TCDE 2018-11-07

Notes

Last week went to meeting of the Korean Accounting Society. Met a woman who was the wife and daughter-in-law of a Gaeseong merchant. She came to South Korea during the Korean War and at the time were very rich, but when they left their hometown, but when they left their hometown, they only took the accounting books with them.
Yesterday, Prof. Jun had another lecture at the Korean National Hangeul Museum, and Prof. Jun will first give a brief review of the lecture.

File:20181107_Lecture.pdf
Hangeul was created in 1443.
Sejong said that he wanted to help young subjects, but he also wanted to gain information from farmers.
종자학 - the study of seeds
Gave examples of how varieties were written in hanja and their hangeul equivalents and how they are very difficult to interpret without hangeul and hangeul is easier to gain a deeper meaning of the words
Korea was seen by Westerners during Joseon, which was a time of ruralization. But Goryeo had a lot of international trade in luxury goods and was city-oriented.
Joseon is unique in that it had it's golden age (peace time) from 1418-1545 which was a period of chaos in other parts of the world such as Europe and Japan
노농(老農) seasoned farmer
Sejong thought that knowledge is not top-down but bottom-up; in farming, herbal medicine, etc. which scholars have no idea about
- Came out of necessity due to famine, etc.
Reading the paper aloud
Joseon developed a national administration system; internal control system
Accounting was needed in Joseon not so much for business, but primarily for taxation, including seed management

Fundamental question of Koreans which is not completely answered: Why exactly and how hangeul could have been created?
Koreans are very proud of Hangeul; There is not such a artificially made writing system like it.
Chinese characters (ideogram 표의문자) and Korean alphabet (phonogram 표음문자)
- with ideograms, meaning is limited by the characters, cannot make new meaning; there is no meaning in a phonogram, so a new meaning can easily be created
Sejong was a creative person, but was limited by hanja.
Hanja was enough for the elites, but Sejong had interest in a broader and more practical realm.
Actually, hangeul was used a lot. It was used for education of morals to the commoners, pregnancy and child rearing, medicine, farming, military, documents by servants, finance documents, women's writing (recipes, clothing), funerals, personal letters
Even queens did not learn hanja (unless they were especially passionate)
Hangeul played an important role even when hanja was still in use.
People see what they want to see regarding the truth of an event - such as Sejong's creation of hangeul
It is important to see the overall context;
Even if people fight about which perspective is right, there will be no winner because all used real facts to support their position while ignoring the other facts.
It would be more useful to join the various contexts