Taewonji - Stories from Taewon

Taewonji is a classical Korean novel in Hangeul,1 in four fascicles and four volumes, with pages of ten columns each and twenty to twenty-five syllables per column. The Jangseogak Archives holds the only extant complete version in vernacular. Taewonji tells the stories of Imseong and his group of heroes, accompanying him through a voyage on the ocean. The novel Taewonji describes for the first time the discovery of new lands, and this can be considered its main value. It tells of other countries existing in the world, beyond the old China, and this can be considered as a sign of the lost centricity of China in the minds of Koreans. It is a sign that Korea has liberated itself from the sinocentric “Weltanschauung.” In spite of the fact that it narrates the discovery of new worlds and introduces revolutionary ideas for its times, the author’s mind is still consumed by conservative Confucian values from which he is apparently unable to escape.