The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the features of Jabga collections and of the city Pyeongyang, where Jabgas were collected and published in a formal collection named “Jabga-jip,” and clarify the reasons why the first existing Jabga collect...
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the features of Jabga collections and of the city Pyeongyang, where Jabgas were collected and published in a formal collection named “Jabga-jip,” and clarify the reasons why the first existing Jabga collection was published in Pyeongyang, not in Gyeongseong (a former name of Seoul, the Capital of Korea). Jabga is a traditional poetry which had been popular in common people during Joseon Dynasty, and it is categorized in Siga (classical poetry). This Jabga was hugely popular in the late Joseon period; however, because of its diversity and complexity, it has gained late attention in the scholarly world. Jabga had a lot of contradictions among scholars from the very beginning when they discussed conceptions and categories of its genre; however, now since many studies have been conducted, many things have been achieved: clarifying its conceptions, genre features, and categorical problems. As a result, not only is Jabga getting achieved its original identity of genre, but also it has been recognized as an independent one. However, compared to such achievements of the studies, Jabga-jip has been rarely discussed until now.
In the late Joseon, Jabga was in the biggest trend so that many collections included its lyrics were published and spread rapidly. At that time, total 26 collections were published randomly, 80 percent of which were published in Gyeongseong, but ironically Shingu-Jabga, the first, extant collection, was published in Pyeongyang. Therefore, I narrowed down the research period between 1914 to 1915 (when the first Jabga collection was published) to find out what attributes led the first collection to be published in Pyeongyang; and I compared and analyzed many collections published each in Pyeongyang and Gyeongseong.
In the second section, I focused on the city Pyeongyang and researched the city in history and in geology. Pyeongyang was a distinctive city compared to others because it was politically isolated so not many restricts existed, which led it to become a liberal city. Furthermore, Pyeongyang was a requisite course for sending or inviting an envoy, which helped develop entertainment cultures, and this automatically resulted in economic prosperity. I researched such features that only Pyengyang would have related to developing Jabga publication. In addition to this, abundant human resources of Pyeongyang could be a major component to publish Pyeongyang Jabga collections; in Pyeongyang were many talented entertainers such as a ginyeo and a changbu (a highly-educated female entertainer and a professional male singer).
In the third section, I tried to figure out distinctive features of Pyeongyang Jabga-jip. Firstly, I collected publishing information based on the covers of targeted Jabga-jip to be discussed, sorted them out, and checked their lists of contained works in the collections to discover features of Pyeongyang. To more precisely understand Pyeongyang collections, I should compare Pyeongyang Jabga-jip with other contemporary collections; therefore, I compared Pyeongyang Jabga-jip with three other Gyeongseong ones. This was the most prominent part of study for discovering features of Pyeongyang collections, which is the major purpose of this thesis; accordingly, I think it can be meaningful that the findings were sorted and organized in the tables based on contents of works.
In the fourth section, I strived to analyze features of each work, not a whole collection, to understand local characteristics. I selected works published only in Pyeongyang collections and studied major works to accomplish the aim of this thesis. This thesis is discussing Jabga-jip published in Pyeongyang so I chose Seodo region (northwest Korea) as a main discussion setting and divided the works into Seodo works and non-Seodo works for conducting the research.
In the fifth section, I searched for poetic meanings of Pyeongyang collections including so-far-discussed matters; I found out the fact that the first extant Jabga-jip had published in Pyeongyang, not Gyeongseong (considering then-publication situation, the first one could have been published in Gyeongseong); therefore, it can be concluded that this phenomenon had occurred because of Pyeongando regional features (a province where the city Pyeongyang was located) and its foundation.
Pyeongyang had stronger community spirit than other regions. This seems to be attributed to rare-existence of the upper class because of political and social isolation. I think Pyeongyang’s strong community spirit could play a pivotal role in leading the popularity of Jabja, which was derived from then-folk songs. It can be understood that it was possible to collect then-popular Jabgas and bind them into a book because local community residents shared songs and traded them freely due to its locality. This thesis is a meaningful study because it aims to prove the validity of the first, extant Jabga-jib published in Pyeongyang through studying various Jabgas and analyzing them.