Abstract
Immanuel Wallerstein had tenaciously attempted to reorganize the academic system which had been deeply affected by colonial and the Cold-War thinking. Succeeding his theory’s critical momentum, I propose “Critical Korean Studies” not by integrating various disciplines into a huge united world-system analysis but by constructing new academic narratives from “small” case studies. In this paper, I illustrate the outline of Critical Korean Studies with examples of two ongoing projects: a biography of a North Korean linguist, Kim Su-Gyŏng, and a historical ethnography of the relationship between a Korean School in Japan and a local community of Ginkakuji area in Kyoto. Critical Korean Studies describes intersectional experiences surrounding concrete elements, in these cases a person or a place, with the prospect of opening them towards world history beyond the limitations of regions, eras, disciplines, and methodologies. Resisting mainstream Japanese discourses on Korea and Koreans in Japan, which are deeply affected by colonialism and the Cold War frames, this paper illustrates a genealogy and a vision of Critical Korean Studies.
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