User:Madalibi/Korean nationalist historiography

Main article: Korean nationalist historiography

• Much of this KNH is discussed explicitly in postwar Korean sources (at least those from South Korea). See Pai 2000: 1-8; Em 1999; Park 1999; Han 1997.
• Not a "school": much diversity in approaches. See Em (1999), p. 438, note 15. Differed in their definition of the Korean nation (minjok), in their methodologies, and in the primary sources they chose.
• International context of minjok/minzoku/minzu, a concept that allowed East Asian nations to reimagine the nation

The concept of "nationalist historiography"

Most historians equate Korean nationalist historiography with minjok sahak (民族史學)

There may be a distinction between "national historiography" (), "nationalist historiography" (minjok chuǔi yǒksahak), and history of the Korean nation (minjoksa)

Different definitions:

• Henry Em (1999): "histories written as a narrative of resistance to colonial rule, devoted to countering the pernicious effects of colonialist historiography and to empowering Koreans to join the struggle for Korea's independence."

1895–1945

Outline

Narrative line for 1905-1945 section:

1. other forms of historiography, focusing on elements that become relevant to natonalism later
2. forms of Korean national expression before 1905
3. 1905 as turning point
4. minjok neologism: creation in Japan, widening use in East Asia to reimagine the nation; first uses in Korea; centrality in Doksa Sillon
5. themes of Shin Chaeho's Doksa Sillon
6. Rejected Confucian historiography and Japanese colonial historiography [introduced earlier?]; the Korean minjok; descent from Dangun; rediscovery of Manchuria
7. Daejonggyo
8. nationalist historiography after Doksa Sillon: 1) intellectuals, often in exile; 2) many ideological approaches; 3) common goal: resisting Japanese colonial views and fostering Korea pride and eventual independence; 4) territorial views; 5) how they fared: Japanese censorship, some collaboration, death in exile
9. rise of Communism: other historical approaches

1895-1905

Newspapers conveyed nationalist ideas; removing china from the center; Hangul; Social Darwinism? Korean intellectuals tried to imagine the national form, the national spirit, the national soul.

1905–1910

1905: end of the Russo-Japanese War opens Manchuria to Japanese colonization; Japan-Korea Treaty turns Korea into a Japanese protectorate, creating a sense of crisis: turning point. The imposition of a Japanese protectorate in 1905 triggered the emergence of nationalist historiography.

Growth of newspapers: Korean Daily Report (Daehan Maeil Sinbo), founded in 1905; given relative autonomy during the protectorate because its main editor was T. Bethell, a citizen of Britain, which was then a Japanese ally.

Around the turn of the century, some Japanese historians had started to write Korean history not as the history of the peninsula, but as a joint and inseparable "Manchurian-Korean history" (Man-Sen shi 滿鮮史). They claimed that Korean historical development had depended on heteronomous political and economic forces (especially those coming from Manchuria), and that Korea had therefore lacked "independence and originality." This kind of historiography gained more prominence after Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 opened Manchuria to Japanese colonization. This unification of Manchuria and Korea into one history derived from Japanese expansion into both regions, but it also furthered Japan's imperialist claims on both territories.

High currency of Social Darwinism. "Thus, nationalist during the Taehan empire involved both resistance and expansion in the context of a social Darwinist view of the world." The "immense popularity" of hero-worship at the time.

A version of Social Darwinism promulgated by the Chinese journalist and historian Liang Qichao influenced nationalists like Shin Chaeho, Choe Nam-seon, and Park Eun-sik. Liang taught that the world was divided between peoples who were expansionist and influential, such as the Anglo-Saxons and Germans, and those peoples who were weak and insignificant. The themes of struggle for existence (saengjŏn kyŏngjaeng 生存競爭), survival of the fittest and natural selection inspired not only Shin's own historical views, but also those the Korean "self-strengthening movement" (chagang undong), which operated in similar terms to that in China and in Japan. In a world order characterized by strong powers preying upon weak nations, it seemed that only heroic individual efforts could preserve the Korean race. Amidst the "immense popularity" of hero-worship, Liang Qichao's work on three outstanding figures of Italian unification was translated into Korean in 1907. In 1908 Shin Chae-ho published a biography of Eulji Mundeok that praised the Goguryeo general for his victories against the encroaching forces of Sui-dynasty China in the early seventh century.

Shin Chaeho's New Reading of History (1908)

Main article: Doksa Sillon

In 1908, the journalist, educator, and independence activist Shin Chaeho (1880–1936) published his polemical New Reading of History (Doksa Sillon) in a newspaper he edited.. In this "first manifesto of nationalist history," Shin argued that Confucian historians like Kim Busik—the compiler of the Samguk Sagi (1145)—had misleadingly focused on legitimate succession between states. Instead of focusing on the succession of dynasties, Shin placed the Korean minjok (or racially defined nation) at the center of Korean history. To Shin, Koreans were descended from Dangun (a mythological figure he treated as a real person), whose state of Gojoseon had once reigned over both Manchuria—from the Amur river to the Liaodong region—and the Korean peninsula. In so doing he embraced one of the principles of Japanese Mansenshi ("Manchurian-Korean history"), but whereas Mansenshi tried to show that Korean history had always been subject to external forces (those coming from Manchuria), Shin argued that Manchuria had historically belonged to the warlike Korean minjok, which had then been weakened by effeminate elites like the Confucianized yangban, the scholarly elite of the Joseon dynasty.

In both North and South Korea, Shin Chaeho is credited as the first historian to make the Korean ethnicity the center of Korean historiography, the Koreanist Charles K. Armstrong notes that Shin is "considered the father of modern Korean historiography.

Refusing both Confucian historiography and Japanese colonial scholarship. This identification of the minjok as the subject of Korean history "established the basis for a modern nationalistic history" and constitutes a "watershed in modern Korean intellectual history."

In so doing he stopped focusing on the state (kukka) and looked beyond the current boundaries of Korea.

He found both Confucian historiography and Japanese colonial scholarship unsatisfactory on political, rather than academic, grounds. Shin believed that Koreans of his time had a "slavish mentality" as a result of centuries of historical, political, and cultural dependence on China, and he prescribed as a cure an identification with the Korean nation and the state, so that this community could be goaded to collective political activism.

Though he had received a typical Confucian education...

1910-1919

Na Cheol, founder of Daejonggyo, a new religion whose claim that all Koreans were descended from the god Dangun inspired many nationalist historians in the 1910s and 1920s.

Japan's formal annexation of Korea in 1910 made it difficult for Korean nationalists to propagate their views in Korea. In 1910, Shin Chae-ho left Korea for Shanghai in China. Many others moved to Manchuria (China's Northeast), where they continued to promote Korean independence. Most of them were strongly influenced by a new religion called Daejonggyo (; also called Dan'gun'gyo), which was founded in 1909 but claimed to resurrect Korea's most ancient native religion, the cult of the god Dangun. Daejonggyo followers set up their headquarters in Manchuria, from where they kept preaching their religion as well as Korean independence. Many Korean independence activists and historians joined the new religion because they were attracted to its Dangun-centered view of Korean history.

After the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, some Korean intellectuals chose to retreat into a life of glorifying Korea's cultural expanse in the past, rather than active collaboration or open resistance with the new authorities. Before he became the religion's second patriarch in 1916, Kim Kyo-heon (金教獻; 1868–?) wrote many historical books for Korean military cadets who studied in Manchuria. One of these books, titled A Popular History of the God Tan'gun (Shindan minsa 神檀民史; 1914), was the first complete nationalist history of Korea, from Dangun to late Joseon.

Explanation of the role of Daejonggyo (founded in 1909) in promoting the notion that the minjok was descended from Dangun. Adepts of Daejonggyo claimed that Koreans were all descended from Dangun...

Choe Nam-seon, the founder of the Association for Korea's Glorious Literature (Chosŏn Kwangmunhoe) and Park Eun-sik were representative of a new school of historans called the nationalist historians (Minjok sahakka), who bemoaned the decline of the Joseon dynasty and aimed to raise national consciousness to achieve Korean independence.

The fellow historians Park Eun-sik (1859–1925) and Chang Chi-yŏng likewise attempted to rectify the "slave literary culture" (noyejŏk munhwa sasang) of the yangban to reflect historical Korea's supposed martial tradition.

1915: Official imperial involvement in Korean historiography began in 1915, through the Chungch'uwon 中樞院 office.

1919-1931

As Governor-General of Korea from 1919 to 1927 and 1929 to 1931, Saitō Makoto (1858–1936) implemented cultural reforms that included the rewriting of Korean history in ways that justified Japanese colonialism in Korea.

1919: creation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai; Pak Eun-sik's Hanguk tongsa 韓國痛史 (?); turning point in Japanese cultural policies

After 1919: Saitō Makoto, the Japanese Governor-General of Korea, targeted Korean ethnic nationalist historians (minjok sahakka) such as Shin Chae-ho, Choe Nam-seon, and Yi Kwang-su, as part of a "cultural containment" policy since the March 1st demonstrations for independence in 1919. Turn to a policy of cultural assimilation rather than military repression, a "fundamental shift from coercion to manipulation." This policy granted more freedom of publication.

1921: The Governor-General's education office published a work called Chōsenjin, which argued that Koreans should be assimilated to Japan. To serve this end, as soon as 1924 Japanese intellectuals proposed to refashon Korean names to Japanese style, anticipating a policy that was implemented in 1939.

1922: Liang Qichao's Zhongguo lishi yanjiu fa

In 1922, the Governor-General established a committee which compiled a 35-volume "History of Chosŏn" (Chosenshi). The Chosenshi (1931) was mostly composed of extracts from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean historical sources, and was used as a primary source for historical works on Korea in the Japanese period.

1920s: Japanese administrators also surveyed artifacts of historical value on the Korean Peninsula (koseki chosa jigyo) and sought to disprove the popular belief in the Dangun figure of Korean culture.

1925?: establshment of the Korean History Compilation Committee

1926: Choe Nam-seon reoganizes Samguk Yusa

1910s-1930s: A popular portrayal of Koreans in Japanese historiography was that of the sadaejuui, or as being extremely servile to foreign powers, particularly China.

Japanese historiography on East Asia (Tōyōshi 東洋史) was a field led by Shiratori Kurakichi 白鳥庫吉 (1865–1942) which generally followed the negative, orientalist portrayals of China and Korea by the West, while categorizing Japan as separate from both Asia and the West, but as on an equal footing with the West.

Shin Chaeho again

Place after a more extensive discussion of Shin's historiography. Inspired by his visits to the Goguryeo ruins and Mount Baekdu (Changbai) on the Chinese side of the border, Shin published Korean nationalist tracts in exile until his death in 1936.

Shin was also influenced by Liang's "Methods for the Study of Chinese History" (Zhongguo lishi yangjiufa, 1922), from which many of Shin's methods derive.

He wrote his own history of Korea which broke from Confucian tradition, whose purveyors he decried as "effete" and disconnected from Korea's "manly" tradition going back to the ancient "Korean" expansionist kingdom of Goguryeo. Shin felt that Confucian historiography, and especially that of Kim Bu-sik and his alleged pro-Silla bias, suppressed a valid Korean claim to Manchurian territory, which not only had Goguryeo possessed, but Shin conceived as a central stage of Korean history, and a measure of the minjok's strength. Moreover, it was the act of writing history that caused Koreans not to rise up and conquer Manchuria again, according to Shin, resulting in a "great country becoming a small country, a great people becoming a small people". Yet he also criticized the shin sach'e textbooks after the Confucians, who nonetheless treated Japan sympathetically, translated Japanese historical works, and reflected the Japanese worldview. He also criticized Pan-Asianism as a guise for Japanese expansionism and regarded East Asia as a mere geographic unit, rather than a basis for solidarity. As a result, his new history focused on "national struggle" rather than on the rise and fall of political dynasties, and emphasizing Korea's separateness from China and Japan, as he argued that historiography "should promote national spirit and independence".

1931-1945

• 1930s?: Korean Studies Movement
• 1933: publication in Tokyo of Paek Nam-un's Chōsen shakai keizaishi ("A Social Economic History of Korea"). The author was a Korean Marxist.
• 1936: death of Shin Chae-ho in exile

After Shin's death, historians who wrote in his tradition would be called "New Nationalists" (shin minjokchuŭi) of the "Korean Studies" movement. In the 1930s, alternative schools emerged, including Marxist historiography and a Western-based, scientific approach (Chindan hakhoe). The scholars from the Chindan hakhoe (Chindan Academic Society), including Yi Pyŏng-do, Yi Sang-baek, Kim Sang-gi, and Kim Sŏk-hyŏng (find Hanja) were trained at universities in Japan or at Keijō Imperial University in Seoul and published in Japanese journals, following objective Rankean ideas that challenged Japanese colonial historiography.

On the other hand, the New Nationalists included figures such as Chŏng In-bo (鄭寅普) and An Chae-hong (安在鴻; 1891–1965), the first of which had a classical Chinese education, rather than at a social science department at a university in Korea or Japan. They emphasized "independent self-spirit" (chashim), in contrast to neo-Confucian and Western-style scholarship, which represented for Chŏng a "dependent spirit (t'ashim).

First works

Lacked training in modern historical methodology.

Ulsa Treaty of 1905 triggered the beginning of Nationalist historiography.

Shin Chaeho: Doksa Sillon (1908; "first manifesto of nationalist history"), Joseon Sanggosa (1931?)

Choe Nam-son: Tangunnon (1926), Purham munhwaron (1927)

The "Korean Studies Movement"

Important issues

The Korean minjok

Among nationalist scholars, Shin chose to adapt techniques of that Japanese scholarship, including the use of the derogatory exonym Shina to debase{{decenter?}} China.

In distinctiveness section.These historians preferred the folkloric Samguk Yusa as a source over the court-sanctioned Samguk Sagi, blaming the sagi's compiler for distorting Korean history to Confucian and sadaejuui (pro-China) ends.

Refuting Japanese colonial scholarship

What Korean historians refer to as Japanese "colonial historiography" can be traced to Japan's "first national history textbook," the Kokushi gan 國史眼 (1890), which argued for the common ancestry of Koreans and Japanese (Nissen dōso-ron in Japanese). Co-authored by three historians from Tokyo Imperial University, the Kokushi gan drew from the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles to assert that legendary ancestors of the Japanese imperial family––Susanoo and Empress Jingu––had once ruled or invaded Silla (Korea). Such views of Korea's historical subjugation to Japan became widely accepted in Japanese scholarship, and integral to Japan's national history. Ōtori Keisuke's Chōsen kibun 朝鮮紀聞 ("Records of Things I Heard in Korea"; 1885) and Hayashi Taisuke's 林泰輔 Chōsenshi 朝鮮史 ("History of Korea"; 1892) made similar arguments. Another theme in Japanese historical scholarship was Korea's backwardness, which was first argued in 1902 by the economist Tokuzō Fukuda, who said that Joseon was equivalent to Japan in the Heian period (794-1185).

Choe's historical research, which he believed should not be unbiased, was motivated by the desire to refute Japanese kokugaku scholarship that emphasized those periods where Korea was under foreign domination.

Korean historians charge Japanese colonialist historiography of four main distortions: of giving a leading role to Chinese, Manchurian, and Japanese actors in the history of Korea (t'ayulsŏngron); of portraying Korean society as stagnant and even pre-feudal (ilsŏn tongjoron); of documenting factionalism within Korean political culture (tangp'asŏng-ron); and of alleging common Korean and Japanese ancestry in order to justify the Japanese colonization of Korea. Balanced summary or Em's own assessment? Yi Ki-baek (1960s!) summarizes Japanese colonialist historiography as stemming from the assumptions of "stagnation, nondevelopment, peninsula particularism, and unoriginality".

An Hwak (安廓), another Korean nationalist, inverted Japanese historiographical tropes, such as by arguing that the supposed factionalism of the late Joseon was an embryonic form of modern party politics.

Evaluations

Despite their designation as historians, many prominent figures in the movement did not have formal historical training, made extreme claims that "had little chance to withstand the rigorous test of objective historical criticism", and saw history as a political weapon to serve the aims of achieving Korean independence. Shin Chaeho often revised existing history and mythology to support his ideal of historical Korean autonomy, and where he could not find it, or where there were contradictions, blamed it on "lost" or "falsified" records, a technique which he accused Kim Bu-sik of.

"In spite of the major problems connected with their historiography on Korea, Japanese scholars did lay the groundwork for modern historical studies on Korea and, in the process, did make important contributions to the study of Korean history."

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