Designed by a National Museum curator
The most perfect humanities walking course
From Dasan's birthplace to his gravesite,
I walked the path of Jeong Yak-yong where everything ended.

Jeong Yak-yong, a young bureaucrat who was a genius of Joseon and favored by King Jeongjo.
When he returned to his hometown of Namyangju, branded a criminal after 18 years of exile, the world had already abandoned him, and his dreams of political revival were forever closed.
It is a time of despair that would have made an ordinary person curse the world in anger or abandon themselves to deep emptiness.
But Dasan never collapsed.

This book is a humanities travelogue, following the spaces in Namyangju where Dasan returned after enduring his most severe ordeals: his birthplace, Yeoyudang, his graveyard, and the lonely riverside paths, through the eyes of a curator with a doctorate in humanities.
The author reinterprets these spaces as battlefields of cultivation where Dasan sublimated despair into great ideas.

Over the next 18 years after his return home, Dasan systematically compiled the 500 or so volumes of writings he had roughly written in a mud room in Gangjin, completing a final prescription for the crumbling Joseon Dynasty.
Instead of being cut off from officialdom, he chose to practice self-cultivation by locking himself in a small room in the Yeoyudang, and instead of boiling with anger in front of the flowing river, he cultivated a cool intellect that observed the times.
His efforts to prove his dignity to history until the last moment of his life by writing his own epitaph (self-praise epitaph) are sublime.

The author follows the footsteps of Dasan, not a stuffed great man, but an existential human being who never put down his pen even in pain.
We read Dasan's fragmented dreams in the severed railroad tracks of Neungnae Station, and see the world of Daedong (Great Unity) that he longed for in the wind of Dasan Ecological Park.
To you who are facing the winter of life, full of failure and frustration, I convey the heavy silence of Dasan, who tells you that it is not over until it is over.
This is a record of a desperate pilgrimage to find the courage to start again.

The person we will encounter on this journey is Dasan Jeong Yak-yong.
He was a being too great for one era to fully bear, a genius full of brilliant talent but driven into deep darkness.
The short period in which he unfolded his grand ambitions of ruling the world for the people and achieving practical results under the trust of the wise monarch Jeongjo (正祖) was scattered like a spring day's dream, and most of his life was filled with the long and deep 18 years of exile.
However, the dark shadow of Joseon's old contradictions that hung over his life actually became the nutrients that made the fruits of 'Silhak' ripen brighter and more solid.

--- From "Entering the Land: A Hiking Journey in Dasan"

In 1818, Dasan, who had spent 18 long years in exile in Gangjin, finally returned to his hometown of Majae (present-day Neungnae-ri).
He is 57 years old.
It was difficult to find the image of the brilliant young official who used to travel to Hanyang with dreams of great success.
The hometown he was now standing in was like an abandoned station where everything had stopped and all roads were cut off.
The railroad tracks he was to follow were no longer visible.
18 years ago, as soon as King Jeongjo, who had cherished him, passed away, a great storm struck.
The Sinyu Persecution of 1801.
The charge of being involved in Catholicism was a superficial one, and behind it were the intentions of the opposition who feared his talent and his will to reform the world.
He was a political enemy who had to be eliminated.
--- From "Prologue: The Closure of Neungnae Station"

This is the fundamental virtue of Confucianism and the starting point of all practice: self-cultivation, that is, the attitude of cultivating oneself.
What we think of as an adult has changed over time.
Unlike modern adults, who are given responsibility based on their legal age, in pre-modern societies, people called saints were respected for their character regardless of age.
An adult is someone who knows how to take full responsibility for his or her actions, is prudent in his or her actions, has a gentle personality, but is also cold and strict with himself. In other words, he or she strives throughout his or her life to embody the ideal human being pursued in Neo-Confucianism.
--- From "Part 1: Dasan's Birthplace, Yeoyudang"

Our walk began in the study of Yeojudang, where Dasan spent his later years.
What fills that space is not only the scent of ink and the weight of the book, but also the attitude of a human being who accepted trials and blossomed them into learning.
The study of Yeoyu-dang is a symbolic place that shows us what true study is and what it means to achieve self-management through that study.
Dasan's method of study—reading, writing, teaching, and building oneself up—resonates deeply with all those who are going through difficult times in life, regardless of how big or small their struggles may be.
The knowledge management he practiced in exile became a force that held together his scattered mind and turned times of suffering into times of learning.
--- From "Part 2, Dasan's Study, Yuyudang Sarangchae"

And there is no such thing as fast or slow in correcting an individual's shortcomings.
Didn't Dasan also deeply reflect on his past mistakes only after he reached his 60th birthday and leave a record of it in his epitaph?
Of course, there is no such thing as a quick or slow way to fix a flaw, but if you think about it carefully, it is clearly a better way to try to avoid creating a flaw in the first place than to try to get rid of a flaw that has already formed.
The aforementioned quote from Oil Samsung Osin contains the wisdom to lead a life that avoids going down the wrong path and creating shortcomings as much as possible through daily self-examination.

--- From “The Tomb of Dasan Jeong Yak-yong, Part 3”