Korean Studies, vol. 24 (2000)

ARTICLES

Country or State? Reconceptualizing Kukka in the Korean Enlightenment Period, 1896-1910
Kyung Moon Hwang, 1

The Korean enlightenment period, 1896-1910, was characterized by intellectual experimentation and adaptation, as the leading intellectuals attempted to reconcile the new ideas and models originating from the West, as well as from contemporary Japan and China, with the very powerful equivalents from the Korean-Confucian tradition, and in constant consideration of the real circumstances of the day. This study examines a key example of the reformulation of a traditional concept, that of kukka (commonly translated as “state”). The new meanings involved a wider array of concerns, including political legitimacy, sovereignty, and even rights. Furthermore, the notion of kukka provided the enlightenment activists an opportunity to get to the heart of their urgent concerns: What kind of Korean nation and polity should prevail in the brave new world of competing civilizations, and what should the enlightenment intellectuals’ role be in this process?

Two competing revisions of this ancient term emerged—one insisting that the kukka constituted a collective entity of people, land, and government and the other adopting a perspective that equated kukka with the ruling authority, or the “state.” This study argues that the former, collectivist notion of the kukka was the first and foremost reconceptualization of this term in the Korean enlightenment period. Furthermore, the two contrasting concepts of kukka corresponded to differing views about the appropriate political form for Korea at the time. Ironically, while those who adopted the Western-oriented, statist notion of kukka called for an authoritarian ruling order dominated by a powerful state, the intellectuals who advocated the more liberal, people-centered concept of the collective kukka attempted to reconcile their political theory with, of all things, Confucian teachings. The Confucian intellectual tradition supported these activists’ collectivist definition of kukka by establishing the concept of kukka-as-family, by providing a holistic connection between individual self-cultivation and the condition of the larger kukka, and by validating the efforts of sagely activists, such as the enlightenment thinkers, in working to save the kukka. In an important sense, the enlightenment project can be viewed as the latest in a long history of Confucian reform movements in Korea.

Eroticism and Buddhism in Han Yongun’s Your Silence
Gregory N. Evon, 25

Han Yongun (1879-1944) is chiefly remembered as a participant in the March First Independence Movement of 1919 and as the author of Your Silence. For these reasons he holds an important place within Koreans’ collective memory of their nation’s troubled modern history. Although much has been written about him and Your Silence, little attention has been given to the eroticism in the work. This article offers a perspective on the collection’s eroticism, Han’s overturning of Buddhism’s negation of desire, and thus his unusual attitude toward women.

The I Ching in Late-Chosôn Thought
Wai-ming Ng, 53

The Korean national flag, taegukki, consists of t’ai chi (Great Ultimate) and four trigrams, symbolizing the balance of yin-yang, heaven and earth, and sun and moon. It serves as a reminder of the peculiar role of the I Ching (Yokkyong) in Korean thought and culture. The I Ching was imported to Korea no later than the fourth century, and penetrated into different aspects of Korean life, including politics, economics, ethics, philosophy, art, science, and religion. It was studied at official academies, and had been included in the civil service examination. Sung commentaries on the I Ching came to Korea during the twelfth century, and soon replaced Han commentaries as the main reference. Following the adoption of the Chu Hsi school as the official learning, Korean Confucianism reached its apex in the Chosôn period (1392-1910). Regardless of the importance of the I Ching in Korean thought and culture, very few studies have been done. This paper attempts to deepen our understanding of late-Chosôn Confucianism through an examination of its I Ching scholarship, focusing on the Chu Hsi school in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the school of practical learning (sirhak) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Maps of Resistance and Geographies of Dissent in the Chôlla Region of South Korea
Sallie Yea, 69

In the postcolonial (post-1948) period in South Korea, South Chôlla and North Chôlla provinces, which collectively constitute the Honam region (hereafter simply referred to as Chôlla), have come to occupy a marginal place in the political economy of Korean development and a peripheral, even counter-hegemonic, place in national politics. In addition, the region has long suffered the stigma of social discrimination and the humiliation of cultural and ideological subordination within the Korean nation-state. This article explores the imagined map of Chôlla as it has been constituted structurally and textually, both historically and more recently. I argue that the historical and contemporary processes of marginalization have collectively supplied both the catalyst and reference point for popular struggle in the region. Since Chôlla occupies a central place in Korean popular literature, the main part of the essay considers the ways Chôlla figures in populist texts. This literary reconstitution of the region, I suggest, in turn contributes to its reproduction as a radical region.

Gender Politics in the Korean Transition to Democracy
Jeong-Lim Nam, 94

This article investigates how a variety of Korea women’s groups contributed to the processes of breaking down military rule in the late 1980s. Excluded from formal politics, Korean women partook in the struggles for democracy through alternative channels such as grassroots women’s groups, labor uprisings, and political mobilization as mothers and wives. Their vigorous activism significantly shaped the direction, outcome, and strategies of the Korean democratic struggles. Women’s involvement in the prodemocracy movement, on the other hand, affected the goals and the strategies of progressive women’s-movement groups formed in the 1980s. This study expands the class-centered perspective of Korean democratization by incorporating women’s participation and contributions in the process.

Late-Chosôn Society as Reflected in a Shamanistic Narrative: An Analysis of the Pari kongju muga
Michael J. Pettid, 113

This article examines the social values and criticism contained in the Pari kongju muga, a narrative shaman’s song that has long been orally transmitted over much of the Korean peninsula. Although this song has an important religious function in shamanistic eschatology, this study is primarily concerned with the social values and convictions reflected in the narrative. Particularly, this analysis enables an understanding of the social ethics most important to late-Chosôn females–the primary adherents and celebrants of the shamanistic religion. Among these values, the most prominent is the strong critique of the dominant Neo-Confucian ideology, especially the practices surrounding male-child preference. Hence, this textual examination recognizes female aspirations in the late-Chosôn period.

Pre-Hankul Materials, Koreo-Japonic, and Altaic
Alexander Vovin, 142

Although limited in number and thus far underused, Old Korean and Early Middle Korean data are valuable to comparative linguists. This article discusses several lexical items and grammatical morphemes from this body of data and demonstrates their significance for comparative Koreo-Japonic and Altaic studies. The author proposes a number of etymologies for the first time and, in several cases, refines etymologies suggested by others.

Korean History Studies in Japan: The 1999 Shigaku Zasshi Review of Historiography
Furuhata Toru, Morihira Masahiko, and Song Yon’ok, 156

Shigaku zasshi, the leading history journal in Japan, devotes its fifth issue every year to historiography reviews of scholarship published in Japan over the previous year on various national and regional histories. The reviews for Korean history are written by specialists and introduce and direct readers to publications in many fields, including archaeology, economic history, and social history. The summaries are not as lengthy as those prepared for Japanese and Chinese histories, but a glance at those written since 1949 shows the growth of Korean history studies in Japan, the emergence of successive generations of scholars, the breadth of topics being investigated, and the diversity of methodologies and interpretations.

BOOK REVIEWS

Keith Pratt and Richard Rutt with James Hoare, Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
reviewed by Edward J. Shultz, 175

Soon-Won Park, Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea
reviewed by Dennis McNamara, 177

Crawford F. Sams, “Medic”: The Mission of an American Military Doctor in Occupied Japan and Wartorn Korea
reviewed by Bryan Ross, 178

Helen-Louise Hunter, Kim Il-song’s North Korea
reviewed by Barbara L. Mori, 183

Geir Helgesen, Democracy and Authority in Korea: The Cultural Dimension in Korean Politics
reviewed by Joel Motsay, 188

Brenda L. Kwon, Beyond Ke’eaumoku: Koreans, Nationalism, and Local Cultures in Hawai’i
reviewed by Lili M. Kim, 191

Suh Ji-moon, trans., The Golden Phoenix: Seven Contemporary Korean Short Stories
reviewed by Bruce Fulton, 195

Young-Key Kim-Renaud, ed., The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure
reviewed by Florian Coulmas, 198

Samuel E. Martin, Consonant Lenition in Korean and the Macro-Altaic Question
reviewed by John B. Whitman, 201

Institute of Language Education of Ewha Womans University, Pathfinder in Korean
reviewed by Minju Kim, 206

Hye-Won Choi, Optimizing Structure in Context: Scrambling and Information Structure
reviewed by Jae Yeon Kim, 207

UH Press
Privacy Overview

University of Hawaiʻi Press Privacy Policy

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

University of Hawaiʻi Press collects the information that you provide when you register on our site, place an order, subscribe to our newsletter, or fill out a form. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address, mailing 0address, phone number or credit card information. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.
Website log files collect information on all requests for pages and files on this website's web servers. Log files do not capture personal information but do capture the user's IP address, which is automatically recognized by our web servers. This information is used to ensure our website is operating properly, to uncover or investigate any errors, and is deleted within 72 hours.
University of Hawaiʻi Press will make no attempt to track or identify individual users, except where there is a reasonable suspicion that unauthorized access to systems is being attempted. In the case of all users, we reserve the right to attempt to identify and track any individual who is reasonably suspected of trying to gain unauthorized access to computer systems or resources operating as part of our web services.
As a condition of use of this site, all users must give permission for University of Hawaiʻi Press to use its access logs to attempt to track users who are reasonably suspected of gaining, or attempting to gain, unauthorized access.

WHAT DO WE USE YOUR INFORMATION FOR?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

To process transactions

Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. Order information will be retained for six months to allow us to research if there is a problem with an order. If you wish to receive a copy of this data or request its deletion prior to six months contact Cindy Yen at [email protected].

To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature

Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the service requested. Your information will only be kept until the survey, contest, or other feature ends. If you wish to receive a copy of this data or request its deletion prior completion, contact [email protected].

To send periodic emails

The email address you provide for order processing, may be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order, in addition to receiving occasional company news, updates, related product or service information, etc.
Note: We keep your email information on file if you opt into our email newsletter. If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.

To send catalogs and other marketing material

The physical address you provide by filling out our contact form and requesting a catalog or joining our physical mailing list may be used to send you information and updates on the Press. We keep your address information on file if you opt into receiving our catalogs. You may opt out of this at any time by contacting [email protected].

HOW DO WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information.
We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be stored on our servers.
Some services on this website require us to collect personal information from you. To comply with Data Protection Regulations, we have a duty to tell you how we store the information we collect and how it is used. Any information you do submit will be stored securely and will never be passed on or sold to any third party.
You should be aware, however, that access to web pages will generally create log entries in the systems of your ISP or network service provider. These entities may be in a position to identify the client computer equipment used to access a page. Such monitoring would be done by the provider of network services and is beyond the responsibility or control of University of Hawaiʻi Press.

DO WE USE COOKIES?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer’s hard drive through your web browser (if you click to allow cookies to be set) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.
We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart. You can see a full list of the cookies we set on our cookie policy page. These cookies are only set once you’ve opted in through our cookie consent widget.

DO WE DISCLOSE ANY INFORMATION TO OUTSIDE PARTIES?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer your personally identifiable information to third parties other than to those trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your personally identifiable information to those persons to whom disclosure is required to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

CALIFORNIA ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT COMPLIANCE

Because we value your privacy we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.

CHILDRENS ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT COMPLIANCE

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

ONLINE PRIVACY POLICY ONLY

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

YOUR CONSENT

By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page, and update the Privacy Policy modification date.
This policy is effective as of May 25th, 2018.

CONTACTING US

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us using the information below.
University of Hawaiʻi Press
2840 Kolowalu Street
Honolulu, HI 96822
USA
[email protected]
Ph (808) 956-8255, Toll-free: 1-(888)-UH-PRESS
Fax (800) 650-7811