basis, they documented what happened at the Joseon court, including information related to every aspect of both domestic affairs and foreign relations. The Annals are highly valued for their truthfulness, as Joseon historiographers were trained to faithfully record all information without bias according to the Confucian principles of integrity; not even the monarchs were allowed to interfere with their work. The Annals are treasured nowadays as a precious legacy of history, especially because all records were kept intact (even during upheavals such as the Japanese and the Manchu invasions), enabling the collection to unbrokenly cover all the periods of the Joseon dynasty. It is precisely due to their impartiality and completeness that the Annals have been selected to be the key primary source of research materials in this book. The Annals were written in Classical Chinese. The version of the Annals used in this study is a reprint by the Research Institute for Oriental Cultures of Gakushuin University in Tokyo, published between 1953 and 1967.2
This introductory chapter explains why returning to the distant past can provide us with a better understanding of and some solutions to the contemporary issues of Northeast Asian international relations. It is composed of three sections. The first section illustrates the impact of history and culture on the interstate relations in Northeast Asia, while the second section outlines the concept of Sadae in Joseon’s foreign relations with great powers. The third section briefly reviews the literatures on Sadae written by contemporary Mainland Chinese and South Korean scholars, based on which, the necessity of employing a combined approach of constructivism and realism to the study of Korea–great powers relations is explained.
History and Culture in Northeast Asian International Relations
Northeast Asia is a region made of countries with millennium-old histories that have nurtured deeply rooted national cultures; consequently, the area’s historical and cultural traditions differ from those of the West (Kang 2003a, p. 84). Northeast Asian international relations are woven not only by the material threads of power politics but also by the ideational threads of historical and cultural influences. Studying the local history and culture, therefore, ‘can provide a way of distilling and making concrete and relevant the distinctive historical experiences of different nations and elites. In a region as culturally diverse as Asia, grasping this essence is a critical perspective’ (Pyle 2007a, p. 9). To study the international relations of Northeast Asia, the impact of history and culture should be considered as important as that of material forces.
History in Northeast Asian International Relations
Continuity is a prominent feature of Northeast Asian international relations because there is unfinished business in the region that makes it impossible to separate the past from the present. Chun (2010, pp. 69–87) has discussed this connection, arguing that transformations and continuities in history have complicated the present situation in the region. Such complexity can be observed in the rise of China, the country that has been striving to achieve national revitalization in order to compensate for its losses during the ‘century of humiliation’, and on the Korean Peninsula, where the goal of unification is still among the top priorities for both Korean states to establish a truly independent and autonomous sovereign state, which originally belonged to the Koreans but taken away first by the Japanese annexation in 1910, and again by the intervention of the USA and the USSR in 1945.
What has kept these unresolved issues alive is the sustaining force of historical memory. Even today, the Japanese government maintains its pre-war nationalist narratives and has never truly offered apologies that are considered satisfactory to its wronged neighbors. This, in consequence, compounds the victims’ agony and fury, increasing the impact of the past on the present. In the keynote speech delivered at the United Nations on 28 September 2012, South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said:
It requires a sound historical consciousness and heartfelt soul-searching on any past wrongdoings in order for solid peace and stability to be established between nations. A country’s true valor is proven when it confronts the dark side of its history and endeavors to rectify past wrongdoings. (Yonhap News Agency 2012)
While the Chinese and the Koreans tend to focus on Japan’s past war crimes, the Japanese, taking the view that everything was settled on the battleground, refuse to confront its past—trust has therefore never been genuinely established among Northeast Asian states (Kristof 1998, pp. 38–44). Since there is little hope of reconciliation, exclusionist nationalism is growing steadily in these countries, exacerbating the security dilemma in the region as a whole (Pyle 2007b, pp. 31–6).
Historical memory is also sustained via education in Northeast Asian countries, offsetting the power of time that could have diluted the enmity among these historic adversaries. In China, both Korean states, and Japan, it is a common practice for history lessons at school to be used to perpetuate historical memory for future generations. Wang (2008, p. 800) points to the fact that, in China, it is compulsory for children to receive patriotic education from primary school upwards; they study the official version of history that focuses on the ‘century of humiliation’ during which the glory of China was dimmed by the imperial West and Japan. In Japan, however, the government downplays its militarist past by asking textbook publishers to remove information about the brutal war crimes committed by Japanese military personnel, so that fewer people of younger generations learn of the wrongdoings of the past (Kristof 1998, p. 41). This is also one of the issues that has produced discord between Japan and South Korea: in order to shape the view of future generations, each government insisted on incorporating their own version of the role of Japan during the colonial period of 1910–45 into school textbooks (i.e. the Koreans see the Japanese as invaders, whereas the Japanese consider themselves the modernizers of Korea). Thus, the goal of the state-sponsored Japan–Republic of Korea (ROK) Joint History Research Committee to reconcile the d...
