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Journal of Asian History 53.2 (2019)
A Conceptual Appendix
to “The Politics of Historical Knowledge”
Tay Jeong*
Introduction
My original article, which was published in volume 52.1 of this journal, presented three
broad descriptive arguments about the study of the historical geography of Old Chosŏn:
overconfidence, convergence, and external influence. I think what has agitated many peo-
ple about these broad descriptions is the worry that they may be used to derive unaccepta-
ble or radical normative arguments. In this article, I present what I think is a reasonable
interpretation of the descriptive arguments. First, the record of overconfidence and exter-
nal influence reminds us of the subrational origins of the field and the possibility of path-
dependent biases that have survived over time. Second, the record of convergence resists
the view that the rational reconstruction of scientific historiography is solely populated
with elements from orthodox research. 1 In the final part of the article, I respond to An-
drew Logie’s criticisms, starting from the conceptual criticisms and ending with some
noteworthy empirical issues.
1 Declaration
“Personal opinions in politics are completely irrelevant, unless you’re a person of great moral
authority,” as Norman Finkelstein, a political scientist and critical historian of Israel, once
said in a lecture when an agitated audience pressed him to declare his personal stance on
* McGill University Department of Sociology. Tay Jeong may be reached at jeong.tay@gmail.com.
1 While the lexical meanings of the terms “orthodox” and “heterodox” are simply based on conventionality
[according to Oxford Dictionaries], I am using them to refer to the broad but real traditions of historical
research that started in the colonial times and persisted throughout a large part of modern historical
scholarship. See Jeong 2018a for historical details. The terminology was inspired by widespread usage in
the field of economics. It must be stressed that the orthodox/heterodox division is conceptually inde-
pendent of quality or scientificity: I am not making any direct claims about a theory’s soundness by using
these terms. For example, calling a certain geographical proposal “heterodox” is not an act of legitimiza-
tion just as calling Marxist economics “heterodox” is not necessarily a defense of the scientificity of Mar-
ixist economics.
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310 Tay Jeon
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various controversial topics in Israeli history. Although he was talking about issues in politics,
this statement reflects our common norm in science in general, where criticism remains
internal to directly expressed arguments rather than encompassing aspects about the re-
searcher such as his motivation and judgments on issues that bear no direct relevance to the
premises and inferences that constitute the argument.
My original article focused on procedural rather than technical evaluations.2 By the latter,
I mean that I did not attempt to directly weigh the empirical evidence and make a substan-
tive judgment about the relative plausibility of rival hypotheses for each topic. Instead, I
devoted my attention to social evidence, or what social epistemologists like to call “evidence
of evidence”. The idea is that examining things like the level of expert support, past track
records, and various external biases can give us useful information about the plausibility of
scientific theses.
As technical judgments on the key topics in historical geography were outside the scope
of my original arguments, I had consciously refrained from making them explicit – doing so
would have been no different than expressing my personal opinion on these issues, which is
irrelevant. Yet, at the risk of committing what would generally be considered bad practice in
academic communication, I will start this supplementary article by declaring my personal
judgments on the key empirical issues that I discussed in my original paper. It is my bet that
doing so will help some of my agitated critics read the rest of this article (and the original, if
they decide to go back to it) without making unnecessary hostile speculations about me.
My personal judgments on issues that pertain to pre-Qin historical geography simply fol-
low one version that is popular among South Korean historians and archaeologists. I think
that Chosŏn first rose as a political entity between the eighth and seventh century BCE based
on the mandolin-shaped dagger culture in the Daling River basin area. It spread eastward to
Liaodong starting from the fifth century BCE and, a couple of centuries later, lost its western
territory to Qin Kai’s conquest. Manpanhan, the easternmost extent of Qin Kai’s conquest,
is likely to have been somewhere in the Qianshan Mountains in eastern Liaoning Province.
My judgment about the location of Paesu, the river where the Han Empire made its retreated
border with Chosŏn during the Qin-Han transitional period, also follows the recent trend of
identifying it as the present-day Hun River. I have not made a firm judgment about where
Wanghŏm was – I think it could have been in Pyongyang or somewhere in southern Man-
churia. Locating it at Pyongyang with certainty had been an old (near-)consensus, but since
the early 2000s, we have seen a number of serious experts treating this as an open question.
Finally, regarding the notorious topic of Lelang, I abide by the standard view that locates it in
Pyongyang. I think the empirical evidence, as well as the social evidence, are so strongly in
2 Hereafter, “original article” refers to Jeong 2018a.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
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favor of this location that it could now be plausibly classified as confirmed historical
knowledge. I do, however, have some reservations about accepting the standard thesis that
Lelang continuously persisted as a Chinese commandery in this region up until Koguyro’s
invasion in 313CE as confirmed beyond doubt. Recent research revealed several anomalies
for this time frame, and I think it remains to be seen if simply explaining them away is the
best response.3
It should be clear whether my technical judgments on these issues are closer to and in-
formed by the recent findings and proposals from authoritative South Korean experts or the
historical reconstructions advocated by Lee Dukil. Contrary to some speculations, I have
rather little knowledge of the projects of politically active extra-institutional historians.
2 The Main Descriptive Arguments and Their Epistemic Implications
The main message of my original article was predominantly descriptive: it focused on
describing certain notable patterns in the history of historiography rather than making
claims about normativity or historical truth. The argument of the first main section of the
article was that, regarding a number of key topics related to the historical geography of Old
Chosŏn, our confidence in the important theses that had been considered uncontestable
in the past has tended to weaken, rather than strengthen, with the accumulation of new
evidence and the growth of professional scholarship. And often, that weakening meant
getting closer to (if unintendedly, and if for not exactly the same reasons) those heterodox
or “resistance” geographical reconstructions that were considered squarely outside the
realm of reasonable historical research. The degree to which such a pattern occurred varies
by topic, of course, and I tried to make this clear in the historiographical review that con-
stituted the first main part of the article.
The main content of the second section was that, at virtually all stages of modern historical
scholarship, the study of ancient Korean historical geography has been permeated with exter-
nal influences, namely political, ideological, and factional interests.4 What my analysis aimed
to show was that mainstream theories – those that were later more solidly confirmed as well as
those that were questioned – have been by and large far from devoid of external influences.
This was predominantly the case during colonial times, but external concerns continued to
exert a significant influence on ancient history scholarship even long after independence and
national division. This kind of argument is just typical practice in the sociology of knowledge,
for which the modern scholarship on Korean antiquity provides suitable material.
3 See footnotes 83 and 84 of the original article.
4 For reasons of convenience, I will ignore philosophical arguments that there can be no objective demarca-
tion between internal and external elements of science.
31
2
Tay Jeon
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I will call these three arguments (the first two from the first part and the last one from the
second part of the original article) “overconfidence”, “convergence”, and “external influence”.
Many people found these descriptions provocative, but I don’t think that these descriptions
per se express anything new or radical. The first two simply describe certain noticeable pat-
terns in the history of historiography. The third may involve a greater degree of interpreta-
tion, but it is certainly not a description that stands out as idiosyncratic. The strong presence
of external influence in modern scholarship, even on those works that fall in the camp of
orthodox historiography, is something that has already been expressed by scholars multiple
times in the past and present, and remains fairly widely acknowledged even by people who do
not like to talk about the subject. The bits of research that constitute these three broad de-
scriptions are nothing new or arcane – it is just that the patterns they collectively form previ-
ously existed in a state of relatively unspoken, and unorganized, silence. The immediate goal
of my original article was to bring these phenomena to the surface and express them in a
structured and detailed manner. It was my judgment that these macroscopic patterns and
characteristics of modern scholarship merited explicit expression.
In my view, what has agitated many people about my article has to do with the epistemic
and normative implications that these descriptive facts about historiography contain. “So
what?” seems to be the inevitable question. I initially found Logie’s repeated efforts to specu-
late about my motivations rather surprising, as this is not the kind of criticism one would
normally expect.5 But this is likely just an expression of anxiety that these descriptions may be
interpreted to derive unacceptable normative conclusions. Likewise, when Logie said that my
description of convergence was a “false analogy” (138), I believe he was pointing out that the
normative or epistemic conclusion that (he thinks) I am trying to get across is false.6 An
Jeongjun, who wrote a critical response to my Korean language article, also expressed, “I do
not understand why Tay Jeong brought up the phenomenon where a new theory about the
location of Paesu is presently receiving attention in the academia” (my translation).7 Am I
trying to imply, for example, that Lelang is just as likely to have been in Liaoxi as early
Chosŏn, or that Lee Dukil’s opinions are just as sound as any majority position among au-
thoritative scholars? Do my descriptions gesture towards “post-truth”?8
The epistemic implications were largely left unspoken because, apart from the fact that
they were outside the immediate focus of the article, I thought there was a good deal of inter-
pretive uncertainty. Now, in the face of all the radical normative arguments that I have been
accused of making (or implying), I will propose an interpretation that I, upon further reflec-
5 Logie 2019.
6 Logie 2019, 138.
7 An 2018, 360. This was a response to Jeong 2018b.
8 Logie 2019, 146.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
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tion, have found reasonable. I will say two things: First, the study of ancient historical geogra-
phy started from a subrational state, and there is a possibility that its irrational legacies may
still linger in the professional habitus of its researchers. If this is true, then the discipline (or at
least some parts of it) might be able to benefit from some added intellectual caution and
humility. Second, some works in the heterodox tradition can claim a legitimate spot in the
rational reconstruction of scientific historiography. This second interpretation has more to
do with our retrospective evaluation of modern scholarship than an analysis of the activities
of the present body of scholars. The rest of this section will be devoted to explaining how
these epistemic interpretations may be drawn from the three descriptive arguments present-
ed in my original article.
2.1 Confidence, Bias, and Rationality
The record of overconfidence demands a critical adjustment of the level of confidence we
deem appropriate for the mainstream theories in the field. The basic reasoning rests on a
simple and commonsensical Bayesian inference: the fact of having been wrong or wrongly
confident in the past reduces the likelihood that your next confident judgment will be true or
safe. Similarly, a currently prevailing thesis in a field with an excellent record of corroborating
the beliefs it held with high confidence in the past will prima facie enjoy a stronger epistemic
status than a majority opinion in a field where confidence has frequently been betrayed by
further evidence and reasoning.
Here, one may argue that getting things wrong or developing the wrong levels of confi-
dence in our theories may just be a result of intellectual growth rather than any shortcoming
in scientific practice. People had full faith in geocentrism until they developed the tools and
methods for coming up with a better theory, heliocentrism. That is surely a record of error,
but it seems that there is nothing immediately irrational in this history: it could just be that,
at each moment in history, astronomers supported the theory which explained the available
evidence with maximal rationality. As scientists are never perfect in reality, the more refined
critic may admit that there are sure to be occasional elements of irrationality in conventional
scientific theories in each period. But he/she would then argue that, while it is generally true
that scientists need to be keenly aware of the possibility of irrationality and overconfidence,
there is nothing in the history of historiography of ancient Korean geography which makes it
more problematic than any other healthy research program. My description of the record of
overconfidence has no epistemic implications other than completely trivial reminders that
are common to all sciences.
The strong external influences that permeated modern historical scholarship of Korean
antiquity decrease the plausibility of such a response. It is commonly assumed by practicing
scientists as well as philosophers and historians of science that bias, or the influence of external
314 Tay Jeon
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factors, generally impedes rational judgment.9 The error-conducive effects of bias are already
well accepted with relation to the works of heterodox scholars. Lee Chirin, easily one of the
most influential heterodox historians, spoke with full confidence that, for example, Lelang was
not in Pyongyang and Wanghŏm was in the Liaodong Peninsula.10 That confidence was surely
mistaken – the available evidence was arguably determined to support the rival hypothesis in
the case of Lelang while the evidence is still inconclusive in the case of Wanghŏm. Yet, why did
he make these assertions with such unwavering confidence as if the evidence was clearly de-
termined to support his hypotheses? It must have been the case that external motivations, such
as political motivations, induced him to inflate the plausibility of the theories that he found
agreeable and understate the plausibility of those with which he was uncomfortable. I believe
this much of my argumentation should face no objections even from my strongest critics.
The crux of the second part of my original article was that in retrospect, the same can be
said of researchers in the orthodox camp in the past. We can now very plausibly say that the
location of, for example, Paesu remained largely underdetermined for the most part of mod-
ern scholarship. Yet, why was it that, until relatively recently, virtually every professional
historian on ancient Korea in South Korea and Japan spoke with conviction that Paesu
could not have been anywhere north of the Yalu? Or, to take another example from my
article, why was the thesis of the centuries-long presence of Chosŏn in Liaoxi widely consid-
ered unreasonable among the absolute majority of scholars, despite documentary records
indicating that this was the case and despite the absence of any decisive reason to believe this
could not have been the case? The most plausible explanation lies in elements that are exter-
nal to the rational content of science. In my original article, I identified colonial path depend-
ence and the existence of heterodox adversaries as the most likely sources of collective bias.
The records of unwarranted confidence in traditional geographical theses are attributable
to a non-trivial degree to biased scientific practice. At this point, the critic may complain that
all my examples (perhaps with the exception of Wanghŏm, where serious revisionist argu-
ments have begun to be presented relatively recently) are from the past. My response is that
09 In this article, I will abide by this assumption without questioning it, although it must be mentioned that
there is a philosophically controversial but noteworthy argument – notably advocated by feminist epis-
temologists – which hold certain forms of bias to be either constitutive of or conducive to knowledge.
These works argue that taking the standpoint of the marginalized groups makes science more objective or
truth-conducive. Considering the strong political power dynamics that have been intertwined in almost
every part of the history of historiography of Korean antiquity, such feminist epistemological concerns –
if one decides to take them seriously – are likely to have implications for our evaluation of historical
knowledge. Such an extended application of epistemological theory is beyond the scope of this article, and
my argument can be made sufficiently clear with the standard assumption of bias as an epistemic nuisance.
10 I am sure that interested readers can think of more recent examples. I just do not want to pinpoint any-
one who is currently active in the field.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
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this is just a typical feature of reasoning from history. A historiographical evaluation of a track
record can only be made in retrospect, and current cutting-edge research will need to wait
until the tribunal of time allows us to evaluate them procedurally with the advantage of hind-
sight. But then, how can my descriptive arguments about the history of historiography imply
any prescriptive demand for current research in the field?
There is surely a problem of external validity here. If we think in deterministic terms –
that is, if we reason only with chains of inferences where the conclusion certainly follows the
premises – my descriptive arguments about overconfidence and external influence would
need to end just as a historiographical argument that pertains only to relevant cases of past
research. And frankly, I would have been fine with leaving my argument there. If we actively
seek out the prescriptive demands that can be derived from those descriptions, however, and
if we think probabilistically rather than deterministically, I think it should be possible for us
to make certain tentative prescriptive arguments. Again, the logical principle behind this is
just Bayesian induction: The existence of bias up to the relatively proximate past in main-
stream historical research presents an uncertain but serious possibility that past legacies may
still remain in the present at least in some subfields and among some researchers. This reason-
ing accords with recent technical research that has forcefully argued that path-dependent
biases exist in the study of Korean antiquity.11
2.2. Deviant Theories in the Rational Reconstruction of Science
The patterns of error and overconfidence in modern scholarship on the historical geography
of Chosŏn differ from those in most other research fields in that the conclusions of deviant
or fringe hypotheses have turned out to be closer to the truth or at least less implausible with
the accumulation of more advanced research. The key question here is whether this fact is
something to be taken seriously or something that is to be explained away. Can at least some
deviant research from the heterodox tradition claim a legitimate place in the rational recon-
struction of scientific historiography?
Epistemologists commonly identify two main intuitions about the concept of
knowledge: (the absence of) luck and (cognitive) ability.12 I find these two intuitions useful
for analyzing the epistemic significance of convergence. Instances of convergence can be
ignored to the extent that they can be reduced to sheer luck. Deviant research will be able to
claim a spot in the rational reconstruction of science to the extent that their correct or rea-
sonable predictions are a result of ability.
11 The most prominent recent proposal comes from Jung In-Seung, who has identified the presence of
sticky and subrational frameworks inherited from the colonial period in our archaeological theories of the
early Iron Age Korean Peninsula. See also footnote 104 of the original article.
12 Pritchard 2010 contains a good concise overview of the two intuitions.
316 Tay Jeon
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There is no doubt that measuring the proportion of luck and ability of a certain thesis or
argument is an empirical judgment that resists top-down generalization. I do not wish to
argue that all heterodox theories in the history of modern historical research whose geograph-
ical inferences approach the proposals of recent cutting-edge research can claim an element of
ability. Nor do I wish to downplay the role of luck, which I believe is almost universally pre-
sent: Often in the study of Korean antiquity (as well as that of antiquity in many other parts
of the world), the evidence is too scarce, ambiguous or mixed to allow for complete determi-
nation of historical knowledge, so the potential truth or plausibility of inferences made in
such research is likely to contain an element of luck. But it is my firm judgment that at least
some deviant geographic proposals whose plausibility is retrospectively verifiable contain a
significant degree of ability as well. Ability in this context consists of both positive and nega-
tive terms. On the positive side, it is about paying attention to the evidence, which, albeit
scarce and not fully determined, adds weight to a certain possibility. On the negative side, it is
about being able to critically deal with underappreciated problems in prevailing theories.
The examples I mentioned in section 2.1 exhibit elements of both positive and negative
ability, which is reflected in the works that lay out some of the most prominent heterodox
geographical theories. The existence of an early territory of Chosŏn in Liaoxi hypothesized in
the works of pre-1990s North Korean scholars was not just a product of wishful thinking but
was also based on an interpretation of widely-used Chinese textual sources that pointed to
this location, as well as the newly available evidence provided by the mandolin-shaped dag-
gers. Consider, also, the territory of late Chosŏn demarcated by the Paesu. Neither the textu-
al nor the archaeological evidence has, at any point in the past, unequivocally favored the
traditional locations of the Chŏngchŏn or Yalu Rivers. Even looking at the most basic source
– Shiji, “Chaoxian liezhuan” – alone, the only description of the size of Chosŏn’s territory is
just not compatible with the identification of the Paesu as the Chŏngchŏn and only very
dubiously so as the Yalu.13 Basic compatibility issues regarding cardinal directions can be
found in other key primary sources like “Weishu” and “Dongyi zhuan” in the Sanguo zhi.14
The problem gets really compounded when we think of the compatibility with other con-
ventional geographic reconstructions.15 Yet, the fact is that almost all authoritative historians
had decided to explain away these and kindred problems until relatively recently without
paying due attention to the historiographical uncertainty they pose, and it was mainly schol-
13 Shiji 115.2985 (眞番臨屯, 皆來服屬, 方數千里).
14 Sanguo zhi 30.850 (燕人衛滿亡命, 爲胡服, 東度浿水, 詣準降, 說準求居西界, (故)[收]中國亡命爲朝
鮮藩屛. 準信寵之, 拜爲博士, 賜以圭, 封之百里, 令守西邊). It is hard not to wonder whether one really
would have recorded that Wiman crossed the river eastwards to Chosŏn and defended its western border
if the Paesu was the Chŏngchŏn or Yalu.
15 See, for example, Park Jun-Hyoung 2016, 96–98 for details.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
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7
ars influenced by the heterodox tradition that chose to deal with them seriously before the
late 1980s. At least in the context of the historical geography of Chosŏn, we cannot simply
reduce the relative similarity between major heterodox geographical reconstructions and the
proposals of recent cutting-edge research to sheer chance. It is a mistake to think that the
rational content of the history of historiography on this topic is exclusively populated by
elements from orthodox research.
3 Response to Logie
The catalyst for writing this sequel to my original article was in part Logie’s critical review of
it. I will devote the remainder of this article to addressing his criticisms and other notable
aspects of his paper that have not already been addressed.
3.1 Think in Degrees, Not Kinds
However, rather than viewing this [the fact of having staved off erroneous colonial
historical theses such as Mimana Nihonfu] as evidence of South Korean scholars’
agency, and by extension their acceptance of a P’yŏngyang location for Lelang and
Wanghŏm likewise, Jeong frames it as a potential “intimation” of a gradual process
of decolonization….16
This [the fact of recent convergence] is nothing but a manifestation of the fact that
many different theses normally coexist in academia, and that the presentation of
minority theories is not suppressed….The cases that Tay Jeong mentions merely
indicate that the minority theories that are published in academic journals through
normal procedures sometimes receive attention and may even become the majority
theory depending on the progress of subsequent research17 [my translation].
One conceptual criticism that I have often received is that I have not interpreted the fact of
having overcome distorted or biased theories in the past as indicative of the intellectual
openness and agency of present South Korean academia. In principle, I have no opposition to
this interpretation – I think it is also a natural message that we get from the history of histo-
riography. There is no doubt that present South Korean academia is open enough for minor-
ity or even “seemingly heterodox” proposals strongly supported by evidence to receive serious
attention. But this fact poses no contradiction to the interpretation that the experience of
constantly having corrected past errors or biases could be taken as a reminder that modern
scholarship did not begin in a rational state, and irrational path-dependent biases have been
present for the greater part of the history of modern scholarship even as they were presuma-
16 Logie 2019, 143.
17 An 2018, 361. This quote is from An’s critique of my Korean-language article.
318 Tay Jeon
g
bly corrected or weakened one after another. This points to a very real possibility that un-
wanted biases – although not as explicit and overt as they once were – may still persist in a
non-trivial portion of the professional habitus. If anyone thinks that these two interpreta-
tions are contradictory, it is just a result of thinking in types (as one or the other, open or
repressive, rational or irrational) rather than in degrees. The current situation in Korea is that
there are quite a number of otherwise respectable scholars who are refusing to appreciate the
latter interpretation. Such an attitude is only reinforced by the worry that it may be seen as a
weakness against aggressive populist adversaries. The recent anti-pseudohistory campaign is
just an organized manifestation of this attitude.18
3.2 Hidden Motivations
Logie spends much effort trying to uncover my hidden motivations. Most of these efforts rely
on one-dimensional similarities between my arguments and those of the “pseudohistorians”.
For example, Logie takes issue with my frequent citation of Jung In-Seung, saying that Jung’s
argument about the location of Wanghŏm was cited by a supporter of Hwandan Gogi.19
Citing Jung in multiple locations in my article was only natural considering the outstanding
contributions he had made to the discipline with his thorough and bold hypotheses, many of
which rely on novel data. His well-evidenced arguments supporting the existence of remain-
ing colonial legacies in Korean archaeology also provide a useful reference for my descriptive
argument about external influence. And still, Jung’s works had only minor representation
among all the sources I cited in the historiographical review which laid out the arguments
about overconfidence and convergence.
The same can be said about Logie’s criticism of my treatment of Yi Pyŏngdo. Logie said,
“As is common to the polemical narratives promoted by Korean pseudohistorians, Jeong
highlights only Yi Pyŏngdo as being representative of establishment historiography, while
making no mention of other professional South Korean scholars or the ways in which they
sought to decolonize narratives of Korean history.”20 Regarding this point, it seems clear to
me that the activities of the “pseudohistorians” have a much larger presence in Logie’s mind
than mine. Yi is sometimes branded as an archvillain in popular historical narratives in South
Korea, and, at least in some of the more radical polemics, the entirety of South Korean insti-
18 I am referring to the recent series of organized journalistic, academic, and political activities by some
South Korean historians that condemed the irrationality and danger of the “pseudohistorians” far more
aggressively than most historians had before. The special editorial sections in the 2016 and 2017 volumes
of Yŏksabip’yŏng, which contain more than a dozen contributions specifically aimed at criticizing various
elements of “pseudohistory”, are one noteworthy attempt.
19 Logie 2019, 125.
20 Logie 2019, 137.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
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tutional academia is portrayed as being mindlessly subservient to Yi. But there is no reason
that I should pay attention to such issues. Yi was by far the most important historian of Old
Chosŏn in the couple of decades after decolonization (1945) (there weren’t even that many
people specializing in this topic back then), and if there is one person who should appear in
such a brief historiographical review to represent the works of the early South Korean histo-
rians on this topic, it is Yi. I still cannot think of any other South Korean historian from that
period whose addition to the historiographical review would have made any important dif-
ference for the topics that I was discussing. In addition, I made it abundantly clear that sub-
sequent generations of South Korean researchers moved further and further away from
colonial precedents. Such efforts to portray me as a covert supporter or ally of aggressive
populist movements and as a person whose “broader motivation may be to throw a lifeline to
pseudohistorians” (129) do not even qualify as arguments.
3.3 A Note on Terminology
The only normative argument I really wanted to forcefully advance had to do with the use of
the word “pseudohistory”. The basic argument is that this term is better used as a predicate
than as a name in the context of the study of Korean antiquity. This is an important differ-
ence. A name refers to objects in the world; a predicate simply ascribes properties to an object
already referred to by a name. Simply put, the use of the term “pseudohistory” as a name is
undesirable because its referent is too vague for a serious scientific language. This causes im-
mediate problems with the clarity of communication. For example, Logie’s statement that I
“portray[ed] the dispute between pseudo and professional historians and archaeologists as a
vigorous debate between scholars of opposing factions in which no side has absolute evi-
dence” 21 is borderline unintelligible. I expressed clearly that the “factions”, as much as they
are a historical reality, have gradually dissolved over time.
In addition, almost all the scholars I cited were professionals. In a number of cases, the dis-
putes are between professional scholars with no noticeable or proclaimed ties to the tradition
of what I have called “resistance historiography”. To illustrate this point with an example, the
people who appear in my review of the historical discussion surrounding the location of early
Chosŏn range from Jeong Yak-yong, Inaba Iwakichi, and Jeong Inbo active in precolonial and
colonial times to Lee Chirin, Yi Pyŏngdo, and Ch’ŏn Gwanu of the 1960s and 1970s and to
Lee-Hyunggoo, Bok Gi-dae, Zhang Boquan, Wu’en Si, Song Ho Jung, Park Junhyung, and
Ishikawa Takehiko from the period after the 1990s, just to randomly grab a few names from
the bibliography. Exactly which part of my historiographical review is Andrew Logie calling a
“portrayal of the dispute between pseudo and professional historians and archaeologists”? I do
21 Logie 2019, 128.
320 Tay Jeon
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not mind commentators calling any specific personmentioned in my articles a pseudohistorian
(i.e. using the term as a predicate) as long as they present a cogent case for it. It is just that Lo-
gie’s statement is unintelligible and scientifically unfit because of his use of the word “pseudo-
history” as a name. The same can be said of any other topic I mentioned in my article with
equal plausibility, even the least controversial topics, such as Lelang.
Here one may ask: is the problem with the referential use of the term “pseudohistory”
merely that it adds a vague name to our scientific vocabulary, thus hindering efficient com-
munication? It might seem to some that this is not that big a deal. Yet, I think the negative
implications go far beyond that, and explaining those further negative implications of the
referential use of the term “pseudohistory” in the context of the study of Korean antiquity
was the topic of my Korean language article. As this usage seems to be spilling over to scholars
working in the English language, I shall briefly reiterate my arguments below.
In my Korean language article I classified the negative implications into epistemic, practi-
cal, and ethical aspects. To avoid excessive redundancy, I will just briefly outline the main
logic of the epistemic aspect, which I think is the most relevant for the present article. The
problem is that there is a theoretically very plausible and empirically attestable danger that
the users of this name will be compelled to implicitly bring in a criterion that is external to
the lexical meaning of the word “pseudohistory” to make up for the excessive vagueness of its
reference.22 In ancient Korean historical geography, that external criterion is most likely to be
the property of being a deviant hypothesis that depicts a larger territory than the traditionally
accepted view. Or perhaps, it could be the property of having cited certain canonical works or
arguments that are generally recognized as belonging to the heterodox tradition. The essen-
tial problem with both criteria is that they are not sufficiently reliable indicators of pseudo-
history; there is no reason to believe that these two properties are coextensive with the prop-
erty of being pseudohistorical. The epistemic consequence is that it may render scholars
unable to maximize the opportunity to engage in a fruitful deliberation and discussion of the
material which may prove useful for further scientific development, especially when it comes
to overcoming path-dependent biases.
3.4 Partiality (Representativeness)
One of the main objections that Logie raises against my article is that the review of historiog-
raphy was partial and biased. I can think of two kinds of partiality in a historiographical re-
view: qualitative and quantitative. The former has to do with representation, given the fact
that a certain thesis was selected for discussion. As I was committed to avoiding technical
judgments about the quality or plausibility of each thesis, the only fair way for me to present
22 Jeong 2018b, 441–443.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
g
e” 321
each theory was to introduce the key supporting arguments as well as criticisms, in addition
to information about the level of support each theory receives from experts. One could prob-
ably still criticize me for more subjective things like nuance or tone, or singular anecdotal
cases where I did not mention the flaws of a certain minority thesis in detail. At this point, I
can only respond by saying that I made an effort to maintain qualitative fairness within the
constraints of avoiding technical judgments.
Let us consider quantitative partiality. What I mean by that is that the amount of atten-
tion and coverage that is devoted to each theory included in the historiographical overview is
not proportional to its historical visibility in the academia.23 For example, if one theory had a
visibility of 9 and another theory 1, quantitative parity will demand that I write roughly nine
sentences about the former theory and one sentence about the latter. I never made an at-
tempt at quantitative representativeness in the first place, nor was it necessary or even appro-
priate. A critic could make the technical judgment that at least some of the hypotheses and
research trends I mentioned are of such low quality that they did not deserve inclusion in
serious academic communications and worry that mentioning them may lead the innocent
reader to believe that they are actually good. I do not think we need to agree on exactly which
constituents of my historiographical overview are good and which are bad, or which hit the
“legit history” mark and which do not. The paper was presented as an original research article
in a journal frequented by historically literate people. The risk of potentially misleading naïve
readers is an ethical non-issue.
3.5 Irrelevance between Topics?
Logie argues that my paper “conflates the question of the location of P’aesu, Wanghŏm, and
Lelang with the separate topic of Chosŏn’s earlier, pre-Qin Kai territories…. In terms of
culture-historical associations, [the] ‘movement hypothesis’ … has no impact on the perti-
nent questions regarding historical P’aesu, Wanghŏm and Lelang, which all pertain to post-
Qin Kai, and indeed the post-Warring States period.”24
The degree of interconnectedness between topics is not crucial to my descriptions. The
baseline coherence of the topics I discussed was given by their relevance to Chosŏn and Le-
lang, and they collectively constitute my broad descriptive arguments. However, it just hap-
pens to be the case that all these topics, especially the ones regarding the pre-Qin Kai and
post-Qin Kai territory of Old Chosŏn, are closely related – in fact, they have often been
23 Here, visibility should be compatible with a number of definitions, such as the number of publications,
the number of citations, or even hard-to-measure concepts like cultural-political influence, or whatever. It
does not matter for the present discussion.
24 Logie 2019, 130.
32
2
Tay Jeon
g
discussed in conjunction with each other.25 It appears to me as common sense that a certain
polity’s territory after a recorded major loss is not unrelated to its territory before the loss. In
fact, Logie shows that he knows this himself when he says, “Unaddressed by Jeong, the neces-
sary premise to support the assertion that Chosŏn continued to occupy Liaoning would
either be that the Yan expansion never occurred, or that Chosŏn’s original territory had
extended even further west.”26 Although this sentence is quite vague – the modern adminis-
trative district of Liaoning is vast, and it is not really intelligible what the exact criterion for
“even further west” is – it is clear that the latter option expresses some kind of relationship
between pre- and post-Qin Kai territory. For example, if one wants to consider the Sejungni-
Lianhuapu culture as belonging to Chosŏn in its later stages, then it makes sense to say that
its territory had likely extended to Liaoxi before the major loss.
3.6 Lelang Seals
This one is comparatively trivial but still worth pointing out. Logie says,
[T]here is certainly a debate specifically concerning the authenticity of clay seals associ-
ated with the Lelang excavations, as first highlighted by Chŏng Inbo, and the conspir-
acy theory of Japanese forgery remains a favourite of pseudohistorians. … Lelang graves
have continued to be uncovered by North Korean archaeologists, which constitutes
the strongest evidence that the Japanese did not fake their excavations. It is precisely
through this method of introducing the reader to contradictory information, howev-
er, that Jeong works to construct the idea of an ongoing debate.27
This is just a typical case of conservative overconfidence (plus, if I may guess, Logie’s own
ignorance of the literature). In most cases, an excavation is unable to provide strong proof of
the authenticity of another excavation conducted by another team at another time. More
concretely in the context of Lelang seals, North Korean archaeologists never reported any
Lelang seals in their excavations; they have only reported features and artifacts that are not
seals. I do not see how one can ever argue (or has ever argued) that the vast number of seal-less
features reported by North Korean archaeologists provides strong evidence for the authentic-
ity of the Japanese excavations of Lelang seals.
25 This makes me wonder whether, his unwavering trust in “professional” research notwithstanding, Logie
is really all that familiar with the historical and archaeological literature on the historical geography of
Chosŏn. His bibliography is wanting when it comes to the sources on this topic that have been written in
Korean or other East Asian languages, which are the languages where the majority of the cutting-edge dis-
cussion (or just about any discussion) has been taking place in the past 100 years.
26 Logie 2019, 131n.
27 Logie 2019, 135.
A Conceptual Appendix to “The Politics of Historical Knowled
g
e” 323
According to recent research, it is unlikely that the Japanese excavators intentionally
forged the seals that they claimed to have unearthed. This conclusion was primarily based on
an examination of the long-forgotten excavation records and the memos left by participating
excavators and researchers.28 However, as is well known, debates about seal forgery are not
just about the possible dishonesty of Japanese excavators – they are also (and perhaps to a
greater extent) about the possible interference of antique traders, for whom the high price of
Lelang seals provided a motivation for forgery and other illicit activities. At present, there is
no decisive evidence that the more than 200 Lelang seals that we know of were all or mostly
authentic, nor is there decisive evidence that they are all or mostly fake. This was the conclu-
sion of the most thoroughly evidenced and researched publication on this topic by Jung In-
Seung. The fact remains that there is an ongoing debate and continuing uncertainty about
the authenticity of the Lelang seals.
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