Silhak

Silhak ("practical learning") is a reform-minded current of Confucian scholarship that developed in Korea's Joseon dynasty from around the seventeenth century, associated with scholars including Yu Hyong-won, Yi Ik and, in its later and most systematic phase, Jeong Yak-yong (Dasan), who argued that Neo-Confucian orthodoxy had grown preoccupied with abstract metaphysical debate over principle (li) and vital force (qi) at the expense of concrete, practical knowledge capable of improving governance, agriculture, economy and everyday livelihood. Silhak scholars called for land reform, more efficient taxation, the study of natural science and technology, including knowledge introduced from Qing China and, indirectly, Europe, and a more empirical, evidence-based approach to scholarship generally, positioning practical usefulness against what they saw as sterile scholastic disputation among the entrenched Neo-Confucian establishment. Though Silhak scholars remained committed Confucians who worked within the classical textual tradition rather than rejecting it outright, their emphasis on institutional reform and empirical method placed them in persistent tension with the conservative yangban scholar-officials who dominated the Joseon court, and few of their specific reform proposals were adopted during their own lifetimes. Silhak is retrospectively regarded, especially in twentieth-century Korean nationalist historiography, as an indigenous precursor to Korean modernization, and its emphasis on practical knowledge and institutional critique is often read as anticipating themes that gained fuller political traction only after the fall of the Joseon dynasty.