[Guide to the Market Economy] Isolation Policy

“Even when people like Hamel drifted ashore, Joseon had no desire to learn about the world.

Clinging to a closed-door policy in an age of openness, it ultimately became a colony.”

The Journal of Hendrick Hamel is a record of the experiences of a Dutch sailor named Hendrick Hamel, who was shipwrecked on Jeju Island and spent 13 years in Joseon, documenting what he saw and went through there. He was originally said to have been traveling from Jakarta, Indonesia, through Taiwan, to Nagasaki, Japan. Indonesia was a Dutch colony, and Nagasaki was famous as a city that traded with the Netherlands even when Japan maintained its isolation policy.

Hamel’s role in the Dutch fleet was that of a clerk, responsible for recording everything that happened during the voyage. Because he was literate and accustomed to keeping records, he was able, unlike the other sailors, to write an account of his shipwreck after returning home. Moreover, it is said that his purpose in writing about Joseon was not so much to introduce Joseon to Western society as to provide material for claiming from the Dutch East India Company the wages he had not received during his detention in Joseon. One cannot help but think that this was very much in keeping with the Dutch reputation for being merchants to the bone. Today, with Dutch support, Jeju commemorates Hamel’s party by building a large sailing-ship-shaped structure along the Yongmeori Coast, where they drifted ashore.

Joseon, Isolated from the World

The condition of Joseon described in Hamel’s records shows a country far more isolated from the world than we might imagine today. One would think it natural for people to be astonished when a large group of tall, blue-eyed men landed on their shores, yet it is said that there was little interest in where Hamel and his party had come from. They were simply dismissed as having come from the southern barbarians south of China.

“Southern barbarians” did not refer to any specific region. Rather, it was a conventional expression centered on China that referred to foreign peoples in the four directions as eastern barbarians, western barbarians, southern barbarians, and northern barbarians. In other words, it meant little more than that Hamel’s party was not Chinese. According to the record, Hamel and his party thus became people from “Namman” and were all given the surname Nam in Joseon. In The Journal of Hendrick Hamel, Hamel did not reveal his Korean-style name, but in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, in the section on King Hyojong, the name of his companion Nam Buksan appears. Nam Buksan was a man who died after attempting to escape Joseon before Hamel did.

At the time, Joseon enforced a watertight isolation policy that kept foreigners from entering the country, but once foreigners had entered, it did not send them back abroad either. After spending more than a decade in Joseon, Hamel’s party escaped to Nagasaki, Japan, where an investigation by the Japanese authorities revealed that they were Dutch. That fact was then conveyed back to Joseon, but Joseon’s response was reportedly indifferent.

After The Journal of Hendrick Hamel was published, interest in Joseon rose in Europe. Joseon, previously completely unknown, became known in Europe, and it also became clear that Japan was reaping substantial profits from intermediary trade with Joseon. The Netherlands, a nation of merchants, was especially eager to act on this discovery, and the Dutch East India Company even built a 1,000-ton-class ship named the Corea to engage in direct trade with Joseon.

However, because the Edo shogunate in Japan opposed it, wanting to monopolize trade with Joseon, the Corea was unable to sail to Joseon. In fact, had Joseon been proactive, Japan’s opposition would not have posed much of a problem, but Joseon at the time likewise had no interest in trade with foreign countries.

The isolation policy we commonly associate with Heungseon Daewongun was in fact a policy that had been maintained throughout the Joseon dynasty. For example, the Silhak scholar Je-ga Bak, who lived several decades after Hamel’s shipwreck, lamented that “for 400 years of Joseon, not a single ship from another country entered,” and argued for trade by sea routes, but this too was not accepted.

Joseon in the Age of Exploration

Remarkably, Hamel’s party was not the only group of Dutchmen to drift ashore in Joseon at the time. More than 20 years before Hamel’s arrival, a group of Dutchmen led by Jan Jansz Weltevree had also drifted there. He is well known to us by the name Bak Yeon and was the first European to settle in Joseon. Despite the prior arrival of Dutchmen, the Joseon government did not know the nationality of Hamel’s party, largely because it had never investigated Bak Yeon’s nationality in the first place. In the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, Bak Yeon too is recorded simply as “the southern barbarian Bak Yeon.”

In this way, the people of Joseon neither knew nor sought to know why these men had wandered across the vast ocean and drifted all the way to Joseon. At a time when people from one small European country were exploring the entire world with a spirit of adventure, one small Asian country failed to obtain any information even from those who had been shipwrecked onto its shores. In the Age of Exploration, the Netherlands grew into a great power on par with Spain, England, and France, while Joseon later fell into the sorry state of a colony.

■ Please remember

At a time when people from one small European country were exploring the entire world with a spirit of adventure, one small Asian country failed to obtain any information even from those who had been shipwrecked onto its shores. In the Age of Exploration, the Netherlands grew into a great power on par with Spain, England, and France, while Joseon later fell into the sorry state of a colony.

Sung-no Choi

President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [시장경제 길라잡이] 쇄국정책

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2019-04-29

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=14&idx=20152