[Essay in My Heart]

Book Review – Seoyugyeonmun (西遊見聞)

In 2008, with the help of a person who was visiting Korea to read Yu Gil-Jun's Seoyugyeonmun during summer vacation, I obtained the book. I had heard a lot about the name of Yu Gil-Jun and his representative book Seoyugyeonmun in history class during my school days, but in fact, I did not know the contents well, so I decided to read it out of curiosity after several decades. However, due to my laziness, it was only in 2022 that I finally read through Seoyugyeonmun. In fact, it took my infinite patience to read the book, which is not an interesting novel.

I knew about Yu Gil-Jun, who was a pioneer figure who had the idea of enlightenment in the late Joseon Dynasty, and he visited the United States as a member of the Bobingsa, which is a special diplomatic envoy, and visited various countries in Europe, America, and Japan on the way back to his home country, Joseon, but little is known about his specific idea of enlightenment. 

As the first Korean international student to study at a high school in Boston, U.S., Yu Gil-Jun has many things to learn from his diverse curiosity about the West and his ceaseless efforts and passion.

Yu Gil-Jun is a representative intellectual of the time, and Seoyugyeonmun (西遊見聞) meticulously recorded what he felt while looking around the west, especially the United States and Europe) and listening (聞), and later put it here. In addition to various books and information he collected, he calmly wrote down what he thought in his spare time when he was in Seoul, Korea.

He meticulously covered almost all fields such as culture, ideology, system, law, education, industry, nature, major cities, etiquette, and architecture of the representative countries of Europe and America in an encyclopedic way, from the point of view of a representative intellectual of the declining country Joseon. It is considered to be of high value as a historical record because it recorded and grasped the details of the world situation and culture and relics of the time.

It is thought that he ultimately expressed his will for the modernization of the country by comparing and interpreting and translating these diverse Western cultures and various elements composing cultural artifacts from his personal point of view and comparing them with the reality of his declining country Joseon.

Although, as a Joseon intellectual who experienced Western culture and artifacts first, his grand dream could not be realized as he himself dreamed, but his writings are thought to have a great meaning in their own way.

In order to understand the two axes of the East and the West, which are still fiercely colliding, I think a kind of guidebook is needed.

The turbulent life of Yu Gil-Jun, who was one of the people who played a pioneering role in accepting Western culture and artifacts during the enlightenment period of our country, suggests many things to us even today. In this respect, Yu Gil-Jun's study of travel to the west suggests many things to us who are aiming for globalization even today in its own way, so it should be evaluated as a useful book worth reading through to understand Western culture and its origins from a new angle. 

Solti

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