Organizer: Ted Hughes, Columbia University

Chair: Vipan Chandra, Wheaton College

Discussant: Andre Schmid, University of Toronto

This panel examines the ways in which the notion of "tradition," inextricably linked to the advent of the "modern," helps to set in place a series of opposing yet ultimately overlapping positions in twentieth-century Korea, imperialist/anticolonial nationalist in the first half of the century, statist subject/dissident resistance in postliberation South Korea. Jongyon Hwang analyzes the literary and political uses of the colonial-period "discovery of Silla" (Silla ui palkyon), paying particular attention to the intersection between archeological and historical research on Silla conducted by Japanese and Korean scholars and representations of the ancient kingdom in the historical novels of Yi Kwang-su and Hyon Chin-gon. Christine Kim explores the reworking of the Choson dynasty monarchy in the immediate pre- and early colonial periods, unpacking the ways in which a synthesis of the "modern" and "traditional" produces different meanings for Koreans and Japanese. Se-Mi Oh shows how history is reworked and colonial subjectivity is produced via the spectacle of the modern displayed at the 1915 Exposition of Common Progress (Choson mulsan Kongjinhoe). Theodore Hughes looks at the ways in which enlightenment- and colonial-period pan-Asianisms were redeployed in Cold War South Korea in the form of traditionalisms appropriated both by the anticommunist state and leftist-nationalists. Taken together, the four papers demonstrate the ways in which "tradition," informed by new ways of thinking about history, temporality, and visuality, plays a central role in the formation of subjects from the eve of annexation in 1909 to postcolonial South Korea of the 1970s.

Christine Kim, Georgetown University

It is well known that in the twilight years of the Choson dynasty, Japan found little use for the recalcitrant ruler of the self-fashioned Taehan Empire. After repeated clashes and acts of defiance, Kojong’s dispatch of three envoys to the Hague Peace Conference in 1907 ultimately cost him the throne, and in his place ascended the crown prince, known to posterity as Sunjong. For the "new emperor" to serve a useful purpose, however, it became necessary for the Japanese imperial project to raise his profile. Sunjong was thus fashioned into a modern monarch, but one with traditional values.

This paper will focus on Sunjong’s journeys throughout the Korean peninsula in 1909 and, after annexation, to Japan in 1917. Melding traditions of Choson royal tours (haengch’a) with the modern state-building exercise of the Meiji emperor (junko), these well publicized events illustrate how Japanese imperial intentions to create a cipher were carried out, at times with unintended consequences. By examining the uses of Sunjong for a Korean audience on the one hand and Japanese on the other, I hope to provide some clues to understanding the development of Korean nationalism, Japanese perceptions of Korean polity, and the importance of Korea to Japan’s modernity.

Se-Mi Oh, Columbia University

The 1915 Exposition (Sijǒng o’nyǒn kinyǒm Chosǒn mulsan kongjinhoe), held in Seoul in commemoration of the fifth-year anniversary of Japanese annexation of Korea, was a carefully orchestrated event displaying the products of industrial development during the first five years of Japanese rule. Serving to legitimatize and popularize Japanese colonial rule, the exposition showcased modernity and progress in terms that represented Japan as the leader of bringing modernity to Korea and that reinforced colonial difference as temporal hierarchy.

This paper pays particular attention to the ways in which this exposition accomplished the double-edged processes of civilizing mission that sought to incorporate Korea into the Japanese Empire while simultaneously displacing it from within. It examines intertwined processes of rewriting history through the erasure of the Kyǒngbok palace, the monarchical symbol of the Chosǒn dynasty, and creating a spectacle of utopian future in its place through various visual elements. In doing so, it argues that colonial subjectivity in the making was that of spectator-subject split between self-critique and desire for the other, alienated from his/her history as well as from the possibility of partaking in the Japanese Empire.

Jongyon Hwang , Dongguk University

The name of Silla invokes in the Korean mind a land of Buddhist cosmopolitanism where Korean ancestors were at the zenith of their political, military, and artistic power. Generally regarded as the first kingdom to unify the Korean peninsula, Silla provided a rich source of nationalism, awakening the Korean people to a historical past which promoted collective self-esteem and patriotic commitment. Following Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule, cultural legacies associated with Silla such as the Way of Hwarang were frequently proclaimed as one of the essences of Korean nationhood. At the same time, it was forgotten that the idea of Silla as a prototype of the Korean nation was derived from Japanese colonial scholarship. Beginning with Hayashi Taisuke’s new periodization of Korean history and Sekino Tadashi’s pioneering survey of the ruins of ancient kingdoms in the peninsula, Japanese historians, archeologists and art connoisseurs played a leading role in the historical and aesthetic representation of Silla. It was under the influence of Japanese historiography, archeology and art criticism that Korean intellectuals found in the ancient kingdom an origin of Korean cultural identity which, they believed, would make it possible to refashion their ethnonation along the lines of Japanese civilization. This paper will analyze colonial-period historical novels by Yi Kwang-su and Hyon Chin-gon, focusing on the ways in which Japanese discoveries of Silla are employed and contested in their texts in an attempt to retrieve and repossess the past.

Ted Hughes, Columbia University

This paper looks at the ways in which enlightenment- and colonial-period pan-Asianisms were rearticulated in South Korea by way of the literary and intellectual discourse on "tradition" (chont’ong) and "Asia" (tongyang) in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1950s, the invocation of tongyang is accompanied by its elision, the continuous slippage between tongyang and Korea, "Asian spirit" and "Korean spirit." South Korea becomes representative of tongyang—Japan and China have, for all intents and purposes, been dropped from the equation. Under 1960s developmentalism, the traditional was organized by the state both as repository of cultural authenticity and as a past set off from a modernizing present and future. At the same time, a number of intellectuals and writers in the 1950s and 1960s turned to the traditional as one way of contesting the trajectory of national division promoted both by North/South Korean statisms and a broader U.S./Soviet Cold War polarization. Informed by the Korean War, such a gesture, particularly in the works of writers from the North such as Hwang Sun-won and Yi Ho-ch’ol privileges a peaceful, harmonious space which, even as it occurs in the form of an anticommunist humanism, offers an implicit critique of the militarism of the Park Chung Hee regime and the accompanying notion of a developmentalist "Free Asia." This paper concludes by analyzing the ways in which not only the Park regime but also the emerging leftist-nationalist opposition sought to appropriate this "neutral" traditionalist space in the early 1970s.