Carving Status at Kmgangsan: Elite Graffiti in Premodern Korea

Honorable Mention for the 2024 James B. Palais Prize for English-Language Scholarly books published on Korea from the Association for Asian Studies

Winner of the 2022 Patricia Buckley Ebrey Prize sponsored by the American Historical Association

An eye-opening journey through time in Koreas Diamond Mountains

North Koreas Kmgangsan is one of Asias most celebrated sacred mountain ranges, comparable in fame to Mount Tai in China and Mount Fuji in Japan. Carving Status at Kmgangsan marks a paradigm shift in the research about East Asian mountains by introducing an entirely new field: autographic rock graffiti. The book details how late Chosn (ca. 16001900 CE) Korean elite travelers used Kmgangsan to demonstrate their high social status by carving inscriptions, naming sites, and joining the literary pedigree of visitors to renowned locales. Such travel practices show how social competition emerged in the spatial context of a landscape. Hence, Carving Status at Kmgangsan argues for an expansion of accepted historical narratives on travel and mountain space in premodern East Asia. Rather than interpreting pilgrimage routes as exclusively religious or tourist, in Kmgangsans case they were also an important site of collective memory.

A journey to Kmgangsan to view and contribute to its sites of memory was an endeavor that late Chosn Koreans hoped to achieve in their lives. Based on multidisciplinary research drawing on literary writings, court records, gazetteers, maps, songs, calligraphy, and paintings, Carving Status at Kmgangsan is the first historical study of this practice. It will appeal to scholars in fields ranging from East Asian history, literature, and geography, to pilgrimage studies and art history.

*Winner of the 2022 Patricia Buckley Ebrey Prize for a distinguished book on the history of China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, or Japan, prior to 1800, sponsored by the American Historical Association