Hyeok Hweon Kang
Biographic Data
| ID | 1253757 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hyeok Hweon Kang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hyeok Hweon |
| FAMILY NAME | Kang |
| SIGNATURE | KANG H H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0893-0427 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 6 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Kingpins at Court
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Chosŏn Korean (1392-1910) court ran a smuggling enterprise in Japan, using both formal diplomatic agents and private merchants to import military contraband. This royal enterprise caused the largest documented criminal investigation in early modern Japan, complicating diplomatic relations with both the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) and the daimyos of its Tsushima domain. By examining this history of "contraban…
How Network Analysis Uncovers International Networks of Smuggling History
This paper takes a network analytic approach to investigating crime in seventeenth-century Japan. In 1667, the Nagasaki magistrate’s office conducted the largest documented smuggling crackdown in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), busting a ring of 87 arms traffickers who had been shipping contraband to Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). I use the office’s “criminal investigation records” (*hankachō* 犯科帳) to build a dataset of the 94 suspects from ten Japanese t…
Reverse engineering as history and method
How does one reverse engineer a technical artefact, let alone build a system of knowledge, use, and production around it? This article investigates Korean artisans and practitioners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their efforts to understand and rebuild the Portuguese espingarda (matchlock musket). What emerges, first, is a hitherto untold story of how a global artefact became reconstituted in Korea – a process that generated new …
Cooking Niter, Prototyping Nature
From experimental philosophers in England to workshop managers in Korea, practitioners across the seventeenth-century world developed new ways of investigating nature while studying saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the chief ingredient of gunpowder. Contrary to global histories that emphasize circulation, however, this early modern convergence had less to do with the fluid movement of knowledge and technology than with the very moments when such mo…
A Korean Military Revolution?
This article argues that advances in drilling techniques and the use of muskets—essential ingredients of the famous Military Revolution paradigm—were central to Korean military reforms following the Imjin War of 1592–1598. Drawing on recent work in East Asian military history that argues that guns also wrought deep changes in non-European ways of war, we use the Korean military of the Chosŏn dynasty, a fascinating nexus of Chinese, Japanese, and …
Big Heads and Buddhist Demons
Boosted by superior firearms and competent riverine transportation, Cossack explorers of the Muscovite empire encountered little resistance in their eastward expansion across Siberia until they reached the Amur frontiers. The Cossacks arrived in 1643 and gained notoriety as Buddhist demons ( luocha 羅剎) for plundering the Mongol-Tungusic tribes of the region during the latter half of the seventeenth century. There ensued an effective military coun…
Cooking Niter, Prototyping Nature
From experimental philosophers in England to workshop managers in Korea, practitioners across the seventeenth-century world developed new ways of investigating nature while studying saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the chief ingredient of gunpowder. Contrary to global histories that emphasize circulation, however, this early modern convergence had less to do with the fluid movement of knowledge and technology than with the very moments when such mo…
A Korean Military Revolution?
This article argues that advances in drilling techniques and the use of muskets—essential ingredients of the famous Military Revolution paradigm—were central to Korean military reforms following the Imjin War of 1592–1598. Drawing on recent work in East Asian military history that argues that guns also wrought deep changes in non-European ways of war, we use the Korean military of the Chosŏn dynasty, a fascinating nexus of Chinese, Japanese, and …
Big Heads and Buddhist Demons
Boosted by superior firearms and competent riverine transportation, Cossack explorers of the Muscovite empire encountered little resistance in their eastward expansion across Siberia until they reached the Amur frontiers. The Cossacks arrived in 1643 and gained notoriety as Buddhist demons ( luocha 羅剎) for plundering the Mongol-Tungusic tribes of the region during the latter half of the seventeenth century. There ensued an effective military coun…
Reverse engineering as history and method
How does one reverse engineer a technical artefact, let alone build a system of knowledge, use, and production around it? This article investigates Korean artisans and practitioners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their efforts to understand and rebuild the Portuguese espingarda (matchlock musket). What emerges, first, is a hitherto untold story of how a global artefact became reconstituted in Korea – a process that generated new …
Cooking Niter, Prototyping Nature
From experimental philosophers in England to workshop managers in Korea, practitioners across the seventeenth-century world developed new ways of investigating nature while studying saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the chief ingredient of gunpowder. Contrary to global histories that emphasize circulation, however, this early modern convergence had less to do with the fluid movement of knowledge and technology than with the very moments when such mo…
How Network Analysis Uncovers International Networks of Smuggling History
This paper takes a network analytic approach to investigating crime in seventeenth-century Japan. In 1667, the Nagasaki magistrate’s office conducted the largest documented smuggling crackdown in Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867), busting a ring of 87 arms traffickers who had been shipping contraband to Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910). I use the office’s “criminal investigation records” (*hankachō* 犯科帳) to build a dataset of the 94 suspects from ten Japanese t…
Kingpins at Court
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Chosŏn Korean (1392-1910) court ran a smuggling enterprise in Japan, using both formal diplomatic agents and private merchants to import military contraband. This royal enterprise caused the largest documented criminal investigation in early modern Japan, complicating diplomatic relations with both the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) and the daimyos of its Tsushima domain. By examining this history of "contraban…
History (6 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (4 works) · Japanese History and Culture (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Economics (3 works) · Geography (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Ancient history (2 works) · China (2 works)