The Emergence of the Concepts of Liberty, Equality, and Rights: A Study of Public Values among Reformist Intellectuals in Late 19th-Century Korea

This study sheds light on the context in which the concepts of liberty, equality, and rights were accepted and used by reformists in the 1880s and 1890s. Research on the new values accepted in the 19th century has focused on the ‘translation’ of Western concepts in China and Japan, while the internal context of their acceptance in Korea has not been systematically analyzed. This study first illuminates the context in which these concepts were utilized by reformists. The reformist intellectuals’ attention to new public values at the time was connected to the internal needs of Korean society. They believed that the individual’s liberty needed to be expanded to achieve national wealth and power, and emphasizing liberty and equality was necessary to improve the society’s evil customs. Next, this paper analyzes the context in which the terms 自由(freedom), 平等(equality), and 權利(rights) survived as translations of English terms. These three Chinese characters were not newly coined as translated terms but had long existed within East Asian vocabulary, inherently containing the notions of the English words. 自由(jayu) held the notion of being ‘free,’ and 權利(gwolli) included the meaning of ‘capability’ in rights within the character 權(gwon). Even 平等(pyeongdeung) was not initially a translation for equality but was later summoned as a traditional term. In this regard, the view that the notions of liberty and rights were propagated from modern Western thought is merely a prejudice. The translation process of Western concepts acted as a catalyst for internal notions and vocabulary to expand in meaning and develop into universal values.