The Formation of the ‘Buyeo Tribe’ Concept and the Construction of National History

This paper examines how modern concepts of human geography were introduced and transformed during Korea’s transition to modernity around the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on the notion of the Buyeo tribe, it traces how racial classifications derived from geographical discourse came to be redefined as historical agents in the form of “ethnicity.” Shin Chae-ho positioned the Buyeo tribe as the central ethnic group in Korean history in his 『Doksa Sillon(讀史新論)』, but the term had already appeared in geographical texts produced by Japanese scholars during the Meiji period and in Jang Ji-yeon’s 『Daehan Sinjiji(⼤韓新地誌)』, where the Buyeo tribe was identified as the descendants of Dangun. Shin’s reconceptualization of the Buyeo tribe and his construction of a “national history” critically engaged with contemporary geographic and ethnological knowledge, displacing older narratives such as that of Gija and positioning the Buyeo lineage as a link between Dangun and Goguryeo. However, later nationalist historiography often misunderstood or simplified Shin’s intervention, using the term Buyeo tribe in a more generic or instrumental manner. This study highlights how the category of ethnicity emerged through the reinterpretation of racial-geographical knowledge in the service of nationalist historiography.