전쟁과 평화의 근세 한일 관계

War and Peace in the Early Modern Korean-Japanese Relations: Hisdeyoshi’s Invasion of Korea and Korean Envoys to Japan

Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea and the Korean envoys to Japan occupied the central position in the early modern Korean-Japanese relations. Two contrasting diplomatic aspects of war and peace helped to shape the two-century-long foreign relations between the Chosun dynasty and the Edo bakufu. This paper deals with the major issues related to the war; the naming of the war, the causes of the war, the result of the war, the damages caused by the war, the postwar restoration of the relations, and the aims of the Korean envoys by comparing each of these aspects described in the controversial Japanese history textbook called the New History Textbook. Concerning the naming of the war this paper suggests ‘the War of the Imjin Era’ or ‘the Hideyoshi’s First and Second Invasion of Korea’ stressing its role in the shaping of new East Asian world order instead of ‘the Rebellion of the Japanese’, which meant the invasion of Japanese pirates. It also criticizes previous studies which have emphasized Hideyoshi’s personal ambitions in explaining the causes of the war. In appraising the damages caused by the war there exists a wide gap between Korea and Japan. To better understand the reality of the war this paper tries to look at how the Japanese people were mobilized and the Japanese forces were deployed in Korea. In restoring its relations with Japan the Korean government tried to put the Tsushima Island in a subordinate position, and the So clan, the daimyo clan of the Tsushima, played a mediator role in the negotiations between the Korean government and the Tokugawa bakufu. Tsushima often pursued its own political and economic interests in its dealing with Korea at the expense of those of the bakufu. Even if Korea was very reluctant to restore its relations with Japan, the changing situations in East Asia forced Korea to accept the Japanese offer to restore their friendly relations. Previous studies on the Korean envoys to Japan tended to regard them as congratulatory envoys and cultural envoys, but they overlooked the fact that they were the political envoys designed to stabilize the international order in the area. Therefore, the major aim of the envoys was to collect military intelligence. The other seven middle school history textbooks were not much different from the so-called the new history textbook published recently by neo-nationalist scholars in attributing the cause of the Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea to Hideyoshi’s personal ambitions to conquer Ming China. Some textbooks, however, try to be objective in describing the sensitive issues of Korean-Japanese relations.