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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Yi Sunsin (1545-1598) was perhaps the most highly successful military commander of Korea's Chosŏn dynasty, earning particular regard for his naval engagements during the sixteenth-century invasion of Korea by Japanese dictator Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It should perhaps be unsurprising that Admiral Yi, a symbol of Korean defiance of Japanese aggression, would take on fresh significance in the years following World War II, as Korea worked to reimagine itself after a generation of Japanese occupation. The following article by Saeyoung Park describes the ways that Hyŏnch'ungsa - one of many small Chŏson-era shrines dedicated to Yi Sunsin - was transformed into the first national shrine following President Park Chung Hee's rise to power in a 1961 coup d’état. Over an eight-year period, the shrine architecture, its commemoration rituals and the surrounding countryside was transformed into an evocation of South Korea as a modern power, even as its connections with the sixteenth-century continued to be emphasized.
1 Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight, Wilson's Ghost (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), 21.
2 For Yasukuni shrine, see: John Breen, ed., Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past (London: Hurst, 2007). For the Korean War Memorial and the Yasukuni museum, see this link.
3 Sarah Schneewind, Community Schools and the State in Ming China (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2006); William Charles Wooldridge, “Transformations of Ritual and State in Nineteenth-Century Nanjing” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2007); Manjo Chŏng, Chosŏn sidae sŏwŏn yŏngu (Seoul: Chipmuntang, 1997); Saeyoung Park, “Sacred Spaces and the Commemoration of War in Chosŏn Korea” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, forthcoming).
4 Some examples—a one hundred and four episode TV series called The Immortal Yi Sunsin (Seoul: KBS, 2005); Heaven's Soldiers, DVD, directed by Min Chunki (Seoul: Showbox, 2005); popular literature: Kim Tōksu, Bareknuckle Leadership as Seen through the Life and Death of Yi Sunsin (Seoul: Sinkhouse, 2007); Kim Yŏngcha, Yi Sunsin: the Famous Chosŏn Admiral Who Invented the Turtleboat (Seoul: Hŭkmatang, 2008); Pae Sangyŏl, The Second Death of Yi Sunsin (Seoul: Wangŭi sŏchae, 2009); Chi Yŏnghŭi, Encountering Yi Sunsin in Times of Economic Conflict (Seoul: Design House, 2003), Yi Chini, Journeys in Search of Yi Sunsin (Seoul, Ch'aek'kwa hamkke, 2008). A quick search at the retailer www.kyobobook.co.kr reveals three hundred and forty five items on Yi Sunsin that are available for sale. Last accessed April 10, 2010.
5 For economic development under Park Chung Hee and a brief biography, see: Hyung-A Kim, Korea's Development under Park Chung Hee (New York: Routledge, 2004). For politics of Park's legacy, see Seungsook Moon, “The Cultural Politics of Remembering Park Chung Hee,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 19-5-09 (May 9, 2009); Han'guk Chŏngch'i Yŏn'guhoe, Pak Chŏng-hŭi rŭl nŏmŏsŏ : Pak Chŏng-hŭi wa kŭ sidae e taehan pip‘anjŏk yŏn'gu, Ch’ŏtp'an. (Seoul: P'urŭn Sup, 1998).
6 The Yi dynasty refers to the royal lineage of the Chosŏn dynasty.
7 On spectacle see Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 12-24. On performativity and nationalism see: T. E. Woronov, “Performing the Nation: China's Children as Little Red Pioneers,” Anthropological Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2007): 649-653.
8 Gi-Wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2006), 49-50. Emily Roxworthy, The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma: Racial Performativity and World War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008). Technically, evidence does not support the historical existence of Tan'gun.
9 The government declared the renovation of Hyŏnch'ungsa was complete in 1969 but some smaller construction and landscaping projects continued until 1975, when a revised edition of the Record of the History of Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa was published by the Ministry of Culture and Information (Munhwa kongbobu).
10 One pyŏng is 3.3 meters squared.
11 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 2nd ed. (Sŏul: Munhwa Kongbobu, 1975), 79-81.
12 Ibid., 81.
13 Ibid., 79-81.
14 ”Narasaranghanŭn maumŭi ttang…Hyŏnch'ungsa chungkŏn,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April 23, 1969.
15 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hy ŏ nch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 88.
16 ”Songyŏkhwa chisi wa tŭlttŭn ch'ukche,” Tonga ilbo, April 29, 1966.
17 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi, 1st ed. (Sŏul: Munhwa Kongbobu, 1969), 55.
18 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hy ŏ nch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 87.
19 Ibid., 92.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., 107.
22 Ibid., 92.
23 Ibid., 87.
24 Ibid., 88.
25 Ibid., 86-107.
26 Thanks to Sheila Miyoshi Jager for stressing the relevance of the Blue House Raid and the seizure of the USS Pueblo in 1968. This article suggests that Park saw the reinvention of Hyŏnch'ungsa as a critical support of his legitimacy in the Cold War. As mentioned elsewhere in this article, narratives of competing legitimacy composed an important front in the Cold War. Offering himself as the guardian of a (selectively) glorious Chosŏn past was central to Park's claims of South Korean superiority and authenticity.
27 Ibid., 87.
28 Ibid., 88.
29 Ibid., 82, 88.
30 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 201.
31 Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women (Rutgers University Press, 1987), 33-102. Some feminist scholars have drawn correlations between the selective display of leisure and a corresponding rise in status in order to explain the popularity of bourgeois domesticity and women's withdrawal from the workplace. The classic formulation linking leisure and pecuniary abilities is Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Dover Publications, 1994), 110.
32 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 93.
33 Ibid., 154-157.
34 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 155.
35 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 155.
36 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 155.
37 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsayŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 156.
38 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi, unpaginated.
39 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 200.
40 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.) unpaginated.
41 Ibid., 88, 215-216.
42 Ibid., 88.
43 Ibid., 215.
44 Ibid., 88.
45 Ibid., 216.
46 I do not mean to assume a static continuous Chosŏn ritual practice concerning Yi Sunsin; broadly speaking, there were two peaks in the commemoration of Yi Sunsin—the first after his death, and the second during the eighteenth century. The veneration of Yi in the late Chosŏn period was associated with the eliding of the Japanese invasion of Korea and the Manchu wars within a cosmopolitan Confucian rhetoric of Ming loyalism. I explore the construction of these ideologies elsewhere.
47 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 12-154.
48 Henry A Giroux, Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and the Challenge of the New Media, The radical imagination series (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 32.
49 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 19. For spectacle and the “opening” of Japan, see: Roxworthy, The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma, 19-32. On Fascism, aesthetics and the cultural politics of violence in the twentieth century, see: Walter Benjamin, “Theories of German Fascism,” New German Critique, no. 17 (1979): 120-128; Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” in Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: Macmillan, 2002), 73-108.
50 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 12.
51 ”Kim hupo Hyŏnch'ungsa kŏnripŭn chalhan'il,” Tonga ilbo, April 8, 1971.
52 Tzvetan Todorov, Hope and Memory (Princeton University Press, 2003), 162.
53 Three hundred and twenty eight students march in 1972: “Kŏkyosaeng 328myŏng Hyŏnch'ungsa ch'ampae haengkun,” Tonga ilbo, April 26, 1972; Four hundred and eighty five students march to the shrine in 1975: “Ch'ungmugong tansin 430chu kinyŏm Hyŏnch'ungsasŏ chehyang omsu,” Tonga ilbo, April 28, 1975. There was another march in 1974 that was reported in the press, and possibly more.
54 A Taehan newsreel (Taehan nusŭ) of the 1972 student march can be seen here. Last accessed March 30, 2010.
55 As Park Chung Hee was known between the 1961 coup and 1963 accession to the presidency.
56 ”Malkkutmata ‘A'i. ton. nou’,” Tonga Ilbo, April 29, 1962.
57 Chungmugong, literally meaning ‘Loyal and Martial Lord’ is the posthumous title granted by the Chosŏn court in recognition of Yi Sunsin's exceptional merit. The Admiral is interchangeably referred to as Chungmugong or Yi Sunsin in modern and historical documents after his death.
58 Chung Hee Park, Major Speeches by Korea's Park Chung Hee, A New Horizon in Asia 3 (Seoul: Hollym Corp., 1970), 243.
59 Chung Hee Park, Pak Chŏng-Hŭi Taet'ongnyong Šŏnjip, vol. 4 (Seoul: Chimungak, 1969), 96.
60 Kim, Korea's Development under Park Chung Hee, 4-33. Park sought to mobilize the country under the twin banners of anti-Communism and economic development.
61 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 32. Italics mine.
62 Park, Major Speeches by Korea's Park Chung Hee, 244.
63 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hy ŏ nch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 23.
64 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hy ŏ nch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi, 25.
65 Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 25.
66 Ibid., 221.
67 A copy of Park's handwritten order can be seen in Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 29-30.
68 Ibid., 29.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., 30.
71 Literally, this means tea ceremony. Tea ceremonies in Korean history were not solely restricted to a stylistic consumption of brewed tea; such rites were used in Buddhist worship, diplomatic practices and court ritual. All the documents I have seen note the elevation of the new ritual commemoration to the level of a ‘tea ceremony,’ but they fail to mention which particular Chosŏn precedent(s) are at work.
72 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi, 31.
73 Saeyoung Park, Sacred Spaces and Postwar Commemoration in Chosŏn Korea, (Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D Diss forthcoming).
74 Park Kyeri, “The Statues of Ch'ungmugong and National Ideology,” The History of Recent Modern Korean Art 12 (January 2004): 162. In his comparative study of national heroes, Yi Sangrok is even more explicit: “That Park Chung Hee privately most admired Yi Sunsin is a widely known fact.” Kwŏn Hyŏngjin et al, Taejung Tokchae Ŭi Yŏngung Mandŭlgi, 1st ed. (Sŏul-si: Hyumŏnisŭťŭ, 2005), 324.
75 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), unpaginated.
76 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi, unpaginated.
77 By Korean Enlightenment, I mean the kaehwa kyemonggi, roughly 1896-1910.
78 Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 9. Jager's work on gender and nationalism focuses on the emergence of masculine citizenship.
79 Park, Major Speeches by Korea's Park Chung Hee, 242-243.
80 Ibid., 243.
81 Park, Pak Chŏng-Hŭi Taet'ongnyong Šŏnjip, 4:95.
82 Chung Hee Park, Pak Chŏng-Hŭi Taet'ongnyong Šŏnjip, vol. 6 (Seoul: Chimungak, 1969), 153.
83 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi, 54.
84 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), 70.
85 Barry Schwartz and Howard Schuman, “History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945-2001,” American Sociological Review 70, no. 2 (April 2005): 185. While the authors problematize the conflicting dynamics between history and memory quite nicely, their theoretical construction of the dichotomy of history and memory can be a bit rigid. The distinction between “historians” and “commemorative agents” can be artificial in the sense that historians too may play a commemorative role.
86 Todorov, Hope and Memory, 199. I am using Todorov's words out of context here. He writes: “If we adopt this position, then historians have no obligation to the truth, only an obligation to the good.” In his work on history and memory, this sentence is from his analysis of the critique historians have endured for undermining heroes.
87 Munhwa Kongbobu, Asan Hyŏnch'ungsa yŏnhyŏk chi (2nd ed.), unpaginated.
88 Peter Carrier, Holocaust Monuments and National Memory Cultures in France and Germany Since 1989: The Origins and Political Function of the Vé l’ d'Hiv’ in Paris and the Holocaust Monument in Berlin (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 33.
89 Cf. Jonathan Culler's discussion of the English and French terms for river and stream in Ferdinand de Saussure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 33-34. To paraphrase Saussure's claim, signs function not because of any intrinsic value, but through their relative position; by application, the main point I make here is that the discrepancy between the English and Korean terms in this instance focuses our attention on the particular socio-linguistic construction of sacred spaces.
90 Here I am referring to official shrines, and not illicit (ŭm) shrines, many of which were of shamanistic nature and were frequented by women.
91 ”Taechunghwaha nŭn kwankwang,” Tonga ilbo, September 9, 1970.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid.
94 Chihyung Jeon, “A Road to Modernization and Unification: The Construction of the Gyeongbu Highway in South Korea,” Technology and Culture 51, no. 1 (2009): 57.
95 ”Kukminkyo taep'yo sambaekmyŏng ch’ŏltoch’ŏng sŏch'och’ŏng sisŭng,” Maeil Kyŏngche, May 5, 1975.
96 ”Kyŏmsonkongchungtotŏk silch'on e apchang hŭmuthan kukkyosaeng tŭl ŭi kicha yŏhaeng,” Tonga Ilbo, November 20, 1974.
97 Carbon monoxide poisoning of students on field trip to Hyŏnch'ungsa: Tonga ilbo, October 20, 1973; Food poisoning of overseas Korean students traveling to Hyŏnch'ungsa: Tonga ilbo, August 2, 1975; Bus crash with forty-five fatalities: Tonga ilbo, October 15 1970.
98 The Korean residents in Japan are often referred to using the Japanese word, zainichi (在日) which usually indicates persons of Korean descent residing in Japan. Lacking Japanese citizenship, including the second and third generation, they occupy ambiguous positions in Japanese society.
99 Sonia Ryang, North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1997).
100 Deokyo Choi has been kind enough to lend his perspective through a series of emails in February 2010. Also thanks to Jaeeun Kim for her helpful article “The Making and Unmaking of a “Transborder Nation”: South Korea during and after the Cold War.” Theory and Society 38, no. 2 (2009): 133-164.
101 Ch'ongnyŏn is the organization of Koreans in Japan sympathetic to North Korea and Mindan is the name of the opposing group that leans towards South Korea.
102 ”Chusŏksŏngmyo mokukpangmun chochungnyŏn kye chae'il kyopo 700myŏng,” Kyŏnghyang Sinmun, September 15, 1975.
103 ”Hyŏnc'hungsa rŭl ch'ampaehanŭn choch'ungnyŏnkye chae'ilkyopodŭl,” Kyŏnghyang Sinmun, September 17, 1975.
104 ”P'ohangchech’ŏltŭng palchŏnsang nolla,” Kyŏnghyang Sinmun, September 17, 1975.
105 Ibid.
106 ”Choch'ongnyŏn chae'iltongpo karangpimatŭmyŏ hyŏnch'ungsa ch'ampae,” Kyŏnghyang Sinmun, November 15, 1975 and “P'ohangchech’ŏltŭng palchŏnsang nolla,” Kyonghyang Sinmun, September 17, 1975.
107 ”Choch'ongnyŏn chae'iltongpo karangpimatŭmyŏ hyŏnch'ungsa ch'ampae,” Kyonghyang Sinmun, November 15, 1975
108 Many of the tours that were reported in the press were government sponsored, such as in 1973 when the Ministry of Culture invited kyopo students from Japan and the United States to see the “true face” (ch'ammosŭp) of Korea.
109 ”Chaemi kyopo yŏrŭmhakkyo malŏchŏkanŭn chokukŭl ikhinta,” Tonga ilbo, August 13, 1973. Italics mine.
110 ”Chokukŭi p'um'anŭn yŏksi pokŭnhae,” Tonga ilbo, October 12, 1972.
111 ”Chaemi kyopo yŏrŭmhakkyo malŏchŏkanŭn chokukŭl ikhinta,” Tonga ilbo, August 13, 1973.
112 ”Chokukŭi p'um'anŭn yŏksi pokŭnhae,” Tonga ilbo, October 12, 1972.
113 ”Chaemi kyopo yŏrŭmhakkyo malŏchŏkanŭn chokukŭl ikhinta,” Tonga ilbo, August 13, 1973.
114 ”P'o'odŭ ch'ehan 24sikan ilchŏng,” Tonga ilbo, November 20, 1974.
115 ”Kkŭl mikukpangch'akwan Hyŏnch'ungsa kwankwang,” Maeil Kyŏngche, September 12, 1973 and “Kkŭlch'akwan, Hyŏnch'ungsa kwankwang,” Tonga ilbo, September 12, 1973.
116 Chung Hee Park, Chungdan hanŭn chanŭn sŭngni haji mot handa: Pak Chŏng-hŭi taet'ongnyŏng yŏnsŏl chip, 4th ed. (Seoul: Hallim Ch'ulp'an sa, 1968), 41. For Park Chung Hee's linking of patriotism and development, see his speech “Inkan ŭi kŭntaehwa wa saenghwal ŭi kyŏngchehwa” in the same volume, 13-34.
117 This English name was transliterated into Korean and I have had to transliterate it back into English. My apologies to Mr. Charles Sollong (sic?) for possibly butchering his name.
118 ”Hyuchit'ong,” Tonga ilbo, December 23, 1972.
119 The admiral's anti-Japanese credentials resonate with the anti-colonial narratives that are at the center of the founding mythology of North Korea. While the cult of the two Kims remains paramount, Yi Sunsin still occupies a venerable position in North Korean identity formation. Cf. Yang, Yŏn-guk. Chosŏn Munhwa Ka Ch'ogi Ilbon Munhwa Palchŏn E Mich'in Yŏnghyang. P'yŏngyang: Sahoe Kwahak Ch'ulp'ansa, 1991.
120 ”Yi Ŭnsang-ssi Yi Chungmugong ŭi ŏl,” Tonga ilbo, September 14, 1972.
121 ”Puk ŭi saramtŭlyi namkin Soŭl sapak oilhwa annaeyangkwa hot'el chikwonul t'onghaetulo ponta,” Tonga ilbo, September 18, 1972.
122 Ibid.
123 ”Kwihyanghanun Ch'ungmugong p'alsap'um,” Tonga ilbo, October 11, 1969.
124 Schwartz and Schuman, “History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945-2001,” 184-186; Todorov, Hope and Memory, 164-176. Critiques of memory work and commemoration are often rooted in the dichotomy of memory and history. The controversy over history and memory cannot be engaged in detail here; but it is worth noting that much of the critical debate between history and memory is exacerbated by their seemingly similar claims to the truth but contrasting ontological foundations.
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