South Korean Historiography on Civil Service Examination, Max Weber, and the Cold War Transpacific Invention of Confucian Modernity

Abstract

Abstract:

This article first offers a postcolonial critique on Japanese colonial historiography and post-1945 South Korean historiography on Confucian tradition of Korea that they both have shared a very essentialized understanding on Confucian tradition of Korea as unique nature of Korean society based on the same overarching evolutionary modernization narrative in spite of their contradictingly different definition of it as either premodern backwardness or Confucian modernity. In order to go beyond these still dominant essentialized bipolar views on Confucian tradition of Korea, based on a transnational perspective, this paper seeks to show how post-1945 South Korean historiography has redefined Confucian tradition of Korea. Then, to do so, this paper tries to historicize post-1945 South Korean historiography's appropriation of Max Weber's bureaucracy and modernization theories from U.S. academia of social science and East Asian studies for its studies of Koryŏ-Chosŏn civil service examination and social status system. Then, this paper goes further to look at how post-1945 South Korean historiography on late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn history has struggled from 1945 to early 2000 to redefine and reinvent Confucian tradition of Korea such as Koryŏ-Chosŏn civil service examination as the unique origin of its own meritocratic modernity that is as close as "Western Modernity," based on this appropriation of Max Weber's bureaucracy and modernization theories. Then, this paper finally turns to rethink the meaning of this appropriation within the broader context of Cold War and South Korean postcoloniality.