Organizer, Chair, and Discussant: Sun Joo Kim, Harvard University
This panel explores how the northern part of the Korean peninsula has developed and changed historically from the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) to 1945. There are three goals: (1) to trace northern regional identities as constructed and negotiated in reaction to outsiders’ views, (2) to locate such regional identities and politics in relation to the center, and (3) to examine how presumably local, parochial, and even backward regionalism unfolded in Korea in the vortex of colonialism and nation-building in the first half of the twentieth century. Historical studies in Korea have been dominated by grand paradigms such as modernization theory, a positivist perspective, and historical materialism. The result has been subordination of the local to the national, diversity to homogeneity, and place to class. The facts that the Korean peninsula is relatively small in territorial terms and that it has been under one ruling structure for a very long time have rationalized the writing of Korean history as a single narrative in which variances have been effectively muted. This panel creates a forum for interdisciplinary exchange that deepens and expands our understanding of historical experiences, cultural variances and transformations, and literary expressions of the identities and cultures of the northern region.
Eugene Y. Park, University of California, Irvine
In late Choson Korea, northern elites desired appealing self-representation
in genealogies, an increasingly popular medium for expressing status consciousness.
Studies have shown that other than the yangban lineages possessing older documents,
many families had to concoct a pre-Choson pedigree by linking historical Koryo
figures bearing the right surname. All the same, conventional studies overlook
the families that had not attained bona fide yangban status by the beginning
of Choson—including many elite families of P’yongan and Hamgyong
provinces. In the case of the largest Miryang Pak descent group segment, northern
lines claimed southern origins through mid-Choson ancestors allegedly banished
to the north as victims of literati purges, but such putative ancestors are
missing from the late Choson Miryang Pak genealogies published in central or
southern Korea. Also, local northern editions recording them contain chronological
problems and claims of significant office-holding that cannot be independently
verified. Considering that the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the era
when the government settled the north with southern farmers, soldiers, and
convicts en masse, we can posit that at least some, if not a good proportion,
of late Choson northern elite families actually came from such backgrounds.
In late Choson, when the region’s elites commanded significant economic
and cultural capital, dearth of genealogical records allowed them more room
for imagined connections. Invented traditions buttress ruling ideologies, and
it seems that both the 1812 Hong Kyong-nae Rebellion and King Kojong’s
modernization reform spurred northerners to reject the yangban hegemonic discourse
and instead espouse Western values.
Yumi Moon, Stanford University
This paper examines the popular movements in the Northwestern provinces of
Korea during the post Kabo period, the decade between the fall of the Kabo
cabinet or the defeat of the Kabo rebellion, and the beginning of the Japanese
Protectorate in Korea (1896–1905). During the time, the people in the
provinces showed diverse political attitudes from “collaboration” with
foreigners to militant protests against them. Catholic rioters in Hwanghae
Province, for example, sought protection from Westerners in the course of their
own resistance to the Korean government. Protesters in P’yongan Province,
in contrast, opposed Western encroachment, which they experienced as an economic
and cultural shock. Meanwhile, Japan relentlessly propagated a Pan-Asianist
discourse in Korea —a discourse which asserted a Western threat, Chinese
backwardness, and Japan’s new leadership to “save” Asia.
This paper highlights this historical “conjuncture” in the northwestern
provinces of (1) the divergent popular movements that grew up in response to
foreign encroachments, (2) the Japanese dissemination of a Pan-Asianist discourse,
and (3) the political reorientation and resettlement of Tonghak remnants in
the provinces. This conjuncture reveals both the fluid popular atmosphere in
the provinces at the time and the convoluted historical context within which
the defeated Tonghak rebels and their leaders sought a new pathway toward survival.
Ross King, University of British Columbia
This paper argues that P’yongan dialect speakers developed a strong dialect-based
linguistic identity by the early 19th century and that this linguistic identity
remained throughout the colonial period. The dialect-based aspect of regional
identity in P’yongan manifested itself in two different Korean orthography
debates.
The first debate occurred between 1902-1904 when certain Western missionaries,
led by James Scarth Gale, (briefly) convinced the missionary community to approve
a reformed orthography for use in Protestant publications. The second debate
concerned the Unified Han’gul Orthography, announced in 1933. Here again,
P’yongan Protestants refused to go along with the new orthography.
The P’yongan dialect speakers’ position on han’gul orthography
can be summed up as follows: 1) our dialect uniquely preserves consonant distinctions
that go back to the time of invention of the Korean script, 2) therefore, P’yongan
dialect is more “correct” than other Korean dialects, 3) the ‘historical’ (pre-reform)
han’gul spellings honored those distinctions (even if they did not write
them exactly as preserved in P’yongan dialect), and 4) reformed spellings – especially
for Sino-Korean elements – dishonor our dialect (and hence “correct
language”) and destroy distinctions useful in a reader-friendly orthography.
Using a “language ideology” approach, the paper shows that P’yongan
opposition to reformed spelling 1) challenges prevalent modern-day notions
of linguistic unity and homogeneity in colonial Korea and 2) demonstrates that
linguistic nationalism and linguistic identity in modern Korea is, more than
anything else and perhaps more than anywhere else, a matter of writing system:
Korea is a rare example of script-based linguistic nationalism.
Soo-Chang Oh, Hallym University
This paper analyzes the cultural images of P’yongyang reflected in folktales
called yadam, which were largely created and consumed by commoner intellectuals
as well as ordinary people, and in the poetry and travel writings by the learned
elites. The Choson elites tended to emphasize the traditional idea that P’yongyang
was the capital of both Kija and Tangun, legendary founders of Korean history,
a perception that was also internalized by P’yongan elites. They also
often recited the well known beauty of the scenic sites in P’yongyang.
P’yongyang was one of the most frequently mentioned places in folktales
and images of P’yongyang portrayed in folktales were very different from
those appeared in learned elites’ writings. They consist of three elements:
the provincial governor, kisaeng (female artist-entertainers), and economic
activities. The governors and kisaeng play very active and positive roles in
the development of the storyline in P’yongyang tales. Their presence
in the stories is often intertwined with legal and illegal economic transactions
in P’yongyang. What do these different topics of narratives authored
by diverse group of people signify? What do we learn about P’yongyang’s
environment, history, and culture from them? What was the place of P’yongyang
to central elites, local elites, commoner intellectuals, and ordinary people,
whether they had a chance to visit and experience the town or not? This paper
seeks to answer these questions and to map out the socio-cultural position
of P’yongyang in late Choson Korea.
|
