Shinjae Chu Se-pung was a literati, academic, and educator who lived during the mid-Chosŏn era.
Many great scholars were active around his time; Shinjae made sure to communicate with them academically to widen his scholarly perspective. Shinjae treat...
Shinjae Chu Se-pung was a literati, academic, and educator who lived during the mid-Chosŏn era.
Many great scholars were active around his time; Shinjae made sure to communicate with them academically to widen his scholarly perspective. Shinjae treated his seniors like teachers, and also reached out to both T'oegye and Nammyŏng-who were both six years his junio-whereas T'oegye and Nammyŏng themselves never met each other. Shinjae also had a strong sense of responsibility and loyalty to his government post. In life, he always tried to practice what he had learned, and thus, he was able to remain in a government post all his life.
Shinjae regarded Confucianism as the correct form of edification, and thus endeavored to disseminate Confucian teachings. He also made an active effort to apply Confucian ideology to politics. His founding of Paegundong Seowon reflects this mentality. As the first Seowon built in Chosŏn, Paegundong Seowon invigorated the autonomy of scholarship and enhanced the pride of Korean scholars by enshrining them for the first time. This had a great impact on Korean scholarship, culture, and education among other areas.
Shinjae’s founding of the Seowon allowed Korean scholars to be methodically trained, and scholarly thinking came to be established. At this time, government schools-Seonggyungwan and local Confucian schools-had already become vessels of perfunctory education, oriented towards studies for the civil service examination. Instead, the Seowon came to be the site of a novel and authentic academic innovation, providing an education that focused on the learning of “the Way” (道學).
Paegundong Seowon primarily dedicated its efforts to the practical application of Neo-Confucianism, such as the edification of the people through scholarship, rather than theoretical research. The one who succeeded the tradition of founding Seowon was T'oegye Yi Hwang, who not only supported such projects, but went on to construct Seowon himself. Approximately one thousand Seowon had been constructed by the end of the Chosŏn dynasty’s rule, serving as headquarters for academic research and the edification of the people.
A collection of Shinjae’s works, Various Writings of Murŭng, is more structured in its contents compared to the other literati and academics of his time, making it a valuable resource in studying the politics, society, and culture of the period. In particular, there are invaluable materials for researching the history of Seowon and the scholarly mind of Korea.