Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.33526/ejks.20191901.103
Min Koo Choi
Kim Tong-in (1900–1951) strove to not only refine the form of the modern novel but also to create a new type of modern individual character. This paper examines Kim Tong-in’s novella Maŭm i yŏt’un chayŏ (A Person with a Weak Heart, 1919–1920), which draws on the modern Korean intellectual’s self-portrait of the inner self engaged in the pursuit of modern love. Through the analysis of Kim Tong-in’s novella, this paper will argue that the characterization of the modern individual as a superfluous man alienated from society and confined to his inner subject is a manifestation of the ambivalent status of the modern Korean intellectual in colonial Korea.
金同仁(1900-1951)不仅力求完善现代小说的形式，而且力求创造一种新型的现代个性。本文考察了金同仁的中篇小说Maŭm i yŏt’un chayi (A Person with A Weak Heart, 1919-1920)，这是韩国现代知识分子对追求现代爱情的内心自我的自画像。本文通过对金同仁中篇小说的分析，认为将现代个体塑造为游离于社会之外、局限于内心主体的多余人，是近代韩国知识分子在殖民时期的矛盾地位的体现。
{"title":"The Creation of the Modern Individual in Modern Korean Literature: Kim Tong-in’s Novella Mau˘m i yo˘t’un chayo˘ (A Person with a Weak Heart, 1919–1920)","authors":"Min Koo Choi","doi":"10.33526/ejks.20191901.103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/ejks.20191901.103","url":null,"abstract":"Kim Tong-in (1900–1951) strove to not only refine the form of the modern novel but also to create a new type of modern individual character. This paper examines Kim Tong-in’s novella Maŭm i yŏt’un chayŏ (A Person with a Weak Heart, 1919–1920), which draws on the modern Korean intellectual’s self-portrait of the inner self engaged in the pursuit of modern love. Through the analysis of Kim Tong-in’s novella, this paper will argue that the characterization of the modern individual as a superfluous man alienated from society and confined to his inner subject is a manifestation of the ambivalent status of the modern Korean intellectual in colonial Korea.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86955062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.33526/ejks.20191901.15
A. Pedret
Conventional methods are necessary for addressing certain types of problems, but they are inadequate for investigating subjects that cannot be known in an increasingly complex and emergent world. The method proposed in this paper acknowledges the role of imagination as a cognitive function involved in all human activities from perception and reasoning to experiment and speculation. It forms the theoretical basis for an inter-disciplinary research method that combines the scenario method from Future Studies, fictive narrative, and design thinking and visualization for examining the projects for alternative plausible spatial futures of Pyongyang in the context of a unified Korean peninsula.
{"title":"Imagination as a Research Method: Spatial Futures for Pyongyang in 2050","authors":"A. Pedret","doi":"10.33526/ejks.20191901.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/ejks.20191901.15","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional methods are necessary for addressing certain types of problems, but they are inadequate for investigating subjects that cannot be known in an increasingly complex and emergent world. The method proposed in this paper acknowledges the role of imagination as a cognitive function involved in all human activities from perception and reasoning to experiment and speculation. It forms the theoretical basis for an inter-disciplinary research method that combines the scenario method from Future Studies, fictive narrative, and design thinking and visualization for examining the projects for alternative plausible spatial futures of Pyongyang in the context of a unified Korean peninsula.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82639978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.33526/ejks.20191901.125
Gooyong Kim
This paper evaluates a current discourse of cultural hybridity that is deployed to examine the global success of local popular culture from South Korea. Indicating the discourse is descriptive without retaining an explanatory merit, I propose an alternative perspective based on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and hyperreality, while focusing on the political economy of cultural hybridization. Examining how the Korean popular music (K-pop) industry mixes various audio-visual elements, I argue cultural hybridity in K-pop is not so much an autonomous, self-reflective cultural endeavor as an industrial means to maximize profits while perpetuating the status quo of gender relations. Re-inserting K-pop within the industry’s structural configurations, I analyze how and why a hyper-real personality of female idols who sport contradictory characteristics, innocence and explicit sexuality, becomes a new ideal femininity. Indicating neoliberal and post-feminist ramifications in K-pop’s hybridity, I redress the myopic, descriptive nature of the current scholarship.
{"title":"From Hybridity of Cultural Production to Hyperreality of Post-feminism in K-pop: A Theoretical Reconsideration for Critical Approaches to Cultural Assemblages in Neoliberal Culture Industry","authors":"Gooyong Kim","doi":"10.33526/ejks.20191901.125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/ejks.20191901.125","url":null,"abstract":"This paper evaluates a current discourse of cultural hybridity that is deployed to examine the global success of local popular culture from South Korea. Indicating the discourse is descriptive without retaining an explanatory merit, I propose an alternative perspective based on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and hyperreality, while focusing on the political economy of cultural hybridization. Examining how the Korean popular music (K-pop) industry mixes various audio-visual elements, I argue cultural hybridity in K-pop is not so much an autonomous, self-reflective cultural endeavor as an industrial means to maximize profits while perpetuating the status quo of gender relations. Re-inserting K-pop within the industry’s structural configurations, I analyze how and why a hyper-real personality of female idols who sport contradictory characteristics, innocence and explicit sexuality, becomes a new ideal femininity. Indicating neoliberal and post-feminist ramifications in K-pop’s hybridity, I redress the myopic, descriptive nature of the current scholarship.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"93 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83807510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.33526/ejks.20191901.55
J. Mandić
The possibility of reconciliation between the two Koreas and a potential change of the political regime in North Korea raises the question of the urban futures of North Korean cities, which at the moment serve as a stage for power consolidation through the monumental propaganda of the present regime. This paper examines an urban design project that imagines urban future of Pyongyang in 2050 and its colossal socialist era monuments after an assumed unification. Instead of erasing the socialist past of the city by removing the existing monuments (which was the practice in other socialist countries), this project proposes adding new layers of monuments that would represent and commemorate the new political and economic realities of ‘unification,’ and at the same time preserve the identity and legibility of the city. This alternative strategy was made possible by combining design thinking with the scenario technique utilized in Future Studies. Within the framework of the established scenario and politico-economic circumstances it compels, the method of writing History of the future was developed as a tool for envisioning an urban reality of 2050 Pyongyang, from which the Grid of Moments project would arise. The resulting project, conceived within the fictional story, allows historical and future ideologies, represented by the historical and new monuments, to coexist in Pyongyang through concurrent and respective acknowledgement. In this way, the role of architecture is shifted from serving the political regime towards acting as a social critique, as well as inducing a social transformation. These thought strategies were enabled by approaching design through scenario and storytelling method developed within it, as it left space for more imagination and creativity, and introduced a degree of objectivity to the design process by allowing different ideologies to be considered.
{"title":"Moments of the Future’: Imagining the City and Monuments of Pyongyang in 2050","authors":"J. Mandić","doi":"10.33526/ejks.20191901.55","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/ejks.20191901.55","url":null,"abstract":"The possibility of reconciliation between the two Koreas and a potential change of the political regime in North Korea raises the question of the urban futures of North Korean cities, which at the moment serve as a stage for power consolidation through the monumental propaganda of the present regime. This paper examines an urban design project that imagines urban future of Pyongyang in 2050 and its colossal socialist era monuments after an assumed unification. Instead of erasing the socialist past of the city by removing the existing monuments (which was the practice in other socialist countries), this project proposes adding new layers of monuments that would represent and commemorate the new political and economic realities of ‘unification,’ and at the same time preserve the identity and legibility of the city. This alternative strategy was made possible by combining design thinking with the scenario technique utilized in Future Studies. Within the framework of the established scenario and politico-economic circumstances it compels, the method of writing History of the future was developed as a tool for envisioning an urban reality of 2050 Pyongyang, from which the Grid of Moments project would arise. The resulting project, conceived within the fictional story, allows historical and future ideologies, represented by the historical and new monuments, to coexist in Pyongyang through concurrent and respective acknowledgement. In this way, the role of architecture is shifted from serving the political regime towards acting as a social critique, as well as inducing a social transformation. These thought strategies were enabled by approaching design through scenario and storytelling method developed within it, as it left space for more imagination and creativity, and introduced a degree of objectivity to the design process by allowing different ideologies to be considered.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88968043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.33526/EJKS.20191802.81
Mark E. Caprio
On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato with the apparent intention of delivering an undisclosed number of Koreans to Pusan, Korea. The laborers had been both recruited and conscripted for construction work necessary to fortify the naval base that had been strategically located in this remote location decades from the time of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War to monitor ship traffic between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Two days later, while skirting the Japan Sea/East Sea side of Honshu island, the ship suddenly detoured into Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto prefecture, where it exploded sending hundreds, perhaps thousands of Koreans, and 25 Japanese to their watery grave. While other ships met similar fates after the guns of the AsiaPacific wars fell silent, the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in the cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery. While the Japanese government insists that a sea mine sank the ship, Korean groups continue to maintain that it was the Japanese navy that intentionally caused the explosion to sink it. This paper aims to first identify the points of contention by following the ship from its Ōminato departure to its Maizuru sinking. It then considers the ramifications for the incident remaining unresolved. In what ways might Japan adopt more positive means toward assisting investigations that seek resolution and closure? Is non-resolution truly in its interests, or might its failure to resolve this incident (and other outstanding colonial-era issues) return to haunt the Japanese government? Does non-resolution strengthen the colonial narrative that Koreans have scripted that frames Japanese colonial-era ambitions as seeking a long-term goal of cultural genocide?
{"title":"Investigating Tragedy at Sea – The Ukishima-maru Incident and its Legacy","authors":"Mark E. Caprio","doi":"10.33526/EJKS.20191802.81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/EJKS.20191802.81","url":null,"abstract":"On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato with the apparent intention of delivering an undisclosed number of Koreans to Pusan, Korea. The laborers had been both recruited and conscripted for construction work necessary to fortify the naval base that had been strategically located in this remote location decades from the time of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War to monitor ship traffic between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Two days later, while skirting the Japan Sea/East Sea side of Honshu island, the ship suddenly detoured into Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto prefecture, where it exploded sending hundreds, perhaps thousands of Koreans, and 25 Japanese to their watery grave. While other ships met similar fates after the guns of the AsiaPacific wars fell silent, the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in the cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery. While the Japanese government insists that a sea mine sank the ship, Korean groups continue to maintain that it was the Japanese navy that intentionally caused the explosion to sink it. This paper aims to first identify the points of contention by following the ship from its Ōminato departure to its Maizuru sinking. It then considers the ramifications for the incident remaining unresolved. In what ways might Japan adopt more positive means toward assisting investigations that seek resolution and closure? Is non-resolution truly in its interests, or might its failure to resolve this incident (and other outstanding colonial-era issues) return to haunt the Japanese government? Does non-resolution strengthen the colonial narrative that Koreans have scripted that frames Japanese colonial-era ambitions as seeking a long-term goal of cultural genocide?","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"146 S284","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72407693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.33526/EJKS.20191802.127
Duan Baihui
Despite Chosŏn Korea having been nicknamed the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ by the American William Elliot Griffis in 1882, Englishmen had already been there in the early half of the nineteenth century. This paper considers three journeys by westerners to the Korean peninsula in 1816, 1832 and 1845, utilizing these explorers’ travel diaries to analyze lifestyles in Chosŏn, including clothing, food, and dwelling style. The paper considers westerners’ lively views on the lifestyles of citizens of Chosŏn. Although these narratives from westerners on Chosŏn are tinged with orientalism or racist bias, they still have a great deal of value for historians today who seek to understand everyday life and the social structure of nineteenth-century Chosŏn. This paper sheds light on these useful historical perspectives for the observation of Chosŏn lifestyles in contrast to the high politics of the court, or great power rivalries in East Asia.
{"title":"Clothing, Food and Dwelling – Western Views of Korean Life in the Early Nineteenth Century","authors":"Duan Baihui","doi":"10.33526/EJKS.20191802.127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/EJKS.20191802.127","url":null,"abstract":"Despite Chosŏn Korea having been nicknamed the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ by the American William Elliot Griffis in 1882, Englishmen had already been there in the early half of the nineteenth century. This paper considers three journeys by westerners to the Korean peninsula in 1816, 1832 and 1845, utilizing these explorers’ travel diaries to analyze lifestyles in Chosŏn, including clothing, food, and dwelling style. The paper considers westerners’ lively views on the lifestyles of citizens of Chosŏn. Although these narratives from westerners on Chosŏn are tinged with orientalism or racist bias, they still have a great deal of value for historians today who seek to understand everyday life and the social structure of nineteenth-century Chosŏn. This paper sheds light on these useful historical perspectives for the observation of Chosŏn lifestyles in contrast to the high politics of the court, or great power rivalries in East Asia.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88171082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.33526/EJKS.20191802.153
Brother Anthony
There are various ways in which it is possible to talk about ‘Translating Korean Poetry’, it might be best to combine several in this paper. First, I will evoke some of the earliest pioneers in the field and then put on record some of the main stages in my own career as a translator. Next, something more theoretical and general can be added, before ending by offering a translation of one poem.
{"title":"Translating Korean Poetry – History, Practice, and Theory","authors":"Brother Anthony","doi":"10.33526/EJKS.20191802.153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/EJKS.20191802.153","url":null,"abstract":"There are various ways in which it is possible to talk about ‘Translating Korean Poetry’, it might be best to combine several in this paper. First, I will evoke some of the earliest pioneers in the field and then put on record some of the main stages in my own career as a translator. Next, something more theoretical and general can be added, before ending by offering a translation of one poem.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76514686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.33526/EJKS.20191802.105
P. Ward
In March 1958, delegates from across North Korea met in the National Art Theatre in Pyongyang for the First Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party. To date, it has an event largely overlooked by South Korean and Western historians of North Korea because of a lack of source material. The newly unearthed official minutes, however, reveal a highly staged event in which the opponents of high-level party opponents of Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng 김일성) are subjected to what amounts to a show trial, before they lose their party membership. The official minutes are notable for containing one of the only official North Korean descriptions of the alleged plot by certain military members of the Yanan Faction to overthrow the Kim Il Sung government in a military coup. The purpose of the Party Conference within Marxist-Leninist parties is discussed, the background to the Conference and developments in the communist world are also described. The delegate roster is then briefly analysed, interesting and significant statistics are explained with broader reference to North Korean history—the context and what it can tell us about the structure of power in the Korean Workers Party back then. Following this, the show trial by conference is detailed. The trial by conference is split into two parts, the first dealing with their economic crimes and the second with their political crimes. This article discusses both sets of allegations in light of the actual economic pathologies of Soviet-type economies and the political nature of the Kim Il-sungist system.
{"title":"Purging ‘Factionalist’ Opposition to Kim Il Sung – The First Party Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party in 1958","authors":"P. Ward","doi":"10.33526/EJKS.20191802.105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/EJKS.20191802.105","url":null,"abstract":"In March 1958, delegates from across North Korea met in the National Art Theatre in Pyongyang for the First Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party. To date, it has an event largely overlooked by South Korean and Western historians of North Korea because of a lack of source material. The newly unearthed official minutes, however, reveal a highly staged event in which the opponents of high-level party opponents of Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng 김일성) are subjected to what amounts to a show trial, before they lose their party membership. The official minutes are notable for containing one of the only official North Korean descriptions of the alleged plot by certain military members of the Yanan Faction to overthrow the Kim Il Sung government in a military coup.\u0000\u0000The purpose of the Party Conference within Marxist-Leninist parties is discussed, the background to the Conference and developments in the communist world are also described. The delegate roster is then briefly analysed, interesting and significant statistics are explained with broader reference to North Korean history—the context and what it can tell us about the structure of power in the Korean Workers Party back then. Following this, the show trial by conference is detailed. The trial by conference is split into two parts, the first dealing with their economic crimes and the second with their political crimes. This article discusses both sets of allegations in light of the actual economic pathologies of Soviet-type economies and the political nature of the Kim Il-sungist system.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75735556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.33526/EJKS.20191802.5
V. Tikhonov
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 socio-economic 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 ‘civilizing’ itself with the Japanese ‘help’ rather than pure opportunism. However, New Right never succeeded in putting the conventional South Korean historical paradigm—based, eventually, on the vision of Korea ‘under-developed’ by the colonial capitalism and heavily influenced by various left-nationalistic interpretations of Marxism—upside down. The present article aims at exploring how the movement proceeded and finding out what could have been the decisive factors in its failure. Moreover, it will shed the light on the general tendencies in the development of South Korean historiography in the neo-liberal age, in an attempt to understand to which extent the elite interests may be still influencing the historiographical trends, even despite the downfall of the New Right movement.
{"title":"The Rise and Fall of the New Right Movement and the Historical Wars in 2000s South Korea","authors":"V. Tikhonov","doi":"10.33526/EJKS.20191802.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33526/EJKS.20191802.5","url":null,"abstract":"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 socio-economic 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 ‘civilizing’ itself with the Japanese ‘help’ rather than pure opportunism. However, New Right never succeeded in putting the conventional South Korean historical paradigm—based, eventually, on the vision of Korea ‘under-developed’ by the colonial capitalism and heavily influenced by various left-nationalistic interpretations of Marxism—upside down. The present article aims at exploring how the movement proceeded and finding out what could have been the decisive factors in its failure. Moreover, it will shed the light on the general tendencies in the development of South Korean historiography in the neo-liberal age, in an attempt to understand to which extent the elite interests may be still influencing the historiographical trends, even despite the downfall of the New Right movement.","PeriodicalId":40316,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Korean Studies","volume":"349 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84863554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-01DOI: 10.33526/EJKS.20191802.37
A. Logie
In current day South Korea pseudohistory pertaining to early Korea and northern East Asia has reached epidemic proportions. Its advocates argue the early state of Chosŏn to have been an expansive empire centered on mainland geographical Manchuria. Through rationalizing interpretations of the traditional Hwan’ung- Tan’gun myth, they project back the supposed antiquity and pristine nature of this charter empire to the archaeological Hongshan Culture of the Neolithic straddling Inner Mongolia and Liaoning provinces of China. Despite these blatant spatial and temporal exaggerations, all but specialists of early Korea typically remain hesitant to explicitly label this conceptualization as “pseudohistory.” This is because advocates of ancient empire cast themselves as rationalist scholars and claim to have evidential arguments drawn from multiple textual sources and archaeology. They further wield an emotive polemic defaming the domestic academic establishment as being composed of national traitors bent only on maintaining a “colonial view of history.” The canon of counterevidence relied on by empire advocates is the accumulated product of 20th century revisionist and pseudo historiography, but to willing believers and non-experts, it can easily appear convincing and overwhelming. Combined with a postcolonial nationalist framing and situated against the ongoing historiography dispute with China, their conceptualization of a grand antiquity has gained bipartisan political influence with concrete ramifications for professional scholarship. This paper seeks to introduce and debunk the core, seemingly evidential, canon of arguments put forward by purveyors of Korean pseudohistory and to expose their polemics, situating the phenomenon in a broader diagnostic context of global pseudohistory and archaeology.
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