Voice From the North : Resurrecting Regional Identity Through the Life and Work of Yi Sihang (1672–1736)

This is a study of the northern region of Korea through a person's life and work, highlighting how a writer from a marginalized region in early modern Korea became an advocate of regional subjectivity through various social, cultural, and intellectual activities, in particular through his conscientious historical writings. Voice from the North resurrects the forgotten historical memory of the people and region in late Choson Korea while also enriching the social history of the country. Sun Joo Kim accomplishes this by examining the life and work of Yi Sihang, a historically obscure person from a hinterland in Korea's northwestern region who was also a member of the literati. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Yi Sihang left numerous writings on his region's history and culture, and on the political and social discrimination that he and others in his region faced from the central elite. This work explores a regional history and culture through the frames of microhistory and historical memory. Kim criticizes the historiographical problem of "otherizing" the northern region and fills a gap in Korean historiography—the lack of historical study of the northern region from a regional perspective, P'yongan Province in particular. The biographical format of this work engages readers in the investigation of a person's life within the changing world of his time and also creates a space where private and public intersect. Kim places Yi Sihang at the center of the historical stage while describing, analyzing, and reconstructing the world around him through his life story. Kim resurrects the forgotten historical memory of people, family, lineage, and region, while at the same time enriching the social history of late Choson Korea, by examining the life and work of Yi Sihang, a historically obscure person from a hinterland in the northwestern region, but an advocate of the history and culture of the region he came from and a literatus whose literary talent was recognised by his contemporaries This book presents the life and work of Yi Sihang, a member of the literati from Korea's northwest hinterland, who wrote about his region's history and culture, as well as the political and social discrimination that he faced from the central elite