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Organizer: Haesook Kim, Long Island University
Chair: Mark Peterson, Brigham Young University
Discussant: Laurel Kendall, American Museum of Natural History
Keywords: gender, modernity, nationalism, colonialism, Korea.
The historical formation of "modern" womanhood in Korea, beginning in the late 19th century, was closely intertwined with the development of a modern nation-state, Korean nationalism, Japanese colonial experience and Western modernity. In the discourse on modern womanhood, the nation was often privileged as an extended family and women’s own subjectivity was downplayed. The panel gives special attention to women’s voices, exploring the tensions between modernity and traditionalism, and between feminism and nationalism.
Panel presentations begin with Hyaeweol Choi’s paper, "Pious Woman, New Woman: A Missionary Fiction in Korea," which introduces competing discourses of "modern womanhood" in her analysis of a novel by an American woman missionary written in the 1920s. Jiweon Shin’s paper, "Nationalism, Colonialism, and Modern Motherhood in Korea, 1920s–1930s" extends the panel’s theme by delineating the historical conjuncture where nationalism and Japanese colonialism dynamically interacted in constructing ideal "motherhood" in early modern Korea. The panel ends with two critical studies of life histories of pioneer women of modern Korea. Insook Kwon’s research on Kim Hwallan, the first female Ph.D. and pioneer in women’s education ("Rethinking Kim Hwallan: Heroine or Traitor"?), locates the processes of constructing collective memory of Kim Hwallan in the context of power conflict between feminism and nationalism in modern Korea. Haesook Kim’s paper ("Dangerous Memory: The Life and Death of Hwang Yun-Suk, 1929–1961, the First Female Judge in Korea") concludes that the "new/modern woman" is a site where old and new beliefs Koreans held about gender origins, roles, and relations were fought over and remade in post-war Korea.
Pious Woman, New Woman: A Missionary Fiction in Korea
Hyaeweol Choi, Arizona State University
This paper explores the nexus of gender, race and other subjectivities that are presented in The Concubine, a novel written by Ellasue Wagner, a veteran missionary in Korea. The novel uniquely presents competing discourses of "modern woman-hood" in telling the story of a love triangle between Tai Jin, a US-educated Korean man, Eva, a college-educated American woman, and Pobai, a Korean woman promised to Tai Jin in an arranged marriage when they were children. Wagner offers a stark contrast between her two female characters—Pobai as a docile and pious Christian, and Eva as a "modern girl" who defies traditional values, including religious piety. Furthermore, Eva transgresses the racial boundary that separates Westerners from "the other" and readily gives up her American citizenship to join Tai Jin in Korea. The climax of the story finds Eva unwittingly trapped in the concubine system, a symbol of "heathen tradition," because of Tai Jin’s preexisting engagement to Pobai.
Wagner’s narrative reflects the attention paid to the issues of the "new woman" in Korea in the 1920s, and further complicates those issues by adding a racial component. In this paper, I argue that the storyline offers significant insights into the tensions between tradition and modernity and between secularism and Christian piety. I also argue that the romance plot reflects Wagner’s own subjectivity as an unmarried missionary woman who gained significant cultural knowledge of Korea, but was isolated from the overwhelming power of modernity in the early 20th century.
Nationalism, Colonialism, and Modern Motherhood in Korea, 1920s–1930s
Jiweon Shin, Harvard University
In contemporary Korean society, motherhood is highly emphasized and glorified as an essence of womanhood. The word ‘Mothers,’ which Ueno Chizuko expressed with a capital M in her work on Japanese society (Ueno, 1996), applies to Korea as well: the word ‘Mothers’ in social context connotes the representation of a socially and culturally constructed ideal image of motherhood rather than a specified sub-group of women. "Mother" is the personification of women who embrace the values of devotion to children and selfless love and sacrifice.
In historical perspective, as Edward Shorter (1975) indicates good mothering as an invention of modernity, research in this field implies that a society requires and endorses certain types of women depending on its stages of modernization, industrializ-ation, and political/international environment.
This paper has two parts. In the first part, I trace the changes in ideal images of womanhood and motherhood that were constructed in colonial Korea during the 1920s and 1930s through public discourse. In the second part, I examine and explain the historical conjuncture where nationalism and Japanese colonialism dynamically interacted to exert influences on the establishment of ‘Motherhood’ in early modern Korea, which eventually became the prototype of contemporary ‘Motherhood.’
I argue in this paper that an earlier version of modern ‘Motherhood,’ who would raise a new enlightened generation for the sake of national well-being, was firmly established by the mid-1930s and that it was conditioned by strong nationalism and Japanese colonialism.
Rethinking Kim Hwallan: Heroine or Traitor?
Insook Kwon, University of South Florida
Kim Hwallan (1899–1970) was the most representative educator and activist in the women’s movement in South Korea. As the first woman who earned a Ph.D. in Korean history and longtime president of prestigious Ewha Woman’s University (1945–1961), Kim Hwallan has been a household name representing empowered educated women and pioneers of the women’s movement.
However, recently rising criticism of her collaboration with the Japanese colonialists during the Japanese occupation (1910–1945) brings out many controversies on her and her accomplishments. In 1999, Ewha Women’s University had tried to offer prizes in memory of Kim Hwallan but failed because of increasing criticism. It is interesting to denote the tension between feminists who still value her contribution to the women’s movement/education and nationalists who discredit everything she has done by accusing her as a traitor.
In this paper, I will focus on Kim’s activities from the late 1930s to early 1940s in colonial Korea and see how the collective memory of Kim Hwallan has been constructed and reconstructed creating the tension between feminism and nationalism in Korea.
Dangerous Memory: The Life and Death of Hwang Yun-Suk, 1929–1961, the First Female Judge in South Korea
Haesook Kim, Long Island University
The focus of my paper is the second pioneer female jurist in post-war Korea, Hwang Yun-suk (1929–1961), who became the first woman judge after she passed the Judicial Examination in 1952. Unlike her contemporary, Lee Tai-young (1914–1998), Hwang’s career and life came to an untimely end allegedly at the hands of her husband, whose family reportedly did not approve of her actions. Shortly before her death, however, Judge Hwang spoke out for gender equality in family law. In the four decades since her death, her legacy has remained hidden from her successors both in Korea and in the wider arena of women and law.
In this paper, I have two objectives. First, I bring back her voice from the forgotten and erased netherworld. In so doing, I critically embrace her short and tragic life as a "dangerous memory" that can heal the wounded past and serve as a guide for the continuing struggle for women’s rights. Second, by analyzing the media response to her death, I probe into the ways in which her life as a powerful "new woman" became the site on which old and new beliefs Koreans held about gender origins, roles, and relations were fought over and remade in post-war Korea.
Organizer: Ann Y. Choi, Rutgers University
Chair: Kyeong-Hee Choi, University of Chicago
Discussant: Miriam R. Silverberg, University of California, Los Angeles
The struggles of new social forces emerging in civil society in Korea succeeded in establishing a public sphere after 1919 that accelerated the introduction of Western discourses of modernity and facilitated the production of a modern literature. Intellectuals were trying to represent new subject-ivities that were experiencing an increasingly modern life under a colonial rule that was intensifying capitalist modernization in the colonies. In the process, these discourses became re-written and re-located, and literature became a site of contestation as ideological splits emerged in Korean society.
All literary modernisms were responses to the upheavals caused by colonial modernity, and our panel will examine the tensions and ideological conflicts in the literary world that centered on differing conceptions of nation and class. Two of the papers examine the works of central figures in KAPF, the major proletarian literary organization. Jin-kyung Lee analyzes the emergence of a new notion of a class subject in the works of early proletarian writers Kim Kijin, Pak Yonghui, and Ch’oe Sohae. Ann Choi examines Im Hwa’s narrative poetry as an effort to create a unified community of the working class. The other two papers examine the search for an authentic identity that would transcend class differences. Michael Shin’s paper discusses the term "national literature" in the works of Yi Kwangsu, comparing his theoretical and creative works. Janet Poole analyzes Yi T’aejun’s efforts to represent daily life and thus find an authentic Korean identity within a vision of Pan-Asianism.
Aesthetics and Colonial-Modern Political Subject: Early Proletarian School
Jin-kyung Lee, University of California, San Diego
This paper treats the early stage of the "proletarian school" of literature (Sin’gyônghyang-p’a) that emerged in Korea in the first half of the 1920s under Japanese colonial rule. I will discuss two important theorists of literary Marxism, Kim Kijin and Pak Yônghûi. Their essays demonstrate that the new notion of a class subject was grounded upon a notion of individuality that had been forming since the mid-1910s. I argue that this new political subject has close ties to the Decadentist-Aestheticist ideas of subjectivity from the preceding phase between 1918 and 1922. I will also compare Kim Kijin and Pak Yônghûi’s short stories, often considered by South Korean critics, including most leftist scholars, to be a formulaic application of Western Marxism, to the literary works of Ch’oe Sôhae, regarded as the representative writer of the early proletarian school. Ch’oe Sôhae’s short stories, "Record of an Escape" and "Starvation and Slaughter," combine two different elements. First, they inherit from the Decadentist-Aestheticist phase the literary form of interior monologue and first-person narrative, which premised itself upon the conception of the autonomous individual in the same manner as Kim Kijin and Pak Yônghûi’s socialist theories of aesthetics were firmly grounded upon the notions of autonomy of individuality and aesthetics. Second, Ch’oe Sôhae constructs a new category of class-based subjectivity by joining the notions of the autonomous individual implicit in these literary forms with the concepts of class-consciousness, material conditions, resistance, and revolution.
Modernist against Modernity: Yi Kwangsu and National Literature
Michael D. Shin, Cornell University
This paper traces the emergence of the discourse on national literature through the texts of Yi Kwangsu from the 1920s. In 1924, he was one of the founders of a new literary journal Chosôn mundan which promoted the creation of a Korean national literature. I will analyze Yi Kwangsu’s theoretical works in Chosôn mundan in the context of two literary debates: the 1925 debate between the journals Chosôn mundan and Kaebyôk and Yi Kwangsu’s 1926 debate with Yang Chudong.
It is no coincidence that the definition of national literature became a major concern after 1919. The March First Movement forcefully dramatized the unevenness of capitalist modernization, but for nationalists, it also demonstrated the potential for its overcoming through communal unification under the banner of the nation. National literature was an attempt to represent colonial difference as a form of communal identity which would provide a source of stability within the constant upheavals of capitalism. Yi Kwangsu located both the alienating effects of modernity and the potential for its transformation—i.e., the nation—in the culture of daily life. It is thus important to see national literature not only as political allegory but also as the production of a particular experience of daily life. I conclude this paper by analyzing national literature as both allegory and quotidian experience through an analysis of Yi Kwangsu’s 1924–25 serialized novel, Chaesaeng. I will try to show that the novel’s immense popularity was rooted in its representation of social relations, experiences, and an environment that could be identified by a readership living an increasingly "modern" life.
The Strength of Fiction: Im Hwa’s Narrative Poetry
Ann Y. Choi, Rutgers University
My paper looks at the narrative poetry of Im Hwa (1908–1953) as a response to the political demands made on language by the late twenties in colonial Korea. The centering of the message, the "iyagi" (story), in poetry reflected the valorization of prose and the perceived "strength" of fiction, which later was manifested in Im Hwa’s construction of modern Korean literary history as one based effectively on the novel form. Against colonial intellectuals who posited a view of national literature based on capturing the "hon" (spirit) of Korea, thought to be contained and released through the lyric form in poetry, Im Hwa viewed such project promoting national consciousness as a smoke screen to hide existing class conflict; his position marks the movement of literature from the spiritual to the material focus at this juncture in Korean literary history. Im Hwa’s imagined community of workers united appears in his narrative poems, which assert an identity based on a sibling society severed from the past. The question of how the fall into feeling associated with the lyric became channeled to serve a narrative function and the relationship of this phenomenon to the "romanticism"-"realism" nexus is examined in the light of the problem of representation faced by colonial writers in Korea.
Yi T’aejun’s Private Orient
Janet Poole, Columbia University
As the Japanese imperialist policy of assimilation was being pursued with ever more efficiency and detail in Korea in the late 1930s, literary production in the Korean language witnessed an increasing interest in the past, tradition and notions of a native culture defined within a Pan-Asian identity. This coincided with similar attempts in Japan to rearticulate tradition as a defense against the upheavals of capitalist modernity. In both cases this was a phenomenon that not only governed the content of writing but also the very forms of literary production. Yi T’aejun held the distinction of being a rare Korean writer able to make a professional living from his writing in the 1930s in the form of novels serialized in newspapers and magazines. This paper looks at Yi T’aejun’s other literary production: his collection of essays, "Musôrok," and short stories written in the I-novel form, which Yi himself defined as true "literature" and as possessing an authentically East Asian literary form. In these essays and stories Yi attempted to produce an aesthetic vision of daily life grounded in tradition and a performative reworking of the identity of the Confucian literati. He thus locates an authentic Korean identity at the heart of East Asia and outside the circuits of capital, an identity fraught with ambivalence as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was being articulated and the Korean colonial subject redefined as an Imperial subject.
Organizer: Jiwon Shin, Yale University
Chair and Discussant: Jahyun Kim Haboush, Columbia University
Keywords: literature, Korea, Late Chosôn, detachment, reality, kasa, narrative, p’ansori, eccentrics.
This panel reconsiders a sense of detachment in the literary and performance texts of the late Chosôn period. Often criticized in the modern scholarship on late Chosôn literature as representing an intellectual condition of disengagement from social and cultural reality, a sense of detachment has been associated with passivity, aloofness, and a general lack of commitment in responding to the urgency of the present. But as a literary device, a sense of detachment also provided a figurative stance to create an alternative present that might engage in or critique the late Chosôn socio-cultural reality. The papers discuss the ways in which the various forms of aesthetic detachment have continually been reformulated and have provided a sense of a critical engagement with the perceived reality, identity, and performativity, in, respectively, the seventeenth century kasa verse narrative, the mid-nineteenth century prose narrative of biographical vignettes, and the permutations of p’ansori as a performance genre in late nineteenth century and beyond. A poetic voice recounting the condition of poverty, an ostensibly realistic narrative of the eccentrics and figurative "immortals," as well as the dynamics between a performer and audience in p’ansori, each responds to the urgent call to rethink the social and physical reality of late Chosôn Korea. Rather than proposing it as a defining characteristic of the literary tradition of this period, the panel presents a sense of detachment as a heuristic term through which further discussions engaging the late Chosôn literary and performance tradition may take place.
Pak Illo’s "Song of Poverty" as an Exercise in Narrative Detachment
David R. McCann, Harvard University
In the realm of traditional Korean verse, Yun Sôndo is generally accorded highest rank in sijo composition, and Chông Ch’ôl in kasa. Pak Illo (1561–1642) is known for his didactic sijo on Confucian themes, and for several kasa admired for their combination of lyricism and learning. One kasa in particular, "Song of Poverty," Nuhangsa, seems strikingly modern in its gently ironic outlook, masterfully shaped, short narrative interlude, and realistically rendered dialogue. The poem can be read as setting and performance of a short realist drama, and one could well imagine its central vignette performed in a traditional street market with puppets or masked dancers. The poem’s narrative line works to disengage itself from the initial set-phrase framing in order to enter the short dramatic narrative that comprises its center; it then returns to the detached, Confucian set-phase framework for its conclusion. Through these shifts, the poem moves from expository detachment to realistic representation and back to detachment. The poem is situated, furthermore, in the author’s detachment from regular income following his detachment from military service at the conclusion of the late fifteenth century campaigns against the Japanese invaders. A literary tour de force, it begins at some aesthetic distance from the subject, then establishes dramatic distance from set-phrase accounts of poverty as humanity’s natural state. The irony of the poem’s meaning is that poverty is a state against which it is aphoristically foolish to struggle, except within the performative space of writing a kasa about it.
Distance between Persons and Things in the Accounts of the Eccentrics by Cho Hûi-ryong
Jiwon Shin, Yale University
Cho Hûi-ryong (1789–1866) is known for his Unofficial Record of Hosan (Hosan oegi), a nineteenth century compilation of biographical vignettes on secondary and commoner status writers, artists, and other notable individuals. While treated generally as a source for rare insights into the social framework of the late Chosôn period, the narratives about the eccentrics and figurative "immortals" in his texts have not yet been a focus of analysis. This paper concerns the narratives about those individuals deemed detached and deviating from reality and the norm in the writings of Cho Hûi-ryong. In presenting these idiosyncratic personalities as being characteristically obsessed with the ornamental aspects of literati culture, Cho’s accounts oscillate between the lure and repugnance of the personal attachment to things. As it seeks alternative, "removed" space to situate this obsession, the narratives turn these eccentrics into a satirical embodiment of the literati ornaments. Lodged in the concerns for both the persons and things, his narratives make the person of the literati identity portable, as it were, as if it can be lifted out like a thing and relocated at whim. The tension inherent in this figurative reality locates, rather than displaces, the "detached" personae in the late Chosôn socio-cultural reality.
P’ansori Singing and the Resolution of Societal Incongruities
Chan E. Park-Miller, Ohio State University
Storytelling is an intersection of two realities: the tale-world of socio-political and spatio-temporal realities of the characters within, and the world of the telling, the represented reality of teller and audience. P’ansori—a storysinging art that emerged from the mid-Chosôn repertoire of the outcast kwangdae singers during the mid-Chosôn era to evolve into Korea’s Intangible Cultural Asset No. 5 in the twentieth century—is an intriguing matrix of societal crossings, contradictions, engagements, disengagements, tale and telling. Distanced from the mainstream dramatic, narrative, and poetic texts and performativities, the voice of p’ansori has induced a perspective on the inner dimensions of the social reality across time, class, gender, and geography. In the nineteenth century, p’ansori developed into a favored form of entertainment among royal and aristocratic patrons and audiences. The still-outcast kwangdae strove to naturalize its own contradictory existence. A blend of provincial orality and bookish literacy, the language of p’ansori reveals a unique sociolinguistic construction, contradictory yet oddly harmonious when sung, keyed to simultaneously entertain their social superiors and their own kind. Literary scholarship customarily credits the likes of scholar/bureaucrat Shin Chaehyo (1812–1884) with its linguistic gentrification. Identifying the singers themselves as the primary inspiration for p’ansori’s linguistic hybridity, this paper establishes that the voice of p’ansori gained access to a wider audience by translating into coherent poetics the hierarchized and polarized worldviews of the time.
Organizer: Burglind Jungmann, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair: Marsha S. Haufler, University of Kansas
Discussant: Kumja Paik Kim, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
Keywords: cultural, political, and social context; individual versus institution; Taoist and Buddhist themes versus Confucian ideology.
Korean art has been mainly investigated in terms of its stylistic evolution. Although usually accompanied by a short introduction to cultural and political circumstances few studies in Korean painting have made efforts to directly link the visual material to its cultural, political and social contexts. The panel attempts to approach the field under different perspectives, through case studies on individual painters and a government institution, and through Taoist and Buddhist themes used at times when Confucian ideology was strong.
Jeonghye Park will shed light on one of the most powerful government institutions of the Choson period (1392–1910). Introducing documentary paintings commissioned by the Office of Statesmen of Venerable Age she will investigate the political character of the visual material as well as social life inside government agencies.
Burglind Jungmann will introduce the case of Kim Che, a painter whose life and work was overshadowed by internal and external political conflicts. She will show that his paintings rather than being examples of a leisurely pastime can be interpreted as evidence of retreat and thus as reactions to contemporary political conditions.
Seunghye Sun investigates Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist iconography in Choson painting and how the symbolism of the "three religions" amalgamates in the visualization of a Korean novel.
Finally the discussion of a modern painter, Kim Kich’ang, by Joohyun Lee will show how Korea’s political struggle in the 20th century affected painting history and how the heritage of the Choson period helped painters to find their identity in the modern world.
Revering the Elderly: Documentary Paintings of the Office of Statesmen of Venerable Age during the Choson Dynasty
Jeonghye Park, Academy of Korean Studies
The Office of Statesmen of Venerable Age (Kiroso) of the Choson dynasty was a special organization which reflected the spirit of revering the elderly within the government system. It mainly consisted of cabinet ministers over seventy years old and of upper second rank or higher, but the kings of Choson, such as Taejo, Sukchong, Yongjo, and Kojong, also became members of the Kiroso when they reached age sixty. Thus the organization became an advisory committee with the greatest authority. Becoming a member of the organization was the greatest honor a government official could receive.
Whenever celebrations were held for the Kiroso, for friendship or for the commemoration of national events, members would receive paintings of the banquets and would keep them as souvenirs. These pictures of events of the Kiroso constitute a great part of documentary paintings of the Choson period.
The Kiroso was a distinct government organization that cannot be found in any other country. Meetings of a king with his cabinet ministers as members of the Kiroso seem unprecedented. The present study, concentrating on albums and folding screens produced when Kings Sukchong, Yongjo, and Kojong joined the Kiroso, attempts to analyze types and characteristics specific to documentary paintings of banquets of the Kiroso and to investigate the meaning of these paintings. The paintings give us an opportunity to visually examine the customs of the Royal Court and the social life of government officials during the Choson period.
Dreaming of Seclusion in Times of Turmoil: Paintings by Kim Che (1524–1593)
Burglind Jungmann, University of California, Los Angeles
Kim Che, according to contemporary records, was a most prominent and influential painter during the 16th century. However, two historical events have obscured the reception of his work, the career of his over-ambitious father and the invasions of Korea under Japanese warlord Hideyoshi.
Kim Che is credited with the adoption of the so-called Zhe school style, but there is a certain calmness about his paintings of figures and animals in landscape settings, of birds on trees, that goes beyond the constraints of this Chinese court mode and links him to earlier scholarly painting traditions. Curiously, his paintings stand in strong contrast to the political conditions of his time as well as his personal situation. His father, Kim Allo (1481–1537), a powerful politician, played a crucial role in fights between political factions, and he was subsequently forced to commit suicide. Kim Che himself never assumed any high government position; he rather seems to have chosen painting as a means of retreat.
My paper attempts to reach beyond current interpretations of Kim Che’s paintings as mere adaptations of a Chinese style. Introducing literary sources, I will shed light on his personal situation and on the evaluation of his works by contemporaries. Discussing his paintings in the context of political and social conditions I attempt to reinterpret them as political statements. Moreover, I will discuss a number of paintings in Japanese collections which may have reached Japan before or during the Hideyoshi invasions and have so far attracted little attention.
Storytelling in Korean Painting
Seunghye Sun, National Museum of Korea
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how storytelling was visualized in Korean art during the Choson period (1392–1910). Besides the better known depictions of Confucian stories in Korean painting—showing the devotion to parents and to the king in order to propagate Confucian values—there are two other categories of iconography that have not been researched well yet. One is the depiction of Taoist stories; the other one the depiction of Korean novels. As examples of the first category I will introduce representations of the "Banquet for Immortals by the Queen Mother of the West." The paradise of the Queen Mother of the West has been one of the favorite topics for Korean screens. These screens give evidence that members of the Korean elite, even though educated in and devoted to Confucian state ideology, used Taoist symbolism in their private lives in order to convey their wishes for well-being and longevity. Examples of iconography based on Korean novels are depictions of scenes from "A Nine Cloud Dream (Kuunmong)," a novel written in 1689 by Kim Manjung (1637–1692). Paintings on this theme will serve as case studies that demonstrate how Confucian and Taoist symbolism was visualized and related to Buddhism.
Apart from discussing their ideological contents, I will also compare Korean paintings with Chinese and Japanese works in order to analyze their special characteristics.
In Search of Identity: Figure Paintings by Kim Kich’ang (1913–2001) between 1945 and 1975
Joohyun Lee, Hongik University
Kim Kich’ang was one of the most influential artists in the history of modern Korean painting. He was deaf from childhood, but his paintings show unrestrained power and give evidence of the world he created through his art.
Kim’s works can be divided into three phases: 1913–1945, 1945–1975, 1975–2001. This research focuses on the second phase, with emphasis on his figure painting. Kim Kich’ang’s paintings of this period distinguish themselves both from his works before 1945, which were deeply rooted in a realistic and detailed manner introduced from Japan, and the blue-green landscapes he produced after 1975, the so-called "Foolish Landscapes" (pabo sansu).
After 1945 Korean artists were confronted with two problems. They had to overcome Japanese influence in order to rediscover their own traditions and, on the other hand, had to accept Western painting styles to renew traditional ink painting modes. Figure paintings by Kim Kich’ang between 1945 and 1975 show his methods of experimentation for resolving these problems. One representative example is his album "The Life of Jesus Christ," consisting of thirty leaves produced between 1950 and 1952, during the Korean War. Here he successfully combined Western iconography with a style derived from Kim Hongdo (1745–?) and Sin Yunbok (1758–?), two representative figure painters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Another example is his combination of abstract Western painting styles, such as Cubism, Futurism and Abstract Expressionism, with typical Korean icon-ography and scenery, which can be found in his works of the 1960s.
Organizer and Chair: Miwha Lee Stevenson, University of Kansas
Discussant: Minja Yang, UNESCO World Heritage Center
The archaeological study of sites connected with the polity of Koguryo (3rd–7th c. C.E.) was initiated by Japanese scholars under the direction of the Office of the Governor General in Korea and Manchuria. Set against this backdrop of colonial appropriation and local resistance, the material record of Koguryo and related northeast Asian kingdoms forged a link between artifact, territory, and historical imaginaire that has played seminally into politics of nationalism and ethnic identity in China, Japan, and especially the two Koreas since the redrawing of geo-political boundaries at the end of the Pacific War. The place of Koguryo in contemporary constructions of northeast Asian "heritage" has accordingly become a sensitive issue, an issue intensified by South Korean media access to previously restricted Koguryo sites in northeast China and North Korea and the recent UNESCO initiative to place select Koguryo tombs and remains in North Korea on the register of World Heritage Centre protected sites.
This panel will bring together four scholars who are representative of the spectrum of current perspectives in the archaeology and history of Koguryo found in China, North and South Korea, and Japan. Individual participants will deliver papers on major archaeological projects, textual resources, and methodological issues relevant to understanding the formative interactions (social, cultural, and material) through which Koguryo and related northeast Asian kingdoms took shape between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Special emphasis will be placed on the negotiation of "borders"—a theme variously understood to include boundaries of discipline and method, the limits of data and their interpretative reach, and the politics of archaeological practice, historical representation, and construction of "heritage" in the nation-centered discourses of contemporary East Asia.
The Koguryo View of World Order as Demonstrated in Stone Inscriptions from the 5th Century C.E.
Tae-don Noh, Seoul National University
Koguryo, which emerged in the middle reaches of the Yalu River, established control over most of Manchuria by early fifth century C.E. In 427 Koguryo moved its capital to present-day P’yongyang, and through continuous expansion to the south, took control of half of the Korean peninsula. Koguryo is thus a unique example of a dynasty that combined territories of the Korean peninsula and Manchuria, thereby becoming an active force in the broader interregional development of East Asia. In this paper, I intend to explore and shed light on the status of Koguryo as a formative factor in the interregional politics of northeast Asia, focusing especially on the Koguryo rhetoric and view of world-order expressed in stone inscriptions erected by Koguryo rulers and elites during the fifth century C.E.
Koguryo and the Murong Xianbei: Evidence from the Archaeology of the Three Yan Kingdoms
Likun Tian, Liaoning Province Museum
Much as with Koguryo sites at Ji’an (Jilin Province, PRC) and P’yongyang, excavation of tomb concentrations and remains in lower Liaoning Province (e.g., Zhaoyang and Liaoyang cities) connected with former Han-Chinese border commanderies and northern kingdoms such as Murong Yan began under Japanese colonial archaeologists in the 1920s. Since the end of the Pacific War, the region has seen steady excavation and study under the auspices of the archaeological and cultural properties bureaus of the Peoples Republic of China. This paper will focus on tomb remains in the vicinity of Zhaoyang city along the middle reaches of the Daling River, a location that variously served as the site of the Former Han border commandery of Liucheng, the administrative seat for relocated Wuhuan tribes during the Former Han, and, the capital of Former, Later, and Northern Yan kingdoms established by resettled Murong Xianbei tribes circa 337–438 C.E.. The Murong state of Yan was a major competitor of Koguryo in the quest for control of the northeast during the fourth and first half of the fifth century. Moreover, its political and cultural transformation into a regional power appears to be quite comparable in character to that of Koguryo, providing an important point of contrast to the study of the latter. In this paper I will summarize the history and current state of thinking about the archaeology of Murong Yan sites, drawing out various points that have significant implications for understanding the history of Koguryo and its interactions with Yan. Particular attention will be given to transformations in Murong tomb construction and burial practice, the painted tombs of Yuantaizi and Feng Sufou being primary examples that share intriguing parallels with Koguryo developments at Ji’an and Pyongyang.
Sekino Tadashi Revisited: Archaeology of Koguryo under the Governor General of Chôsen
Masahiro Saotome, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
The Japanese colonial apparatus of the Chôsen Sôtokufu (Office of the Governor General of Chôsen), was first established in October of 1910. That same year the office set about making an examination and inventory of material remains on the Korean peninsula, initiating the first such systematic archaeological study under what one might call official political auspices. Between 1910 and 1930, a series of three major ongoing expeditions were commissioned by the Sôtokufu, the first from 1910 to 1915; the second from 1916 to 1920; the third from 1921 to 1930. They focused mainly on sites connected with the early Han commanderies and Three Kingdoms Korea, including Koguryo, and were carried out primarily by specialists from Tokyo Imperial University. Extensive reports were published on these sites in professional journals, and for purposes of Sôtokofu administration, the sites were grouped hierarchically into four different categories according to their perceived historical value and worthiness of "preservation" (hôzon).
Sekino Tadashi (1868–1935) was a leading figure in the Sôtokufu expeditions, as well as and one of the influential minds behind the classification and historical interpretation of the sites they studied. Based on Sôtokofu records, professional publications, and the extensive collection of field notes that Sekino kept during his expeditions (preserved in Tokyo University archives), this paper will revisit Sekino and his work under the auspices of the Sôtokufu. It aims to use the example of Sekino to take a more nuanced look at the complex voices of colonial-period archaeology of Koguryo sites, giving particular attention to paradigms and interpretive models operating variously at the level of field practice, official report, and professional publication.
Organizer: Jacqueline Pak, Georgetown University
Chair and Discussant: Wayne Patterson, St. Norbert College, WI
Keywords: Korea, Korean-America, centennial, history, identity.
Over a hundred Koreans arrived in Hawaii as sugarcane field workers in 1903. This event augured the beginning of Korean immigration to America. Looking backward and forward, this cross-cultural and interdisciplinary panel commemorates the centennial of the Korean experience in the New World.
From the formative origins of constitutional democracy in the independence movement to the shifting relations between Korea and America in the post–Cold War era, the panel explores the germane themes in Korean and Korean-American identity, history and representation. Reflecting the changing landscape of academic praxis, it further underscores growing cross-fertilization in Korean Studies and Korean-American Studies in the fields of history, anthropology and literature. Here, new theoretical paradigms and conceptual tools are sought to redefine and reconfigure the borders of enlarged identity and discourse, including the issues of colonial and post-colonial race, gender, nationalism, transnationalism, and diaspora.
Jacqueline Pak analyzes the recurrent historical controversies surrounding the leading Korean and Korean-American pioneers, such as So Chaep’il, An Ch’angho and Syngman Rhee. With new revelations, she deliberates on the possible paradigm shifts in Korean and Korean-American history and historiography. Jinhee Kim evaluates the lives and legacies of early Korean-American women, especially the picture brides, who formed the foundation of Korean-American families, within gender and diaspora discourse. Kyeyoung Park mines the meaning of the "imagined" Korean-American community and symbolism of the "ritual of state" embedded in the centennial celebration.
Centennial Rituals: Transforming Korean-Americans into More Americans
Kyeyoung Park, UCLA
The paper examines the Centennial celebration, "an opportunity to reflect upon the trial and glories of the early pioneers," and explores the development of historical consciousness among Korean immigrants and their children. Specifically, the following set of questions will be addressed: how the Centennial has been recognized and celebrated; how Korean Americans discovered "rituals of state"; what has been the role of rituals in politics; finally, what has been erased in this historiography? Adopting both historical/archival and ethnographic analysis, various commemorative events and activities organized by national as well as the regional Los Angeles committees from 2001 to 2003 will be analyzed. For instance, the LA committee plans on publishing a white paper on the independence movement activities in Denver and Central California at the turn of the last century; establishing a related museum; and sponsoring a floral float in the 114th Rose Parade, for the New Year Celebration. Ultimately, this paper attempts to argue that the Centennial celebration is appealing to Korean as well as American history. Even though some of these activities may be seen as peculiar, as far as the participants are concerned, they are symbolically constructing themselves as members of the "imagined" Korean American community and employing the state ideological apparatuses to claim pieces of American national identity. As scholars increasingly focus on issues of power and cultural change, the essential conservatism of ritual is coming into doubt. Nevertheless, rituals like magic and science give participants much meaning: confidence, strength, and pride.
Pioneers, Controversies and Paradigm Shifts: So Chaep’il, An Ch’angho, and Syngman Rhee
Jacqueline Pak, Georgetown University
As representative leaders of Korea and Korean-America, So Chaep’il, An Ch’angho and Syngman Rhee were profoundly shaped by newly rising America. They were, in essence, "made in America" as a pioneering democrat (So Chaep’il) on the east coast, constitutional revolutionary-democrat (An Ch’angho) on the west coast, and democrat-turned-autocrat (Syngman Rhee) in Hawaii. Based on their private papers, some of which have become only recently available, this paper will explore the enduring nature and problematique of historical controversies surrounding these leaders and the paradigm-altering implications of new findings in Korean and Korean-American historiography.
To the extent that So, An and Rhee have largely defined the course of the Korean independence struggle from the late nineteenth century to the post-Liberation era, the controversies concerning Korean nationalism have often engaged the binaries of left/right, patriotism/collaborationism, cultural/political national-ism, communism/nationalism, gradualism/revolution-ism, and pacifism/militarism. Probing beyond the Cold War–influenced binaries, this paper will share new revelations about their lives, philosophies and strategies as much as their professional rivalries as trailblazing pioneers and patriotic revolutionaries. Inquiring into the nationalist origins of constitutional democracy, it will examine the milieu and sources of their cooperation and conflicts, including the politics of the Provisional Government.
The Korean independence and democracy movement was also a Korean-American grassroots community movement. More than a narrative of nationalist struggle vs. colonial repression, the Korean/ Korean-American offers a multiplicity of colonial and post-colonial narratives on democracy, transnational-ism and diaspora, remapping the parameters of modernity, nationalism and colonialism.
In the Beginning, There Were Picture Brides
Jinhee Kim, University of Southern California
Between 1910 and 1924, nearly a thousand Korean women arrived in Hawaii as "picture brides" after exchanging merely photographs across the Pacific Ocean. The policy of emigration for the picture brides was largely instituted at the behest of the sugarcane plantation owners, who were hard pressed to find a way to ameliorate the growing tension among their Asian workers. Before the emigration of picture brides, the composition of the Korean plantation camps remained a community of bachelor laborers, men far outnumbering women. Although the picture brides boarded ships departing from different ports in Korea, all came on a one-way passage.
In tracing the history of the Korean diaspora, it is evident that the picture brides form the very foundation of the Korean American immigrant experience. The picture brides enabled the growth of families and transformed the demographics of the plantation communities. Equally important, their enduring multiple hardships in a foreign territory became a touchstone for subsequent contributions of Korean-Americans. Although most of the Korean picture brides have passed, their legacy is still present.
Exploring their transnational odyssey and narratives, this paper examines the current scholarship on picture brides in Korea and America to assess how their identity, history and representation have been forged. While investigating the formative role of picture brides in Korean-American history, this paper also juxtaposes the discoursive issues on "comfort women" and military prostitutes, as gendered problematiques in the colonial and post-colonial history of Korea and Korean-America.
Chair: Wonmo Dong, University of Washington
Discussants: Victor D. Cha, Georgetown University; Jerome A. Cohen, Council on Foreign Relations; Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago; Robert Gallucci, Georgetown University; Samuel S. Kim, Columbia University; Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation
The Cold War has receded into history almost everywhere—except in Korea. With the two rival states, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), confronting each other across the world’s most heavily fortified demarcation line, called the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the Korean Peninsula continues to be "The Most Dangerous Flashpoint" of the Asia-Pacific Region. This is where the interests of the four major powers, the United States, China, Japan, and Russia, converge directly.
The United States and South Korea, a vibrant industrial democracy and the 7th largest trading nation for this country, are the close military alliance partners, seeking to deal with the Stalinist DPRK, a militarized state with a starving civilian population but with the nuclear arms ambition, which has threatened the security and peace of not only South Korea but the whole of Northeast Asia. In the Axis of Evil policy pronouncement of January 2002, the Bush administration lumped North Korea with Iraq and Iran, the two rogue states of the Middle East, thus extending the War on International Terrorism to the Korean Peninsula.
This roundtable will attempt to critically examine and compare the two sets of delicate bilateral relations between the US and the DPRK and between the US and the ROK. The current hard-line (confrontational) North Korea policy of the Bush administration and the controversial Sunshine engagement with the DPRK of South Korea’s Kim Dae Jung administration have significantly constrained US-ROK relations since the onset of the Bush administration in January 2001.
Organizer: Soon Won Park, Howard University
Chair and Discussant: Carter J. Eckert, Harvard University
Keywords: Korea; history; wartime changes in late colonial Korea, 1937–1945.
Until the 1990s, the wartime industrial growth in late colonial Korea was viewed as "enclave" style development which had no linkage effect on local economy and society. Throughout the 1990s, however, younger scholars of Korean studies rediscovered that, despite the human suffering, both physical and psychological, the changes during the war years had unintended effects on both colonial society and the Japanese empire as a whole that were a significant foundation for Korea’s modern transformation in the long run. For example, the period of war mobilization brought increased penetration of capital, rapid changes in the occupational structure, quick urbanization, and the growth of the male and female industrial work forces, the urban middle class, and Korean capitalists.
This panel seeks to examine how the totalitarian wartime policies and industrialization engendered many unexpected, unintended, yet very substantial changes in the Korean economy, society, and labor and how these changes accelerated after the liberation.
The three papers by Park, Kim, and Lee will examine respectively rural farm women’s responses after their husbands and sons had left for slave labor in Japan, the changes in female industrial wage labor, including Warren’s Labor Volunteer Corps in Korea, and the changes in the higher educational system, centering around the Educational Law Reform of 1938. All these topics will be discussed in the context of current politics of conflicts in war remembrance in Japan, Korea, and China. The panel will not only rescue the silenced historical subjects of the wartime, such as rural farm women, forcefully mobilized male and female laborers, and young Korean students, but also contextualize the theme of wartime experience and changes in the Korean people in broader 20th-century Korean history as well as East Asian history.
Forced Labor Mobilization and Rural Women in Colonial Korea, 1937–1945
Soon Won Park, Howard University
The majority of Korean forced laborers—generally estimated to be between 720,000 and 1 million men, aged between 18 and 41, and without justifiable employment for the war effort—were sent to coal mines in Kyushu (170,000) and Hokkaido (90,000), other metallurgical mines (70,000), and other construction sites in Japan (140,000) during 1937–1945. Almost one-third of all coal miners in Japan were Koreans by 1945.
The forced laborers from Korea were mostly from seven southern provinces until 1942 when recruitment was extended to men from the Hwanghae and Kangwon provinces. The recruitment patterns had developed in three different forms over the period 1939–1945, probably in consideration of the potential for revolt among the mobilized Koreans for this compulsory war effort of the empire: (1) Mojip (1939–1942, volunteer-oriented recruitment); (2) Kwanalson (1942–1944, government-intervened recruitment); and (3) Jingyong (1944–, forced labor draft by the government).
This paper seeks to examine the impact of the sudden, compulsive outflow of male labor from rural Korea on farm women in the war years. The major agricultural work as well as the participation of the rural Sampo (Patriotic Industrial Corp.) programs became the major responsibilities of rural women and the older, unmobilized men in the countryside. The landlords had to cope with this sudden labor shortage at home, too. The paper will present a story of how Korean rural women went through the war years coping with the new demands and hardships of the time, when nationalist feeling was tested, not only for the elites but also the ordinary masses. Its historical implications in the post-1945 period will also be discussed.
Gender and Labor in Late Colonial Korea, 1937–1945
Janice Kim, York University
As elsewhere, women’s wage work in Korea began with unskilled labor in textile factories but, as a late industrializer, Korea did not begin industrial development in full until the 1920s and early 1930s. Because of the characteristics of late industrialization, women’s wage work in Korea began with a diverse array of jobs including textiles, chemicals, food-processing, but women’s wage work was transformed after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931. The concentration of Korean women workers slowly shifted away from textiles and towards other industries such as chemicals, ceramics and mining by the late 1930s. After Japan’s entrance into China and the Pacific, the government redeployed both male and female workers to designated important industries, such as iron and steel, mining, as well as ship and aircraft building. While the recruitment of women workers was generally guised under "student" or "patriotic" mobilization campaigns, by 1943, the government decided to officially mobilize women for heavy industry by calling for a Women’s Labor Volunteer Corps (Yôja kûllo chôngsindae) in Japan and in the colonies. While many women remained in female labor-intensive industries, Korean and Japanese sources indicate that women were most prominent in unchartered terrains of work in the machine and machine tools sectors as well as the airplane manufacturing industries. The majority of women employed in heavy industries were not placed in the highest technical positions, but the fact that female volunteers attained greater ranges of employment indicates that women entered heavy industries for the first time during the Pacific War years.
World War II and Changes in Higher Education in Colonial Korea
Gilsang Lee, Academy of Korean Studies, Korea
The history of late 1930s and early 1940s colonial Korea has not been reasonably explained by either experimental materials or scientific theories. This is one of the reasons why the history of pre- and post- 1945 liberation is understood as a discontinued rather than a continued history. The field of education is no exception. Changes in educational institutions and realities during the war have not yet been clearly examined in comparison with the pre- or post-war period.
This paper deals with some of the changes in higher education in colonial Korea during World War II. Establishment of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology at Keijo Imperial University, the forced closing and uniting of some private colleges, the forced changes to college names, changes in college curricula, and the responses of private colleges to the colonial power’s educational policies are among the main changes discussed. An objective interpretation apart from a nationalistic view, and comparative research with changes in higher education in Japan during the same time period will be discussed using pertinent documents.
Organizer: and Chair: Kimberly Kono, Smith College
Discussant: Namhee Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
Keywords: Korea, Japan, literature, colonialism, modernity.
Our panel will examine the representation of different Korean identities by Japanese and Korean writers and artists in the first half of the 20th century. Through our discussion of images of colonial Korea and Koreans in several short stories, novels, and manga (comics), we reveal the ways in which diverse discourses of modernity and colonialism intersect with the construction of "national" identity. Helen Lee’s paper explores the racialization of Koreans in comics produced by settler Japanese in colonial Korea during late Meiji, and shows how such representations dialectically reflect on both Korean and Japanese identities in the colonial context. While racial difference functioned in the dialectic produced by settler Japanese, several canonical Korean writers focused on the gendered trope of the "New Woman" in order to articulate colonial Korean identity. Kelly Jeong discusses how the figure of the "New Woman" in the works of writers Yom Sang-sob and Ch’ae Man-sik embodies a conflicted colonial Korea caught between Confucian patriarchal tradition and Japanese colonial modernity. During the same period, Japanese writer Yuasa Katsue evoked identical conflicts through the representation of disintegrating colonial families. By contrasting Yuasa’s images with the colonial promotion of Korean Japanese intermarriage, Kimberly Kono shows how Yuasa foregrounds the identity struggles of Koreans and Japanese in colonial Korea and reveals how the intersections of gender and class further complicate such contests. By broadly considering different perspectives on Korean identity during the colonial period, we seek to initiate a conversation spanning different disciplines, eras, and genres.
Sôdesuka shi and Yôbo san: The Images of Racial Other
Helen J. S. Lee, University of California, Irvine
The emergence of racially fixed stereotypes involving both physical and mental traits stems from, and in turn helped shape, the European expansion of slavery, imperialism, and colonialism. Works by scholars including Michael Banton and Philip Curtin interrogate the European notion of race and investigate the process of racialization, a practice that was deployed by white expansionists to rationalize their unjustifiable exploitation and usurpation of people of color. As the only non-white imperial power emerging belatedly in the late nineteenth century, Japan’s construction of Koreans as racial Other manifests a unique mode of inscribing and seeing the image of savages. My paper employs the visual genre of manga, or cartoon, as a source to explore Japan’s colonial construction of Koreans and "Koreanness" in the early twentieth century. A rare illustrated text titled, Chôsen Manga (1909), by two nameless Japanese settlers in colonial Korea, provides a window through which we can begin to grasp the racial images of Koreans constructed by non-elite, unofficial sectors of Japanese population. The vacant and dull looking Korean characters not only ironically end up suggesting that both Japanese and Koreans belong to the same rank of backward civilization that struggles with importing and disseminating western standards of civilized culture, but also the collectivized images of idiocy in Koreans sets adverse tension against its text that delineates with abundant humor how Koreans are animated individuals engaged in eventful daily activities, and suggests their individuality and subjecthood.
The Paradox of Korean Colonial Modernity: Images of the New Woman in Colonial Literature
Kelly Yoojeong Jeong, UCLA
In the early 20th century, the pre-existing notions of Korean womanhood became antiquated when more opportunities for women’s education opened up outside of the traditional domestic sphere. Beginning in the 1910s until the end of the 1930s, images and debates about the New Woman, fascinating proto-feminists and intellectuals of their time, came to preoccupy the imaginations of the nation’s intellectuals, as her high visibility in literature of this period testifies. Despite such popular debates among intellectuals, the New Woman’s relatively high education, mobility, and modernized consciousness made her an anachronism in the socio-cultural environment of colonial Korea, a conflicted nation caught between traditional Confucian patriarchy and colonial Japanese modernity. My paper explores images of the New Woman in two novels of the 1930s, Yom Sang-sob’s Three Generations (Samdae, 1931) and Ch’ae Man-sik’s Muddy Water (T’angnyu, 1937), to show the ways in which the New Woman figures in the texts embody the dilemma of colonial Korea. Indeed, my paper will discuss how the fall from grace that the New Woman characters experience in the narratives in fact underlines the rupture between Korea’s modern ideals and its colonial reality. Finally, my reading of the texts will explain how the images of this new feminine identity in literature reveal and reflect the internal struggles of colonial Korea that are exacerbated by the trauma of the simultaneous and over-determined nature of colonization and modernization.
Embodying Legitimacy in Colonial Korea: Families and Affiliation in Yuasa Katsue’s "Natsume"
Kimberly Kono, Smith College
Images of Korean Japanese "mixed" marriages figured prominently in the discourse used to promote and legitimate the Japanese colonial project in pre-war and wartime Korea. From the arranged marriage between Korean and Japanese royalty to the legalization of similar intermarriages, the Japanese colonial administration sought to enact the "naisen ittai" (Japan and Korea as one body) slogan in a familial form. Yuasa Katsue’s short story, "Natsume" (Jujube, 1937) draws on such popular and political discourses of marriage and family in order to address different struggles for legitimacy in colonial Korea by the actual bodies of naisen ittai: Koreans, Japanese, and the bicultural offspring of these unions. In his story, Yuasa describes the coming of age of a young boy, Kim Tarô, growing up with a Korean father and a Japanese mother in colonial Korea. While revealing the disintegration of Tarô’s family, "Natsume" privileges neither colonizing Japanese nor colonized Koreans, and instead shows the fragility of the family structure under the weight of traditional filial ties, class divisions, and modern national identities. In depicting the bicultural protagonist’s growing disillusionment with his "colonial family," Yuasa also provokes questions about the possibilities of developing a uniquely colonial identity independent from its originary lineages. Ultimately, "Natsume" underscores the contradictions embedded in colonial appropriations of familial discourse, disclosing the disembodied nature of the colonial project.
Organizer and Chair: Donald L. Baker, University of British Columbia
The Construction and Use of the Welcoming Descent in the Koryo Dynasty (918–1392)
Junhyoung Michael Shin, Arkansas State University
The iconography known as Amitabha’s Welcoming Descent represents the dramatic moment when a dying believer in Pure Land Buddhism is received by the Buddha Amitabha and his holy assembly, to be transported for rebirth in the Western Paradise. A number of Korean paintings of Amitabha from the Koryo dynasty (918–1392) have been linked with this subject matter, but they rarely illustrate all the details seen in contemporary Japanese examples. Instead, the Koryo paintings typically portray Amitabha with only one or two motifs alluding to the Welcoming Descent, such as clouds or an empty lotus pedestal. As a result, some scholars argue that these images do not depict the Welcoming Descent.
My paper proposes that, rather than focusing on the representation of specific motifs from the sutras, the key to identifying these paintings is to be found in the contemporary perception and functions of these images in late Koryo religious practices. Functional dimensions of Koryo Buddhist images have not been studied as thoroughly as their iconographic contents. Koryo Buddhist paintings display a limited range of iconographic types, a feature that probably was intended to preserve the authority of the images. However, contemporary literature and documents suggest that religious demand for deathbed ritual and meditation yielded the practice of exploiting standard Amitabha images as Welcoming Descent, making in them only minimal visual reference to the theme. Such a visual accommodation resonates with the Koryo situation of Pure Land Buddhism itself, which did not form an independent school but was embraced by Zen, Tiantai, and Esoteric schools as a powerful devotional methodology.
Religious Response to Modernity in Korea: The Case of Ch’ondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way), 1906–1910
Carl Frederick Young, SOAS, University of London
Ch’ondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way) is a religious movement that arose in 1905. It is actually a successor movement to Tonghak (Eastern Learning), a religious and social movement that arose in Korea in the middle of the nineteenth century. Tonghak combined elements of Buddhism, Confucianism, and native shamanism and was designed to renew Korean society at the time of the decline of the Choson dynasty. The movement was especially successful among the peasantry. Tonghak is most famous for its role in the largest peasant rebellion in Korean history in 1894 that indirectly led to the Sino-Japanese War.
Even though the rebellion failed and Tonghak was forced underground, a period of radical change began in Korea after 1894. New ideas of government reform and modernization were coming from Japan and the West. The Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905 led to the imposition of a protectorate treaty by Japan on Korea in November 1905. This would eventually lead to Korea’s loss of independence when Japan annexed it in 1910.
In order to maintain and increase its influence in this new environment, Tonghak decided to reorganize. This not only involved a name change to Ch’ondogyo, but also a reform in its administrative structure, liturgy, and doctrine. Ch’ondogyo also founded a newspaper, a printing house, and tried to influence various political movements. This paper will trace some of these changes and the impact they had on Ch’ondogyo and its influence on Korean society.
Terms of Engagement: The State, Festival, and Local Cultural Actors in Kyôngju, South Korea
Robert Oppenheim, University of Chicago
Some scholarship on "civil society" aims to displace an a priori analytic separation of civil society and the state in favor of a consideration of located and subjective moral frameworks of interaction. I examine here the shifting bargain made by resident cultural actors in the historic city of Kyôngju—local historical groups and the like—in their dealings over time with cultural projects initiated by the South Korean state and the outside intellectual forces that these have mobilized. Specifically, I take up the topic of civic festivals—centrally the post-1962, state-initiated Silla Cultural Festival—exploring the engagement of Kyôngju-resident cultural experts with this event, their place in debates over its course, and their invention of alternative festival practices.
My focus is on two historical strategies and their interrelation. In the present era of "citizens’ society," Kyôngju cultural actors have pursued a strategy of exteriorization, establishing and seeking to purify a distinct festival domain for "citizens" to stand beside one for "the city." Even in this project, however, they prescribe modes of appropriate action by government and government officials. I relate this strategy to a strategy of interiorization available in the late 1970s, when analogous actors were able to affect festival events and produce their own authority precisely through the terms of mobilizing Yusin state drives for "participation." I thus finally intend this paper to contribute towards a consideration of more subtle relations of power in the "high authoritarian" Yusin period, of a sort that has recently motivated reconsiderations of colonialism.
Buddhist Temple, Confucian Concept: Filial Influences on Yongju Temple
Michael Ralston, Independent Scholar
Yongju-sa, a Buddhist temple located near the city of Suwon in the Republic of Korea, was built in 1790 during the Choson dynasty (1392–1910). It was built on the site of another temple, Kilyang-sa, first founded in 854, during the Silla dynasty (4th cent.–918), and later enlarged in 952, during the Koryo period (918–1392). The original temple was razed in 1636 during the second Manchu invasion of Korea. However, there is a stark contrast between the Choson dynasty, which was founded on Neo-Confucian principles, and the Silla and Koryo dynasties where Buddhism flourished. Not only were Neo-Confucians quick to castigate Buddhists for betraying the fundamental relationships undergirding society, but the Neo-Confucian ideology supporting Choson society was stringent by mid-dynasty and, what is more, it was the King who was supposed to be the embodiment par excellence of Confucian principles. Yet it was King Chongjo (r. 1776–1800) who ordered Yongju-sa built. Moreover, since the King rebuilt the temple for the sake of his deceased father (Crown Prince Sado, who was stuffed into a rice chest and left to die), building the temple was a filial act. The Confucian and filial motives influenced the temple’s layout and some of its buildings; this theme was also reconfirmed in 1981 when a monument to filial piety was erected at the temple. Examining the temple and monument reveals the interaction of Buddhist and Confucian ideas during the Choson dynasty as well as in modern Korea.
Snake Worship on Cheju Island, Korea
Hea-Kyoung Koh, Pacifica Graduate Institute
The snake is the oldest and the most widely worshipped deity in Cheju. However, as modernization has changed the Cheju’s lifestyle, their beliefs around the snake have been modified and obviously decreased. In spite of the changes, whether one believes in the snake as a deity or not or whether one practices that belief actively or not, the snake is deeply ingrained in the psychic soil of Cheju.
It is impossible to express in one word what the snake means to the Cheju. The words that one uses for something sacred—wonder, fear, taboo, deity, individual spiritual praxis, collective religion, belief, and numinous experience—may, if used together, encompass the wide spectrum of the Cheju’s manifested belief system.
Fear and unease as well as wonder surround the snake. Such feelings may be the reason why the snake continuously appears in world mythology, particularly in agricultural zones. The "scientific" mind primarily occupies most contemporary people’s thoughts and governs their actions, but even today the snake is not just an animal to humans. Excessive and unnatural feelings for the snake are frequently observable in myths. Either a hero tries to slay the snake or reveals the highest veneration toward the snake. The Cheju’s attitude leans toward the latter since they have long held the snake sacred.
Feelings of awe and wonder around the snake have ceaselessly stirred the Cheju’s imagination from the beginning of their history. The snake myths on the island are a psychic tapestry woven with the thread of imagination on the warp of time and weft of land. Diverse elements of ritual, myth, believer, and shrine are all intertwined around the snake. This fieldwork based research will concentrate on the myths which are included in both a simbang’s (Cheju shaman) narration during a ritual and taboos and stories circulating around the snake in order to speculate on what the snake means to the Cheju.
Organizer: Timothy S. Lee, Texas Christian University
Chair: Xi Lian, Hanover College, IN
Discussant: Donald N. Clark, Trinity University
Keywords: history of religions, Korea, Christianity, modern.
In the premodern era, Buddhism and Confucianism dominated Korea's religious landscape, not only shaping Korean culture but also becoming Koreanized in the process. In the modern period, Protestantism has dominated Korean religions—claiming, at the end of the twentieth century, one-fifth of the South Korean population as its adherents—and has profoundly influenced Korean society and culture. With respect to the mutual influence between Buddhism/Confucianism and indigenous Korean culture, both sides of the influence have been discussed quite adequately; with respect to Protestantism and Korean culture, however, the discussions have overly focused on Protestantism's influence on Korea—especially vis-à-vis the modernization and nationalism of Korea. This panel seeks to redress this imbalance, with a series of papers that demonstrates ways in which Protestantism underwent Koreanization. Oak does this by considering how the concept of God itself was influence by the concept of Korean deity Hananim; Lee by analyzing native circumstances that gave rise to peculiarly Korean Evangelical devotionals; and Chang by showing how socio-political factors unique to Korea led to the creation of Minjung theology, the Korean version of liberation theology. The panel keeps the other side of the interaction in sight as well, with Grayson discussing how Protestantism continues to affect Korean culture, especially the other religions of Korea. Clark then critiques all these papers in the light of the panel's main thesis, followed by Lian, who opens and moderates discussion among the audience.
"Hananim": The Term Question in Korea, 1881–1911
Sung-Deuk Oak, University of California, Los Angeles
The Korean Protestant Church officially adopted "Hananim" as the term for God by using it in the first authorized Korean New Testament published in 1904; it was also retained in the first Korean Old Testament, published in 1911. "Hanamin" is now the standard term for God among Korean Protestants, but that was hardly the case during the two decades preceding 1904. Quite the contrary—when missionary John Ross first adopted it in 1881, it was just one of several terms in contention; and from 1893 till 1904, a heated debate ensued among the missionaries and Korean Protestants as to which of them should be selected for that most important concept in their religion. This debate bears a close examination, inasmuch as it betrays telling interpretations and negotiations whereby Protestantism became Koreanized. More specifically, it reveals how the North American missionaries understood the etymology of "Hananim" and why they subscribed to the notion that Korean myths contained a "primitive monotheism." In addition, the debate reveals what "Hananim" meant in the context of contemporary Korean Shamanism, and affords an insight into the power dynamics that existed among the Protestants in Korea at the turn of the 20th century—among the missionaries, Korean Protestants, and missionary organizations. This paper focuses on two main issues: (1) the transformation of "Hananim" from being the word for a polytheistic Korean supreme god to the word for the monotheistic Christian God; (2) the three shortcomings of the term—its patriarchal image, provincialism, and syncretism.
Indigenized Devotional Practices in Korean Evangelicalism
Timothy S. Lee, Texas Christian University
As Evangelicalism—the type of Protestantism that predominates in South Korea—entered and influenced Korean culture, it in turn was indigenized by Korean culture. This reciprocal influence is most conspicuous in the realm of practice—in certain types of devotional practices unique to Korean Evangelicalism and in the peculiar intensity with which the Koreans engage in them. This paper examines these indigenized devotional practices, exploring their cultural and historical origins. These practices include the daybreak devotional (saebyok kido-hoe), the most peculiar of Korean devotionals, practiced daily by most churches; the nightlong devotional (ch’olya kido-hoe), a widely practiced weekly ritual; the fast-prayer (kumsik kido), a de rigueur of Protestants wishing to be considered devout; the cell-group devotional, similar to its counterparts in the United States but practiced much more rigorously; and the prayer house (kidowon), a cross between monastery and retreat to which Evangelicals often repair for spiritual revitalization. In addition to describing and analyzing these practices, the paper also discusses to what extent they may be regard as having been influenced by Shamanism, Confucianism, or Buddhism; and what challenge such influences pose for the Protestants’ self-identity in religiously pluralistic South Korea.
Koreanizing Liberation Theology: Understanding the Uniqueness of Minjung Theology
Paul Y. Chang, Stanford University
This paper seeks to understand the particular historical, cultural, and socio-political circumstances that colored the formation of Minjung Theology. During the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 70s, Korean theologians constructed a liberation theology that reflected the suffering and hopes of the Korean masses under oppressive dictatorial rule. These Korean "Minjung" theologians, however, had the benefit of a theological precedence in the form of a robust systematic Liberation Theology developed by Latin American theologians. Minjung theologians drew from this international theological conversation on the importance and relevance of a politically praxis-oriented theology. While Minjung Theology does share many core tenets of Latin American Liberation Theology, Korean Christians were engulfed in a unique socio-political situation. Reacting to this particular situation, Minjung theologians appropriated elements of Korean culture that is reflected in their version of liberation theology. This paper compares the distinct historical, cultural, and socio-political contexts surrounding both Latin American and Minjung theologians and attempts to show how variations in these spheres influenced and shaped developments in the two forms of liberation theology.
Protestantism and the Religious Traditions of Korea: The Twentieth Century Impact and the Future
James Huntley Grayson, University of Sheffield
In this paper, I examine the formal and informal influence which Protestantism has had on other religious traditions in Korea, an impact which would not have been possible apart from the successful implantation of Protestant Christianity in Korean culture in the early twentieth century. In this paper, I will look at the history of the Protestant impact on Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the new religious traditions, which have emerged in Korea since the end of the nineteenth century. In the post–Korean War era, the majority of these latter groups, which would be considered heretical from the standpoint of Christian theology, are in fact new religions, with a Protestant Christian form. The discussion of the new religions will be taken down to the emergence of eschatological groups in the 1990s. In this paper, I will argue that broadly speaking Protestant Christianity has had a three-fold influence on the other religious traditions of Korea: (1) by competitive stimulation—as a result of the successful growth of Protestantism, seemingly moribund traditions were re-invigorated; (2) by the emulation—using the model of Protestant religious practices, other traditions became "modernized"; and (3) by the acceptance and admixture of various Christian beliefs and concepts—which resulted in the emergence of new religious traditions.