Translating the T'aengniji: A Review of Inshil Choe Yoon's A Place to Live

Abstract

Thanks to the support of the Academy of Korean Studies, in recent years the quantity of English translations of primary texts in Korean studies has increased enormously. Especially prolific in this respect has been a team of translators assembled by the Center for Buddhist Studies at UCLA (full disclosure: I am also one of the translators, although I have no connection to the translator of the reviewed work). It is especially welcome that among these texts is the T’aengniji. A literal translation of the title might be “Treatise on Selecting a Village,” but the translator’s title, A Place to Live, is short, striking, and memorable. The author, Yi Chung-hwan (1690–1756), was a marginalized member of an aristocratic yangban family who was pushed into exile on account of factional politics. A Place to Live, which he likely completed during the early 1750s, is a geographic account of eighteenth-century Chosŏn written with the purpose of helping fellow yangban aristocrats select a good place to live. After an introductory survey of the Chosŏn’s system of social status, Yi Review Essay