Memories of respect etched by culture

An example of literary diplomacy between Ming China and Joseon Korea－calligraphic works by Chinese and Korean emissaries.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Invasion

Between 1592 and 1598 Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea. The Ming Emperor Wanli twice sent troops to Korea to counter the Japanese, in 1593 and then in 1597 respectively, when his empire was being attacked by Mongols from the west. While the war ended with the sudden death of Toyotomi in 1598, the military help, which many Korean kings believed to have saved Korea from demise, was not forgotten.

In a telling show of nostalgia, Korean files from the Qing era are often dated using the reign title of the last Ming emperor, Emperor Chongzhen.

The exhibition includes a diary kept by Lee Heul, a Korean emissary to China, between July 8, 1629 and June 8, 1630. In 1899 the diary was reprinted in Korea. In the epilogue, it is noted that the reprinting was made in the 272nd year of the reign of Emperor Chongzhen, 255 years after the last Ming emperor hanged himself on a tree in his royal garden.

"Yi Seong-gye started the Joseon Dynasty in 1392, 24 years after the founding of Ming," Fans says. "The first thing the Korean king did was to ask for recognition from Zhu the first emperor of Ming. The Joseon Dynasty came to an end in 1910, one year after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Both endings signaled the end of both countries' dynastic history. And both were to be followed by a chaotic, bloodstained era filled with struggles for personal freedom and national independence.

Lee died in Beijing on June 9, 1630 - one day after he finished writing his diary.

"In those days to be an emissary was not completely without risk," Ni says. "Nature could jeopardize the journey. Or, one could get seriously ill and die in a foreign land. But Lee, like most of his fellow emissaries to China, left behind writings that, together with other records, shed light on a shared memory in the two countries' history."