『하담파적록』의 현실 인식과 서술 방식

초록

This study examines the perception of reality and the characteristic modes of writing in Hadam Pajeokrok (荷潭破寂錄) by Kim Si-yang (金時讓, 1581–1643), a scholar who lived through the turbulent mid-Joseon period. Having directly experienced major political and military upheavals such as the Imjin War, the Jeongyu War, the deposition of Queen Dowager Inmok, the Injo Restoration, and the Manchu Invasion of 1636, Kim Si-yang recorded these events from a critical and rational perspective. His prose goes beyond a simple record of events and reflects an intellectual practice aimed at uncovering historical truth through rigorous observation and judgment of reality. By analyzing Hadam Pajeokrok, this study explores the literary and ideological significance of Kim Si-yang’s writing as an example of how late Joseon intellectuals perceived and represented history. Focusing on Kim’s epistemological attitude toward factual accuracy and critical inquiry, this study analyzes how he verified and corrected preexisting historical accounts. His critique of the “Jo Ban’s Mission to Ming” narrative in Seong Hyeon’s Yongjae Chonghwa(慵齋叢話) and Heo Bong’s Haedong Yayeon(海東野言) reveals his concern for the precision and reliability of historical sources. However, An Jeong-bok later criticized Kim’s arguments as excessively dogmatic and insufficiently substantiated. These conflicting evaluations illustrate both the rigor and limitations of Kim Si-yang’s pursuit of truth, offering insight into the ethical boundaries of factual writing and the epistemic structure of intellectual discourse in his time. Kim Si-yang’s narrative strategy is noteworthy in that it privileges factual precision over moral embellishment. His reinterpretation of the anecdote of Kim Cheol-su of Chungju demystifies the conventional heroic discourse of loyalty and reframes it as the tragic death of a mentally disturbed individual. Through such critical demythologization, Kim rejected didactic Confucian narratives, emphasizing instead the responsibility of writing grounded in factual verification. This approach may be regarded as an early form of realist historical consciousness in late Joseon prose. Finally, Kim’s writings reconstruct contemporary political issues through personal experience and introspective narrative. His account of the royal posthumous title controversy concerning Prince Wonjong demonstrates how he transformed a central political dispute of the period into a reflective narrative without reducing it to moral rhetoric or factional bias. In this way, Kim Si-yang combined historical interpretation based on factual inquiry with an autonomous perception of political reality. His writing thus reflects a significant intellectual transition in late Joseon literati culture and offers meaningful insight into the evolution of historical prose in Korean literary history.

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