Korean Religion And Foreign Relations In17^th Century

Hamel’s Journal is based on the report which the Dutchman Hendrick Hamel submitted to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). In1653, the party took the VOC ship from Taiwan to Japan for trading. Then the party was shipwrecked on Cheju Island.36survivors started their13-year-long Korean life before they escaped from Korea. After the escape, Hamel submitted the report. This paper takes the journal as the centre to research on Korean religion and foreign relations in17th century. In this journal, when talking about the religion of Korea, Hamel said that many monks believed a story which seems like the Babel story from the Bible. However, the Academia has always believed that Christianity had not been systematically spread on a large scale in Korea yet by that time. Then why there were people believe in the Babel story? This paper aims to synthesized the relevant documents and studies and venture to put forth the following conjectures:firstly, the ’monks’ Hamel mentioned maybe were the prisoners who turned to Christianity in the Japanese aggressive war in1592. Secondly, the ’monks’ possibly were the Catholic of the Catholicism which is brought by Prince So-hyeon from China. Or even these ’monks’ were someone who believed the Christianity which was introduced into Korea in13th century. Besides, according to the stone cross which was found in the Bulguk Temple, the ’monks’ probably were the Buddhists. Besides, the journal had also recorded the facts that Korea was trying to revise the calendar privately after Ming Dynasty was replaced by OJng. With listing the facts such as Korea had hided the foreigners who master the advanced technique, this paper puts forward that the reason that caused these facts is the Concept of "Chinese and foreign". After the downfall of Ming Dynasty, Korean people thought that they were the only orthodox line of Chinese culture and regarded themselves as little China. Their aims of revising the calendar and hiding the foreigners privately were to be strong to protect the orthodox Chinese culture.