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The Postcolonial Strategies of Two Korean Intellectuals, Ahn Changho and Kwangsoo Lee

  • Chunwon Research journal
  • Abbr : Chunwon Research journal
  • 2018, (13), pp.9-33
  • DOI : 10.31809/crj.2018.12.13.9
  • Publisher : Chunwon Research Society
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature > Korean Literature
  • Received : October 30, 2018
  • Accepted : December 9, 2018

Song Hyun Ho 1

1아주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

On the threshold of the modern period, Korean intellectuals began to turn to the U.S. instead of China as their new civilization model, to restore their national rights and identity. Ahn was one of them. With his ‘(有情)-(無情)-thesis’, Ahn criticized that the Korean society was , and that it needed to appropriate the of the Western society, especially the United States. Ahn believed that a Korean society must be founded upon by practicing the ‘competency-training’(실력양성론), which claimed to improve the Korean people’s economic status and level of cultural understanding. Thus he argued for the reformation and enlightenment of their spirit into a collective spirit of ethno-nationalism(민족). Interestingly, Yi was a registered member of Ahn’s Young Korean Academy(興 士團) for preparing Korea’s independence. Although much-neglected in existing academic research, Yi’s theories on ethno-nationalist Movement or Reformation are directly and mutually related to Ahn’s ideology. They were founded upon the objective of fostering the true character of the Korean identity while reforming its subsidiary aspects. They were also an appropriation of the theories of both evolution and civilizational-hierarchy into an active postcolonial strategy, a point where his ideas of civilization and modernization fall apart from the logic of Japanese imperialism. It is in this context of Ahn’s ideology that Yi comes to publish his novels from H(무정)(1917) to (흙)(1932-3). This reveals Yi’s long-time search for a postcolonial strategy just right for Korea, which he found by reading the West through the symbol of heart(情), or love, especially the United States.

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