KOREA: FOCUSING ON TEXTBOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE GOVERNMENT-GENERAL OF KOREA

Abstract

Although imposing the Japanese language on the colonies of imperial Japan was the rule in its education and language policies in Taiwan, Korea, and other countries within the hanmun, (i.e. tongmun) cultural sphere, the idea of a “common literary language” (tongmun, 同文) was used as a means of supplementing Japanese colonial rule. While Japan promoted the slogan of “same letters, same race” (tongmun tongjong, 同文同種) to combine its colonies as one nation through sharing a common literary language, more diverse aspects of tongmun could be applied to colonial rule over Korea as both nations shared a method of transcribing hanmun (漢文) into their native languages. This similarity in the relationship of both nations’ native languages with hancha (漢字) was the setting in which Korea the colonized and Japan the colonizer shared a cultural ideal in which they integrated Western learning with classical hanmun in their native languages. This can be seen as a unique cultural mechanism of colonized Korea best represented by the textbooks produced by the Government-General of Korea. In addition, translation was the main mediating device for realizing this ideal. This study presents the composition and translations of the Chosŏnŏ kŭp hanmun (Korean and hanmun) readers published by the Japanese Government-General and discusses the proportion and significance of translation in the compilation of the textbooks. This study proposes that imperial Japan attempted to impose a new “common literary language” order in place of China’s and assigned the Korean language the status of a vehicle for translating Japanese and classical hanmun.