Law and Literature in Late Imperial China and Choson Korea

Abstract

This paper explores a close link between law and literature in Late imperial China and Choson Korea. Apart from the official legal code, a wide variety of legal literature ranging from case records to court case fiction were produced in late imperial China and Choson Korea. More surprisingly, even Chinese court case fiction called gong'an was read as a kind of legal literature providing with useful information on law and legal proceedings. A genre of legal literature produced in traditional society deserves our particular attention in examining the meaning of reading law as literature in the context of Confucian legal culture. My focus in this paper is shifted from Chinese case literature and Ming court case fiction to the reception of Ming court case fiction in the context of Korean legal culture, in particular, to a case of Chong Yagyong's (1762-1836) Humhum sinso (A new book on penal law).