Nason Kim Dong-wook’s History of Gisaeng: Definition of ‘Giyeou/Gisaeng/changgi’

This article tried to define the concept of ‘Giyeou/Gisaeng/changgi’ focusing on Nason’s “Introduction to the history of Chosun Giyeou (Giyeou and Gisaeng)－A customs-historical approach to the nobles and changgi of Lee dynasty－” published in 1966 by Nason. In particular, the central concept of the thesis can be seen as a Gisaeng, a Changgi, a nobleman, and a history of customs. The vocabulary of ‘Gisaeng’ is not difficult to find in East Asian literature. Even today, without any change in diachronic notation, it is possible to search for data in East Asia as well. ‘Gisaeng’ is judged to be the most common word. In academia, there is a tendency to express mainly as ‘Giyeou’ in the Korea period, and in the case of the Chosun period, it is classified as ‘Gisaeng’. In the case of ‘changgi’, there are many examples of use in East Asian literature, and it can be found that the use of ‘changgi’ is mixed in ancient Korean literature. ‘Gisaeng’ is a suffix ‘-saeng’, and its usage has been prominent since the late Chosun Dynasty. Here, ‘live’ means ‘to make a living by some kind of livelihood’. A ‘Giyeou’ can be called a ‘gisaeng’ who is making a living through a company. For example, ‘Yu-saeng’, ‘Seo-saeng’ etc. can be mentioned. It can be speculated that the generic name of ‘Gisaeng’ is from the 15th to 16th centuries in the mid-Chosun period, when Neo-Confucianism was established as the governing ideology. Concepts are important in academic concepts. In Nason’s thesis on the history of changgi, generic terms such as ‘gisaeng’, ‘Giyeou’, ‘gagi’, ‘sucheonggi’, ‘gwangi’, and ‘changgi’ are used interchangeably. A concept refers to general knowledge about an object or phenomenon. The generic name of ‘gisaeng’ can be said to be a generic term for a changgi who is making a living in a company. Therefore, the definitions of ‘gisaeng’, ‘Giyeou’, ‘gagi’, ‘sucheonggi’, ‘gwangi’, and ‘Giyeou’ are generic terms that reflected the society of the time.