KJC Korea
Journal Central

While the colonial view of history separated Manchuria from Joseon in order to justify Japanese colonial rule and Japan’s advance into Manchuria, the nationalist view of history regarded the two territories as one and systematized the history of ancient Joseon with much focus on Go-Joseon(Old Joseon). Such an awareness of Manchuria was largely based on the discourses established in the late Joseon dynasty. The only difference is that, though the former view applied the histories of Manchuria and Joseon to the direction of reducing the history of Koreas, the latter incorporated the historyof the former nation in its own in order to resist Japanese colonialism and overcome the reality of the colonized Joseon. The academic circles of Korea between the 1960s and the 1980s succeeded in overcoming the time-honored colonial view of history and figured out the sovereign developmental process of the history of Korea. It was not until China carried out a national project called “Studies of History and Geography of Northeast Borderland and a Series of Phenomena,” a.k.a. “Northeast Asia Project” in 2002 that Japanese colonialists’ view of Manchuria-Joseon history became spotlighted again. China attempted to incorporate the history of Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Balhae into that of ancient China with the current territory as the basis. Most recently, there have been diverse debates over the colonial view of history and the Japanese colonialists’ view of Manchuria-Joseon history with regard to how we can newly understand Northeast Asia by overcoming the logic of China’s Northeast Asia Project.

Established in January 1908 by Kurakichi Shiratori, the Research Department for Historical Geography of Manchuria and Joseon published an academic journal Historical Geography of Manchuria in 1913. This paper has analyzed the depiction of Han Chinese Commanderies (Hansagun) in Historical Geography of Manchuria and has examined how the histories of Manchuria and Joseon during the formative years and the colonial view of the history of two nations had been applied to actual situations. The colonialview of the histories of Manchuria and Joseon had otherized the histories of Manchuria and Joseon and attempted to reorganize them from the perspective of the history of Japan as the axis. It was noticed that Historical Geography of Manchuria attempted to portray the space of Manchuria as a form of concentric circles under the influence of China. Besides, it interpreted the history of Manchuria by dividing it into two states: “Gojoseon” in the northern area of the Korean peninsula that had been deeply influenced by China and “Yemaek” in the northwestern area of Gojoseon where such influence was indirectly exercised. According to the journal, Changhae-gun Commandery, Jinbeon-gun Commandery, and Hyeondo-gun commandery were located in regular sequence in the basin of the Yalu River where Goguryeo was founded. As the Japanese view of the histories of Manchuria and Joseonoriginally was formulated in order to cope with the continental policies ofmodern Japan, Japan attempted to accomplish its practical needs of figuringout the origins of the current territories but did under the name of pursuing“pure academic perspectives.”

Ikeuchi Hiroshi (池內宏) is one of the Japanese historians who devotedhimself to positive-historical research of East Asian history in modern Japan. This study is aimed at figuring out whether or not his estimate of thelocation of Daebang-gun (帶方郡) — one of the four Han Commanderies (漢郡縣) in ancient Korea — and its influence on “positive-historical” researchare based on “rationalism” from the academic perspective. As a result, thestudy has examined the following facts. Ikeuchi maintained that Daebang-gun was located downstream from theHan River during the period of the Han Commanderies (漢郡縣). Hispositive-historical research made in the process was less precise than otherstudies of his and was far from the mode of rationalism. Besides, whencompared with other studies of Ikeuchi, such an academic suggestion wasbased on a view that “the history and culture of old Korea had beensubordinate to Manchuria (滿鮮史觀),” which was fully based on theheterogenous character of Korean history at its core. Ikeuchi’s understanding of the location of Daebang-gun was almostidentical with that of Shiratori Kurakichi (白鳥庫吉) and Tsuda Soukichi (津田左右吉). It must be noted that both scholars were the so-called “historiansof Manchuria-Korea (滿鮮史學者)” who made research of the relations between Manchuria and Joseon as they were working at the Historic-geographical Research Center of South Manchuria Railway Companies (南滿州鐵道會社). Although Ikeuchi had long proclaimed the importance of “positive-historicalresearch” and “rationalism” in his academic study, he only betrayed his ownphilosophy when the two ideas encountered with what he had regarded ascommon knowledge: the heteronomy of Korean history. This clearly showsthat even positive-historical research is not totally irrelevant to the reality andthe period of a historian.

This paper has examined the relations between the JapaneseGovernment-General’s two major policies of assimilation: “naeseon ilche” (內鮮一體) and “donggeundongjo-ron” (同根同祖論). The former idea maintains that“Japan and Korea are one entity,” while the latter, a.k.a. “ilseon-dongjo-ron”suggests an idea that the origin of ancient Japan and Joseon is the same. “Donggeundongjo-ron” emerged as one of the major measures of “naeseonilche” which was the core task the colonial policy of subjecting Joseon toJapan. Those who strongly suggested “donggeundongjo-ron” included: JapaneseGovernor-general Chiro Minami; Tokisaburo Shiobara, director of theEducational Affairs Bureau; and Governor-general Kuniaki Koiso. Professors ofKeijo Imperial University as well as Japan’s history circles, however, did notagree with the opinions. The Japanese academic community argued that mythshould not be interpreted as history. “Donggeundongjo-ron” was propagated into Joseon in two categories. First,the relation between Japan and Joseon in hisotry was interpreted andpublicized as “the history of ‘naeseon ilche.’” Since the era ofSusanoo-no-Mikoto —the Shinto god of the sea and storms — a lot of people or events have been introduced as historical evidences of “naeseon ilche.”Such a proposal was distributed through the bulletins published by theJapanese Government-General of Joseon. Second, Japan reinterpreted thehistorical relations between Joseon and Japan not as “the history of ‘naeseonilche’” but as “the history that will become ‘naeseon ilche,’” thus regardingits occupation of Joseon as the historical beginning of “naeseon ilche.” Such aview was raised by the Educational Affairs Bureau in charge of publishinghistory textbooks and received a far-reaching response from the Japanesebureaucracy. Although “donggeundongjo-ron” failed to receive favorable responses fromboth the Japanese academic circles and the Japanese Government-General, it,nevertheless, was distributed through the press and the educational fieldsunder the oppression from the governor-generals who had the distorted viewsof history. As “donggeundongjo-ron” was a fabricated history based onbeliefs, however, it failed to persuade the people of Joseon. With the defeatof Japan at the end of World War II, “donggeundongjo-ron,” along with“naeseon ilche,” disappeared like a mirage.

Sokichi Tsuda is one of the representative historians of Japan in the 20thcentury whose view is interpreted quite differently between Korea and Japan. The Korean history circles say Sokichi Tsuda distorted the ancient history ofKorea with his “colonial view of history” as he had proposed that Mimana (任那; rènnà; or imna in Korean) was a Japanese colony on the Korean peninsulathat existed from the 3rd to the 6th century. The Japanese counterparts,however, have a favorable opinion that Tsuda confronted with the Emperorsystem of Japan and took a critical view of the Asia-Pacific War through hisobjective and scientific description of history. This study is aimed at chasingTsuda’s basic view of civilization and history based on his writings byovercoming the dichotomy with regard to Tsuda and the Tsuda school ofhistory (津田史學): “a historian with a colonial view of history” vs. “anintellect of resistance.” This paper intends to closely examine Tsuda’s theory ofChina and of the non-existence of the East he maintained in the 1930s and tofind out that the national thoughts of Japan as an individual civilization - whichTsuda ultimately tried to establish - was fully based on his view of history based on which he took an affirmative view of imperialism of Japan that hadcolonized Asian nations and invaded China.

There have been discussions about place names in the ancientperiod section articles of “Silla-bongi (新羅本紀, Records of Silla)” inSamguk-Sagi (三國史記, History of the Three Kingdoms). Thosestudies on place names in the book argued that later facts were dealtwith retroactively. The studies proceeded as follows. At first, thedebaters selected a place name in “Silla-bongi” as a certain placename on the basis of various pre-modern period geography books. And then they argued that a writer of “Silla-bongi” recordedretroactively later accidents happening in a certain place. But there aresome repetitions of the same place names in various regions in theancient period section articles of “Silla-bongi.” These show that thedebates’ arguments are not academically proven but are mereinferences. Repetitions of the same place names in various regions were alsoshown in the epigraphs of the ancient Silla period. Even though thoserepeated names in the epigraphs are mostly the native words and tendto be highly conservative, the repetitions of the same place names inancient Silla region lasted for a long time. There are some cases thatSilla and Baekje share the same place names. The reasons for repetitions of the same place names within the same country oramong countries are attributed to the fact that they had been made inconsideration of the topographical aspects. In this case, those names ofregions were written in the native words in the original texts of“Silla-bongi” and “Baekje-bongi” but were presumed to have beentranslated into Chinese after the announcement of the measures tochange the names of regions into classical Chinese letters in the 16thyear during the reign of King Gyeongdeok, the 35th monarch of Silla.

This paper has examined the life and the consciousness of Jeong Hak-yeonas a writer with a view to figure out the process of his creation of a longpoem sequence with the scenery of fall as the main material. Jeong Hak-yeon actively kept company with the influential figures inHanyang (present Seoul) in order to help save his father Jeong Yak-yongliving in exile and, at the same time, accumulated his fame as a poet byshowing his skills of poem recitations in social get-togethers. After the deathof King Jeongjo and the following factional feuds between Sipa (時派) . on the side of the deceased monarch and Jeong Yak-yong . and theopposition Beokpa (벽派) lasting for a long period, the issue of rescuingJeong Yak-yong and promoting his comeback to politics long fettered the lifeof Jeong Hak-yeon during and after his father갽s 18 years of exile. Humanrelations he had elaborately established in the midst of power politics andsmoldering factional strife only aggravated his ill fate. What is worse, hisconflict with his own father who had long wished him to be a great scholarmade him experience further agony. At the old age of 60, he recollected his painful past and sang his heart-rending sorrows, which became the mainthemes of the poetry. Jeong Hak-yeon expressed his own self-consciousness in his own worktitled “Chusa (秋士),” literally meaning “a poet who feels pathetic for fall,”thus showing the true emotion of a poet by expressing his inner conflictsresulting from the disharmony with the real world and by frankly portrayinghis image as a frustrated intellect. Jeong expressed his consciousness as awriter with which had created his world of poem dotted with sorrowsthrough the portrayal of the autumn scenery. After the mid-18th century, recitations of poems with the theme of fallbecame popular among the literary circles of Hanyang and there emerged theself-consciousness of “Chusa.” As the intellectuals who had been marginalizedfrom the politics took a lion’s share of the literary community, theyexpressed their own identity and aesthetic attitude more frankly. And the longpoem sequence by Jeong Hak-yeon is at the height of the style.

The newsreel was produced in a unified manner in Japan in the wake ofits rising popularity after the Sino-Japanese War. As a result, JapaneseNewsreel Corp. was founded on April 15, 1940; it produced Japan News, thenation’s only newsreel, from May 14 and presented it to the public fromJune 11 the same year. On May 1 the following year, the corporationrefurbished itself as a distributor of both cultural films and newsreels. Havingbeen established as the most powerful newsreel company in Japan, JapanNews exerted an enormous influence on the colonized Joseon from thebeginning of its colonial rule. After having obtained its distribution channelthrough the Gyeongseong Ilbo (the Gyeongseong Daily), Japan News wasreleased mostly in the cinemas solely devoted to presenting newsreels. Aspart of the Japanese plans to control the production, the distribution, and thebox-office records of films between 1940 and 1942, an institutional apparatus was made to force Joseon to screen cultural films and newsreels in thecountry. Japan News was distributed and screened in the colonized Joseonwith a time difference of a week after the original presentation in Japan. Theformats of Japan News presented in Joseon somewhat varied in accordancewith the period of presentations, regions, production styles, and thecircumstances. In some cases, the contents of Japan News included news stories on Joseon, through which the Japanese empire carved out the imageof the colonized Joseon and its people as it intended to show to the viewers. Meanwhile, Japan News replaced Joseon Sibo (Joseon News) -the onlynewsreel of Joseon- thus raising its status in the colonized Joseon. Inconclusion, the newsreel in the colonized Josoen was closely related to thespecial circumstances during the war period characterized by war mobilizationand exploitation. And Japan News stood at the center of the situations.

Kim Chai Choon, whose pen-name is Changgong, was not only aProtestant pastor but also a social activist who took the lead in socialparticipation of the Korean church. This paper is aimed at examining Kim’sChristian nation-building theory in close connection with The Christian Viewof National Foundation he had introduced and figuring out the characteristicsof “social participation” suggested by Kim during the period of thenation-building movement. Right after Korea’s liberation from Japanesecolonial rule, the Korean church was supposed to newly redefine the relationbetween a new “state” and religion from the perspective of historical andtheological context. “The idea of nation-building based on the Christian ideal”proposed by the Korean church, however, combined with the propaganda of“Christian nation-building” suggested by three right wing figures — SyngmanRhee, Kim Gu, and Kim Kyu-sik — and provided the right wing with apolitical groundwork for the anti-trusteeship and the anti-Soviet Union (lateranti-Communist) movements. As a result, the agenda of the Christiannation-building theory gave birth to the pro-Christian political power and tookroot in the nation in the form of “the alliance of church and state.”Kim’s Christian nation-building theory was categorized as the majorityopinions of the Korean churches when it came to the issue of the Christian ideal, but showed an attitude different from the views of many Protestants interms of participation in politics in that Kim’s theory emphasized the “socialrole” of religion. Kim’s idea was based on the “sovereignty of God” and the“theory of dual-government” in Calvinism, according to which all the areas ofhuman society should be faithful to their own roles at the face of “theabsolute sovereignty of God” and, in this case, the state and the church — andpolitics and religion — are not contradictory but can supplement each other. Kim believed, therefore, the church can participate in the nation-buildingproject by sending conscientious people to society to carry out its moral andethical function. Kim’s theory is based on the principle of “separation ofchurch and state” on one hand but emphasizes the socio-ethical role ofreligion, thus offering a theoretical basis for Christianity’s social participationafterwards in Korea’s history on the other.

Gwon Yeo-seon has so far interpreted “memory” not as an evidence ofpathology but as ardent and volitional aspirations for “maturity” by mainlyfeaturing figures who are fixed on the past and has thus showed thequintessence of trauma writing, which are all culminated in Legato (ChangbiPublishers, 2012). The literary works by Gwon are categorized as“reminiscences literature” —which was later established as the ethos ofliberalist literature after the 1980s— in that they portrayed the generations ofrevolutions who are obsessed with the specter of the past. Her literature,however, stands at the location of disintegrating generational narcissism andthe ethos of ‘self-authenticity” that supports it. It is because her literatureparodies reminiscences literature in a feminist style by twisting and disturbingthe authenticity of the memory through the medium of the body and thegender of women who have suffered injuries from the ideological community. Gwon’s writing reflects the generational self-consciousness of the womenin the 1970s and the 1980s who had broken away from the norm of“institutional femininity” in order to destroy the biological destiny of thesocial bondage of “gender.” They enter into the arena of politics and seekfor a friendly community which is overcoming the differences of gender as if they would not get caught by the institution of heterosexuality such asfamily, motherhood, a mode of domestic production, and reproduction. Notonly the modern state but also the ideological community that emerged as itsalternative, however, has been deprived of their chances for maturity becausethey stuck to the principle of immanence and self-identity and therebydisrespected the differences of body and gender. The author, however, doesnot see the frustration over the establishment of political identity as a failure. Rather, she seeks for the narrativization of the frustration paradoxically as anopportunity to establish a political community that is ethically responsible forthe others and holds a sense of relationship by acknowledging theweaknesses of the subject. In the process, the body is by no means inferior to reason but — insofaras it is understood that one is bound to the pain of the others — isre-signified as an ethical foundation on which a subject can overcome thefirst person-oriented behavioral subjectivity. We can be a behavioral subjectbecause we have a body, but, reversely, can be exposed to the violence ofthe others and get hurt. The body is the point of contact with the others butis irresistibly exposed to the decision of the others. The author implies thatthe “relationship” is the essence of our subjectivity by showing that theassailant of violence is not always the painless victor. As she criticized thatfriendship — having been regarded as the qualification for men’s refinement— had lost its corporeality and had been too excessively ideology-oriented,Gwon suggests the establishment of a new political community that respects the body and the gender of the others. In this process, Gwangju in May1980 is not a location of state violence but a stage of ritual where peoplecan reconcile together by mourning the others whose image they cannoteasily wipe out in their memories.

Korean auxiliary verb “itta (있다)” is composed of two constructions inKorean language: “~go itta (~고 있다)” and “~eo itta (~어 있다).” Of thetwo, “~go itta” presents both the meaning of “progress” and “duration,” while“~eo itta” only indicates “duration.” On the other hand, as Chinese is devoidof such an auxiliary verb, it is virtually difficult for Chinese learners ofKorean language to grasp the differences between “~go itta” and “~eo itta.”On a positive side, however, there are corresponding expressions in Chineselanguage with regard to the two Korean expressions. Considering that theinfluence of the mother tongue cannot be ignored in the second languageacquisition, this study has used the comparative analysis of “~go itta” and thecorresponding expressions in Chinese language in order to help Chinesestudents not only to distinguish the differences between “~go itta” and “~eoitta” but also to master Korean auxiliary verb “itta” faster and more efficiently.

This study has examined, first of all, the meaning of empathy in relationto the communications with — and the understanding of — the othersincluding people and the text. To be more exact, this paper is aimed atfiguring out the meaning of empathy through the situation of children’spicturebook reading, and more concretely, through the perspective ofunderstanding the text and through the viewpoint of understanding the self,the others and the world. In order to carry out the task, this study has selected 31 picturebooks thatdeal with either such social issues as environmental protection, poverty, war,peer rejection, racial discrimination and child labor or universal human issuessuch as self-respect, honesty, and friendship. It has also selected 30six-grader elementary school students, let them read the books and writebook reports, and then analyzed the reviews from the perspective of empathy. First of all, the result shows that child readers turned out to feel moreeasily emphatic with the sentiments of the characters based on either theirown experiences or the similarity of the text. This tells us that the size andthe diversity of the reader’s experiences are closely related to the possibilityof empathy. Second, the children could understand the pains of the characters- even though they had not experienced them yet - by playing those characters’ roles through imagination when it came to some issues, like war,that they would not otherwise have easily felt empathy with. This shows thatempathy is not only possible to those readers who would feel the sense ofidentity based on their own experiences. In other words, child readers areunderstood as having been equipped with the capability to understand andfeel empathy with even the unfamiliar characters through the roleperformance of swapping places with them. This result is meaningful in thatreaders’ understanding of the text does not remain in the endless replay ofthe self based on their own experiences but could be expanded further. Reversely, this shows that the text could help the children feel empathyfurther by offering them a variety of indirect experiences. Third, child readersshowed their empathy toward the life of the characters based on their beliefin the universal value of mankind, which means that the degree of theirempathy is largely determined by that of their own value orientation. Thebelief in the universal value of mankind is thought to help the children understand the characters by putting them into such unfamiliar situations aspoverty or war and by inducing them to change their roles with thecharacters. Besides, the empathy of child readers with the unfamiliarsituations did not remain in the unconditional acceptance of the reality of thetext as the complete world but became deeper having been boosted bycritical reading. Fourth, child readers were able to get a chance to understandthemselves better and to affirm the others by relocating themselves in anotherreality of the text, and were able to examine the potential for creating abetter society. Thus, this study has found out that empathy . though itstarts from the understanding of the characters who are dealing with eventsin the text . could eventually become into a locomotive power for creatinga better society through the process of understanding the readers outside the text, the others, and finally the world itself.

John Keats embodied the relationships of romantic love and imaginationthrough the rhetoric of an extended metaphor in his poems. The poetextensively dealt with an erotic love story, which is internally a kind ofexperiment of his own imagination. By the way, the concepts of romanticlove and imagination were the two axes of an epochal paradigm of the19th-century romanticism which opened up a new era, breaking off thetradition of the 18th-century neoclassicism in Britain. As the freedom andspontaneity of human beings became more emphasized in the revolutionaryera, such a trend emphasized free and romantic love. Besides, a number ofnew ideas began to make their appearances, not only in terms of themes andforms of poetry but also in literary criticism, which emphasized the functionof imagination as an icon of innovative ideas. Romantic poets who hadexercised a far-reaching influence and made achievements in diverse areas when compared with other poets, therefore, cherished imagination and soughtfor love in their poems enough to be called love poets. Of them, Keatsrecognized “a man's life of any worth” as a “continual allegory” andreflected this periodic and literary phenomenon in his own work, by graftingthem onto the rhetoric of an extended metaphor. The poet can get a chance to come closer to the quintessence of things through imagination andintuition through what is recognized as his best-known doctrine: “negativecapability.” “Negative capability” implies an engagement with an actual objectthrough imaginative identification that is simultaneously a kind oftranscendence. A poet loses selfhood that demands a single perspective,identifies with the experience of the object, and lets the experience speakitself through him/her. Therefore, through these processes, the denotation andthe connotation being embodied in Keats' poetry are integrated into one andcan form a true integer in terms of contents and techniques.

Immanuel Kant’s biological philosophy is at the center of his philosophicalsystem that seeks for the harmony and the unity of nature and freedom. From the perspective of contemporary biology armed with the mechanism ofevolution and genetic engineering, however, Kant’s thought of organism canfind itself difficult to sustain itself and to be generally accepted. This studyis aimed at figuring out, first, to what extent can the philosophy and thesystem of Kant — which are add odds with the current view of organism —be maintained if we accept the biological organism which is the dominatingview of contemporary biology, and, second, what role can the philosophy ofKant play to promote the view of biological organism under the preconditionthat it is not perfect in itself. Recent studies of biological philosophy usually take an affirmative stancewith regard to the opinion that the teleological explanation of biology cannotbe reductive to the mechanical views but nevertheless can be naturalized aslong as it is compatible with other systems of explanations in natural science. Nevertheless, there is a substantial difference between naturalized teleology, orteleonomy, and conventional teleology. This study, therefore, has found out the differences, and examined how Kant’s teleology in the history ofphilosophy can be reinterpreted — despite the differences — in the paradigmof contemporary teleology and how Kant’s teleology can supplement thevulnerable points of contemporary teleology.

In fact, human body is actually a biological-sociological entity, but hastraditionally been treated only as a bearer of “mind” or ‘the self.” From thisconventional viewpoint, human body was no more than a dependent variable. Boosted by modern political movements, however, human body came to beunderstood as an independent entity, from which was born the equation that“human body is life.” Unlike the modern political movement that treatedhuman body as an issue of rights, the life-community regarded human bodyas an object of medical management. Finally, the state came to commandmedical science, opening the way for it to occupy the individual body. Michel Foucault called such an affair of life in the life-community“biopolitics.” But the issue of biopolitics is not restricted only to a“life-management” that rescues a life from the infectious diseases. Humanbeings wish to live a “better life,” and such human desires have given birthto modern “eugenics.” But Nazi Germany used eugenics as a means ofcarrying out “ethnic cleansing” from which emerged G. Agamben’s“death-politics (tanapolitica).”Based on Foucault’s biopolitics and Agamben’s death-politics are born P. Rabinow and N. Rose’s “the politics of life itself,” which is evaluated ashaving opened a new realm of biopolitics in the post-genome era. In the post-genome age that started from the “Human Genome Project” in 1992, a“gene” is life itself. This study has discussed how a gene is treated in thepolitical context and how gene-politics can possibly acquire justification.