Korean Studies

Special Section:  A Translational Reading of the Invention of Korea’s Confucian Traditions

Special Section: Portrayals of Motherhood in South Koran Popular and Practices Culture

Volume 48 (2024)

Editor Cheehyung Harrison Kim introduces this issue and the two Special Sections:

Two interconnected Special Sections are at the core of this volume. The first is titled “A Transnational Reading of the Invention of Korea’s Confucian Traditions,” exceptionally guest edited by Daham Chong (Sangmyung University). The second is guest editor Bonnie Tilland’s (Leiden University) superb “Portrayals of Motherhood in South Korean Popular and Practiced Culture.” Confucianism and motherhood are notions and practices tied to the ideological perception of constancy, on the one hand, and the shifting epistemological norms based on cultural and historical exigencies, on the other. The authors of the two Special Sections question and explore various historical and cultural predicaments of Confucianism and motherhood in modern and contemporary Korea.

The Special Section on the invention of Confucian traditions begins with Daham Chong’s meticulous account of the influence Max Weber had on modern Korean historians’ comprehension of Confucianism-derived systems in late Koryǒ and early Chosǒn, namely the civil service examination. Young-chan Choi (University of Oxford) adroitly investigates the epistemological changes distinctly occurring in late nineteenth century Korea, in which Confucianism comes to be seen as inferior to the modernist understandings of the world stemming from Protestantism. The postliberation space is Kim Hunjoo’s (Hanbat National University) research area, where the process of remaking Confucianism as a new tradition is carefully scrutinized in relation to the nation building process. The final piece in this Special Section is on literary culture. Owen Stampton’s (University of British Columbia) sophisticated article probes into the tension between tradition and modern life as experienced by women characters in Yi Kwang-su’s 1917 play Kyuhan, as well as discussing the birth of the modern stage in Korea.

Split Inalienable Coding in the East Bird’s Head Family
Laura Arnold

Observations on Tagalog Genitive Inversion
Henrison Hsieh

Variation and Change in Jakarta Indonesian: Evidence from Final Glottals
Ferdinan Okki Kurniawan

When Sound Change Obscures Morphosyntax: Insights from Seediq
Victoria Chen

Lexical Evidence in Austronesian for an Austroasiatic presence in Borneo
Juliette Blevins and Daniel Kaufman

Find these articles, squids, and more at Project MUSE.