Modern Identity Narration in An Chae-hong’s Cho-seon Hak Studies(Korean Studies) and Jeong Yak-yong in 1930’s

Abstract

When An Chae-hong was developing Cho-seon Hak Studies(Korean Studies) in the mid 1930s, he took notice of Jeong Yak-yong. Cho-seon Hak movement in An Chae-hong’s case was ‘self-establishment’, which was a discourse in modern enlightment which had a narrative of making modern identity. Here Jeong was placed as the archetype of modern reformation who pursued an independent identity and confronted with conservative doctrines of Chu-tzu. Jeong was the person who compiled land reform and social reformism mainly focused on farmers’ interests. An Chae-hong named Jeong Yak-yong as a Hundred Day’s progressive, and a national and social democrat because Jeong Yak-yong connected modern nation state historically which An Chae-hong aimed at.BR An Chae-hong’s narration of modern reformation found the tradition of reform in Silhak, Realist School of Confucianism which was the center of a unique ‘nation’. This meant that it denied the situation of Japanese ‘nation’ and in pursuing Korean ‘nation-state’s independent establishment of it, it sought a independent modern Korean nation- state’s intrinsic and single-handed ideology base in Silhak which was pursuing Korean modern state thought. It also supported the ideology that the identity of a people was the center of independent modern nation-state.