Periodization is a key element in the organization of archaeological research as well as an instrument through which political ideas can be conveyed. This article provides a comparison of two systems created during and after the Japanese colonial period whose aim was the periodization of Korean archaeology. In this regard, it compares the systems of Fujita Ryosaku and Kim Wollyong and how these illustrate the contrasting purposes of intellectual inquiry in the colonial and postcolonial periods. In addition, it aims to locate postcolonial archaeological scholarship within a larger frame of reference than a simplistic colonial-structure. To do this, it investigates the influence of Western intellectual thought on Korean archaeology. As a result, the decolonization of Korean archaeology can be judged within the scope of world archaeology in the 1970s.
Internal development theory ( ) has been one of the most influential and enduring approaches to the systematic study of Korean history since its classic articulation in the 1960s by Yi Kibaek (1924-2004) in Hang'uksa sillon (1967, rev. ed. 1976). Scholars see both the influence of modernization theory and resonance with Marxist history in Yi's language choices. More importantly, it makes Koreans actors in their historical development, unlike Japanese theories of the colonial period which imagined Korea as merely a geographic area acted upon by outside forces. Internal development theory is conventionally invoked in two modes. The first is in its modern mode to advance the position that the "sprouts of capitalism" had appeared and would eventually have led toward Western-style modernization if Chosen Korea (1392-1910) was not colonized by Imperial Japan (1868-1945). The second is in its premodern mode, where it asserts that the rise of new social groups were the primary cause of political change. Scholars have tested the premodern mode of internal development theory and, although some aspects are not completely persuasive, the basic premise continues to be influential. This essay presents a draft translation of the last chapter of the revised edition of Hang'uksa sillon, "Han'guksa ui palchon kwa chibae seryok" Development and ruling power in Korean history which was not included in Edward Wagner's translation (1984). This hitherto untranslated chapter articulates the way Yi conceptualized what came to be known as the internal development theory.
This article examines the apocalyptic landscape of neoliberal South Korea through two postmillennial webtoons Sweet Home (((sic)(sic)(sic)(sic), , 2020) and All of Us Are Dead ((sic)(sic) (sic)(sic) (sic)(sic)(sic), 2 , 2022), whose Netflix adaptations achieved global success during the COVID-19 lockdown. Through a comparative analysis of these zombie/monster horrors, the article challenges the existing discourse around the transnational, transmedia flow of Hallyu (sic)(sic)(Korean wave). It does so by addressing the interconnected issues of genre, generation, and gender in these dystopic coming-of-age narratives, where endangered youths struggle for survival under a necropolitical order. The emergence of such zombified/ monsterized subjects is linked to an aesthetics of relational survivance (hangjon (sic)(sic)) and to a vision of trans-species alliance, situated within Korea's rapid neoliberalization and evolving popular protests. The article adopts a posthuman feminist perspective in tackling the affective dynamic running through the original webtoons, the participatory culture of the audience, and media convergence amid an antifeminist backlash in contemporary Korea. Alongside nuanced readings of graphic texts that elicit multisensory engagement and diverse viewer responses, its intersectional approach to the evolution of K-apocalypse, as inflected by Netflix, argues for the critical contextualization of the political, ethical, and ontological question of surviving as (non-)humans at the end of the world.
The "comfort women" issue is one of the most contentious and emotionally charged disputes between South Korea and Japan. Its political sensitivity is so acute that it has often been treated as a taboo subject, even within the field of Korean literature. In this study, I analyze the English translation of Han myong (One Left), the 2016 Korean novel devoted to the subject of comfort women by Kim Sum (Kim Soom). This work is unique in that it is based on testimonies from surviving comfort women and contains over 300 endnotes citing the sources of the testimonies. My analysis explores how the translation captures the experiences and memories of the victims. Specifically, I focus on eight key aspects: (1) the creation of a temporary shift in the narrator's voice, (2) the complexities of thought representation, (3) the use of different spelling, (4) how the translation conveys expressive meaning, (5) the adoption of the generic "you," (6) the metaphor of comfort women as consumables, (7) the clarification of cultural subtext for the reader, and (8) the endnotes. Following this analysis, I examine the omission of an episode from the translation-an authorial choice that could be misinterpreted as an unfaithful rendering of the original. My analysis suggests that the narrative surrounding comfort women can be expanded and refined through translation.
This article deals with the disappearance of hunting in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) to reconsider human-centered narratives of modern authoritarianism. I examine how the perception of hunting in North Korea changed through Pyongyang's ineffective efforts to classify and exploit animals according to their perceived value in building socialism. In particular, I highlight local understandings of fauna and the gradual disappearance of conventional hunting from state media, a reflection of the disorganized attempts to regulate hunting and mobilize animals for material ends. Contrary to these ambitions, local populations compelled the regime into a tacit compromise, resulting in official silence on hunting.
In August 1948, North Korea held an election for the Supreme People's Assembly, essentially a symbolic legislature with no real authority. The regime in Pyongyang claimed that an astounding three-fourths of South Koreans secretly participated in this election, ostensibly granting the assembly jurisdiction over the entire country. This article posits that this claim transcended mere propaganda; rather, it exemplified a striking instance of self-deception among the decision-makers in Pyongyang. Compelling evidence indicates that the audacious claim of widespread South Korean participation was genuinely embraced in Pyongyang, both by North Korean authorities and their Soviet overseers. This belief evidently played a role in shaping the decision to initiate the Korean War in 1950. The article suggests that echo chambers facilitate a decision-making pattern fraught with potentially grave consequences. The case examined in the paper illustrates the alarming extent to which the biases of decision-makers can obscure their judgment, leading them to disregard an overt falsehood.
This article examines the development of state feminism in the emerging North Korean state, in particular the institutionalization of the North Korean Democratic Women's Union (Pukchoson Minju YosongTongmaeng) to mobilize women for the building of the state from 1945-49. It examines how the women's union became the sole women's organization and how the organization became a state agent, politically mobilizing female voters for the communist party, and an intermediary, translating international socialist materials into Korean educational literature. In this period, the women's union contributed to the political legitimization of the Communist Party as the people's party. In addition, the women's union translated international socialist narratives on the liberation of women and reformulated them for the Korean context to construct an ideal modern citizen embodying the postcolonial "tradition within modernity." They also deployed this unifying ideology of "entwined liberations"-that the state liberated women and women liberated the nation via their roles as innovative workers and revolutionary mothers. The article seeks to show that these active participation by the women's union was fundamentally interlinked with and instrumental to nascent postcolonial state building of North Korea.
The worship of Guan Yu entered Choson Korea from Ming China during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-98). Although it was initially regarded as a foreign custom, Choson monarchs gradually adopted it for political purposes from the late seventeenth century onward. In particular, Yongjo fi11 (r. 1724-76) appropriated the rituals associated with Guan Yu to assert his dominance within the power dynamics of the Choson court. This paper focuses on the strategies Yongjo used to appropriate the symbolism of Guan Yu in his writings on the shrines to the great Chinese hero. It examines how the king employed the rhetoric of Pip'uug 1E)(No breeze) and Hach'ou 1F (Falling spring), slogans of a pro-Ming and anti-Qing ideology, for domestic political purposes. The paper also interprets the rituals dedicated to Guan Yu, including the rites at Hwangdan eta (Imperial altar, also known as Taebodanta), as part of a larger project that aimed at securing the king's moral superiority and political legitimacy. In doing so, the paper illustrates how Yongjo appropriated the symbolism and rituals of Guan Yu and used them as media for reinforcing and exercising power within the court of Choson.
This article examines how the Korean writer Paek Ch'ol translated and adapted Michael Gold's American proletarian poem "120 Million" into Korean using the sprechchor (speaking chorus) genre, which originated in Germany and entered Korean literary circles via Japanese leftists. Focusing on the early 1930s, it explores how Paek anchored his literary practice in the materialist dialectic and how his stage adaptation enhances our understanding of that dialectic as manifested in Gold's poetry. The analysis shows that the communist aesthetic championed by Gold and Paek strives not to forgo any aspect of the world, seeking to replace a bourgeois ersatz totality with a Marxian bona fide one. Since Marxism, understood as a living philosophy, hinges on grasping transformation and process, its aesthetic centers on praxis attuned to the emergent forces that disrupt hegemonic formations. It aims to overcome the alienation of individuals from their labor, their communities, and the elements of their being-ultimately reclaiming economic, political, cultural, and communal dimensions to which humanity is entitled. Although proletarian aesthetics in colonial Korea were largely shaped by Russian, German, and Japanese thinkers, Paek uniquely positioned Gold's poetry as a model of materialist dialectics and a corrective to the artistic impasse facing Korean writers. By theatrically rendering this dialectic through American verse-a relatively obscure current in world Communist literature-Paek sought to awaken his audience at the intersection of colonial rule, the Great Depression, and the global resurgence of Marxist thought.
This study investigates the use of historical films as a tool for content activism in challenging the historical perspectives of the Japanese government and hawkish right-wing groups. The investigation involves the conceptualization, production, and dissemination of two South Korean historical films, namely, Kwihyaug ,I and Kuuhamdo p1/4, and an examination of the social and political ramifications of these films. The study identifies two revisionist movements in Japan: (a) the rebranding of the comfort women as women who had chosen prostitution and (b) the transformation of Hashima Island, a site of forced labor, into a site of industrial revolution. It then outlines how the two films confronted these issues and led to social activism in relation to them. The study demonstrates how content activism through historical films can effectively confront historical revisionism.
This study argues that Simsol (Exposition on the heart-mind) by Songho Yi Ik(19)(1681-1763) follows the traditional Neo-Confucian understanding of the heart-mind. Based on the structural similarity between the three layers of the heart-mind-plant, animal, and human-in his writings and in those of the Jesuit order, much previous research has claimed that he was influenced by Western learning. Although the hierarchy of plant, animal, and human first appeared in the Xunzi , it is accepted by Zhu Xi *@, and is included in the Songni taejon ri i (Compendium on nature and principle). Songho's articulation of the heart-mind followed Neo-Confucian ideas. He acknowledged that the heart-mind of plants is an allegory that refers to the existence of a pattern-principle in the world. He also described the function of the heart-mind in terms of a consciousness, ]hijue fW (K. chigak), that in animals, tends to like profit and hate loss, while in humans, it informs their sense of right and wrong. In contrast, Matteo Ricci rejected the Xunzian hierarchy of the myriad being and instead characterized living things in terms of their possession of a soul and found human beings to be unique in terms of their possession of an immortal soul, comprised of reason and free will. While Western learning may have been an inspiration for Songho in composing Simsol, his work followed a Neo-Confucian understanding of the heart-mind.
Even after two hereditary successions of power and what would appear to be preparations for a third, the question of whether North Korea should be considered a monarchy is yet to be recognized as an important one. Taking both North Korean realities and relevant political-scientific discussions of the institution of monarchy into account, this paper argues that North Korea should indeed be considered a monarchy. The monarchical model, if properly understood, may afford insight into the stability and longevity of the regime, suggest a different approach to nuclear negotiations, and produce less alarming assessments of the risk of conflict than those currently informed by the perception of a conventional personalist dictatorship.
With the growing popularity of K-pop, K-pop bands have become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. However, is the diversity of K-pop bands- referred to as K-pop diversity-genuine? This article addresses this question by examining issues related to race and color and institutional racism within the K-pop industry. The discussion consists of four parts. First, the article visits three framing ideas that guide the article's analysis, specifically Critical Race Theory (CRT), Koreanness, and neoliberal multiculturalism. Second, it examines the racial and ethnic diversity of K-pop boy and girl groups from 2010 to 2022, highlighting the implications of this trend. Third, it offers a critical analysis of EXP Edition, the first non-Korean K-pop band. Fourth, the article delves into ChoColat, the first mixed-race Korean K-pop band. Through these case studies, the article explores institutional racism, neoliberal ideas of racial diversity, and the notion of Koreanness in K-pop bands. Finally, the article discusses the future of K-pop diversity and K-pop bands regarding multiculturalism.
This study analyzes the extent to which China adhered to shifting North Korean narratives on Kim Il-sung amid turbulent bilateral relations between the two communist neighbors. It considers these ties in relation to Yuwen School, where Kim Il-sung studied during the late 1920s and early 1930s, and which historically has been a key site and symbol of bilateral exchange and cooperation. For decades, China deferred to North Korea on the sensitive issue of biographical information on Kim. However, during a recent period of strained Sino-DPRK relations, China published new material on Kim's graduation from Yuwen which represents a rare instance of China contradicting the North Korean biography of Kim. This analysis challenges DPRK narratives on the "Great Leader" from the perspective of historical and geopolitical contexts, and in so doing introduces new material which contributes both to the early biography of Kim and to recent debate on his graduation from Yuwen School. It offers a fresh perspective on the recent difficulties in the Sino-DPRK relationship, and considers how contemporary changes in this complex bilateral alliance shape the biographies of North Korean leaders.
