WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

The Imjin War, also known as “The Japanese Calamity of 1592,” “The Rescue of Korea,” “The Glorious Conquest of Korea,” or “The East Asian War,” was the largest military conflict of the sixteenth-century in terms of the number of combatants, yet it still remains obscure outside of East Asia. This is despite the fact that the war was witnessed and chronicled by Western observers and its outcome had significant and far-reaching implications for the subsequent histories of all the major belligerents and indeed, for international trade in the region. It marked the most serious challenge to China’s international hegemony in East Asia prior to the nineteenth century and featured the integration and deployment of the latest military technologies from both the West and the belligerent states. Its memory continues to impact relations between China, Korea, and Japan in both the cultural and diplomatic realms. Bringing in primary sources from all the major participants and examining the impact of this war down to the present, the papers in this panel seek to redress this omission by focusing on several key facets of this seminal conflict, ranging from strategy and alliance building, to the production and dissemination of nautical knowledge, to the creation of extensive genealogies to document positive participation in saving the Korean state from destruction at the hands of the Japanese invaders. Together, the papers demonstrate the permeability of borders and boundaries of various kinds, helping to highlight the broader global significance of this war and suggests fruitful areas for future comparative research.

The gwageo, civil service education system was an educational and governance model shared by multiple East-Asian societies, including Vietnam. Through this institutional connection, local elites were selected through Neo-Confucian knowledge, shaping regional society through an international system. Moreover, the yangban elites in Joseon’s different localities became entangled with this international system. Overall, these factors facilitated social and geographical movement across the Korean Peninsula.

This paper seeks to elucidate the way the career trajectories of local scholars were shaped by this educational model. Educational practices associated with the gwageo generated various types of mobility: candidates often crossed county – and at times provincial – boundaries to prepare for or sit for the examinations, and many successful examinees experienced additional movement as they advanced into official positions.

Employing a method drawing from two key sources, this study seeks to reconstruct the career paths of scholars from Danseong county. First, using the household registers (hojeok), which record occupation, residence and kinship information for local inhabitants, as well as individual mobility and family connections in 1606-1888 Danseong. And second, the exam lists (bangmok), official rosters of successful gwageo candidates, to identify the scholars and track those who advanced to official positions. This way, the scholars’ mobility can be situated within a larger tradition of East-Asian education reaching across national borders, to shed light on a topic that is much understudied yet provides an insight in both national attitudes and the reactions of the local elite.