# Cultural Cognition and Analytical Methods of Chinese and Korean Envoys in Ming Dynasty Based on Big Data Analysis Technology

Authors: Ke Wang; Lulu Tang
Journal: Advances in Multimedia
 (2022)

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## Abstract

During the Ming Dynasty, China and Korea exchanged frequently and recorded a large amount of written information, which is of great value for understanding the culture of that time. The large amount of data makes it difficult to conduct quantitative analysis by researchers, which makes the analysis limited. This paper carries out a research on the cognition and analysis method of Chinese and Korean envoys to foreign cultures in Ming Dynasty based on big data analysis technology. Based on the literature research, this paper determines the ontology model establishment method to efficiently detect the written records of Chinese and Korean envoys in Ming Dynasty. The established ontology model and the improved clustering analysis method can improve the efficiency of data detection, reduce the error of data detection, and provide data basis for the research of this paper. According to the technology of big data analysis, this paper analyzes the focus and status class of Chinese and Korean envoys in Ming Dynasty and analyzes cognition of the Chinese and Korean envoys for the foreign culture. The results show that the envoys of the Chinese and Korean pay different attention to the foreign culture due to their different cognition of the foreign culture, compared with Ming Dynasty envoys, Korean envoys paid 15.3 percent less attention to geography, 19.7 percent more to history, 11.7 percent more to people, and 16 percent less to customs. This reflects the two envoys’ different perceptions of the foreign culture. And the status class of the envoys exacerbates this difference. In the early Ming Dynasty, the creative diversity of Ming envoys was far lower than that of Korean envoys. As time went by, the creative diversity of Ming envoys increased. The results provide support for further understanding of Chinese and Korean culture and their relationship in Ming Dynasty.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

Since ancient times, the exchanges between China and Korea have been close. In the Ming Dynasty, the political, economic, and cultural exchanges between the two countries reached a new peak. From the establishment of the Ming Dynasty in 1368 to the separation of Korea from the Ming Dynasty in 1637, much Chinese and Korean envoys left a large number of documentary writings in each other’s countries, which are of great significance for modern scholars to study the culture of the time. At present, many scholars have carried out relevant studies, but there are few researches using big data analysis technology to carry out relevant work. In traditional research, such analysis is mostly qualitative research, but the emergence of big data technology can change the relevant research from qualitative to quantitative research [1, 2]. After entering the era of big data, human society is full of digitalization, complexity, virtualization and intelligence. As the core force to promote a new round of scientific and technological reform and industrial revolution, big data has penetrated and deeply influenced the innovation, production in the field of humanities and social sciences, and enhanced the processing capacity of human culture-related data [3, 4]. It has spawned a new direction of cultural industry research [5, 6]. Therefore, in the past decade, the relevant technologies, methods, and data of big data technology have had an important impact on the research of traditional humanities and social sciences. Researchers can transform qualitative analysis into quantitative analysis through the corresponding processing methods and steps of these big data.Many scholars in the world have carried out a lot of active exploration in the integration of big data and cultural research. Chuprin et al. pointed out that information and big data technology fundamentally changed the pattern of cultural analysis, and they established a SCRABS method to carry out digital culture research based on big data analysis [7]. Zhang combined the big data analysis method in Chinese and Western cultural aesthetics, form a clustering algorithm to analyze the aesthetic differences between Chinese and Western cultures, and constructed a data set of the aesthetic differences between Chinese and Western cultures [8]. Rubio-Largo et al. conducted in-depth research and analysis on the heritage protection of ancient villages and reconstruction and optimization of cultural industry in western Guangdong in the context of big data analysis [9]. Wiegmans used big data to analyze its application to international transport networks, focusing on the transport logs of the fleets of some European countries from 1662 to 1855 and analyzing historical data of freight corridors [10]. Gao et al. proposed a neural network analysis method based on big data analysis technology. The research results show that the combination of big data analysis technology has a good effect on solving the optimization and integration of traditional folk culture and has strong advantages over traditional analysis methods [11]. Fei et al. analyzed the acceptance degree of traditional culture based on big data analysis technology, and the research results showed that the faster R-CNN model proposed in this study was superior to traditional analysis methods [12]. Yeh et al. applied big data technology to the analysis of traditional culture of temple street programs and applied Kano model with fuzzy language concept to the analysis of traditional culture of temple street festivals [13]. Hou et al. established an adaptive segmentation algorithm for traditional cultural patterns based on super-pixel logarithmic Euclidean Gaos metric, which can improve the accuracy of similarity measurement of segmentation objects in traditional cultural patterns [14]. Ai et al. established a method to analyze national traditional sports culture on the basis of big data analysis, which can combine numerous traditional sports culture resources and realize resource sharing [15]. Xu et al. proposed a network model to predict the spread of cultural information. Based on the rules of big data in the process of cultural communication, the ethical review and theoretical construction of cultural network communication were carried out, and the characteristic attributes of the network were extracted [16]. Gu et al. made the relevant document system more complete through in-depth study of the document information in the historical period and the optimization and integration of the big data technology [17]. In order to study the semantic changes of Korean verbs, Lou et al. established a big data analysis method, which studied the characteristics of verbs through the constructed database, data mining, and data analysis, and established a system framework containing a large amount of text corpus. Finally, the semantic changes of Korean verbs were deeply studied [18]. The great ruins are important witnesses of human civilization. Large site archaeology has the characteristics of long period, interdisciplinary, irreversible, and uncertain. Due to the lack of effective methods and tools, a large amount of archaeological data cannot be properly handled in time, which brings many difficulties to the protection and utilization of large sites. Wu et al. proposed a method to integrate spatio-temporal big data of large sites, including classification coding, spatial scale, and spatio-temporal framework, and realized the integration of archaeological data from multiple sites or different archaeological excavations through this method. The system architecture of large-scale archaeological information cloud platform is further proposed [19].To sum up, big data technology has been fully applied in the research of cultural field, but according to literature survey, it is still blank in the research of Chinese and Korean culture. The use of big data analysis technology can provide an important basis for the study of Chinese and Korean culture. This paper uses big data analysis technology to study the Chinese and Korean envoys in the Ming Dynasty and their cognition and analysis of foreign cultures. Through the ontology model and the improvedK-means algorithm, the written records of Chinese and Korean envoys in the Ming Dynasty were extracted and analyzed, and their creative elements, creators’ identities, and creative diversity were analyzed, and their cognition of foreign cultures was studied by comparison.


## 2. Methods

Due to the large number of query results returned by traditional search engines, previous researchers often obtained a large amount of invalid data when studying Chinese and Korean culture. Therefore, traditional engines cannot well meet the requirements of this paper. Domain ontology is used to describe a specific professional field; define the concepts and relations between concepts; describe the basic principles, main entities, and activity relations of the field; and provide a common understanding basis for knowledge sharing and knowledge reuse within the field [20, 21]. OWL, a Web ontology description language recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is an ontology language based on DL, which can be divided into OWL_Lite, OWL_DL, and OWL_Full. The OWL_DL takes into account both knowledge expression and efficient reasoning, which is the most suitable for constructing the ontology of Chinese and Korean culture in Ming Dynasty. Therefore, OWL_DL algorithm is chosen to construct ontology model in this paper.An OWL_DL-based ontology can be expressed as a quintuple(1)O=C,P,I,A,F,where C represents the set of classes; P represents the set of attributes including object attributes and data type objects; I is the set of individuals; A is the set of axioms, including class axioms, attribute axioms, and truth axioms; and Fis a collection of facts that represent the relationships and constraints between classes and attributes, classes and instances, and instances and values.In this paper, Protege is selected as an ontology modeling tool, which can well represent SubClassOf, EquivalentTo, and other relations, and can also customize various attributes that meet the actual needs. The modeling process is shown in Figure1.Figure 1
Ontology model building process.For the research object of this paper, culture is an abstract concept, and it is difficult to give its exact definition. It is of great significance to display its connotation by quantitative means and visual form. From the perspective of knowledge search and information management, analyzing the existing literature, the author summarizes the cultural analysis components of this paper: people, events, regions, customs, and time. There are a large number of descriptions of Chinese envoys in related written records such as “Chaotianlu” and “Huanghua Ji.” Based on such materials and previous studies, the author determined these four categories of keywords. Among them, region represents the spatiality of Chinese and Korean culture, while time represents its timing and transitivity. These two attributes are unique to cultural domain ontology and are also the core point of reasoning of Chinese and Korean culture ontology in Ming Dynasty.Characters are the main source of power to produce and create culture. Region is the material carrier of culture. Events are catalysts for the creation of culture. Custom is the direct representation of culture. According to the components of Chinese and Korean culture, the ontology model of Chinese and Korean culture is constructed [22], and its conceptual model is shown in Figure 2.Figure 2
Ontology model conceptual model.In the process of database construction, entity semantic relation needs to be constructed, and the calculation method of feature weight is an important part of the construction method. Ontology of feature weight calculation is shown in Equation (2), where n represents the position of the feature word ti, fn represents the weight value of words at different positions, tn represents the word frequency of the characteristic word ti at position n, Ti represents the total word frequency of the characteristic word ti, di represents the final weight of the characteristic word ti, Pi represents the occurrence frequency of the characteristic word ti in the corpus, and m represents that there are m characteristic words in the search engine. Thus, the weight values of all feature words are calculated, and the feature words with the highest weight are selected as the corresponding entity of the document
(2)Ti=∑n=15fn×tn,di=TimaxT1,T2,⋯,Tmpi.TF-IDF algorithm is a classic text feature weighting method, which measures the importance of a word in a document [23, 24]. Equation (3) is the formula of TF-IDF algorithm, where TFw,d is the word frequency of word w in text d, N is the total number of documents in corpus, and DFw is the number of documents containing word w in the training corpus.
(3)TF‐IDFw,d=TFw,d×logNDFw.TF-IDF is often used by search engines to evaluate how relevant the resulting document is to the user’s query. In this paper, TF-IDF is used to construct vector space model.The semantic representation of all entity resources can be obtained by different semantic modeling algorithms, and the relationship between different entity resources can be obtained. In order to select the entity resource modeling algorithm suitable for this paper, this paper adopts the clustering method of public cultural entities based on semantic relations [25]. The objective function formula of the clustering method is shown in
(4)E=∑i=1k∑p∈cip−mi,where Eis the sum of the square errors of all objects in the data set, mi is the average value (or center point) of class ci, and p is the data object in the data space. Partition-based clustering method should consider all partitioning possibilities to achieve global optimal results.According to the intracluster dissimilarityai and intercluster dissimilarity biof data sample i, the contour coefficient of sample iis defined as shown in
(5)Si=bi−aimaxai,bi,(6)Si=1−aibi,ai<bi0,ai<bibiai−1,ai>bi.IfSi is close to 1, it indicates that sample I clustering is reasonable. If Si is close to -1, it indicates that sample I should be classified into another cluster. If Si is approximately 0, it means that sample i is on the boundary of the two clusters. The total contour coefficient of clustering results is obtained after the average contour coefficient is obtained.CH index is a measure of sample-based intraclass distance and interclass deviation matrix in cluster analysis, and its judgment function is shown in(7)sk=trBktrWkn−kk−1,where m is the number of samples in the training set and k is the number of categories. Bk is the covariance matrix between categories, and Wk is the covariance matrix of data within categories. tr is the trace of the matrix. Therefore, the smaller the covariance of data within categories, the better, and the larger the covariance between categories, the higher the CH index will be.In the resource-term weight matrix constructed by TF-IDF, due to the excessive number of terms contained in the corpus, the vector dimension representing each cultural resource is also too large. Here, principal component analysis (PCA) is adopted to reduce the dimension to extract the main features of the resource and map the high-dimensional vector to the low-dimensional vector. Let then-dimensional vector w be a mapping vector of the target subspace to maximize the variance of the mapped data
(8)∑=1m∑i=1mwTxi−x¯xi−x¯Tw,where m is the number of samples, xi is the sample, and x is the sample mean.W is defined as the matrix containing all mapping vectors. After linear transformation, the optimization function can be obtained:
(9)mintrWT∑W,s.t.WTW=I.It is easy to find thatW is the matrix of the eigenvectors corresponding to the n largest eigenvalues in the matrix ∑. By outputting PCA according to the following equation, the original data can be reduced to n dimension.
(10)Y=WTX.The above methods constitute the technical basis of big data analysis in this paper, and on this basis, research is carried out on the cultural cognition and analytical methods of Chinese and Korean envoys to foreign countries in Ming Dynasty.


## 3. Result Analysis and Discussion

“Chaotianglu” and a large number of documents have important records of the cultural exchange and development between China and North Korea in Ming Dynasty. Based on these materials, this paper randomly selects more than 1000 pieces of information as the basis for detection. Through the method established in this paper and the traditional method to carry out, the Chinese and Korean envoys record information detection, and the detection results are compared to test the method established in this paper and its superiority. The results can be seen in Figures3 and 4. It is worth noting that the sample ABC in Figures 3 and 4, respectively, refers to the three detection keywords related to the Chinese and Korean culture, namely, the characters, regions, and customs. This test starts with these three keywords. According to the average detection rate of the three samples, the average detection rate of the traditional model is 77.68%, and the detection rate of the improved method is 85.3%. The detection error of the traditional model decreased from 9.7% to 6.8%. The detection effect of the improved K-means algorithm is significantly better than that of the traditional K-means algorithm. The detection efficiency of the improved k-means algorithm is higher than that of the traditional method, while the detection error rate is lower than that of the traditional method. It is important to note that in the model data selection should be full consideration of the representation of the data characteristics, avoid the efficiency of the algorithm is to reduce data redundancy and, at the same time in training, to adopt the way of stratified training, to extract a few key data operation, to gradually increase the difficulty of the training, to strengthen the training of logical, and to reduce training time consuming.Figure 3
Comparison of detection rate before and after improvement.Figure 4
Comparison of detection error rate before and after improvement.Compared with the traditional method, the improved method in this paper is improved in detection efficiency and detection error rate. In the face of thousands of pieces of information in the network space, the improved method can more effectively screen out the information suitable for the research object, so as to improve the research efficiency.


### 3.1. Research Results of Ming Envoys’ Cognition and Analysis of Korean Culture

In the Ming Dynasty, Korea attached great importance to the development of friendly relations with the Ming Dynasty. Korean envoys came and went between the Peninsula and China. During the period from 1368 when the Ming Dynasty was established to 1637 when the Korean surrendered to the Qing regime and dissolved its relations with the Ming Dynasty and vassal states, Korean envoys left a large number of writings on their travels to China, which are collectively called “Chaotianlu.” Its genre includes poems, diaries, miscellanies, and notebooks, and its authors include the chief, deputy, and written officials of the Korean Dynasty sent to China, as well as the general accompanying members of the diplomatic corps. Its contents include rich contents of politics, economy, culture, geography, and humanities of the Ming Dynasty. It has the characteristics of large span of time, diverse genres, complex composition of authors, and straight writing. The appellation of “Chaotianlu” reflects the cultural mentality of Korea towards the Ming Dynasty and the Korean relations of the Ming Dynasty. Korean envoys identified with the orthodox nature of the Ming Dynasty, and in the process of traveling in China, they dazzled at the developed social economy, marveled at the powerful military power of China, and envied the splendid social culture of China, all of which became the main melody of Korean diplomacy to the Ming Dynasty in this period. And Korea in the critical moment of Japanese invasion, the Ming Dynasty sent troops to help resolve the crisis, more make Korea’s “big” meaning to reach the peak. During the Ming Dynasty, many Korean envoys directly named the characters for their trips to China as “Chaotianlu,” a Chinese character for “heaven,” which accurately summarized the social collective imagination of Korea on Ming China during this period. After the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, the Korean envoys, out of nostalgia for the Ming and Han regime and hatred for the Qing minority regime, replaced the word “heaven” with “Yanxinglu.” The collective change of the words used in the text reflects the distinct “view of Chinese foreigners” in Korea. Therefore, the Chinese characters of the Qing dynasty are collectively referred to as “Yanxinglu”, taking Beijing as Yanjing in ancient times and writing it down in the meaning of Yan’s journey. These detailed historical data provide a solid foundation for big data information acquisition and analysis.The written records of “Chaotianlu” are extremely large and which is great importance in the cultural studies. It is difficult to make quantitative analysis in traditional analysis methods, but through big data analysis technology, researchers can select the interested parts from a large number of written records and carry out quantitative analysis. Through big data analysis, it can be seen that the envoys of the Ming Dynasty paid more attention to the geography (46.7%) and customs (27.8%) of Korea in their records, as shown in Figure5. Have bright generation, in particular, Zhu Di moved the capital Beijing, the two countries political relations stable for a long time, so the Ming Dynasty envoys to route are relatively fixed; in addition to the late Ming latter to Liaodong, individual leaders have to take the way of sea to, basically all is by the road from the Yalu river, over Korea’s inn, finally arrived in Seoul to complete the political mission. It is worth noting that the Chinese envoys had an obvious feature; that is, each Ming envoys were different people, unlike the Korean envoys who had been to China many times, such as Chung Mong-ju and Lee Jeong-gu. Therefore, the ambassadors of the Ming Dynasty who came to the Korean Peninsula had a stronger aesthetic desire for foreign geography and a higher passion for creation. In addition, the author found that when most Ming envoys described the “strange” foreign geography, their starting point was often “to learn from the customs and customs,” and they took the lead in recognizing the Korean Peninsula from the exotic scenery, which was clearly reflected in the poems of Ming envoys. Chinese envoys with the emperor’s orders issued orders to the most loyal vassal states of the Ming Dynasty, on behalf of the emperor’s son to visit the foreign country, respected as “angels”, their “open land, all the king’s land, under the whole world, all the king’s ministers” cultural mentality is that we cannot ignore. Driven by this mentality, all the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula influenced by the Ming Dynasty can be included in the ambassadors’ aesthetic vision, and all the mountains and rivers, branches, and leaves can be included in the article. Since it was the first time for Ming envoys to visit the Korean Peninsula, it was natural for them to internalize their curiosity about foreign countries and praise the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula. In addition, the reason why Chinese envoys frequently sing about the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula and go to great pains to “learn from the customs and ask the customs” is also related to China’s long vague cultural cognition of ancient Korea.Figure 5
The key points of Ming envoys focus on.In addition, it can be seen from the existing records that among the envoys sent to Korea, the status of envoys is also a key point worth paying attention to. Due to their different classes and knowledge, they have different records of foreign cultures. This paper analyzes the identities of ambassadors to Korea in different periods of the Ming Dynasty, as shown in Figure6. “Huanghua Ji” records the identity of each envoy to Korea during the Ming Dynasty and what they saw and heard, which provides a basis for future generations to analyze the envoys themselves and their cognition of foreign cultures. This paper analyzes the envoys’ identities through big data extraction and analysis of the information in “Huanghua Ji.” It can be seen that the envoys were mainly eunuchs in the early Ming Dynasty and then gradually became a group of envoys dominated by civil officials. Development to the Mid Ming Dynasty, politics, economy, and culture become comprehensive solid, solid economic foundation and strong military strength, especially the former lessons make Ming Yuan destruction realized that only depending on the economic prosperity and a powerful military is not enough, and more should rely on the power of culture to achieve the periphery has been, and this cultural power is more effective than economic or military means. Therefore, eunuchs were the main envoys to Korea in the early Ming Dynasty, and the first year of Jingtai was a strong proof of that. As for the reason of the change of official identity, in addition to the factors to rebuild the image of the Ming Dynasty and enhance the confidence of the vassal states, it is also one of the important reasons to provide important reference for the later foreign policy. Chinese envoys singing songs about the geography of the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula are the starting point for their cultural inspection of the Korean Peninsula. According to big data analysis, other classes include royal family members and military generals. Such personnel do not account for a high proportion in the members of the diplomatic corps, but they have also made contributions to the spread and development of Chinese and Korean culture. The royal family paid more attention to the culture of the upper class of Korean, and they more integrated what they saw and heard with the history of Korean, while the military generals paid more attention to geography and customs due to their education level. The writings they recorded were also an important part of the “Huanghua Ji,” which formed an important part of the Chinese and Korean culture.Figure 6
The status of the Ming Dynasty envoy to Korea in different periods.


### 3.2. Results of Korean Envoys’ Cognition and Analysis of Chinese Culture

Through big data analysis, it can be seen that the Korean envoys paid more attention to the history of the Ming Dynasty (32.7%) and geography (31.4%) in their recorded texts, as shown in Figure7. Compared with Ming Dynasty envoys, Korean envoys paid 15.3 percent less attention to geography, 19.7 percent more to history, 11.7 percent more to people, and 16 percent less to customs. It can be seen that the focus of attention of the two envoys showed obvious differences. Compared with the envoys of Ming Dynasty, the envoys of Korea passed through the same or similar mountains and rivers, but each envoy was an independent aesthetic individual with different aesthetic pursuits. Therefore, under their pen, they have different aesthetic experience and cognition of the same scenery. On the other hand, in terms of geographical cognition, the Korean envoys present a very different from the Ming Dynasty princes, and the characteristics of the Korean envoys will not completely get rid of a curious about unfamiliar geographical caused aesthetic impulse, but in the geography of China cultural cognition, more in the text placed his deep thinking on history, the difference is very obvious. The ancient Korean scholars’ cognition of China’s geography far exceeded that of Chinese scholars’ cognition of Korea. Therefore, the poetry creation of the ambassadors of the Ming Dynasty and the Korean envoys showed obvious differences. The political missions of the Ming envoys to Korea were relatively single, with limited frequency, and no one repeated the missions. Therefore, in the geographical cognition and investigation of the Korean Peninsula, the poem creation of simple scenery lacked deep thinking. The Korean toward him often in the name of the various to the Ming Dynasty, many times, more him many times to China, therefore, their cognition of Chinese geography often can get rid of the shackles of pictorial synthesis, more to express the deep emotional history, express their view of history, and demonstrate the ancient Korean scholars observe China to stick to the theoretical system of Ming Dynasty. In addition, the Korean envoys’ writings were elegant and implicit in terms of language, and only a few poems were plain and simple. In their poems, they used a large number of Chinese allusions and poems of Chinese poets, reflecting the reference and imitation of Chinese poetry. Their feelings are based on things and follow them. Through chanting for things, the poet expressed his feelings of missing his country and relatives in a foreign land incisively and vividly. At the same time, he also lamented Chinese civilization and wealth through chanting for things.Figure 7
The key points of Korean envoys focus on.


### 3.3. Comparison of Chinese and Korean Envoys’ Cognition of Foreign Cultures

This paper extracts the written records of Chinese and Korean envoys in the same period and analyzes their creative diversity, as shown in Figure8. Cultural diversity refers to the diversity of literary works created or related descriptions recorded. For example, the same envoy has left literary works in culture, characters, geography, and other aspects during the mission. In Figure 8, the abscissa is the creation time, the ordinate is the cultural diversity, the abscissa is from the early Ming Dynasty to the late Ming Dynasty from left to right, and the ordinate is the cultural diversity from low to high. In this paper, the medians of cultural records of Ming Dynasty and Korean envoys were obtained from relevant records by big data analysis technology, and on the basis of the medians, the cultural diversity of different periods was analyzed. The research shows that in the early Ming Dynasty, the creative diversity of the Ming envoys is much lower than that of the Korean envoys, and the creative diversity of the Ming envoys increases with the increase of time. Creative diversity is an important difference that reflects the degree of cultural identity between the two sides. It is possible to create different types of works only when you have a deeper understanding of the foreign culture. At the same time, in the late Ming Dynasty, more envoys were converted from eunuchs to civil servants, which also promoted this trend. Realistically speaking, despite thousands of years of contacts between China and the Korean, China’s cultural perception of ancient Korea is much lower than ancient Korea’s perception of China. In the Ming Dynasty, which had the closest relationship with ancient Korea, there were many inconsistencies in the descriptions and records about Korea. Therefore, the author believes that apart from completing political missions in the form of “poetry diplomacy,” it is also an important purpose for the Ming envoys to conduct a comprehensive cultural investigation and cognition of the Korean Dynasty.Figure 8
The comparison of the creative diversity of Ming and Korean envoys.From the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century, Korea’s collective imagination of China was that the Ming Dynasty was politically and militarily powerful and economically and culturally prosperous. The image of China in Korea has experienced a change process from positive to positive and vice, from bright to dark, which includes four stages: fanatical “utopia,” imagination, and reality, which was the last elegy of the Ming Dynasty. The criticism of the Korean envoys on the negative characteristics of China’s Ming Dynasty, such as the worship of Buddhism and the relaxation of the mourning system, reflects that by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Korean had begun to observe and evaluate China from the perspective of Confucianism. In another sense, it also shows the comprehensive deepening of Neo-Confucianism in Korea, marking the beginning of positive factors in the ideological circle of Korea, and also shows the decline of Neo-Confucianism in Ming Dynasty China.


## 3.1. Research Results of Ming Envoys’ Cognition and Analysis of Korean Culture

In the Ming Dynasty, Korea attached great importance to the development of friendly relations with the Ming Dynasty. Korean envoys came and went between the Peninsula and China. During the period from 1368 when the Ming Dynasty was established to 1637 when the Korean surrendered to the Qing regime and dissolved its relations with the Ming Dynasty and vassal states, Korean envoys left a large number of writings on their travels to China, which are collectively called “Chaotianlu.” Its genre includes poems, diaries, miscellanies, and notebooks, and its authors include the chief, deputy, and written officials of the Korean Dynasty sent to China, as well as the general accompanying members of the diplomatic corps. Its contents include rich contents of politics, economy, culture, geography, and humanities of the Ming Dynasty. It has the characteristics of large span of time, diverse genres, complex composition of authors, and straight writing. The appellation of “Chaotianlu” reflects the cultural mentality of Korea towards the Ming Dynasty and the Korean relations of the Ming Dynasty. Korean envoys identified with the orthodox nature of the Ming Dynasty, and in the process of traveling in China, they dazzled at the developed social economy, marveled at the powerful military power of China, and envied the splendid social culture of China, all of which became the main melody of Korean diplomacy to the Ming Dynasty in this period. And Korea in the critical moment of Japanese invasion, the Ming Dynasty sent troops to help resolve the crisis, more make Korea’s “big” meaning to reach the peak. During the Ming Dynasty, many Korean envoys directly named the characters for their trips to China as “Chaotianlu,” a Chinese character for “heaven,” which accurately summarized the social collective imagination of Korea on Ming China during this period. After the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, the Korean envoys, out of nostalgia for the Ming and Han regime and hatred for the Qing minority regime, replaced the word “heaven” with “Yanxinglu.” The collective change of the words used in the text reflects the distinct “view of Chinese foreigners” in Korea. Therefore, the Chinese characters of the Qing dynasty are collectively referred to as “Yanxinglu”, taking Beijing as Yanjing in ancient times and writing it down in the meaning of Yan’s journey. These detailed historical data provide a solid foundation for big data information acquisition and analysis.The written records of “Chaotianlu” are extremely large and which is great importance in the cultural studies. It is difficult to make quantitative analysis in traditional analysis methods, but through big data analysis technology, researchers can select the interested parts from a large number of written records and carry out quantitative analysis. Through big data analysis, it can be seen that the envoys of the Ming Dynasty paid more attention to the geography (46.7%) and customs (27.8%) of Korea in their records, as shown in Figure5. Have bright generation, in particular, Zhu Di moved the capital Beijing, the two countries political relations stable for a long time, so the Ming Dynasty envoys to route are relatively fixed; in addition to the late Ming latter to Liaodong, individual leaders have to take the way of sea to, basically all is by the road from the Yalu river, over Korea’s inn, finally arrived in Seoul to complete the political mission. It is worth noting that the Chinese envoys had an obvious feature; that is, each Ming envoys were different people, unlike the Korean envoys who had been to China many times, such as Chung Mong-ju and Lee Jeong-gu. Therefore, the ambassadors of the Ming Dynasty who came to the Korean Peninsula had a stronger aesthetic desire for foreign geography and a higher passion for creation. In addition, the author found that when most Ming envoys described the “strange” foreign geography, their starting point was often “to learn from the customs and customs,” and they took the lead in recognizing the Korean Peninsula from the exotic scenery, which was clearly reflected in the poems of Ming envoys. Chinese envoys with the emperor’s orders issued orders to the most loyal vassal states of the Ming Dynasty, on behalf of the emperor’s son to visit the foreign country, respected as “angels”, their “open land, all the king’s land, under the whole world, all the king’s ministers” cultural mentality is that we cannot ignore. Driven by this mentality, all the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula influenced by the Ming Dynasty can be included in the ambassadors’ aesthetic vision, and all the mountains and rivers, branches, and leaves can be included in the article. Since it was the first time for Ming envoys to visit the Korean Peninsula, it was natural for them to internalize their curiosity about foreign countries and praise the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula. In addition, the reason why Chinese envoys frequently sing about the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula and go to great pains to “learn from the customs and ask the customs” is also related to China’s long vague cultural cognition of ancient Korea.Figure 5
The key points of Ming envoys focus on.In addition, it can be seen from the existing records that among the envoys sent to Korea, the status of envoys is also a key point worth paying attention to. Due to their different classes and knowledge, they have different records of foreign cultures. This paper analyzes the identities of ambassadors to Korea in different periods of the Ming Dynasty, as shown in Figure6. “Huanghua Ji” records the identity of each envoy to Korea during the Ming Dynasty and what they saw and heard, which provides a basis for future generations to analyze the envoys themselves and their cognition of foreign cultures. This paper analyzes the envoys’ identities through big data extraction and analysis of the information in “Huanghua Ji.” It can be seen that the envoys were mainly eunuchs in the early Ming Dynasty and then gradually became a group of envoys dominated by civil officials. Development to the Mid Ming Dynasty, politics, economy, and culture become comprehensive solid, solid economic foundation and strong military strength, especially the former lessons make Ming Yuan destruction realized that only depending on the economic prosperity and a powerful military is not enough, and more should rely on the power of culture to achieve the periphery has been, and this cultural power is more effective than economic or military means. Therefore, eunuchs were the main envoys to Korea in the early Ming Dynasty, and the first year of Jingtai was a strong proof of that. As for the reason of the change of official identity, in addition to the factors to rebuild the image of the Ming Dynasty and enhance the confidence of the vassal states, it is also one of the important reasons to provide important reference for the later foreign policy. Chinese envoys singing songs about the geography of the mountains and rivers of the Korean Peninsula are the starting point for their cultural inspection of the Korean Peninsula. According to big data analysis, other classes include royal family members and military generals. Such personnel do not account for a high proportion in the members of the diplomatic corps, but they have also made contributions to the spread and development of Chinese and Korean culture. The royal family paid more attention to the culture of the upper class of Korean, and they more integrated what they saw and heard with the history of Korean, while the military generals paid more attention to geography and customs due to their education level. The writings they recorded were also an important part of the “Huanghua Ji,” which formed an important part of the Chinese and Korean culture.Figure 6
The status of the Ming Dynasty envoy to Korea in different periods.


## 3.2. Results of Korean Envoys’ Cognition and Analysis of Chinese Culture

Through big data analysis, it can be seen that the Korean envoys paid more attention to the history of the Ming Dynasty (32.7%) and geography (31.4%) in their recorded texts, as shown in Figure7. Compared with Ming Dynasty envoys, Korean envoys paid 15.3 percent less attention to geography, 19.7 percent more to history, 11.7 percent more to people, and 16 percent less to customs. It can be seen that the focus of attention of the two envoys showed obvious differences. Compared with the envoys of Ming Dynasty, the envoys of Korea passed through the same or similar mountains and rivers, but each envoy was an independent aesthetic individual with different aesthetic pursuits. Therefore, under their pen, they have different aesthetic experience and cognition of the same scenery. On the other hand, in terms of geographical cognition, the Korean envoys present a very different from the Ming Dynasty princes, and the characteristics of the Korean envoys will not completely get rid of a curious about unfamiliar geographical caused aesthetic impulse, but in the geography of China cultural cognition, more in the text placed his deep thinking on history, the difference is very obvious. The ancient Korean scholars’ cognition of China’s geography far exceeded that of Chinese scholars’ cognition of Korea. Therefore, the poetry creation of the ambassadors of the Ming Dynasty and the Korean envoys showed obvious differences. The political missions of the Ming envoys to Korea were relatively single, with limited frequency, and no one repeated the missions. Therefore, in the geographical cognition and investigation of the Korean Peninsula, the poem creation of simple scenery lacked deep thinking. The Korean toward him often in the name of the various to the Ming Dynasty, many times, more him many times to China, therefore, their cognition of Chinese geography often can get rid of the shackles of pictorial synthesis, more to express the deep emotional history, express their view of history, and demonstrate the ancient Korean scholars observe China to stick to the theoretical system of Ming Dynasty. In addition, the Korean envoys’ writings were elegant and implicit in terms of language, and only a few poems were plain and simple. In their poems, they used a large number of Chinese allusions and poems of Chinese poets, reflecting the reference and imitation of Chinese poetry. Their feelings are based on things and follow them. Through chanting for things, the poet expressed his feelings of missing his country and relatives in a foreign land incisively and vividly. At the same time, he also lamented Chinese civilization and wealth through chanting for things.Figure 7
The key points of Korean envoys focus on.


## 3.3. Comparison of Chinese and Korean Envoys’ Cognition of Foreign Cultures

This paper extracts the written records of Chinese and Korean envoys in the same period and analyzes their creative diversity, as shown in Figure8. Cultural diversity refers to the diversity of literary works created or related descriptions recorded. For example, the same envoy has left literary works in culture, characters, geography, and other aspects during the mission. In Figure 8, the abscissa is the creation time, the ordinate is the cultural diversity, the abscissa is from the early Ming Dynasty to the late Ming Dynasty from left to right, and the ordinate is the cultural diversity from low to high. In this paper, the medians of cultural records of Ming Dynasty and Korean envoys were obtained from relevant records by big data analysis technology, and on the basis of the medians, the cultural diversity of different periods was analyzed. The research shows that in the early Ming Dynasty, the creative diversity of the Ming envoys is much lower than that of the Korean envoys, and the creative diversity of the Ming envoys increases with the increase of time. Creative diversity is an important difference that reflects the degree of cultural identity between the two sides. It is possible to create different types of works only when you have a deeper understanding of the foreign culture. At the same time, in the late Ming Dynasty, more envoys were converted from eunuchs to civil servants, which also promoted this trend. Realistically speaking, despite thousands of years of contacts between China and the Korean, China’s cultural perception of ancient Korea is much lower than ancient Korea’s perception of China. In the Ming Dynasty, which had the closest relationship with ancient Korea, there were many inconsistencies in the descriptions and records about Korea. Therefore, the author believes that apart from completing political missions in the form of “poetry diplomacy,” it is also an important purpose for the Ming envoys to conduct a comprehensive cultural investigation and cognition of the Korean Dynasty.Figure 8
The comparison of the creative diversity of Ming and Korean envoys.From the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century, Korea’s collective imagination of China was that the Ming Dynasty was politically and militarily powerful and economically and culturally prosperous. The image of China in Korea has experienced a change process from positive to positive and vice, from bright to dark, which includes four stages: fanatical “utopia,” imagination, and reality, which was the last elegy of the Ming Dynasty. The criticism of the Korean envoys on the negative characteristics of China’s Ming Dynasty, such as the worship of Buddhism and the relaxation of the mourning system, reflects that by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Korean had begun to observe and evaluate China from the perspective of Confucianism. In another sense, it also shows the comprehensive deepening of Neo-Confucianism in Korea, marking the beginning of positive factors in the ideological circle of Korea, and also shows the decline of Neo-Confucianism in Ming Dynasty China.


## 4. Conclusion

Based on big data analysis technology, this paper establishes the methods and techniques for the Chinese and Korean envoys in Ming Dynasty to recognize and analyze foreign cultures. As one of the periods when China and Korea contacted the most closely, the information recorded by Chinese and Korean envoys in the Ming Dynasty was extremely large. The method established in this paper has been optimized compared with traditional big data methods in detection rate and error rate. The detection rate increased from 77.68% of the traditional model to 85.3% of the improved method. The detection error of the traditional model is reduced from 9.7% to 6.8%, which realizes high-quality big data analysis.The results show that the Ming envoys paid more attention to the geographical conditions and customs of Korea, while the Korean envoys paid more attention to the historical factors besides the geographical conditions due to their better understanding of the culture of the Ming Dynasty. In the early Ming Dynasty, envoys were mainly eunuchs, while in the later Ming Dynasty, they were mostly civil officials. This change of class also promoted the creation diversity of envoys in the later Ming Dynasty. In the early Ming Dynasty, the creative diversity of the Ming envoys was much lower than that of the Korean envoys, and the creative diversity of the Ming envoys increased as time went by. Creative diversity is an important difference reflecting the degree of cultural identity between the two sides. It shows that with the increasing frequency of contact between the two sides, the Ming envoys’ cognition of Korean culture also increased to a greater extent.



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*Source: 4568147-2022-09-27.xml*