KJCKorea
Journal Central

This article examines the discourse on motherhood in Manchukuo under Japanese imperial rule. Specifically, it focuses on the “Mother’s Role” series published in the Manseon Ilbo from May to October 1942. The newspaper’s section presents a comprehensive portrayal of Korean households that had migrated to the multiethnic state of Manchukuo in the 1930s and 1940s. Among its features, the “Mother’s Role” series was the longest-running series of articles on motherhood. Korean women were assigned the position and role of seonggye (normative/ideal) mothers, with strong emphasis placed on their responsibilities as wives managing food, clothing, and shelter and as mothers responsible for childrearing and education. The series also provided detailed norms and guidelines on various aspects of everyday life, including language use, etiquette, domestic routines, education, time management, and health. At the same time, Japanese women—framed as “mainland” wives and mothers—were presented as exemplars of the dominant identity, while Korean women were evaluated in terms of their shortcomings and needs for improvement. Through the “Mother’s Role” series, Korean women were expected to remake themselves by imitating Japanese women.

This study examines how Yuasa Katsue’s novel Yalu River (鴨綠江) represents both colonialism and developmentalism while simultaneously revealing their internal contradictions. To this end, it focuses on the Sup’ung Dam, which symbolically illustrates the developmentalist expansion of colonialism within the work. First, the study demonstrates that the Sup’ung Dam was constructed under an imperial vision aimed at political, cultural, military, and economic integration. In line with imperial ideologies such as naisen ittai (Japan-Korea unity) and gozuku kyōwa (Five Races Under One Union), the dam was represented in colonial Korea as a monument to national achievement. It further analyzes how the protagonist internalizes national subject formation after encountering the dam and how this process served as an inevitable strategy for securing social recognition in the society of that time. Through the concept of the “inverted sublime” presented in the novel, the study explains the protagonist’s process of national subject formation while showing that this ideological framework comes into tension with the narrative structure and character plausibility, thereby exposing the contradictions inherent in colonialism and developmentalism. While this study contributes to the limited scholarship on Yalu River by shedding light on the characteristics of late colonial literature through this novel, a more comprehensive analysis of the broader transformations in Yuasa Katsue’s works during this period is still needed.

This paper examines the attempts and limits of Korean-Mongolian solidarity in the early 1920s socialist revolutionary context. Focusing on the mediating role of Nam Maria, it analyzes how solidarity between Korea and Mongolia unfolded and why it ultimately failed to develop into sustained cooperation. In the 1910s, Mongolian nationalists viewed Mongolia as a potential new base for the Korean independence movement, but the sudden death of Lee Tae-jun greatly weakened this base. In the 1920s, however, the establishment of integrated organizations such as the Sino-Korean-Mongolian Revolutionary Committee, the Eastern Bureau, and the Far Eastern Secretariat laid the political foundation for Korean-Mongolian solidarity. Within this international anti-Japanese united front, close negotiations took place between of and Mongolian revolutionary forces. During this process, Nam Maria married the Mongolian revolutionary leader Rinchino and moved to Mongolia in 1921. The Congress of the Toilers of the Far East, held in 1921, marked a decisive turning point atwhich KoreanMongolian solidarity became more concrete. With the assistance of Nam Maria, who was staying in Mongolia, the Korean delegation— composed of figures such as Lyuh Woon-hyung and Kim Kyu-sik—was able to attend the congresstogether with the Mongolian delegation. Both sides also expanded their political solidarity by discussing concrete plans for national independence and liberation under Soviet support. However, limitations appeared in that the political negotiations between the Mongolian revolutionary Rinchino and Korean figures did not fully come to light. This appears to have stemmed from the differences in revolutionary strategies and approaches to diplomacy toward Japan. Meanwhile, the political changes following the success of the 1921revolution led Koreans under Japanese pressure to viewMongolia as a potential destination for migration. Casesbeen confirmed in which Koreans requested naturalization and residence from the Mongolian government, and Nam Maria exerted a certain degree of influence in this process under Rinchino's political protection. Although the Mongolian government was initially favorable toward Korean migration, its policies later revealed limitations as they became subordinated to Soviet directives amid changes in Soviet-Japanese relations. In this way, Korean-Mongolian solidarity showed certain possibilitieswithin the socialist international order. However, due to confusion in Soviet East Asian policy and Nam Maria’s move to the Soviet Union following Rinchino in 1925, it lost its central focus and ultimately failed to develop into substantive cooperation.