The Great Enterprise

The issue of a mutually constitutive relationship between the nation and its formative historiography is very much one of a living, ongoing tradition; and if the past forms a significant portion of the background context here, it is treated as a much more dynamic past, rather than as a remote or distant one. For the Korean case specifically, this translates into a careful examination of the long twentieth century, in which numerous forces placed national sovereignty at risk, including Japanese colonialism (1910-1945), the American military occupation (1945-1948), and the heated division following the Korean War (1950-1953), persisting to this day. In looking at present-day South Korea and its own struggles, Em seeks to bring this discussion to bear upon the cultural and intellectual origins of minjung and the related mobilization for democratization. And although he never addresses the subject explicitly, he also refers to his personal experience in early 1980s Philippines (ix), implying that the issues of framing and shaping a national narrative hold not just for South Korea, but similarly, for other post-colonial nations in East and Southeast with a comparable trajectory.

Beginning with the potential appeal of sovereignty, Em demonstrates the complex valences of the concept, especially its complicity with a variety of forms of power, deeply rooted as it is in late nineteenth century imperialism and colonialism. He begins his introduction with a short vignette set in the 1930s, a story concerning the desirability of short hair in the form of the bob style (1). Playing with this frame, Em locates his entire project within carefully qualified terms, aware of the gendered character of the hairstyle, its relative comfort and ease of use, and its particular associations with the “modern girl” and a related set of choices, whether set in colonial Korea or elsewhere. By extension, sovereignty represents a trope similar to the heuristic of the hairstyle, a modern romance created specifically to provide a liberating vision for the individual and his/her relationship to the nation, and in turn, the nation’s corresponding place in history. If this romance owes its origins to the intersection of powerful forces, many of which will be treated in Part One (Chapters One and Two) of the work, Em’s emphasis rests in Part Two (Chapters Three to Five), where he demonstrates the rich productive capacity of sovereignty as a vehicle through which to achieve diverse political ends, especially its ability to create new spaces for individuals and nations to live out an alternate rendering of the narrative.

Sovereignty as constraint?

Em’s preoccupation with hair, though introduced playfully at the outset, continues to function as one of his governing tropes as he develops this notion further in his introduction (5), taking up the late Chosŏn, and in particular, a December 1895 decree to ask men to cut off their topknots. Here the polysemy of “sovereignty” comes into sharper focus: the gesture entails a certain vision of the modern, and the hairstyles and modes of behavior that come along with it as part of an accompanying package of reforms. At the same time, Em draws out the deeper implications of King Kojong’s actions at this time, with the effort to demonstrate sovereignty here seen as a redefining of the lengthy tributary relationship with Qing China. In the eyes of the West, or such was the hope, Korea would now be seen as sovereign, no longer in a tributary or contingent relationship, and therefore a partner worthy of courting and possibly even engaging with on even terms. Implicit to this last remark is the understanding that Korea hoped to avoid the fate of China, and sought to gain the support of Western allies as it anticipated the array of forces that might challenge it.

This brief summary has to acknowledge, however, a sustained argument developed over the course of two chapters, with an attempt to frame the problems of the late nineteenth century (1882-1910) within a much longer arc of Korean history. Chapter One covers much of this historical background, tracing sovereignty as a legal concept within Korean tradition, referring to as far back as Koryŏ (918-1392) and the early Chosŏn. Specifically, the legitimacy of rule, and the corresponding rituals and discourse associated with the court, underwent a series of challenges, defining itself first in terms of the tributary relationship with the Ming, and soon thereafter, the Qing. For Em, the replacement of this long-term Sino-centric system at the end of the nineteenth century represents a violent form of rupture, one that would “facilitate Japanese domination over Chosŏn Korea” (31). Or, as he puts it elsewhere in the chapter, the trial adoption of a post-Westphalian notion of equal sovereignty both “enabled and restrained” (31) the subsequent intervention of Euro-American imperialism in the region, with his emphasis clearly resting on the first of these two contrasting verbs.

Much of the chapter traces these intertwined themes, with the diminishing role of China leaving space for increasing Japanese influence, and moreover, a role that might be sanctioned by interested European and American actors, those comfortable with the model of tutelage provided by a close Asian neighbor. If the story of sovereignty begins with this unpromising start, the second chapter continues and deepens the conflict, taking us to the famous 1893 Columbian exhibition, and Chosŏn Korea’s efforts to portray itself there through an exhibit. Questions deriving from visitors required that clarifying signs be attached to the Korean booth, offering additional information about the country and its place in the world. Not surprisingly, Em interrogates this activity primarily in terms of its attempts to underscore “Korea’s distinctiveness from China and Japan” (54), that is, as an effort to assert its independence and sovereignty. Along with the story of the exhibit, he provides a brief account for the intellectual genesis of a growing awareness of these concerns among Korean intellectuals, ultimately bringing us to the project of a nationalist historiography, the work’s major focus, and its transition point, bridging the weaknesses and potential of sovereignty as a vehicle for political mobility.

The various figures associated with this nascent historiography allow Em to spell out the implications of this gesture, especially at a critical turning point at the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, the turn to a history no longer dominated by the lone figure of a powerful monarch, and instead one informed by the minjok, “a category inclusive of every Korean without regard to age, gender, or status distinction” (79), leads to a very different kind of historical practice. Sin Ch’ae-ho, the major figure with whom this historiographical approach is associated, becomes central at the close of Chapter Two, writing a new kind of history immediately prior to formal colonization. The embrace of an ethnic nationalism represents an effort to produce a sustaining alternative to the loss of traditional ties, previously linked with one’s place to a clan, and a village, and situated within a rigid class hierarchy. Though sovereignty was “absent in the present” (84) due to colonialism, Sin nevertheless saw it as present from the beginning of historical time, and therefore as a prospect “recoverable in the future” (83).

Sovereignty as productive

The potential offered by Sin’s approach here should not suggest an easy transition, however, and the following chapter, Chapter Three, places the emergence of nationalist historiography very much in tension, situated within the practice of the colonial state. Here the model of tutelage offered by imperial Japan offers a seductive, if illusory, appeal, valorizing a glorious “Asian” rather than a specifically Korean past, one since fallen into decline. The role of the colonial state is one of guiding Korea along the course to modernity, bringing it the benefits of civilization. Em traces the historiography of this period to prior Meiji efforts to write a new Japanese national history, and locates Sin’s efforts as a direct response to the “violence of imperialism and colonialist historiography” (97), serving as an explicit form of resistance. The appeal of minjok offers a space outside the purview of the colonial state, and one, moreover, which enables the imagining of a different or distinct future, one consciously set against the colonial present.

At the same time, Em carefully outlines the fierce competition taking place between these alternate historiographies, that is, the contrasting Korean nationalist and colonial state accounts, going so far as to label this section “Coauthors of Nation” (102). The point here is to complicate existing accounts of the colonial period emphasizing only Japanese attempts to eliminate or eradicate a Korean identity, especially such efforts dating from the mid to late 1930s. In contrast, this section argues that Japan was very much interested in constructing and maintaining a separate Korean identity, albeit, one subject to a particular vision as outlined by Japanese authorities. If this is the case, the development of the global nation-state system required that the two parties “study, standardize and thus reinvent (or just invent) everything we now associate with the Korean nation” (103). To put this in other terms, this version of events places the writing of history in a dynamic relationship, “one ‘constructive’ for both the colonizer and the colonized” (103), rather than presenting it simply as something static, an external, top-down imposition.

This narrative also suggests that the task of moving beyond the assumptions of colonial historiography remains ongoing, unfinished, and the following chapter, “Universalizing Korea’s Past” (Chapter Four), resumes discussion of the issues underlying this conflict. For (Korean) Marxist historians of the late 1930s, the problem lay not only with the interventions of Japanese scholars, but equally with much of the nationalist historiography, which was characterized as “particularist” in its form. Of the figures present here, Paek Nam-Un is presented as the most ambitious in trying to establish a wider scale for his work, offering a social and economic history that could aspire to move beyond the particular to some approximation of the universal. Even as he acknowledges the reductive character of this vocabulary (particular / universalist), Em succeeds in conveying his major point: in the aftermath of the economic depression (1929), many scholars felt that even existing nationalist efforts, including those appearing in the major Korean-language newspapers sanctioned by the colonial state, had failed to question and subvert the categories created and enforced through colonialism.

The complex events of the period (1931-1948), including Japan’s war with China (1931-1945), the widening of the conflict in the form of World War II, and the subsequent American Occupation (1945-1948), further serve to complicate the historiographical debates taking place in Korea. The constraints upon such engagement were numerous during much of the period, given Japan’s mobilization for war: “open and legal forms of political resistance [effectively] became impossible” (125). In this respect, the move to preserving “things Korean” (125) soon took precedence over prior efforts to engage more overtly. For this period, Em is careful to mark the tensions present within any nationalist scheme, as many of the Korean settlers in Manchuria, for example, stood at the intersection of Korean and Japanese land interests, underscoring possible “complicity between the particularism of Korean nationalism and the Japanese Empire” (124). Perceived by the local Chinese as representing the interests of Japanese land investors by proxy, whether consciously or not, any Korean settlers who complained about mistreatment ran the risk of echoing the rhetoric and language mobilized by Japanese investors.

This style of contradiction proves useful for much of the following discussion concerning Paek’s ambitious, universalist project, comprising the latter portion of Chapter Four. It also serves as anticipation of similar issues prevalent immediately following liberation and division (1945-1953), with Chapter Five taking up the conjoined issues of “Divided Sovereignty and South Korean Historiography” (139). The chapter opens with a December 1945 meeting of prominent writers and intellectuals, who proceeded to engaged in a bout of self-criticism, following the defeat of Japan. For many of these figures, the contradictions embedded within their work—their activities during the colonial period, as well as possible use of Japanese material resources, and even language and publication opportunities—raised probing questions. At the same time, the chapter opens with this moment of doubt precisely to emphasize the comparable difficult circumstances faced by Korean historians when asking the same type of question: “For historians, self-criticism was more problematic” (143). With the most ambitious of the tribe claiming a kind of scientism in their embrace of historical evidence and alleged universal laws, where did they stand in the aftermath of Japanese Empire?

The concluding chapter addresses this and related questions in the context of division associated with the Korean War, although the careful positioning of one’s stance began almost immediately with the moment of haebang in August 1945. If historians did not (and most likely could not) apologize for their prior activities, they nonetheless had to align themselves according to a set of contentious authorities. More specifically, one’s affiliation with the colonial authority in the recent past made for much speculation, and similarly, one had to decide whether or not to cooperate with the American military authorities in the present. Much of this period (1945-1960) thus involved the working out of these positions, with the formation of a nationalist view typically calling for a complete repudiation of the colonial past and a staunchly anti-communist present, placing strict ideological boundary markers around the topics suited for discussion. As Em points out here, it was hardly surprising when those historians who had previously championed an empirical research approach and the use of “objective” methodology began to dominate academic posts from about the late 1940s.

The opportunity to ask more critical questions came only with the transition to the Park Chung Hee government in 1961, although here, too, ideological constraints remained in force. The focus of efforts to construct a national narrative tied itself largely to newer questions of modernization, and the possible paths to achieve such an end. Accordingly, scholarly positions tended to cluster around a set of opposing binary positions, with “a relatively more egalitarian and autonomous path from below,” juxtaposed with “a more exploitative, dependent path from above” (151). These trends, while limiting the overall scope of debate, offered a perspective on the longer narrative of Korean history, and in particular, sought to explain the “distortions” of recent history by external colonizing and occupying forces. Moreover, by the late 1970s, versions of the bottom-up perspective came to appeal greatly to students and those questioning the Park government, directing their scorn in particular at the rule of former President Syngman Rhee. At the same time, Em notes the persistence of division within the historiography, observing that much was written within the existing structure of division, thereby tending to naturalize it.

The conclusion, or at least the content ultimately receiving the label of “in lieu of a conclusion,” briefly summarizes many of the issues that the work has introduced, deliberately leaving these questions behind as food for thought. Here Em steps back, acknowledging the schematic character of the genealogies he has laid out, while taking care to emphasize that his interests lay less with constructing a complete pattern or framework, and more with situating “different, competing modes of history writing within and against the distinctive political and intellectual configurations that dominated a particular conjuncture in modern Korean history” (158). If the result raises many more concerns than it can possibly address, this rich vein of inquiry nevertheless offers a valuable meta-history of Korean historiography that should appeal to Koreanists and East Asianists alike. While it has to consciously de-emphasize the “lived experience” of the actors somewhat in order to provide “an outline of the situation that elicited various modes of history writing” (160), the result is in no way diminished; and again, the comparative possibilities for extending this project beyond Korea to include related post-colonial sites, while implicit, remains a fascinating prospect. .

John DiMoia, National University of Singapore (NUS), Department of History, hisjpd@nus.edu.sg