The volume assembles an interdisciplinary range of articles that look into the secondary transformation of knowledge in Chos?n Korea, i.e. processes of interpretive adaptation, of dissection, selection and re-assemblage, of reduction and amplification, as well as of blending with existing cognitive structures and material objectification.

Marion Eggert is Professor of Korean Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. She has published on Korean and Chinese literature, especially travel literature, and intellectual history, primarily of the 17th to 19th centuries, as well as on literary and intellectual transactions within East Asia. Florian Pölking is a researcher and lecturer for Korean Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. He teaches Korean History as well as courses on Korean society and philosophy. He is engaged with the sociopolitical value of technical knowledge and craftsmen within the wider field of state-sponsored building projects during the 17th and 18th century.

Contents: Vladimír Glomb: Yulgok and Laozi: Integration of the Daodejing into 16th-Century Confucian Discourse – Felix Siegmund: Integration and Re-structuring of Military Knowledge in 17th- and 18th-Century Korea – Gunhild Stierand-Kim: On War, the Waenom, and Waterwheels: Memory, Stereotypes, and Knowledge of Japan and the Japanese in Kim In-gy?m’s Ilttong changyuga, an 18th-century kasa travelogue – Barbara Wall: Literary knowledge reflected in Korean intertexts of Xiyouji («The Journey to the West») – Deberniere J. Torrey: Catholic Didactic Poems in Korea’s Transition to Modernity – Sung-deuk Oak: Christianity as the Religion of Civilisation and Fulfilment: Global and Local Elements in Theology of Religions of Early Korean Protestantism – Shin Dongwon: Hygiene in Korea Around 1900: Between Civilisation and Colonialism – Eun-Jeung Lee: Yu Kil-chun’s translation of Karl Rathgen’s «Political Science» (Ch?ngch’ihak) and its relevance to modern day Korean social science.