Historians have claimed that when social stability returned to Korea
after devastating invasions by the Japanese and Manchus around the turn
of the seventeenth century, the late Chosŏn dynasty was a period of
unprecedented economic and cultural renaissance, in which prosperity
manifested itself in new programs and styles of visual art. A New
Middle Kingdom questions this belief, claiming instead that true-view
landscape and genre paintings were likely adopted to propagandize social
harmony under Chosŏn rule and to justify the status, wealth, and land
grabs of the ruling class. This book also documents the popularity of
art books from China and their misunderstanding by Koreans and, most
controversially, Korean enthusiasm for artistic programs from Edo Japan,
thus challenging academic stereotypes and nationalistic tendencies in
the scholarship about the Chosŏn period. As the first truly
interdisciplinary study of Korean art, A New Middle Kingdom points to
realities of late Chosŏn society that its visual art seemed to hide and
deny.
A William Sangki and Nanhee Min Hahn Book