Tu-ki Min

Tu-ki Min
Born	November 2, 1932 Haenam County, Zenranan-dō, Korea, Empire of Japan
Died	May 7, 2000
Occupation(s)	historian, educator
Academic background
Education	Seoul National University

Tu-ki Min (Korean: 민두기; Hanja: 閔斗基; Korean pronunciation : [min.du.gi]; November 2, 1932 – May 7, 2000) was a South Korean scholar, historian, and honorary professor at Seoul National University. He is known as the founder of modern Chinese history in South Korea.

Min contributed to the development of sinology in Korea by establishing the Society for Asian Historical Studies, a representative Korean academic organization for East Asian Studies. Moreover, Min received numerous awards for his research in Chinese history including Korea Book Award, National Academy of Sciences Award, Kumho Academic Award, and JoongAng Ilbo Academic Award.

Essays on Modern Chinese History (중국근대사연구, 1973), one of Min’s best-known works, is acknowledged for divulging China’s modern history, breaking away from the traditions of Korean Chinese history studies, which focused on the analysis of Chinese history based on the Korea-China relations. This work led Min to be recognized as a Sinologist beyond Korea, as it provided a fresh perspective on the relationship among Chinese traditional feudalism, the modern Xinhai Revolution, and the May Fourth Movement. Min’s book was translated and published by journals in countries such as Germany, China, and Taiwan.

Min was widely recognized as a prominent scholar in Mainland China. He served as an endowed professor in Nanjing University for studies in the republic history of China. In 1999, he was invited as a keynote speaker to an international conference titled “May Fourth Movement and 21st Century China" held at the University of Beijing, which commemorated the 80th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement of China.

Life

Early life and education

Tu-ki Min was born in Haenam County, South Jeolla Province, Korea, Empire of Japan, on November 2, 1932, during the period of Japanese rule. He graduated from Simsang Elementary School in 1939 and from Gwangjuseo Middle School (now Gwangju Jeil High School), in 1951. While the classes were taught in Japanese, his mother insisted that he learn the Korean alphabet at home.

Min entered the Department of History at Seoul National University, in 1951, pursuing studies in Korean history, specifically the Donghak Peasant Revolution. However, one of his professors, Byung-Ik Ko, told Min that the Donghak Movement could be interpreted from the perspective of China. This statement altered Min’s perspective on the study of Korean history and made him develop an interest in Chinese history. After his graduation from Seoul National University in 1955, he served in the military for a few months and re-entered the school as a graduate student. He earned his master’s degree with his thesis Discourses on Iron and Salt and a doctoral degree with his thesis Study on the Gentry Class of the Qing Dynasty.

Death

On May 7, 2000, Min passed away from a chronic illness at the age of 68 while he was serving as an honorary professor at Seoul National University and as an endowed chair professor at Yonsei University. His family revealed that near the end of his life, he insisted that his death should not be known outside of his family. Hence, only a few of his direct students were able to receive the news of his death and attend his funeral.

Career

Tu-ki Min served as a professor at the Department of History at Soongsil University from 1966 to 1969. Then, in 1968, he became a faculty member of Seoul National University, where he continued his career to eventually become the chair of the Department of Asian History in 1977. From 1983 to 1985, he served as the chairman of the Society for Asian Historical Studies (동양사학회), which was founded by several history scholars, including Min himself, in 1965. Since his retirement from Seoul National University in 1998, Min kept guiding his students throughout their research.

Min also actively participated in overseas research activities. He served as a visiting researcher at Harvard University under the Harvard-Yenching fellowship from 1979 to 1980. There, he inspired a team of multinational scholars to translate six of his articles into English, which were published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute in 1989 under the title National Polity and Local Power: The Transformation of Late Imperial China. Additionally, he participated as a researcher at University of Hamburg, Germany, and served as an endowed chair professor at Nanjing University, China.

Achievements

One of Min’s greatest achievements is the establishment of Chinese History as a professional field of study in South Korea. During the period when Korea was under Japanese rule, the field of Chinese History Studies was also influenced by Japan’s Asian Studies. The majority of the resources had to be obtained secondarily from Japanese scholarly works, in which Eastern History was recorded from a stance that emphasized Japanese Imperialism. Even after the liberation, the study of Chinese History was not prominent in Korea as most scholarly works focused on restoring the national identity of Korea and structuring the new postcolonial narrative of Korea’s national history. This restricted the study of history exclusively to Korean history. Although there were some studies on Chinese history, they mostly focused on the Korea-China relations rather than the history of China itself. Also, due to the Cold War in the 1950s, China was interpreted as a Communist enemy to Korean society, which made it more challenging for scholars to academically explore Chinese history.

Despite the challenges, Min did not hesitate to research Chinese history. Studying history at Seoul National University, he started to work on Chinese history with the Salt and Iron Debates of the Han dynasty. Furthermore, he developed a fascination for studying the Qing dynasty and became a pioneer in the studies of both Qing administration and late Qing reforms. After he became the head of the Department of Asian History, he began to establish Sinology as a professional study in Korea and promoted the first monographic studies of China in Korea. Moreover, he developed new faculty positions in his university and devoted his life to training students in the field.

In 1956, Min founded the Society for Asian Historical Studies with 30 other historians, which stimulated the extensive study of East Asian history in Korea. With the establishment of the organization, its members began their monthly presentations to enhance the qualitative level of research and published a school journal called Journal of Asian Historical Studies to encourage students’ active participation in research. Their efforts allowed Korean scholars to approach East Asian history from a global perspective and move on from the former nationalistic approach that interpreted Asian history only in relation to Korean history. Such changes also led to an increase in the participation of Korean historians in international academia.

Methodology

Min set a standard methodology known as the “Min Tu-ki History" for Korean researchers studying Chinese history. The methodology was derived from the following ideas. First, he stressed that Chinese history should be studied as a professional field of study that is independent from other scholarly fields. Second, he not only emphasized the structural understanding and scientific argument of Chinese history, but also called for the consideration of the distinctive characteristics of history that are different from those of social science. Third, he underlined a value-neutral and objective research attitude in the relationship between politics and academia. Fourth, while he acknowledged the importance of the general population in the relationship between the elite and the people, he viewed Chinese history from the perspective of the elite. Applying this methodology, Min and his students published the series of Lectures on Chinese History (강좌중국사, 1989) that provide the basis for understanding Chinese history in Korea.

Works

Min’s study focused on the Reform Movement and the National Revolution Movements in China. His methodology was to understand the Classical Period of China through the research of early Chinese ancient history and to discover how modern China has transformed through the reinterpretation of traditions based on his study of the Traditional Period. With his methodology, Min argued that China achieved intrinsic development by pursuing change through self-renewal rather than change caused by Western shock.

Essays on Modern Chinese History

Published in 1973, this work is acknowledged as the first book to be published in Korea that focused solely on Chinese history. Hence, this book is evaluated as a breakthrough from the existing tradition of Chinese history studies that analyzed Chinese history in terms of Korea-China relations. It led Min to gain academic acknowledgement not only in Korea but also in global contexts. It was translated and introduced in multiple international journals including Germany’s Oriens Extremus (1976), China’s Qing History Research Correspondence (1980), and Taiwan’s Collection of Essays on Modern Chinese History (중국현대사논집 1980). Although Min titled his work as Essays on Modern Chinese History, he did not merely focus on the description of modern events such as the Constitutional Movement, the Xinhai Revolution, or the May Fourth Movement. Rather, in order to discover the essence and causes of these movements, he depicted China’s underlying historical factors in relation to the Traditional Period of China. By understanding the formation of the ideology of the Chinese gentry class, which ruled the Chinese society before the May Fourth Movement, Min described China’s internal agenda set by this gentry class that led to the intrinsic motivation of the modern transformations in Chinese history.

National Polity and Local Power: The Transformation of Late Imperial China (1989)

From 1979 to 1980, when Min participated in the Harvard-Yenching fellowship program, he became known to American scholars for his articles that dealt with debates regarding classical Chinese governmental values. Through his articles, Min argued that the debate on the Chinese fengian (feudal) and junxian (centralized bureaucratic) systems of government led to the debates on China’s reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His study revealed a vital link between China’s bureaucratic past and its nationalist present, and raised the concept of intrinsic development of China, which suggested that China’s internal agendas stimulated its modernization. Min’s lecture on his articles inspired a multinational team of professors and researchers to translate and publish six of his major articles in English. The participants in this project include Timothy Brook, Olive Homes, Philip A. Kuhn, Peter C. Perdue, Heije Choe, Hodong Kim, and Hongmyon Kim. In 1989, the Harvard University Press published the translated collection of Min’s articles, titled as National Polity and Local Power: The Transformation of Late Imperial China (1989).

This work served as a useful reference to American scholars since Min, as neither a Chinese nor a Western scholar, maintained the balance between the East and the West and revealed how China’s own internal agenda conditioned Chinese political life throughout its transition to modernity. Therefore, while the majority of American historians focused on the study of Chinese history in relation to Western history or in terms of China’s response to the West, Min shifted the focus of their study to China’s intrinsic motivation for revolution and modernization.

Min was one of the first Korean scholars to have his previously published articles fully translated into English and published as a book in the US. Several scholars welcomed the publication of Min’s articles and wrote book reviews in academic journals. Amongst them, Jonathan K. Ocko of Duke University underlined the significance of this work by saying, “although five essays in this volume of translations first appeared in 1978, they have not been superseded by subsequent scholarship and remain instructive, stimulating reading.”

Notable works

Academic works

Essays on Modern Chinese History (중국근대사연구, 1973)

Contemporary China and Modern Chinese History (현대중국과 중국 근대사, 1981)

The Periodization of Chinese History (중국사 시대구분론, 1984)

A Study of Modern Chinese Reform Movements (중국근대개혁운동의 연구, 1985)

Lectures on Chinese History (강좌중국사, 1989)

National Polity and Local Power: The Transformation of Late Imperial China, 1989

The Historical Awareness of China (중국의 역사인식, 1993)

The History of Xinhai Revolution (신해혁명사, 1994)

A Study of China’s Modern Revolution Movement (중국 초기혁명운동의 연구, 1997)

Experiment of Liberalism in China (중국에서의 자유주의 실험, 1997)

Autobiographical Essay

When I Meet a Bunch of Wild Flowers (한 송이 들꽃과 만날 때, 1985)

Criticism

Hee-gyeo Kim, a professor of History at Kwangwoon University, criticized the historical objectivism, archaeologicalism, and political objectivity asserted by Min and his students, as nothing more than myths.

Kim pointed out the fact that while Min advocated for a strict depiction of historical evidence claiming that historical records tell everything, he did not contain any independent papers on the Chinese communist party in his and his students' masterpiece, Lectures on Chinese History. Kim argued that Min and his students had settled an incomplete Chinese modern history by turning a blind eye to Communism, selectively collecting historical records and excluding certain research subjects.

Furthermore, Kim argued that the true factors that Min used for his studies were liberalism and elitism, not archaeologicalism and objectivism as Min claimed. Kim condemned Min for using liberalism to replace the socialist revolution and the communist party with unnecessary elements of Chinese modern history, and for using elitism to define the general public as merely mobilized beings without identifying them as subjects of history. Kim evaluated that Min and his students failed to provide an objective analysis of Chinese history by neglecting the communist history and claimed that their published work is rather an elitist attempt to flaunt their superiority in the field of Sinology.