Modern Korea tried to become a member of the modern world system in the late of 19th century. For this, she payed a very expensive price. Korea had to accept, so to speak, the historical experience of the material and spiritual invasion of western and ...

Modern Korea tried to become a member of the modern world system in the late of 19th century. For this, she payed a very expensive price. Korea had to accept, so to speak, the historical experience of the material and spiritual invasion of western and japanese imperialism. In this vortex, many westerners have made a lot of reports or recits de voyage that describe and analyse korean society in the need of their politico-military invasion, or for the purpose of commercial exchange or pure academic concern. We cannot admit that the images of korean society in the western travel writings were constructed from the objective and concrete sources. Because we can often find euro-centric presuppositions and the extremely distorted images of korean society in them.
Nevertheless it is needed to change the perspective. Let us pay attention to the fact that those texts also constitute the cross-cultural context, that is the encounter of the East Asian and the Western Civilization. If the western reports and travel writings of Korea could be considered in the perspective of comparative religion, we can find there a mine of information about korean culture, custom, religion and folklore, which are worthy to be analysed on the basis of comparative religion.
This article treats the documents of a french catholic missionary called Joseph Cadars, who lived in Korea for 42 years(1909-1950), carried out various missionary activities, made often trip to korean rural society and wrote many reports and travel writings. Especially it analyses two articles, "Fête de l'Agriculture en Corée" written in 1909 and "Un Voyage à Quelpaert" in 1912. Of course, the number of all the writings that Cadars made counts more than 30 articles. Above all, the aforementioned two articles displays his great concern for the foreign custom and korean confucian culture. This article tries to elucidate why he wrote those reports and travel writings, why he describe korean people, culture and religion in such a way, what kind of reference he used for understanding the regional history of Korea.
In conclusion, from the analysis of Cadars' reports and travel writings of Korea, we would like to suggest that the images of Korea which were constructed by western christian missionaries cannot fit with the framework of Saidian 'Orientalism'. Because there were mixed both a negative distortion and a positive admiration in their korean images. From this reason, if one would use the concept of 'Orientalism', he have to extend its denotation beyond Edward Said, just as Richard King(Orientalism and Religion) or Peter Hulm(Colonial Encounter) or Mary Louise Pratt(Imperial Eye) do it. Otherwise he had better, speaking some exaggeratingly, consider the Saidian conceptualization as an anachronic or monolithic abuse.