Eugene Y. Park. Korea: A History (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022), xiv, 414 pp. (Figures, maps, B&W photos). (original) (raw)
2005
Authors: Korea Historical Research Association (no individual names cited). Translated by Joshua Van Lieu, edited by Sajid Rizvi as part of Saffron Korea Library Series. ISBN 9781872843865. A History of Korea is a product of a particular moment in South Korean social and political history, published in the aftermath of the popular resistance movements of the late 1980s that brought an end to military dictatorship and ushered in direct elections for the presidency of South Korea. The volume is jointly written by (unnamed) historians of the Korean Historical Research Association. For further information visit http://saffronbooksandart.net/A-History-of-Korea-HB. Additional materials will be uploaded here, please revisit or Follow.
A Concise History of Korea From Antiquity to the Present Michael J. Seth
Modern Korea by the United States and the Soviet Union at the thirty-eighth parallel. Korea was divided along a totally arbitrary line that had no historical, geographical, cultural, or economic logic; just a line that conveniently separated the country into roughly two halves-dividing provinces, valleys, and families. A nation that was arguably the most ethnically homogeneous in the world, with thirteen centuries of political unity, with national and provincial boundaries older than almost any other state, was cut into halves by the two superpowers. While in theory this was only a temporary measure, almost immediately two separate regimes emerged. In 1948, the United States and the Soviet Union set up their client states: the Republic of Korea, better known as South Korea, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea. The two "Koreas" had different leaders, different political and economic systems, and different external orientations. Both saw the division as an unacceptable and temporary condition, but the attempts to unify the country led to one of the bloodiest conflicts since the end of World War II. Despite horrific destruction and loss of life, both regimes survived and continued on their markedly different trajectories of development. North Korea evolved into one of the world's most totalitarian and militant states, ruled by a family with a cult of personality unequaled in its extreme intensity. It is the world's most closed and enigmatic state, with a leadership busy developing missiles and nuclear weapons while millions of the nation's children are stunted from malnutrition. South Korea, by contrast, after a rocky and uncertain start evolved into an open, democratic society, whose spectacular economic growth and internationally competitive industries have made it an outstanding success story among the postcolonial states. Nowhere else was a nation so arbitrarily divided and the peoples of the two halves so effectively isolated from each other; nowhere else did such radically different political and social systems emerge. The boundary between the two Koreas is not only the world's most heavily armed and until recently most hermetically sealed, it marks two different living standards and lifestyles. Nowhere else is there such a sharp contrast between two contiguous states-one rich, democratic, and cosmopolitan; the other impoverished, totalitarian, and isolated. And arguably the history of no other society in the past seven decades offers such contrasting examples of how societies can undergo modern development. Korea's modern history is both a remarkable story and an incomparable example of how the interplay of historical contingency, policy choices, and cultural heritage can shape societies in contrasting ways. borrowing heavily from China. Korea is a modest-sized country surrounded by much larger neighbors: China, Japan, and Russia. The fact that it has been lodged between the important and culturally rich Chinese and Japanese societies helps account for the lack of attention its history has attracted. It has been difficult for Koreans to emerge from the shadow of their East Asian neighbors and to make their presence and their culture known to the rest of the world. Yet Korea, small as it seems next to its neighbors, is not all that small. The area of North and South Korea combined is 84,000 square miles (220,000 sq Introduction km), about the same as Utah. This sounds unimpressive, but it is also the same size as the United Kingdom and a little smaller than another peninsular society, Italy, which it roughly resembles in shape. In population today North Korea has about 25 million inhabitants and South Korea 51 million, for a total of 76 million, a little larger than those of Britain, France, or Italy, and a little smaller than that of Germany. Korea has been a part of an East Asian civilization centered in China. China was one of the earliest homes of agriculture, urbanization, state structures, and literacy. As long as three and a half millennia ago a culture emerged in northern China that was recognizably Chinese. This culture profoundly influenced its neighbors, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, to the extent that the cultures of these societies can be viewed as offshoots of Chinese civilization. Literate states emerged first in Korea and then Japan in the early centuries of the first millennium CE. From China the Koreans received their writing system. Although in the fifteenth century the Koreans invented their own unique alphabet, Chinese characters were the main means of writing until the twentieth century. The Korean language borrowed much of its higher vocabulary from Chinese, much as English borrowed most of its educated vocabulary from Latin and Greek. Koreans then brought literacy farther eastward to their Japanese neighbors. Written classical Chinese was studied by all educated Koreans before the twentieth century, and it served as the means for communicating with their Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese neighbors. China provided the model for literature, art, music, architecture, dress, and etiquette. From China Koreans imported most of their ideas about government and politics. They accepted the Chinese worldview in which China was the center of the universe and the home of all civilization, and its emperor the mediator between heaven and earth. Koreans took pride in their adherence to Chinese cultural norms. For most of the period from the seventh to the nineteenth century they accepted their country's role as a subordinate member of the international hierarchy in which China stood at the apex, loyal adherents of Chinese culture such as Korea ranked next, and the barbarians outside Chinese civilization stood at the bottom. Close adherence to civilized standards was a source of pride. But this did not result in a loss of separate identity. On the contrary, in adapting Chinese culture to their own society Koreans defined their own cultural distinctiveness. Nor did Korea's membership in the "tributary system" in which the Korean king became a vassal of the Chinese emperor mean that Korea was less than fully independent, as was sometimes misunderstood by Westerners. In fact, Koreans often fiercely resisted foreign intruders. Korea's position as a tributary state was usually ceremonial, and for Koreans it did not imply a loss of autonomy. Chinese attempts to interfere in domestic affairs were met with opposition. Indeed, some today view the Korean past as a saga of the struggles of a smaller society to resist the duty to adhere to his or her role as mother, father, son, daughter, elder brother, and so on. These relations were given cosmic significance. At a political level Confucianism emphasized the importance of loyalty, hierarchy, and authority. It made obedience to a ruler a moral duty and correctly carrying out rulership a moral obligation. It also influenced the Korean concern for social rank. Koreans viewed the world as a hierarchical order in which everyone has a place. The young were subordinate to their elders, women to men, commoners to members of the upper class, and subjects to the ruler. Yet in each of these relations both parties were bound by moral obligations. While Buddhism and Confucianism came to Korea from China, the Korean love and respect for nature has indigenous origins. Koreans have looked to the natural world-the mountains, rivers, trees, rocks, flowers, animals, and seashores-as sources of artistic and spiritual inspiration. The changing of the seasons and the beauties of nature have always been among the most popular topics of painting, poetry, and song. Prominent features of nature, especially mountains, but also rocks, trees, and rivers, were seen as sources of spiritual power. This took the form of directly Chapter
2013
/ edited and introduced by Andrew David Jackson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-25458-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Korea-Civilization. 2. Korea-History. I. Jackson, Andrew David. II. Miller, Owen. Tobacco and the gift economy of Seoul merchants in the late nineteenth century. III. University of London. Centre of Korean Studies. DS904.K43 2014 951.9-dc23 2013040501 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual "Brill" typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.
The History of Korea, 1905–1945 2021
Oxford Handbook of South Korean Politics, edited by JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho, 2021
This chapter provides an overview of key questions, issues, and debates in the scholar ship on the political history of Korea from 1905 to 1945. Japan placed Korea in protec torate status in 1905 and colonized the country in 1910. After nearly forty years under colonial rule, the dominant narrative in the scholarship in South Korea from 1945 to the mid-1980s focused on Japanese colonial oppression and the Korean struggle against it to achieve national independence. The focus of this chapter is on subsequent approaches that have supplemented, qualified, challenged, and refined interpretations of this era. These include analysis of the causes behind the emergence of modern nationalism in Ko rea; the internal political polarization between left and right and the internal conflicts within each camp that formed the domestic foundations for the division of the Korean Peninsula after 1945; the bureaucratization that, according to some scholars, served as the template for the developmental state that emerged in South Korea during the 1960s; and the dissolution of absolute monarchy as a viable system of governance in the post-1945 period.
Studies on Korea: A Scholar's Guide (review)
Korean Studies, 1982
ing and seems incongruous at first glance. Still, the field is an important one that is often overlooked, and it would not fit into any other chapter. There is no chapter on modern technology to which it could serve as a prologue. Therefore it is a welcome addition to the chapter on history.
Nineteen papers by European, Korean, and American scholars, most of them former students or otherwise connected with SOAS, who had presented their research in seminars and conferences at the CKS. They were selected and organized into four parts according to research areas, namely 1. History, 2. North Korea, 3. Literature, Philosophy and Society, and 4. Music, Heritage and Art.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2017
Despite its alternate fortunes during the past century, the term geopolitics has seen a considerable success in the last two decades. In this informative and updated book, structured in eleven chapters, Black explores many aspects of the "spatial dynamics of power," expanding its historical horizon to find geopolitical precursors in ancient China and Rome, especially during the last 500 years, in Chapters 2 to 5. To such chronological and geographical extension corresponds a more general approach to the subject: Given that the ambiguities of the term and its use by politicians, diplomats, advisors, journalists, etc., are well known to political geographers, Black refuses to be constrained by disciplinary borders. Solidly grounded in many decades of historical and interdisciplinary readings, he considers the complex relations between power and space, and their perception, from a plurality of angles, ranging from the history of international relations and cartography to diplomatic and military history, to that of science and technology, etc. He even draws a few examples from the history of cinema, literature, and the arts. The book is thus a precious reference work that certainly enriches the historical and geographical horizon of political geographers, political scientists, historians, and scholars from other disciplines. Historical geographers will appreciate the richness of Black's historical contextualizations in Chapters 6 to 9 and will recognize the usefulness of extending the analysis backward, in order to balance the historical role of the British Empire and the usual criticism centered on U.S. hegemony. They will also appreciate the attention given not just to the geopolitics "of the land" but also to that of the seas and the air, as well as to the spatial implications of many technological innovations in transport and weaponry. Furthermore, in addition to his inevitable emphasis on British and German geopolitics, Black also gives attention to the American, French, and other national traditions, though in a more fragmented way. Indeed, Black would have found useful inspiration in the work of Harold and Margaret Sprout and in Jean Gottmannʼs The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville, 1973). 1 Nonetheless, when confronted with the bulk of historical and political geographies, the book systematically accounts for most of the various ideological positions, debates, and controversies, opening the way to a number of interesting theoretical questions that are sometimes underplayed in the mainstream literature: Why does the common geopolitical unit of analysis have to be limited to the state seen as a monolithic entity? Why limit geopolitics to the global scale and not consider also the subnational scale, if international and domestic events are so often
The Middle Ground Journal
Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910Korea, -1945 demonstrates that the debate over the legacy of that era will last far longer. This thought-provoking collection of essays analyzes the blurred boundaries between colonization, modernization, nationalism, and native agency that emerged during Korea's time under Japanese rule. At its core, this work is a response to a long-running historiographical debate about the legacy of Japanese imperialism in Korea. On one side of the debate is a nationalist approach,