Ecology and Colonialism in Late Chosŏn Korea: Ullŭngdo, 1882–1905

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the Chosŏn state, which ruled the Korean peninsula from 1392 to 1910, moved settlers, animals and crops to the isolated oceanic island (do) of Ullŭng, displacing or killing the indigenous people, animals and possibly plant species living there. Having first sent observers to investigate Japanese settler colonialism in Hokkaido, the Chosŏn court accurately replicated its institutions and their impact during its settlement of Ullŭngdo. Documents from the settlement also mention non-Korean islanders uprooted by the state. Their presence shaped these events and the Chosŏn court’s policies, but the nature of their lives is now beyond reconstruction. Although the settlement of Ullŭngdo employed institutions and policies characteristic of settler colonialism, the lack of a self-identifying indigenous people, either at the time or surviving today, complicates the application to this case of the term ‘settler colonialism’. This offers an opportunity to discuss nationalizing settler colonialisms because, unlike the iconic settler colonies of North America and Oceania, settler colonialism in late Chosŏn Korea violently integrated outsiders into the emerging nation.