뉴스레터

The following anecdote about Ahn Yong-bok can be found in Reflections on Takeshima [竹島考], an early 19th-century Japanese work.

Also, according to an old man, the Joseon men ate up all the snakes on the island during their stay there. This led to a surge in the field mouse population, resulting in severe crop damages. The residents caught snakes from outside the island and let them loose. It took a year before the damages abated. However, the authenticity of this story cannot be confirmed.

The "Joseon men" in this anecdote refers to Ahn Yong-bok and company who went Japan in 1696 to assert that Ulleungdo and Jasando (Usando/Dokdo) belonged to Korea. In 1696, a group of 11 men, including An, entered Hoki province (present-day Tottori Prefecture) via the Oki Islands from Ulleungdo. They spent some three months in Aoshima [靑嶋], situated in Koyma [湖山], before returning to Yangyang in August.

The episode is said to have taken place during An Yong-bok and his companions' stay in Aoshima. The story, which had been passed down in the region, was recorded by Okajima Masayoshi [岡嶋正義], the author of Reflections on Takeshima. Aoshima is a deserted island in southern Tottori, the capital of Tottori Prefecture. I had a chance to visit Aoshima a while back and saw that it has become a well-maintained tourist destination. I do not know if the island is still inhabited by snakes.

Reflections on Takeshima: Filling in the Missing Gap in Ahn's Visit to Japan

There are no specific details on what transpired during An and his companions' 1696 visit to Japan. On May 15, 1696, they left Ulleungdo and had a layover in Jasando (Dokdo). They departed from Jasando on the 16th and arrived in the Oki Islands on the 18th. On June 4, they arrived in Aoya [靑谷], Hoki province on June 4 and were deported to Aoshima, Koyama on June 21. They left Japan on August 6 and arrived in Yangyang-hyeon, Gangwon-do on August 21. The group's itinerary along with the names of the men in the group, the government titles they had assumed, the shape of the flag on their vessel, and their claim that Ulleungdo and Jasando are "Joseon territory" are the only all pieces of information about An's 1696 visit to Japan that remain in a small number of Korean and Japanese historical sources. There is no historical record on what the group did during their 3-month stay in Aoshima. While the story in Reflections on Takeshima may lack credibility, it is nevertheless a valuable record that can fill some of the gap regarding An's visit to Japan.

It is also worthwhile to think about why the said anecdote had been passed down for a whole century. Back then, the Japanese followed a pescatarian diet. It is said that people secretly ate wild boars in some mountainous regions in northeastern Japan, but for the most part, the Japanese did not eat meat until the modern era. It is thus natural to assume that An and his companions would have found it difficult to subsist on a vegetarian diet for three months. They may have caught and consumed the island's snakes for protein. However, the Japanese back then would have found this strange. It probably shocked them to see that these men ate something they did not eat; they also probably felt contempt and disdain. Perhaps this is the reason why it became an issue and an anecdote that came to be passed down through the generations. It is my conjecture that a form of "culture shock," which occurs in exchanges and encounters between different cultures, was behind the "anecdotalization" of the episode.

In reviewing old historical sources, I sometimes chance upon records of other episodes that seem to have originated from "culture shock" in the course of Korea and Japan's encounter with one another's cultures. The tone is generally contemptuous and disdainful. It is hoped that historical narratives will be free of such an undertone from now on.