Modern Korean History

A sequel to the groundbreaking volume Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions, the present volume examines in depth interactions between Western racial constructions of East Asians and local constructions of race and their outcomes in modern times. Focusing on China, Japan and the two Koreas, it also analyzes the close ties between race, racism and nationalism, as well as the links race has had with gender and lineage in the region. Written by some of the field's leading authorities, this insightful and engaging 23-chapter volume offers a sweeping overview and analysis of racial constructions and racism in modern and contemporary East Asia that is unsurpassed in previous scholarship.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Tables
Conventions
Preface

1. Introduction: The Synthesis of Foreign and Indigenous Constructions of Race in Modern East Asia and Its Actual Operation, Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel
I. Antecedents: A Detailed Examination of Early Western Racial Constructions of East Asians
II. Interactions: The Fusion of European and Asian Constructions of Race
III. Nationalism: Interactions between Race and Ethnic Nationalism in East Asia
IV. Gender and Lineage: The Impact of Domestic and Foreign Racial Constructions

PART I: ANTECEDENTS
2. East Asians in the Linnaean Taxonomy: Sources and Implications of a Racial Image, Rotem Kowner and Christina Skott
The Linnaean Revolution and View of Humankind
Sources of Linnaeus’ Racial Perspective on East Asians
The Essence of Asia: Swedish Views of China
Swedish Reports and Linnaeus’ Revision of His Human Taxonomy
Linnaeus’ Legacy and the Unfolding Racial View of East Asians
3. Constructing Racial Theories on East Asians as a Transnational “Western” Enterprise, 1750-1850, Walter Demel
The Founding Fathers of Racial Theories: Linnaeus, Buffon, Kant and Camper
The Second Generation: Multiple Directions
4. The ‘Races’ of East Asia in Nineteenth-Century European Encyclopaedias, Georg Lehner
Classifying the Peoples of Asia
The Encyclopedias' Main Sources for Remarks on the “Races” of East Asia
Chinese, Japanese and Koreans: Descriptions of East Asian peoples
Stereotypes of East Asians in General Knowledge
Visual Representations of Race in Works of General Knowledge
Concluding Remarks
5. The Racial Image of the Japanese in the Western Press Published in Japan, 1861-1881, Olavi K. Fält
Background
The Oldest People on Earth
The Shining Japanese Race
Weak and Inferior Race
Praising the Endeavors of a Poor Race
Conclusion

PART II: INTERACTIONS
6. The Propagation of Racial Thought in Nineteenth-Century China, Daniel Barth
The Background: Imperial China and the “Other”
Stage I (1846-1851): Marques and Wei Yuan
Stage II (1851-1855): Hobson and Muirhead
Stage III (1855-1872): The Self-Strengthening Movement
Stage IV (1872-1892): John Fryer and the Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine
Conclusion: Chinese Intellectuals, Social Darwinism and Race
7. Learning from the South: Japan's Racial Construction of Southern Chinese, 1895-1941, Huei-Ying Kuo
The South Seas as Japan’s Backyard, 1895-1914
Japan's Expansion into the Southern Chinese Networks, 1914-1928
Chinese Anti-Japanese Nationalism and Japanese Discourses on South Seas Chinese, 1928-1936
Southern Chinese as Non-Han Races, 1936-1941
Conclusions
8. “The Great Question of the World Today”: Britain, the Dominions, East Asian Immigration and the Threat of Race War, 1905-11, Antony Best
Immigration and “the Awakening of Asia”
The Prophets of Race War
Critics of White Solidarity
Finessing the Racial Divide
Conclusions
9. “Uplifting the Weak and Degenerated Races of East Asia”: American and Indigenous Views of Sport and Body in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia, Stefan Hübner
Sportive Citizenship Training in the Philippines
Chinese Cooperation and Acceptance of American-Style Modernization
Japanese Resistance and its Defeat by American Style Modernization
Conclusion
10. Racism under Negotiation: The Japanese Race in the Nazi-German Perspective, Gerhard Krebs
Early Nazi Views on the Japanese Racial Position
Becoming More Aryan
The Problem with the Japanese in the Nazi Worldview
Continuing Mutual Mistrust
The End
11. Discourses of Race and Racism in Modern Korea, 1890s-1945 , Vladimir Tikhonov
Race and Its Uncertainties
The Emergence of Race Theories in Modern Korea: One of the Logics of the “Civilized World”
“Race” and “Ethnic Nation” in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
Conclusion: Race as a Path to Modernist Self-assertion?
12. The United States Arrives: Racialization and Racism in Post-1945 South Korea, Nadia Y. Kim
Contextual Background: America Marches In and Mass Mediates
The American Military, Whiteness, and Imperialist Racial Formation
American Mass Media, White Heroes, and Counter-Hegemony
Blackness and Imperialist Racial Formation
Racism and Invisibility in Korean “America”
Concluding Remarks
13. A Post-Communist Coexistence in Northeast Asia? Mutual Racial Attitudes among Russians and Indigenous Peoples of Siberia, David Lewis
Discrimination against Siberian Peoples as an Outcome of Racial Prejudice
The Origin and Legacy of Russian Attitudes to Asians
Racial Attitudes among Indigenous Siberian Peoples
The Communist Model of Racial Modus Vivendi
The Impact of Prolonged Racism on Indigenous Siberian Peoples
Marriage as an Anti-Racist Means in a Multi-Racial Society

PART III: NATIONALISM
14. Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-American Racial Perceptions of the Korean War, Lü Xun
Descendants of the Mongolian Hordes: American Perceptions of the Chinese
The Ambitious Wolf: Chinese Perceptions of Americans
The Mirrored Self: A Nation-State in the Making
15. Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Racialized Chinese Nationalism, Yinghong Cheng
Gangtai Patriotic Songs: A “Colored” Political Genre of Pop Music
A Tacit Collaboration between the Party-State and Capitalist Cultural Producers in Hong Kong and Taiwan
The Interaction between Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Chinese Popular Nationalism
Analyses
Concluding Remarks
16. Japanese as Both a “Race” and a “Non-Race”: The Politics of Jinshu and Minzoku and the Depoliticization of Japaneseness, Yuko Kawai
The Historical Trajectories of Jinshu and Minzoku
Being a “Race” and a “Non-Race” in Present-day Japan: An Empirical Study
Conclusions and Implications
17. Ethnic Nationalism in Postwar Japan: Nihonjinron and Its Racial Facets, Rotem Kowner and Harumi Befu
Premises of Nihonjinron
Nihonjinron as a Manifestation of Japanese Nationalism
Nihonjinron and Its Concern with Origin, Blood and Racial Hierarchy
The Impact of Race-Related Tenets on Everyday Life
Functions of Ethnic Nationalism in Contemporary Japan
Concluding Remarks
18. Ethnic Nationalism and Internationalism in the North Korean Worldview, Tatiana Gabroussenko
The Soviet Discourse of the Outside World: Conditional Internationalism
The North Korean Worldview in the “Soviet Era”: Echoing the Soviet Paradigm
Mono-Ethnicity as a Special Korean Virtue: The Evolution of the North Korean World Vision under the Influence of Juche
North Korean Propaganda about Foreigners from Inclusive and Alienating Perspectives
Conclusion

PART IV: GENDER AND LINEAGE
19. In the Name of the Master: Race, Nationalism and Masculinity in Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, Kai-man Chang
From Anti-imperialist Nationalism to Cultural Nationalism
Masculinities That Matter
Conclusion
20. Sexualized Racism, Gender and Nationalism: The Case of Japan’s Sexual Enslavement of Korean “Comfort Women”, Bang-soon Yoon
Korean “Comfort Women”: Drawn in as Substitutes
The Nature of Victimization
Colonial Policies and the Mobilization of Korean Women
Treatment of Korean “Comfort Women”
Lives under Sexual Slavery
Nationalism, Gender and Sexual Violence
Conclusion
21. “The Guilt Feeling That You Exist”: War, Racism and Indisch-Japanese Identity Formation, Aya Ezawa
Power, Discourse, and “Mixed Blood”
The Indisch and the Dutch East Indies
The Indisch Community under Japanese Occupation
Indisch-Japanese Relationships
Indisch-Japanese Descendants
Conclusion
22. ‘The “Amerasian” Knot: Transpacific Crossings of “GI Babies” from Korea to the United States, W. Taejin Hwang
“An Act of Both Humanity and Patriotism”: The Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982
“Confucius’ Outcasts”: The Korean Amerasian “Plight”
Inter-country Adoption of Korean “GI Babies”
Living as a “Mixed-Blood Child” (Honhyeola) in Cold War Korea
“Half-American Also is American”: Towards Migration
Conclusion and Postscript

PART V: CONCLUSIONS
23. The Essence and Mechanisms of Race and Racism in Modern East Asia, Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel
The East Asian Contribution to the Study of Race and Racism
East Asia’s Role within the Rise of Racial Theory and the Resulting Hybridity
Sources and Manifestations of Racism
The Close Links between Racism and Nationalism
The Role of Gender and Lineage in Constructions of Race and Racism
East Asia and the Future of Race and Racism
Contributors
Bibliography
Index

This article reviewed five envoys since the Joseon Dynasty opened her port in 1876, before establishing Joseon Legation in Tokyo. The Joseon government dispatched Susinsa(修信使) four times until 1882, which outlined the human composition and activities of envoys based on prior researches. In 1885, Seo Sang-woo(徐相雨) and Paul Georg von Möllendorff were sent to Japan by changing as an ‘imperial commissioner’ for the first time. All of the five missions to Japan were based on the Article 2nd of the Joseon-Japan treaty of Amity(朝日修好條規). At first, when Susinsa was sent from Joseon, it had the nature of a return visit to the envoys dispatched from Japan to Joseon. Since the 1880s, however, the nature of the envoys gradually changed due to treaty-based working-level negotiations with the U.S., Britain and other Western powers. In official documents, such as a credential and a commission of full powers taken by Susinsa, terms that were not used in traditional diplomatic relation began to emerge. The words ‘King(大君主)’ and ‘I(朕)’ were typical expressions. It was used to equalize national prestige with the other countries. In addition, the third Susinsa was selected as representative by one notch higher(從2品), and this led to the dispatch of the imperial commissioner to Japan. Seo who was dispatched to Japan after the outbreak of the Gapsin Coup in 1884, even used the name ‘imperial commissioner’ for the first time. When the Joseon government began to use such term, the origin of it was reviewed. Joseon began to use these terms from the signing of a treaty with Western powers. Since the establishment of the Foreign Office(外衙門) in charge of modern diplomacy, Joseon applied the same to Japan, trying to show that the bilateral relationship reshuffled into a treaty system. However, Joseon government could not use the term ‘imperial commissioner’ in diplomatic relations with the Qing Dynasty. During his stay in Japan, Seo negotiated three pending issues with the Japanese government. This article reviewed the context and process of handling the issues and confirmed that the working nature of the dispatch of envoy was strong.

Is historical scholarship increasingly "Balkanized"?  My standard of judgment is whether the output of research historians helps provide information and form the judgements of working policymakers and public servants.  "If historians are writing 'more and more about less and less,' I say fine."

This article reviews the scholarly works on the history of science and technology in modern Korea, published from 2008 to 2014. It is remarkable that a number of young scholars has entered this field by publishing research on the history of science and technology in Korea during the Japanese Oc- cupation era (1910~1945) and the Park Chung Hee regime (1962~1979), partly in response to the growing number of literature on those periods by historians in general. Those works are helpful for general readers interested in those periods, not just historians of science and technology, in that they meticulously trace the growth of individual scientists and scientific commu- nity in Korea. It should be noted that, however, there remains a potential danger that those works could be misread as overlooking or even endorsing the oppressive systems underlying the growth of scientific enterprise, as they are rather focusing on local dynamics and tensions than raising direct ques- tion about the system ― colonial or authoritarian developmentalism ― itself. Thus it remains as a challenge what could be asked as a “big question” about the history of science in modern Korea, which might change our current un- derstanding of the topic, from those new case studies.

In the 1970s, the Park Chung Hee administration (1961-79) leveraged all defense-related civilian industries to build an independent system of weapons production. In keeping with Park's advancement of military modernization driven by strong private-sector growth, an agenda that he promoted with his banner slogan “rich nation, strong military,” large Korean companies known as chaebŏl (재벌) were transformed to serve as government contractors that drove both national economic development and military modernization. A case study of one such company, Hanwha, illustrates how the state's hyper-militarization of Korean industries determined the distinct course and character of South Korea's national development. The study highlights the dynamic interplay that occurred between state actors and private-sector CEOs, managers, and laborers in shaping the chaebŏl-centered economic and defense industrialization.

Da un anno a questa parte le relazioni fra Giappone e Corea del Sud sono ai minimi storici. Le divergenze fra i governi giapponese e coreano intorno a una sentenza della Corte Suprema della Corea sono degenerate in una spirale di ritorsioni economiche e diplomatiche fra i due paesi. La materia del contendere riguarda un tema da sempre delicato: le responsabilità del Giappone nei confronti della Corea in qualità di ex colonizzatore. Una pagina nella storia dei rapporti fra i due paesi che il Giappone vorrebbe considerare archiviata, e per la quale invece una parte consistente dell'opinione pubblica coreana continua a chiedere un gesto di espiazione. D La mancata collaborazione fra i due paesi rischia di avere serie ripercussioni sugli equilibri dell'intera regione, perché, in qualità di alleati degli Stati Uniti ospitanti basi militari americane, hanno ruoli chiave nella strategia statunitense di contenimento di Cina e Corea del Nord.

An 8 page essay which looks over and analyses the close relationship that the Korean Koryŏ Dynasty had with Medieval China, especially the Song Dynasty. Examples of war alliances, religions, artworks, politics, and education are analyzed to prove the thesis.

Ecological and environmental history is an extended version of an environmental history that links with the concept of an "ecological turn". This signifies that human is deemed to be one of the chain in the ecosystem that coexists with the ecological environment. In other words, it rejects the human images that rule the nature and concurrently criticizes the capitalism of modern civilization which has faith in economic growth. This is a way to coexist with the natural environment and mankind. Consequently, study on the ecological and environmental history is significant on the historical academic response and participation in ecological environmental matters.
In this regard, this paper reorganizes the preceding research on modern history in Korea. It includes the research on agriculture and forest, issues of marine ecology and fisheries, and the topic on the convergence of ecological environment with the medical history. Subsequently, it introduces the ongoing research such as study on climate matters and disasters, environmental change and pollution by industrialization, and view of nature, ecological thought, and politics of symbiosis as a recent new topic.
Finally, it emphasizes the interdisciplinary collaboration such as natural science is necessary as a task of ecological and environmental history. In addition, it raises the theme of "Korea "s environmental history in the 20th(~ 21st) century’ as a method of contributing the study of modern Korean history. The following can support these themes. First, history of energy in the 20th century, second, the history of environmental change and pollution or disaster, third, mentalité studies of economic growth myths, fourth, ecological thought history, environmental movement, and history of human activity pursuing sustainability. As a result, it is expected that historical studies enable to evoke the survival problem of the earth"s ecosystem and provide a small clue to solve this problem.

The United Nations Command (UNC) was an unprecedented and effective coalition that was an important factor in the outcome of the fighting. It is irrefutable that the U.S. bore the bulk of the material burden of the war in terms of funding and of administrative and logistical support and of the non-Korean military force. But in terms of ground combat power, the proportion of non-U.S. elements was greater than is generally perceived. In the summer of 1951, when most of the composition of the coalition had been set, Eighth Army had seven U.S. divisions with about 63 infantry and seven tank battalions, ten ROK Army divisions and a ROK Marine regiment with a total of about 94 infantry battalions, and 20 infantry battalions from other UN nations who thus constituted close to 25% (20 of 83) of the non-ROK infantry battalions. These numbers still leave out the over 10,000 Korean augmentees in the U.S. and other UN units (KATUSA) and over 30,000 Korean Service Corps men. The purpose of this chapter is to provide some historical details and historiographical guidance on the study of this important aspect of the Korean War.
The perception lingers that the UN coalition was more a political symbol of international solidarity than of a substantive military organization that significantly affected the fighting. This is a matter for historical interpretation and debate, but what seems self evident is that the UN coalition played an important role in the outcome of crucial battles and the course of the war.

[By Chang-su Cho Houchins; Introduction by P.M. Taylor. This full book is uploaded here while the Smithsonian website, where it will be published online, is being revised.] The John Baptiste Bernadou Collection of nineteenth-century Korean artifacts, so thoroughly researched and presented by Chang-su Cho Houchins in this volume, represents a unique attempt by an amateur American ethnographer to record the material culture of the Korean people at a critical moment in Korea's long cultural history. John Baptiste Bernadou (1858- 1908) assembled this collection from March 1884 to April 1885 as an attache (or envoy) of the Smithsonian Institution. Both Bernadou and the Smithsonian recognized that a new opportunity to record Korean cultural heritage using the methods of nineteenth-century museum science had emerged along with the "opening" of Korea heralded by the signing in 1882 of the first Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the Kingdom of Korea and the United States of America. Long known as the "Hermit Kingdom'' for its pre-1880s isolation, Korea, or at least many of the Kingdom's elite citizens, wholeheartedly began a period of openness to the outside world as a result of the exchanges initiated by this accord.
The breadth of this collection, including everyday household furniture and utensils, textiles, clothing and accessories, ceramics, handicrafts, paintings, prints and drawings, books, maps, and musical instruments, allows a unique glimpse of pre-industrial Korean life. The catalog of the Bernadou Collection presented in this volume includes Bernadou's notes {and, in the Appendices, selected correspondence from him), but it reinterprets the collection based on Chang-su Cho Houchins's careful study of the objects in light of more recent methods and current scholarship in this field.

This article examines some of the formal properties, stylistic motifs and thematic preoccupations of classic and contemporary South Korean horror films. As a genre that has enormous box-office appeal and crossover potential for western audiences, horror might seem to be little more than a commercial platform for young film-makers to exploit popular tastes and cash in on derivative stories offering scant insight into the social conditions faced by modern-day Koreans. However, even the most cliché-ridden, shock-filled slasher films and ghost tales reveal the often-contradictory cultural attitudes of a populace that, over the past three generations, has weathered literally divisive transformations at the national and ideological levels. As such, the genre deserves scrutiny as a repository of previously pent-up, suddenly unleashed libidinal energies, consumerist desires and historical traumas , as well as a barometer of public opinion about such issues as class warfare, gender inequality and sexual identity. Specifically, I explore some of the most salient features of Korean horror cinema, including filmmakers' tendency to adopt narrative analepsis -- typically rendered as flashbacks -- in the course of plotting out scenarios that, though far-fetched, are rooted in unsettled (and unsettling) real-world problems. Historical return, I argue, truly is a horrifying prospect, especially for anyone old enough to remember, or to have experienced firsthand, the brutality of a military dictatorship or an ongoing abuse of presidential power resulting in severe rights violations (e.g. the Park Chung-hee [1961–79]) and Chun Doo-hwan [1980–88] administrations). But historical return simply must be dramatized as part of the regurgitative ‘purging’ for which the genre has been singled out by theorists who recognize horror’s socially productive function.

In its first, almost book-length chapter, Berlin Koreans and Pictured Koreans provides a detailed account of Korean students, revolutionaries, and professionals in Berlin (of the Wilhelmine, Weimar, and National Socialist eras). Carefully researched and lavishly illustrated, the study provocatively exposes cultural and political connections that are often unexpected and disquieting. Two shorter essays analyze an artwork and mass-produced advertisement art to assess Germany's take on Korea and the East and what that means for the country's own search for identity and its stance on colonialism. The book challenges and extends established historical and art historical models regarding colonial modernity, the relationship between politics and modernism in art and dance, and the privileged status Nazism bestowed on international specialists. It makes exhaustive use of European, American, Korean, and Japanese primary and secondary materials and archival sources.

The first attempt at spelling reform in South Korea took place in the early 1950s as the Korean War (1950–53) drew to a close. The subsequent Han’gŭl Crisis is often interpreted as an example of the authoritarianism of President Syngman Rhee (Yi Sŭngman), yet the event also represents a clash of generations between the supporters of the Unified Orthography of 1933 and the previous spelling standard. During the han’gŭl simplification debates, the legacies of Chu Sigyŏng (1876–1914) and Pak Sŭngbin (1880–1943) reemerged as their followers continued a contentious linguistic debate that stretched back into the colonial period. The event ended as a victory for the Unified Orthography of 1933, but several ambiguous questions remain for further investigation. Ultimately, behind the claims of “scientific rationalism” in the current han’gŭl spelling are the forgotten memories of linguistic activism and the difficulties in uniting divergent linguistic practices in post-Liberation Korean society.

The Australia government played a diplomatic role on the Korean peninsula as a member of the UNTCOK (United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea) and UNCURK (United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea) from 1946. The political relationship continued even through the Korean War (1950-1953). Was it the first story of Australian diplomacy in Korea? If not, when did the relationship start? While Australia was able to perform no diplomatic activity in the pre-commonwealth period, Australian civilians brought a cultural transformation to the Confucian and Buddhist society of Korea from 1889 through non-governmental organisations (NGOs). They were a minority of the foreign groups in the Hermit Kingdom, but their impact was quite significant during the Korea Empire (1897-1910) and colonial Korea (1910-1945) periods. The Australians particularly influenced the social development of Kyŏngnam province (1889-1941). This paper argues that the spirit of volunteeris...

Cross-national empirical research consistently suggests that, on average, former British colonies are both more democratic and have more stable democratic transitions. I argue that former British colonies are distinct not because Great Britain was a democracy – so were France and Belgium during the late 19th and early 20th century. Nor were the British more altruistic. However, British colonial elites were more divided and thus more constrained. In particular, religious groups were more independent from state control in British colonies than in historically-Catholic colonies (i.e., colonies of France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy). Initially the British restricted missions in their colonies, but Evangelical Protestants forced the British to allow religious liberty in 1813. Protestants were not able to win religious liberty in most other European colonizers during the entire period of colonization.
    Protestant missionaries were central to expanding formal education in the colonies because they wanted people to read the Bible in their own language. Governments wanted a small educated elite that they could control. Other religious groups invested in mass vernacular education primarily when competing with Protestants.
    Missionaries also constrained colonial abuses when they were independent from state control (i.e., chose their own leaders and raised their own funds). If colonial exploitation was extreme, it angered indigenous people against the West and made mission work difficult. Thus missionaries had incentive to fight abuses. Other colonial elites had no incentive to expose their abuses, and indigenous people had little power in the colonizing state. This left missionaries in a unique bridging position. Non-state missionaries also fostered institutions outside state control, institutions that nationalist leaders later used to challenge British colonization and birth political parties.
    Statistical analysis confirms the centrality of missions in expanding education and fostering democracy. Controlling for Protestant missions removes the association between democracy and British colonization, other “Protestant” colonization, percent European, percent Muslim, being an island nation, and being a landlocked nation. Other controls (such as current GDP, and current education enrollments) do not remove the strong positive association between Protestant missions and democracy.

The present article deals with one of the attempts by South Korea's privileged stratum to undermine the very basis for any criticisms against the colonial-age behaviour of its institutional-and in many cases familial-forefathers, namely the so-called New Right movement. Simultaneously an academic and political movement, it was launched in 2004 and had been acting as advocates of a new, post-nationalist neo-conservatism until its recent decline, more or less concurrent with the demise of Park Geun-hye (Pak Kûnhye) regime amidst the candlelight vigils and million-strong demonstrations in downtown Seoul in 2016-2017. On the academic plane, New Right aimed at shifting the axiological basis of South Korean nationalism from ethno-nation (minjok) discriminated and oppressed by the Japanese colonialists, to the capitalist 'civilization' which colonialism had supposedly helped to transplant onto Korean soil, and the South Korean statehood which allowed so many former members of the colonial-period elites to maintain their socioeconomic positions. If the new order of priorities, with the market game rules, industrial growth and modern capitalist statehood put ahead of the traditional shibboleth of the ethno-nation (encompassing the majority of population which might not necessarily benefit, at least, immediately, from all these developments), was to be established, the defence of colonial-age collaboration would no longer be an onerous task. On the contrary, collaborators could be, in such a way, re-interpreted as patriots who had acted out of Korea's long-term interest in

Kim Sowol(김소월, 1902~1934) was a Korean poet who represents modern Korean poetry. That his most acclaimed poem "Azaleas" (진달래꽃, 1922) was strongly influenced by W. B. Yeats's "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" (1899), has rarely been introduced to Japan.
Kim Eok (김억, 1896~?), a poet and "the literary mentor" of Kim Sowol, translated "He Wishes..." into Korean and it is obvious that Kim Sowol read the translation. However, Kim Eok mistranslated "cloths" as "옷" which means "clothes" (in Korean "cloths" should be translated as "옷감"). In his 2013 thesis “One Hundred Year (Mis)Translation of W. B. Yeats's ‘He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’” (The Yeats Journal of Korea 40, 153–184) Kim Yong Kwon (김용권) states that Kim Eok’s version is a retranslation from the Japanese version by Hakuson Kuriyagawa (厨川白村, 1880~1923) and that Kuriyagawa's "He Wishes..." is primarily a mistranslation.
This paper argues how the modern Korean poets read Yeats and how the imperial Japan and Japanese language had some influence, be it positive or negative, on modern Korean literature.

This presentation was done at the 17th meeting of English Poetry Society (Eishi-kenkyūkai, 英詩研究会) on 5th September, 2020.

The aim of this study is to describe and evaluate the 35 years long Japanese occupation period that Korean people came through between 1910 and 1945, from the point of governance, and economic and social life.

Developments in 19th century prior to the Japanese occupation period on Korean Peninsula, where now Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) exist, are examined. After describing Japan, China and Russia at the first half of the 20th century, undergoing situation of the Far East is tried to be determined. Executive structure and regulations on economic and social fields of Japanese occupation rule are mentioned and the phases that Korean people came through under this occupation are studied.

As a conclusion, how the Korean people affected under the Japanese occupation period is analysed with the developments of the prior period at the Korean Peninsula and the neighbouring countries' evaluation at the same period.

In 1894 at the end of the Chosôn dynasty, the Korean government initiated a sweeping program of reforms known as the Kabo Reforms. This was an attempt to make unprecedented political, economic, and social changes that would modernize the country and establish an independent and sovereign state. However, there are conflicting depictions of the Kabo Reforms in contemporary scholarship, some describing the effort as a result of Japanese pressure and others portraying the incipient rise of a modern nation-state. This paper examines the reform efforts through American eyes of the time with the hope that a third-party perspective will provide insight on the issue. Did Americans feel that the reform program was led by Japanese “advisers” or did they believe this was a substantive development in Korea’s modernization and self-strengthening movement? Did it even matter who initiated the process, or was the outcome the most important issue? Missionaries, diplomats, political advisers, and journalists in Korea wrote about the reforms and their aftermath, and newspaper coverage in the U.S. informed the American public about events in the Far East, contributing to the formation of an image of a turbulent Korea in dire need of reform. Understanding the nature of the Kabo Reform movement from eyewitness accounts will demonstrate that the most important aspect of the reforms was their permanence and certitude. Regardless of the Japanese role in the reforms, there was overall agreement that Korea required a modernizing reform program that would actuate substantive and lasting change.

Given the extent to which the decade figures into contemporary historical analyses as a unit of periodization, focusing on a given ten-year span hardly seems argumentative in itself. Yet, that is precisely the case with regard to the temporal framing of “Warfare and the Re-making of Korea in the 1950s,” the recent forum in a special double-issue of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations co-edited by Steven Hugh Lee and Janice C.H. Kim. In Korean War historiography, the dogged recurrence of a long-standing debate over the war’s origins has meant that interpretations of the war most often build upon an exploration of its causes and precursors in the late 1940s or earlier. For this volume to focus instead on the ‘1950s’ therefore sets aside the war-origins debate and instead brings attention to the impact of the Korean War’s period of major military hostilities (1950-1953) from a perspective that carries the analysis forward to the war’s understudied aftermath, including post-armistice reconstruction and social rehabilitation.

https://issforum.org/reviews/PDF/AR855-5.pdf

This chapter is, in many respects, a critical re-assessment of the observations I made in "Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era" (2005). Since the publication of that book, the range of publicly accessible Russian, Chinese, and East European archival materials has undergone a dramatic expansion, which now affords a deeper insight into state formation in the DPRK, especially for the period of 1945–1950. In the light of the newly available evidence, I found it necessary to elaborate, modify, or abandon some of my earlier conclusions, and to add some new angles to my analysis. In particular, I sought to utilize the available Russian primary sources so as to reduce my earlier dependence on Hungarian archival documents.

This essay examines the role of gender in Korean Buddhism's encounter with modernity. I argue that different roles society has imposed on different genders resulted in different experiences of modernization. In the case of Kim Iryŏp, a representative female intellectual who lived during the first half of the twentieth century in Korea, it was Buddhist philosophy--especially the Buddhist view of the self--that provided her a philosophical foundation in her search for identity and liberation from the traditional view of women. An investigation of Kim Iryŏp‘s Buddhism demands a reconsideration of the so far accepted postulation of the binary of modernity and tradition--Buddhism, in this case. Kim Iryŏp's Buddhism also brings to our attention the patriarchal nature of our understanding of modern Korean Buddhism, in which the Buddhist encounter with modernity has been portrayed as focusing exclusively on male Buddhist leaders and gender-neutral issues. Finally, Kim Iryŏp's Buddhism offers us an example of how Buddhist philosophy can contribute to the contemporary discourse on feminism, providing the possibility for creating a new Buddhist, feminist theory.
NOTES: A revised version of this essay can be found in Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, edited by Jin Y. Park (SUNY Press, 2010).
Note that this essay uses the Korean Ministry romanization system of the Korean language and therefore Kim Iryŏp is romanized as Kim Iryeop.

Introduced to Korea around 1900, the modern idea of the ethno-nation (minjok) developed into one of the most important intellectual and political concepts circulating in the country by the early 1920s. From the nationalists' viewpoint, the ethno-nation, seen as an unchanging and homogenous entity, was the primary site for individuals' belonging. The national collectivity was a prerequisite for individuals' existence. While nationalists had been celebrating a primeval, immutable and rather ahistorical " Korean-ness " since the last precolonial decade (the 1900s), the Marxists—strongly influenced by Otto Bauer's and Joseph Stalin's understandings of nation as a product of capitalist modernity—started to question the nationalistic approach to Korean identity as a matter of principle by the late 1920s and early 1930s. There was no full agreement among them on how to understand the history of the Korean ethno-nation. Some of them believed that the Korean ethnic core dated back to the age of the Three Kingdoms (the first century BC to AD 668). Others put heavier emphasis on the role of proto-capitalism and markets in the modern development of national consciousness, tracing this development to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. This article summarizes these debates—between nationalists and Marxists, and also within the Marxist milieu— and links them to Marxist intellectual developments elsewhere. The author argues that the " proto-constructivist " approach articulated by some colonial-age Marxists was an important counterweight to the nationalist nativism of the 1920s and 1930s and, in the end, made a significant—and still largely unappreciated—contribution to the development of scholarship on Korea's history and culture.

The case of Chŏnju Hanok Village shows a troubling turn in preservation away from a focus on the conservation of historic materials and toward the production of themed experiences of traditional urban environments that are entertaining, but have little historical accuracy. Cutting against the grain of recent scholarship that idealizes the preservation tradition of material substitution in East Asian countries, this essay argues that much of this practice is driven by the attempt to accommodate pressure from business leaders and residents to make preservation policies more lax. The resistance of private owners of hanok to preservation practices has caused a proliferation of architectural copies that undermines the material authenticity of the Village, and instead offers a more sensorial, interactive tourist experience. By minimizing the importance of tangible fabric, managers of the site envision the ideal visitor as a tourist seeking something else than material authenticity and ready to accept the representation of tradition offered by the interpreters of the Village. Even if the visitor is aware of the staged nature of the experience, this awareness does not diminish the lived authenticity, since the experience creates a temporary, out of the ordinary reality that satisfies the tourist.

This book is the first endeavor devoted solely to providing a broad comprehensive assessment of the international impact of the war. From a centennial perspective, It is evident how far reaching and pervasive have been the ramifications of the Russo-Japanese War. Some of its repercussions lasted only a decade, as in the case of the European balance of power, although they led indirectly to the outbreak of a still more pivotal event — World War I. Other repercussions of the war lasted four decades, as in the case of the continental grip of the Japanese empire; whereas some resonate even now, as in the case of the divided Korean peninsula.


REVIEWS
“There has been a flood of books dealing with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 published since the centenary. The distinctive feature of the book edited by Professor Kowner is that is deals with the impact the war had on Japan and Russia and on practically all the countries worldwide. … It is not possible to make individual comments on the many insights in the book except for one general observation …. War and navies are still with us; and [this volume] covering the first half of the twentieth century still have much relevance.”
— Ian Nish, Japan Society: Japan-UK Review 2 (2007), 5.

“[The book] proceeds to emphasize the war’s world-wide implications and impact, foreshadowing in many ways the “great” one that would follow in less than ten years. The focus of the book is on the impact of the war on subsequent military strategy and tactics and on political, social, and economic affairs in various world areas. … The scholarship is on the whole of a very high level, and the editor kept most of the contributions focused and brief. There is little overlap and the editing is excellent ...”
— Saul E. Norman, The Russian Review 67 (2008), 137-138.

“Two related things distinguish this conference volume: its specific attempt to assess the repercussions of the conflict and the span of the papers presented. … the book as a whole does make a useful attempt to come to grips with the war’s complicated effects. … What is fresh in this book is a real sense of how far afield the repercussions of the conflict were felt and of the extent to which it was enmeshed with the major global trends of the time. … [T]his book provides a good foundation for further inquiry into the significance of the Russo- Japanese War.”
— Sandra Wilson, The Journal of Japanese Studies 34 (2008), 513.

“The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War asks, and answers, the question, "Why, more than a century after its end, should we care about the Russo-Japanese War?" … All of the essays are thought-provoking, and some break new ground, notably the war’s effect the rise of Asian nationalism, and the rise of Japanese-American rivalry… A volume in the Routledge series, “Studies in the Modern History of Asia,” The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War is a valuable read for anyone with an interest in the era of the First World War or the history of East Asia.”
— A.A. Nofi, Strategy Page (2009) The NYMAS Review, The New York Military Affairs Symposium


TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Between a colonial clash and World War Zero : The impact of the Russo-Japanese War in a global perspective / Rotem Kowner
2. The war as a turning point in modern Japanese history / Rotem Kowner
3. If Japan had lost the war ... / Peter Duus
4. The war and the fate of the tsarist autocracy / Jonathan Frankel
5. From enemies to allies : the war and Russo-Japanese relations / Peter Berton
6. The fragmenting of the old world order : Britain, the Great Powers, and the war / T.G. Otte
7. Germany, the Russo-Japanese War and the road to the Great War / Matthew S. Seligman
8. The impact of the war on the French political scene / Patrick Beillevaire
9. America's first cold war : the emergence of a new rivalry /  Tal Tovy and Sharon Halevi
10. White Mongols? : the war and American discourses on race and religion / Joseph M. Henning
11. The impact of the war on China / Harold Z. Schiffrin
12. On the confluence of history and memory : the significance of the war for Korea / Guy Podoler and Michael Robinson
13. Ironies of history : the war and the origins of East Asian radicalism / Yitzhak Shichor
14. Tokyo as a shared Mecca of modernity : war echoes in the colonial Malay world / Michael Laffan
15.  India and the war / T.R. Sareen
16. A model not to follow : the European armies and the lessons of the war / Yigal Sheffy
17.  The impact of the war on naval warfare / Rotem Kowner
18. The road to Jutland? : the war and the Imperial German Navy / Cord Eberspaecher

Despite the numerous empirical studies on colonial Korea many fundamental questions about Japanese colonialism require further examination. A new approach to understanding Japan’s colonial project is needed to overcome the limits of the colonial exploitation and colonial modernity thesis. A survey of recent works in colonial studies published in the English language can provide some fresh perspectives in this regard. Many of the recent studies on colonial Korea fully engage the historiography of modern Japanese history and provide important theoretical approaches into the questions of historical structure and agency. While not without their limitations, the results provide more complex understanding of the Japanese colonizers and the ambiguities of colonial rule. The arriving at a more comprehensive approach to colonial Korea will require considerable more effort, but the foundations for such an endeavor have finally emerged in the recent English language studies.

MA thesis, Regional Studies East Asia, Harvard University, 1991.
This thesis uses significant new evidences from the archives of the JFK and LBJ Presidential libraries as well as open primary sources from the U.S. and Korea to shed new light on the Korean involvement in the Vietnam War, the Japan-Korea normalization treaty of 1965 and the connection between the two. Contrary to popular versions of the Korean entry into Vietnam which focus on the economic rationale, this paper argues that security was the principal factor behind Korea's decision. In addition, it provides evidence that, as early as 1962, Korea had been looking for ways to become involved in Vietnam. Although the Korean people were viscerally against the Japan-Korea treaty President Park Chung Hee was able to garner support by using the Vietnam War to unify the country and undermine opposition to the treaty thus gaining the economic foundation for Korean development.

The Government General of Korea took over a decade after seizing control of Korea to promulgate the Census Ordinance in 1921 along with the first compilation of the colonial census registry or koseki. Koreans during the previous Choson dynasty did take a census, but the data only clearly recorded the head of household. The 1921 registry was not comprehensive as many Koreans had left the country or never voluntarily identified themselves during the colonial period. Thus the transition from the household registry system of the Choson dynasty to the colonial koseki took several decades and the process was not complete by the end of colonial rule in 1945. Today, the unregistered Korean returnees from the former Soviet Union or China still remain a perplexing problem, because the Republic of Korea refuses to grant resident rights to these ethnic Koreans who cannot produce the proper documentation.

This study examines the complex dynamics behind the emergence of the colonial koseki and the subsequent social and legal interactions that surrounded the registration process in colonial Korea. A fascinating social history can be discovered in the instances of multiple fictitious names that appear on the colonial koseki and the attempts by the colonial state to clear up the legal confusion triggered by an inability to register all the Koreans. The colonial registration process took on a new dimension once the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, when a sudden necessity to register all Koreans for military and labor conscription arose. Thus, understanding the process by which the colonial koseki took shape is important in understanding both the complexities of colonial society as well as the subsequent issue of who is or is not a constituent member of South Korean society today.

Korea has a long history of linking conflict resolution with particular moral and societal values. In this chapter we explore the potentials and limits of this tradition by focusing on the concept of Han, which many Korean scholars claim as unique to their culture.  We explore in detail two important aspects of Han. First, the concept of Han explicitly acknowledges the emotional dimensions of conflict and its resolution. This focus on emotions contrasts sharply with Western approaches to mediation, which are part of a broader cultural tradition dominated by instrumental understandings of reason.  Second, the concept of Han, as understood and practiced in Korea, shifts the focus of conflict resolution from the individual to the collective. The main task is not to address and solve individual grievances or a clash between particu- lar individuals, as is the case in dominant Western approaches to mediation. The purpose, rather, is to find ways of harmonising the relationship between individuals and the society at large.

This article focused on analysis of Yu KilChun’s newly-found draft known as “Pyeonghwa Gwangbok Chaek(平和光復策)” that is kept in Korea University Museum. Before returning to Korea on August 1907, Yu KilChun met various Japanese and gave interviews to Japanese newspapers actively. Through these activities, Yu judged the state of affairs about Korea, and appealed his existence to Japanese officials. The draft of “Pyeonghwa Gwangbok Chaek” was written by Korean and Chinese characters. Compared with the final text, there are many differences in the draft. Mentioning of Choi Ik-Hyeon(崔益鉉), Lee Beom-Jin(李範晉), Bak Yeong-Hyo(朴泳孝) is only found in the draft. It is worthy of paying attention to Yu’s recommendation of Bak Yeong-Hyo that he could aid the Emperor Sunjong for the restoration of independence. But these contents that include sensitive political issues were deleted or diminished at the final version, because of Yu’s concerning about Japanese Resident- General of Korea. Yu KilChun did self-censorship before submitting the document to the Emperor.