Korean Nationalism Research Articles

The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915 by Sung-Deuk Oak (review)

Reviewed by: The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915 by Sung-Deuk Oak Deberniere Torrey The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876–1915, by Sung-Deuk Oak, Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013, xxv, 411p. The dustcover photograph of missionary Samuel A. Moffett standing with Kil Sŏnju, the charismatic leader of the Pyŏngyang revivals, is a fitting introduction to Sung-Deuk Oak’s narrative of the engagement between Christian theology and the religion and culture of early modern Korea. Oak sets out to correct the impression that the first Protestant missionaries to Korea were proponents of cultural imperialism and a rigid theology that molded Korean Christianity into the conservatism for which it is known today. Oak introduces his thesis by pointing out that this faulty impression results from scholars’ over-reliance on Arthur J. Brown’s disparaging comments of 1919 depicting Protestant missionaries as austere and intellectually conservative, and the first Korean Christians as blindly imitating this attitude. Oak suggests that Brown’s comments were likely tainted by his conflict with missionaries in Pyŏngyang over administrative issues, and are not supported by the historical evidence, which he then presents in the body of this monograph as a process of theological exploration and negotiation between missionaries and Koreans, resulting in a distinctly Korean Protestantism. Oak draws a variety of related elements into each section of his discussion, thematically organized around topics such as, “God,” “Saviors,” “Spirits,” and “Ancestors.” Some chapters are more coherent than others, but overall, Oak’s multifaceted approach, drawing on a wide range of material new to contemporary English-language scholarship, offers an informative and thought-provoking glimpse into the formative period of Korean Protestantism, helping to correct simplistic assumptions about the missionary-Korea encounter. Appropriately, the narrative opens with the search for a Korean name for God. In Chapter One, Oak relates how Protestant missionaries and Korean converts finally settled on “Hanănim,” drawn from the pantheon of Korean folk religion, but given the new meaning of “The One Great One,” thanks to the similarity between the various spellings of the original term and hana (one). The Koreanization of God went further than simple terminology, however. Prominent missionaries ascribed to a “fulfillment theory” that attributed the origin of Korean religions to a primitive monotheism, and offered a biblical [End Page 136] interpretation of the Tan’gun myth that suggested the Christian Hanănim was the god worshiped by Korea’s founders. Thus, Christianity was a fulfillment of Korean religious aspirations. This Christian-inspired “rediscovery” of Korea’s religious roots coincided with a growing nationalist sentiment against the traditional domination of China and the new threat of Japanese imperialism, further wedding Protestant Christianity to an emerging modern Korean identity. Chapter Two describes how the symbol of the cross and Christian messianism coincided with cryptic messages in the Chŏnggam-nok, a popular book foretelling the end of the Yi dynasty and the coming of a messianic figure. Oak suggests that the rapid growth of Protestantism corresponding to a series of political and natural disasters leading up to the end of the Chosŏn may be partly attributed to this coincidence between Christian iconography and popular imagination. For instance, references in the Chŏnggam-nok to mysterious sipsŭngjiji (“place of the victory of ten”) as places of refuge during the coming disasters drew many people to the Protestant churches with their crosses, shaped like the Chinese character for ten. Images of Korean patriots executed by the Japanese on cross-shaped frames also linked the cross to Korean nationalism, further associating Christian iconography with popular hopes for the future. The next two chapters focus on encounters between missionaries and the traditional Korean practices of shamanism and ancestor worship. In Chapter Three, Oak describes how the Protestant missionaries’ “initially rationalistic and modern worldview was transformed by [the encounter with] shamanism” (p. 183), compelling them to develop a theology that accounted for spirit possession and exorcism. Missionaries such as Hulbert, Gale, and Underwood were among the first to study Korean shamanism. One outcome of this Christian approach to spirit manifestation was that Korean “Bible Women,” some of whom had been...

Green Growth, Neoliberalism and Conflicting Hegemonic Interests: The Case of Korea

The 2009 South Korean Presidential Committee on Green Growth set a long-term vision for South Korea to “go green.” The Green Growth Korea (GGK) initiative has been instrumental in the formation of the international Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI). The initiative is heralded as a qualitatively new and exportable growth paradigm. The paper argues that the narrative on “newness” is a myth and that green growth represents a continuity of elite-led responses to the contradictions of capital accumulation in the South Korean developmentalist state. These splits in hegemonic “leadership” are a result of the uneven relationship between domestic and transnational Chaebol interests, and the political interests of the developmentalist state and the promotion of South Korea as “global Korea.” This is creating an economy based on a developmentalist model that has provided the conditions for a decoupling of the economy from big business interests, which have been integral to developmentalist success. These economic interests remain reliant on the economic and political policies of the developmentalist state, which these interests are undermining. Green growth is an elite-led narrative that obscures these elite conflicts under the banner of Korean green growth nationalism.

Mothers and Maidens: Gendered Formation of Revolutionary Heroes in North Korea

North Korean political discourse is distinctive in its application of maternalism across genders in which motherhood is depicted as an ideal model for men as well as women. This article seeks to explain how motherhood has been redefined in the process of North Korean nation building, and what influences this process has had on the formation of gendered identities as part of modern subjectivity. The following research examines two of the three so-called great classics of anti-Japanese revolutionary works, Sea of Blood (P’ibada) and The Flower Girl (Kkot p’anŭn ch’ŏnyŏ), to compare the two female heroines and their roles as consummate revolutionaries. Reported to have originated as stage plays during the 1930s anticolonial guerrilla struggle in Manchuria, throughout the 1970s the plays developed into films, live operatic performances, and finally novels. While the works may officially serve to project images of national unity against imperialism, they raise interesting questions about the role of gender in postcolonial state formation. By comparing the mother in Sea of Blood and the maiden in The Flower Girl, this article explores the significance of gender in the construction of modern militarized citizenship in North Korea.

The Colonial State, Migration, and Diasporic Nationhood in Korea

AbstractStudies of European colonialism have long documented how colonial states served as incubators of nationhood, yet the literature has limited its analytic scope largely to the encounters and ethnic mixings that took place within the territorial boundaries of colonies. This article examines a hitherto understudied phenomenon, the colonial state's trans-border engagement with its subjects who left the territorial unit of the colony and its impact on the contested development of diasporic nationhood. My empirical focus is the shifting trajectories of the classification struggles over Korean migrants in Manchuria during Japan's occupation of Korea. I identify the tumultuous and uneven development of specific legal, organizational, and bureaucratic infrastructures that helped the colonial state extend its trans-border reach and define and identify these migrants as “its own,” often against suspicion, sabotage, hostility, and resistance on the part of other states, indigenous populations, or migrants themselves. I argue that the colonial state's extensive and intensive transborder engagement provided a critical institutional scaffolding for the imagined community of the Korean nation, which came to be conceived as transcending the geographical boundary of the colony. This article contributes to the comparative studies of empire, migration, diaspora, and nationhood formation by challenging the prevalent sedentary bias of the existing literature, by elucidating the critical infrastructural underpinning of the formation of diasporic nationhood, and by extending the horizon of comparison to the political dynamics and long-term ramifications engendered by the migration of, not only metropolitan settlers, but also colonial subjects, within and beyond the ambit of the empire.

New Women and Modern Girls: consuming foreign goods in colonial Seoul

Purpose– During the 1920s and 1930s in the colonial city of Seoul, a group of women called the New Women and the Modern Girls expressed their modern identities by wearing different clothing, hairstyles and make-up; visiting cafés; viewing Western movies; and consuming other foreign merchandise. While these women were admired by many women as being pioneers of modernity, they were severely criticized by others under the pretext that they indulged their vanity without considering the economy of their families and their colonized nation. These criticisms continue in twenty-first century Korea. Based on the striking similarity between the two eras, an understanding of the consumption and the criticisms of the Modern Girls could provide a historical context for understanding women's experiences in the consumer culture of twenty-first century Korea. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– As secondary sources, literature published in both English and Korean was included. Primary data were obtained from articles in Korean newspapers, magazines and print advertisements from the 1920s and 1930s.Findings– The New Women and Modern Girls expressed their modern identities by consuming various fashion goods, including Western-style clothes, make-up and various accessories, adopting Western hairstyles and frequenting modern cafés, theaters and department stores. However, their behaviors escaped the boundaries of the “wise mother, good wife” ideology, and they were severely criticized by those adhering to the neo-Confucianism and Korean nationalist ideology that was deeply rooted in Korean society. Thus, the reputations of the Modern Girls were tainted and the individuals were stigmatized.Originality/value– This research illuminates the negative aspects of self-expressive consumption, showing how individualistic, identity-driven consumption can be stigmatized in the collectivistic culture of Korea that is rooted in neo-Confucian nationalism.

Rethinking Feminism in Colonial Korea: Kang Kyǒngae and 1930s Socialist Women's Literature

In the early 1930s, a new group of women writers with a leftist inclination emerged on the Korean literary scene. Some critics have questioned the feminist commitment of these writers, suggesting that their works may have subordinated the cause of women's liberation to that of a socialist revolution. In critically assessing this view, this article embeds the works of women writers in their contemporary social and cultural context. The focus of discussion throughout are the works of Kang Kyǒngae, perhaps the most prominent and representative writer of the group. Leftist women such as Kang, it is argued, espoused socialism not as an alternative to feminism but as a variant feminist outlook in order to address the interest of lower-class women. Kang's portraits of proletarian women contested from a class perspective the contemporary cult of domesticity, which was promoted by both colonial authorities and Korean nationalists. And while Kang refrained from openly confronting the socialist patriarchy, she criticized it in its quotidian form, the chauvinism of leftist male intellectuals. Alongside a socialist commitment, the suggestion is that leftist women's literature had a genuinely feminist function within the discursive environment of colonial Korea.

The beginnings of modern education in Korea, 1883–1910

Korea opened up to foreign intercourse in 1876, when the country concluded its first international treaty with Japan. Similar treaties with European and American nations followed during the 1880s. The period until 1910, when Korea was annexed to the Japanese Empire, saw manifold attempts to reform as well as resistance to these reforms. Against the background of research on the world institutionalisation of education, this contribution analyses the changes that the opening of Korea entailed in the field of education, especially focusing on newly established forms of education. First, modern education was characterised by newly created institutions and curricula. These institutions can be classified according to the actors engaged in their creation, private Korean citizens, foreign missionary actors and the Korean government. Second, new educational discourses and practices characterised modern education in Korea. These new discourses played a central role in negotiating Korean nationalism and in culturally positioning Korea between China and the “West”. Bodily practices were radically changed through uniforms, new hairstyles and military drills. A new system of classroom interaction was introduced to Korea.

단기연호 법제화의 민족사 및 문명사적 의미에 관하여

단기연호 법제화의 민족사 및 문명사적 의미에 관하여

Rivalries: China, Japan and South Korea – Memory, Modernity, Politics, Geopolitics – and Sport

Sport is an effective modern means for revealing a country's political preoccupations and geopolitical concerns. For China, Japan and South Korea, the pre-eminent countries in the recent Asian Games, sport has become a sharp tool for promoting nationalism and national identity. There is a history of bitter rivalry between these countries, not least, due to Japan's occupation of Korea and the Second Sino-Japanese War, the largest Asian war in the twentieth century. Consequently, a prominent characteristic of Korean and Chinese nationalism is anti-Japanese antipathy. This essay examines China–Japan–Korea rivalry through global sports events hosted in Asia during the past decade cumulating in the Guangzhou Asian Games. Here, the focus is on the use of these events as manifestations of resentment and revenge arising out of historic rivalries. This use may well grow in intensity as these nations grow in wealth, confidence and power as the EAST ASIAN EPOCH comes closer. This essay is the first to draw attention to the tripartite politics of sport as confrontation in the region's past, present and future.

Contested Heritage: The “Yanghwajin Controversy” and Korean Protestantism

In 2007, the Yanghwajin cemetery in Seoul, Korea became the site of a controversy between the mostly foreign Seoul Union Church and the Hundredth Anniversary Memorial Church, formed by the Committee for the Celebration of the Hundredth Anniversary of the Korean Church. The controversy, ostensibly over the care of the foreigners’ cemetery and possession of a chapel built to commemorate a century of Protestant Christianity in Korea, is also a conflict over the heritage represented by the missionaries buried in the cemetery. Though missionary graves make up less than a quarter of the graves at Yanghwajin, the cemetery has become a site of heritage for the Korean Protestant Church. As such, the narratives told there hold enormous sway. In this essay I examine the narratives emerging from the controversy, to determine what they say about the role of missionaries in Korean history, the legacy of those missionaries today, and the relationship of the church to Korea’s modernization. I argue that these narratives selectively craft the story of early missionaries in response to Korean nationalist historiography in an effort to assert the relevance of the Korean Protestant Church to Korean modernization and historical memory.

Korean Nationalism and National Identity: A Comparison to New Zealand

Korean Nationalism and National Identity: A Comparison to New Zealand

Kim Hyong Jik’s Idea of “Jiwon” (Aim High) and the Korean National Association

The purpose of this paper is to examine the life and activities of Kim Hyong Jik—father of Kim Il Sung—and the guiding principle of“Jiwon”created by him to help lead the anti-Japanese liberation movement. Jiwon’ of Kim Hyong Jik who waged undaunted struggle for national liberation in spite of the hideous repression under the occupation of Japanese imperialists. Even today in the 21st century I put emphasis on Kim Hyong Jik’s“Jiwon”because this idea enables us to recover the identity of the Korean History.“Jiwon”helps us recover the identity of the Korean nation because at its core lies love for the country, nation and people, which has been the traditional spirit inherent to the Korean nation. Today the North and the South of Korea maintain different stands for their respective political systems and ideals. Nevertheless,Koreahas one and the same identity. That is the nationalist spirit inherent to the Korean nation. I hold we should keep in mind that“Jiwon”reflected this anti-Japanese nationalist spirit which identifies the Korean history. I deem it essential to recover this nationalist spirit in the history of division, in which the North and South have remained divided with different systems and ideals.Through the activities of the Korean National Association, Kim Hyong Jik’s“Jiwon”was not simply a theory for its own sake, but a practical crystallization in history. In view of his anti-Japanese revolutionary movement and his activities as a patriotic educationist, I deem it necessary to evaluate Kim Hyong Jik as a historical figure who put forward a historical idea and put it into reality.

일제말기 일본어문학의 재정립과 임순득의 (재)발견, 그리고 또 다시보기: - 「대모」(名付親, 1942)를 중심으로 = A Study on the Japanese as Depicted in the Literature of Joseon Korean in the Last Period of Japanese Imperialism: Im Sun-Deuk and “A Godmother” (“Nazukeoya,” 1942)

Since the beginning of the new millennium, literary critics have tried to view Japanese literature in its Korean colony as a dual-language literature, not pro-Japanese. Im Sun-Deuk is one of the writers focused on in that process. Among her works, “A Godmother” is especially notable. Most preceding studies analyzed the writer Im Sun-Deuk as expressing national liberation and women’s liberation under the domination of the Japanese Empire. These studies have important meaning for those who tore off the “pro-Japan” label that had been pasted without reservation on the authors of works in the period of Japan’s violent occupation, especially on authors who wrote in the Japanese language. Such labeling missed the way that these studies applied a dichotomous frame of cooperation/resistance to the writers or works from the period of the violent Japanese occupation. But the issue boils down to this. The one-sided view established toward Im Sun-Deuk and the fallacy of applying it so translations were continued steadily in every aspect. There are many reasons that studies must continue on the question of her supposed anti-nationalism and the question of whether or not to include her and her works in the identity of the Korean nation and finally to re-evaluate the contradictory situation and the dual attitude and resolve it.

<디 워>, 매혹의 영화

<디 워>는 실패한 블록버스터인가? 내용과 형식에 있어서 이 영화의 가치에 대해 재고의 여지는 남아 있지 않은가? 이 연구는 이러한 의문에 대한 답을 제공하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 2007년 심형래 감독의 <디 워>는 영화 자체에 대한 평가보다는 영화를 둘러싼 민족주의 담론으로 평단과 관객의 이목을 집중시켰으나, 이야기와 형식 모두에서 분명 기존의 한국형 블록버스터와 차이를 보이면서 850만이라는 투입 대비 다소 실망스러운 박스오피스 성공과 민족주의에 경도된 일부 관객들의 열광적인 지지, 그리고 영화의 예술성과 완성도에 대한 평단의 비판적 시각이라고 하는 부조화스러우면서도 이해하기 어려운 결과를 낳았다. 결국 <디 워>는 문화적으로 논쟁거리를 제공했을 뿐 산업계와 비평계에서는 별다른 주목을 받지 못한 영화로 남겨졌다. 그러나 한 가지 흥미로운 점은 <디 워>를 지지하는 관객들과 비판적인 시각을 견지한 평론가들 사이에 한 가지 공통된 시각이 있다는 점이다. 그것은 <디 워>의 스펙터클이 한국 관객의 기대 이상으로, 그리고 스토리 전개와 불균형을 이룰 정도로 불거졌다는 것을 양자 모두 인정하고 있다는 것이다. 내러티브를 압도하는 <디 워>의 스펙터클은 일면 팬들을 열광시키는 동시에 평론가들로 하여금 이 영화를 외면하게 만드는 원인을 제공하기도 한 것이다. 이러한 맥락에서, 이 연구는 <디 워>의 예술적/이론적/비평적 가치에 논쟁을 불러일으킨 이러한 측면, 즉 '내러티브를 압도하는 스펙터클' 내지는 '스펙터클을 보여주기 위한 구실로서 존재하는 내러티브'라는 영화의 미학적 특성을 살펴보고 이를 통해 작품성의 측면에서 실패작으로 치부되어 온 <디 워>에 일말의 비평적 가치를 제고하는 데에 그 목적이 있다. 또한 <디 워>는 "기존의 영화비평 방식을 통해 접근해갈 수 없는 새로운 범주에 속하는 영상물"임을 제시하고 결과적으로 새로운 개념적 틀을 통해 비평적 평가를 받을 수 있는 기회를 제공하는 데에 이 연구의 의의가 있다 하겠다. <디 워>의 서사미학을 밝히기 위해 스펙터클 중심적인 서사성(narrativity)의 미학, 내지는 내러티브보다 스펙터클을 더 중시하는 제작 양식을 일컫는 앙드레 고드로(Andre Gaudreault)의 '기교성(trickality)'이라는 개념과 이러한 미학이 지배하는 영화를 가리키는 톰 거닝(Tom Gunning)의 '매혹의 영화(the cinema of attractions)'라는 개념을 살펴볼 것이다. Is <D-War> a failed blockbuster film? Is there no room for reconsideration of the value of the film in terms of its contents and forms? The purpose of this study is to answer these questions. In 2007, SHIM Hyung-rae's <D-War> was in the limelight due to the nationalist discourse around the film rather than evaluation of the film itself. In terms of its narrative and formal properties, the film showed the difference from the Korean nationalist blockbuster films. It led to the disaccord and hard-to-understand results of having somewhat disappointed box-office success of 8,500,000 audiences in comparison to the input, of receiving well by a generous part of the audiences absorbed by nationalism, and of getting the critics' cynic criticism of the film's cinematic value. Eventually <D-War> only provided the cultural battlefield of nationalism, was left as an unnoticed film in the realm of industry and criticism. However, it was interesting that there was a common ground between the film's supporters and the cynic critics. Both sides were being acknowledged that the spectacle of <D-War> was way out of proportion to the degree that the spectacle was unbalanced with the story unfolding, achieved more than expected. Its spectacle overwhelming the narrative enfever a few audiences, and at the same time, it provided some reasons making critics face away from the film. In this context, the purpose of this study is to examine <D-War>'s aesthetics that 'the spectacle dominating narrative' or 'the narrative as a pretext for showing spectacle,' leading to discussion of artistic/theoretical/critical value and to find out cinematic value of the film being regarded as a failure. In addition, this study is significant in that it suggests that <D-War> is a new kind of moving image that it cannot be analyzed with existed critical methods of narrative film criticism; as a result, this study provides the chance to be evaluated through a new conceptual frame of the film. In order to grasp the narratological aesthetics, this study focuses on the concept of trickality that Andre Gaudreault suggests, and Tom Gunning's 'the cinema of attractions,' referring to the spectacle-oriented narrativity or the mode of production displaying the spectacle more than the narrative.

Let Morning Shine over Pyongyang: The Future-Oriented Nationalism of North Korea's Arirang Mass Games

The Arirang Mass Games are one of North Korea's most spectacular forms of cultural expression, comprised of breathtaking displays of music, dance, and gymnastics that can involve up to 100,000 participants. Although the content of the performance is avowedly nationalistic, the overall musical and theatrical concept is not native to North Korea at all, but rather blends elements from a variety of sources, including many from the West. Here, I argue that this seeming paradox can be resolved by viewing North Korean nationalism as primarily future-oriented, with a focus on the promised utopian society yet to come.

The politics of China studies in South Korea: A critical examination of South Korean historiography of modern China since 1945

This paper argues that the South Korean scholarship on modern Chinese history since 1945 can be characterized as apolitical with its objectivism, positivism, liberalism, and anti-communist nationalism. This characteristic is a product of not only the Cold War and the military regimes of South Korea but also the political orientation and stance of the senior historians who played an initial and decisive role in determining the goal, direction, and research methods of South Korean studies concerning modern China. The South Korean perspective they promoted usually meant the study of liberal, apolitical topics in Chinese history from a nationalist perspective without any political/ideological influences. The utility of modern Chinese history has mainly lain in helping to construct an anti-socialist, modern Korean nation–state through modernization. South Korean historians of modern China, the paper argues, have not been able to induce a meaningful, broad discussion of critical historical issues in modern China as they might pertain to South Korean society, thus failing to utilize them to help challenge and transform the undemocratic South Korean society and regimes. Hence, the future success of new academic undertakings since the 1990s by South Korean historians will be determined by whether or not they are able to make a radical break from the previous scholarship, in particular, from its objectivism and nationalism.

Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea (review)

Reviewed by: Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea Hee An Choi, Clinical Assistant Professor of Practical Theology, Director of the Anna Howard Shaw (Research) Center Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea. By Timothy S. Lee, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2010, xvi, 228 p. From 1885 to the present, Christianity has shown extraordinary growth as one of the most influential religions in South Korea. It was rapidly indigenized and transformed through its encounter with Korean culture. Because of the unparalleled success of Christianity and its influence upon Korean society, especially in contrast with other religions, there are numerous theories concerning the nature and causes of its extraordinary growth. Throughout this book, Timothy S. Lee brings a new perspective to this issue and gives special attention to the role of evangelical Protestantism, providing critical and in-depth [End Page 194] analysis of the political, socio-cultural and theological factors involved in the growth of Christianity in Korea. By focusing on specific periods of time in the history of Korean Christianity, he offers three sub-theses in each chapter that he uses to explain the success of Korean evangelicalism: 1) "it appealed powerfully to multitudes of Koreans as a religion of salvation" (xiv); 2) "it interacted sympathetically with Korean nationalism and South Korean anti-communism" (xiv); and 3) it involved unrelenting "proselytization efforts" (xv). This provocative framework brings readers to a broader and more multidimensional understanding of Korean evangelism, its role in the growth of Korean Christianity, and its impact on Korean society. In the first chapter, Lee explores the early history of Christianity in Korea by focusing on a specific historical event, the March First Independence Movement, as well as on the spiritual revivals taking place in the period from the 1880s to the end of the 1910s. He considers this period as a "breakthrough for a new moral order." Because of the social and political turmoil of the latter years of Chosŏn, many national leaders as well as ordinary people sought out new ideologies. Because of this trend, the Catholic Church, for example, persevered, survived, and even grew during this period, even though Catholics were at this time being persecuted and tortured. When Protestant missionaries arrived in Korea during this time of complex national and international upheaval, they promoted the Christian faith as a way of saving the "souls of Koreans." To thwart the Korean independence movement, Protestant missionaries attempted to turn the people's attention to revivals and urged Korean Christians to stay away from political movements. Lee uses the Million Movement and the great revival to illustrate how the missionaries' efforts to save the souls of Koreans also deflected them from involvement in the fight for Korean independence. While missionaries tried to show the superiority of Christianity over Koreanized indigenous religions and culture, they were also caught in a dilemma over whether to support Korean independence or be silent about Japanese colonial violence. However, it was inevitable that Korean Christians would become involved in the political fight for Korean independence, despite the missionaries' efforts to prevent them. Lee illustrates how Korean church leaders actively participated in the Korean political movement and how missionaries were finally compelled to become involved in supporting Korean [End Page 195] nationalism, pointing to the March First Independence Movement as a turning point. In the second chapter, Lee seeks to explain Korean Christianity and its conflicts with other religions and communism during the period from 1920 to 1953. He points to the lives of three spiritual leaders (Kil Sŏnju, Kim Iktu, and Yi Yongdo) as examples of how evangelical thought influenced Korean Christianity during this period. As Korean evangelicalism became involved in conflicts among missionaries, Koreans, and Japanese, it also became a force in the struggle between evangelicals and communists in North Korea. While North Korea persecuted Christians and denounced American imperialism through Christianity, evangelicalism continued to grow in South Korea, with evangelical revivals being used as a major tool for promoting Christianity. In describing these revivals, Lee introduces the three spiritual leaders, Kil Sŏnju, Kim Iktu, and Yi Yongdo. He characterizes Kil Sŏnju as propagating the millenarian belief in the second coming of Christ, Kim Iktu as primarily a faith...

A Comparison on Indonesian and South Korean Nationalism: a Historical Perspective

Nasionalisme memainkan peranan penting dalam segala aspek dinamika masyarakat, baik di Indonesia maupun di Korea Selatan. Nasionalisme di dua negara itu dipertajam oleh perjuangan menentang pemerintah kolonial. Indonesia menghadapi kolonial Belanda dan Jepang, sedangkan Korea Selatan menghadapi kolonial Jepang. Di samping itu, kedua negara itu didominasi oleh konflik dengan berbagai macam kekuatan asing serta konflik dengan partai komunis di negaranya masing-masing. Untuk mencapai kemerdekaan negara dan identitas nasionalnya masing-masing Indonesia dan Korea Selatan berjuang menentang kekuatan asing dan berusaha mengatasi konflik di dalam negaranya. Oleh karena itu, ada persamaan dan perbedaan antara kedua negara itu. Persamaannya adalah kedua negara itu sama-sama berhasil dalam menciptakan nasionalisme. Perbedaannya, nasionalisme di Indonesia ada dalam pengaruh dua dunia, yaitu blok barat dan blok timur, sedangkan nasionalisme di Korea Selatan ada dalam pengaruh blok barat.

Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (review)

Reviewed by: Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways Lee-Ellen Strawn, Ph.D Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways. By Hyaeweol Choi, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, xv + 280p. Through her book, Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways, Hyaeweol Choi has contributed substantially to the complex academic discourse on mission history and modernization in Korean society at the turn of the twentieth century. With the assumption that historical truth is never simplistic, Choi lets the facts speak for themselves to illustrate a cross-cultural women’s history of this time period that is multifaceted and new to many readers. She challenges the prevailing notion that Protestant western women missionaries to Korea were the molders of the emerging new Korean womanhood. Moreover, with much textual evidence, Choi explains how Korean women were caught in the vortex of a Korean nationalist sentiment and patriarchal Confucian and Protestant cultural contexts, yet forged paths to modern selfhood. However, neither does Choi dismiss women missionaries as merely agents of western imperialism; rather, she carefully points to the development of self-hood among the women missionaries themselves. Thus, the reader is given a layered picture of the lives of Korean women and women missionaries that depicts mutual transformation through meaningful mutual encounters. By highlighting the “transcultural context” of western missionary work with women in Korea, and by asserting that this context became the “contact zone” for the meeting of ideas concerning modern womanhood, Choi’s work does for the Korean situation what Jane Hunter’s The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China did for the Chinese. Thus, in line with broader research trends, Choi’s work is somewhat of a revisionist mission history that also breaks ground in highlighting the voices and historical agency of both Korean women and western women missionaries. Choi does this by focusing on different issues concerning gender formation in modern Korean society. After explaining modern gender formation as one of the key agendas for Korean society at the turn of the twentieth century, Chapter 2 takes up gender equality as “a new moral order” that propelled both the Korean nationalist agenda of building a new sovereign society and the missionary agenda of evangelizing the Protestant gospel message. Yet, for both the nationalists and the [End Page 163] missionaries, gender equality was subservient to these larger goals and was not seen as valuable in and of itself. Thus, Choi ably demonstrates the tension and contradictions between the ideal of gender equality and its practical implementation in both the Korean nationalist and missionary agendas. Chapter 3 explores the private and public spheres as spaces in which both Korean women and western women missionaries negotiated their efficacy with and against the male agendas of nation-building and Protestant Christendom-building. Chapter 4 illustrates how modern educational institutions for Korean women, many of which were started by women missionaries, became the cradle for an emerging modern Korean womanhood fired in part by tensions with women missionaries themselves, whose Victorian notions of gender fit well with the prevailing Confucian gender ideology. Chapter 5 gives greater insight into missionary thinking, both that of women and men missionaries, by analyzing fiction authored by missionaries in Korea during the time of modernity formation. Choi shows that the western missionary sentiment frequently echoed the traditional Confucian gender and family ideology. Therefore, the Korean New Women (Sin Yŏsŏng) of the 1920s and 1930s, whose contributions are discussed in Chapter 6, often acted independently and against missionary and Korean nationalist elements at the time. This awarded these New Women the disapproval of both their missionary mentors and the Korean nationalist movement as they were shifting from an emphasis on a “collective identity in pursuit of an individual self ” (176). The resulting picture that emerges from Choi’s skillful and sound interpretations is that neither the missionary scene nor the Korean one was monolithic. Women missionaries often felt contradictions between the traditional gender norms they espoused for the Korean women they assisted, the patriarchal theology and practice of their mission boards, and the actual trajectory of their own lives, which was a...

Perspectives for the Treaty Closing the Korean War

The Korean Peninsula has a strategic place in East Asia. According to Korean historic sources the early beginnings of Korean statehood can be traced back many centuries before Christ. Korean history, when considering some events, has some similarities to the history of Poland. Very often Koreans, during the official meetings compare their historic struggles with ours, for example times of partitions and fi ghting against numerous occupying powers. In the past due to its geographic location, Korea had to continuously withstand the expansion of its neighbours, especially China and Japan. Particularly painful was the period of fighting against the Japanese invader at the beginning of 20th century, when after the annexation of Korea, the Japanese were imposing the policy of assimilation and were trying to completely colonize this country. It has unleashed very strong nationalist sentiments within the Korean nation.