동방의 타자 : 이사벨라 버드 비숍의 『한국과 그 이웃나라들』

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the representation of Korea and its people in Isabella Bird Bishop"s Korea and Her Neighbors published in 1897 from the perspective of racism. Her account of Korean society during the politically turbulent years immediately before Japan"s Occupation has been acclaimed as rarely comprehensive, accurate, and impartially objective. A closer look at Bishop"s narrative, however, reveals a perspective of colonial racism with all the prejudices against the Oriental world. In her discussion she generalizes about Korean people as steeped in the Oriental vices of "suspicion, cunning, and untruthfulness" and their life as "squalid and mean." She also characterizes Korean culture as virtually nil, "with no objects of art, very few antiquities, no public gardens, no displays … and no theatres." Her narrative is shot through with this kind of colonialist rhetoric despite some occasional demonstrations of sympathetic understanding and cultural relativist viewpoints.