2026, Vol.83, No.1

Development of Local Polities in the Western Gyeonggi Region and Their Relations with Neighboring Regions

Han Jisun | 2026, 83(1) | pp.9~44 | number of Cited : 0

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This study examines the growth process of regional polities in the western Gyeonggi region, located along the lower reaches of the Han River and the west coast of Korea, and their relationships with surrounding polities. By reviewing existing scholarship on these regional polities, this paper highlights the necessity of viewing the region as a historical subject and suggests key points for future discussion. The western Gyeonggi region can be categorized into three areas based on natural topography—Gimpo-Ganghwa, Northern Incheon, and Southern Incheon—each hosting regional polities that utilized mounded burials (bungu-myo). This study primarily analyzes the Unyang-dong site in Gimpo and the Yeonhui-dong site in Incheon to compare the two groups and identify the characteristics of mounded burials in the region. The Unyang-dong group spearheaded the growth of the western Gyeonggi region from the mid-2nd century, interring prestige goods such as gold earrings and a significant quantity of ironware into large-scale mounded burials. In the 3rd century, while several cemetery sites began to be formed across the western Gyeonggi region, including the Yeonhui-dong site, the Unyang-dong site showed a gradual decline. Furthermore, a chronological trend was identified in which the quantity of iron burial goods decreased while pottery offerings and related rituals increased, suggesting a shift in exchange networks or methods of status expression. In historical studies, the prevailing view associates these western Gyeonggi polities with the Biryu group in Samguk Sagi (三國史記) or Sinbungo-guk in Sanguozhi (三國志). However, one must be cautious of simplistic interpretations that establish a one-to-one correspondence between specific archaeological sites and the small states or historical events recorded in written sources. Nevertheless, the dynamic relationship between the Chinese commanderies and Han (韓) society during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, as revealed in the “Han” section of Sanguozhi, can serve as a valid framework for interpreting the material culture of the western Gyeonggi region. It is also necessary to move beyond the perspective of unilateral absorption and centralized consolidation by Baekje, instead positioning the western Gyeonggi polities as active agents to clarify their multifaceted relationships with surrounding powers. Accordingly, this paper proposes two areas for further research: the networks between regional polities in the southern Gyeonggi and Chungcheong regions, and the patterns of mutual exchange with central Baekje. In the case of the former, it was confirmed that the region was connected to southern Gyeonggi and the Gokgyo-cheon Basin of Chungcheong through distribution networks of Jinhan and Byeonhan style iron weapons and agate beads. In the case of the latter, the morphological features of pottery lids suggest the possibility of mutual influence between central Baekje and the western Gyeonggi region. The growth of the Baekje state was a product of a dynamic history shaped by regional polities competing and cooperating through their respective networks. Therefore, rather than viewing Baekje as the sole subject and peripheral forces as mere objects, the reality of early Baekje history can be better understood by simultaneously considering the patterns of growth and decline of each regional polity.

A Preliminary Study on the Nature of Local Chiefs in the Ancient Yeongsan River Basin Region

YoungEun Choi | 2026, 83(1) | pp.45~77 | number of Cited : 0

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The Yeongsan River Basin is a term referring to the Yeongsan River watershed and its surrounding areas, which share broadly similar material culture and are characterized by the construction of large jar coffins and monumental mound tombs. Existing scholarship in ancient Korean history and archaeology has produced a substantial body of research on the timing and processes through which Baekje integrated the polities of the Yeongsan River Basin, largely based on mortuary evidence. While these studies have yielded important new insights, they have also exposed significant limitations. Most notably, they rest on the uncritical assumption that the polities of the Yeongsan River Basin were incorporated into Baekje’s local administrative system through a uniform process, and they tend to overlook the agency and diversity of local leaders involved in this integration. This study traces the growth of early polities and the emergence of chiefly authority in the Yeongsan River Basin from the Early Iron Age onward, adopting a chronological approach. During the Early Iron Age, leaders were buried with various types of bronze ritual objects, whereas in the Proto–Three Kingdoms period their authority increasingly emphasized military symbolism. However, an examination of mound tombs with square or rectangular platforms indicates that, compared to other regions of the Korean Peninsula, the power of local leaders in the Yeongsan River Basin remained limited and did not extend beyond the collective structure of the community. It was not until around the fourth century, as exemplified by the Doksuribong Tomb in Haenam, that mound tombs clearly expressing the personal authority of individual leaders began to appear. After the fifth century, the emergence of monumental mound tombs across the Yeongsan River Basin suggests the rise of powerful local leaders whose authority was distinct from, and not simply subsumed under, the Baekje central regime. Previous studies have generally assumed homogeneity among these local elites and, on that basis, inferred the relationship between the Baekje center and regional polities. However, analysis of tomb structures and grave goods reveals considerable diversity among local leaders. In particular, their responses to Baekje’s reorganization of regional societies into provincial units were far from uniform. This study argues that such varied responses should be reinterpreted from the perspective of ‘participation and exclusion in local governance.

The Development of Ancient Polities and Characteristics of Leaders in the Eastern part of Honam Province

Kwon Ohyoung | 2026, 83(1) | pp.79~107 | number of Cited : 0

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Prehistory in History Education: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese, Japanese, Irish, and British History Textbooks

CHO DAE YOUN | 2026, 83(1) | pp.111~141 | number of Cited : 0

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The King is Dead, Where is the King? : On Silla’s “Royal” Tombs of the Maripkan Period

Sebastian Mueller | 2026, 83(1) | pp.143~176 | number of Cited : 0

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Fortune (tychē) in Thucydides’ History

Hunsang Chun | 2026, 83(1) | pp.177~212 | number of Cited : 0

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Empirical Aesthetics and the History of Buddhist Art: Theoretical Insights from Recent Reflections on the “Origin” of the Buddha Image

Jimin Son | 2026, 83(1) | pp.213~242 | number of Cited : 0

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Zhu Xi’s Critiques of Silent Illumination and Phrase-Observing Zen and His Neo-Confucian Alternatives

Yi Jongwoo | 2026, 83(1) | pp.243~261 | number of Cited : 0

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The Ontological Revolution of Choe Je-u’s Concept of Heaven: A Textual Stratigraphy of Early Donghak Scriptures

Yun Sang Hyun | 2026, 83(1) | pp.263~294 | number of Cited : 0

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This study aims to elucidate the distinctive position and ontological significance of Choe Je-u’s Donghak concept of Heaven (天觀) within the intellectual-historical context of shifting cosmological worldviews in nineteenth-century Joseon. To this end, the Donggyeong Daejeon (東經大全) and Yongdam Yusa (龍潭遺詞) are analyzed according to their temporal strata (時層) of composition, demonstrating that Choe Je-u’s understanding of Heaven was not a fixed doctrine but a dynamically evolving process of thought. The analysis reveals that Choe Je-u’s concept of Heaven underwent three stages of ontological transformation. The first stage, preceding his mystical experience, is characterized by Heaven (天) as an external and determinative reality that governs human fate and fortune. The second stage, spanning the period immediately following his mystical experience through the years of active proselytization, marks a transitional phase in which Heaven expands into a multidimensional reality: simultaneously a personal deity (하늘님) accessible through intimate dialogue, and a principle of pneumatic transformation (氣化) expressed through the concepts of jigi (至氣, supreme vital force) and gwisin (鬼神, spiritual force). The third stage, representing the completion of his spiritual cultivation, constitutes a moment of radical breakthrough in which the previously external divine becomes fully integrated with the subject’s interiority, culminating in the declaration of the “boundless self” (무궁한 나) as the sovereign operator of cosmic power. Choe Je-u’s mystical experience is understood as a process of integration (tongham, 통합) that preserves a sense of transcendence even within union, through which the individual secures autonomous subjectivity without being absorbed into the divine. Furthermore, his critique of Western Christianity as a tradition lacking pneumatic transformation (身無氣化之神), together with his formulation of the Sicheonju (侍天主) proposition, demonstrates the essence of an East Asian model of divine-human unity in which spiritual presence and pneumatic transformation are organically conjoined. In conclusion, Choe Je-u’s transformation of the concept of Heaven constitutes an ontological revolution that elevated the human subject from passive recipient of predetermined fate to sovereign bearer of cosmic life—the “boundless self.” This transformation brings into sharp relief the dimension of subjective self-awakening that existing panentheistic interpretations have overlooked, and intimates the possibility of a new mode of subjectivity capable of transcending the atomistic individualism of contemporary society.

“Italian Romance” of Meiji Japan (1892-1900): Narrative Strategies of the Italian “Three Heroes” Biographies and the Modulation of Meiji Nationalism

Young Shil Youn | 2026, 83(1) | pp.295~342 | number of Cited : 0

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Reconsidering the Political Element of Sinsosol (New Novels): Focusing on Hyeoruinu (Tears of Blood) and Eunsegye (Silver World)

Jung, Byung Sul | 2026, 83(1) | pp.343~375 | number of Cited : 0

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From the inception, sinsosol (new novels) were touted as political novels, and the connection to Japanese political novels was discussed in early research, so the political element has long been a subject of attention. Kim Yun-sik’s representative paper on this topic definitively characterized sinsosol as an “deficiency of the political novel,” which guided the direction of subsequent research. While it did not specifically enumerate what was lacking compared to Japanese political novels, it was generally understood that sinsosol omitted political topics such as political parties, parliaments, and civil rights, which were covered in Japanese political novels. Other subsequent studies also used terms like “omission,” “invisibility,” and “similarity” to describe the political element of sinsosol. This paper critically examines the opinion that sinsosol lack political element. The comparison points used to determine this lack were the Japanese political novels and their underlying political situations. I argue that prior research, including Kim Yun-sik’s, misunderstood the Japanese political situation and overestimated its level. For example, Kim Yun-sik described the Meiji New Government as implementing a constitutional monarchy from the start, but this was a result achieved later through civil rights movements. Even then, it did not become a proper constitutional monarchy. Furthermore, while some Japanese political novels dealt with civil rights, many works focused predominantly on national rights (independence, nation-building, creating a wealthy and powerful nation), and political novels ultimately converged on the theme of national sovereignty. Examining the political element of sinsosol, focusing on Yi Injik’s Hyeoruinu and Eunsegye, reveals that the works’ backgrounds are directly related to politics, such as war and the exploitation of the populace. Furthermore, the narrators or characters speak of new politics. The depiction of contemporary reality and the setting of the United States as a destination for study abroad also demonstrate the political element of sinsosol. Because these works are not like Japanese political novels that depict the rise and fall of nations or feature politicians debating civil rights, they might be evaluated as lacking political content from a modern perspective. However, considering the reality Korea faced at the time, as well as the previous political situation, sinsosol can be said to have the maximum level of political content possible for that era.

The Anxiety of Influence and the Emergence of New Father-Daughter Narratives

Park, Jin-sook | 2026, 83(1) | pp.377~410 | number of Cited : 0

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This paper identifies the emergence of a new father-daughter narrative in Korean literary history, focusing on Jeong Ji-a’s The Liberation Diary of My Father (2022) and Ye So-yeon’s “That Dog and the Revolution” (2024). Both novels feature a daughter as narrator who, centered around her father’s funeral, reflects on his life, realizes the traces he left on her own existence, and moves toward solidarity. Unlike previous, somewhat abstract fatherdaughter narratives, these works focus on the relationship between Korean society’s ideology and the father’s life, showing how life is possible after the father’s era. Jeong Ji-a’s The Liberation Diary of My Father utilizes anxiety about the influence of Camus’s The Stranger as the text’s unconscious. The novel directly references The Stranger, describes the sun, and deliberately uses the word “absurdity,” revealing both the influence and the process of overcoming it. It uses The Stranger to speak about the absurdity surrounding both the father’s life after the partisan activity and the ideology of Korean society. In Ye So-yeon’s “That Dog and the Revolution,” the narrator-daughter, through her ‘586 generation’ father’s illness, death, and funeral, not only comes to understand him but critically inherits his attitude. This mirrors an expanded version of the brief scene in The Stranger where Meursault feels liberation just before death and comes to understand ‘Mother’. Jeong Ji-a completes her mourning through the funeral, while Ye So-yeon realizes her deep love for her ailing father. Both novels, beginning with the father’s death, transcend the pain of his absence or mere conceptual overcoming to arrive at a new understanding and mourning. They herald the emergence of a new father-daughter narrative significant in literary history, as they encapsulate the unfolding of modern Korean history and the development and undercurrents of 2020s society.

A Contact-zone Person Reconnects a Divided Language: Cho Seung-bog’s Movement for Korean Linguistic Homogenization

KYOUNGHWA LIM | 2026, 83(1) | pp.411~442 | number of Cited : 0

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This study explores a new practical model for addressing the linguistic divergence between North and South Korea through the life history and intellectual activities of Cho Seung-bog (1922–2012), a linguist and a quintessential “contact zone person” (gyeonggyein). To date, discourses on linguistic unification have primarily focused on state-led efforts to reconcile South Korea’s Standard Language (pyojuneo) and North Korea’s Cultural Language (munhwaeo). Consequently, the existential practices of Korean diasporas outside the peninsula have often been overlooked in academic discussions. This paper highlights Cho’s unique “locality” and neutral perspective, shaped by his journey from Kando to Japan and the United States, followed by his exile in Sweden. Upon visiting his hometown in Yanbian in the late 1970s, Cho discovered the Yanbian dialect and defined it as a “third Korean language” capable of mediating between the South and the North and serving as a bulwark for recovering linguistic homogeneity. He introduced the academic value of Yanbian Korean to Western academia while emphasizing that linguistic unification is a prerequisite for cultural and political integration, proposing a neutral “language planning” acceptable to both Koreas. Furthermore, from the late 1980s, Cho engaged in practical language movement by collaborating with South Korean academia and organizing groups such as the “Association for the Restoration of Homogeneity in Our Language and Culture” (Dongchuhoe). Based on the ideal of a neutral civil society free from state intervention, he envisioned the Korean diaspora playing the role of a “bridge” connecting the two Koreas. Although his movement failed to reach fruition due to a complex interplay of factors — the structural barriers of the national division system on the Korean Peninsula, the impracticality of his adherence to archaic linguistic norms, and his personal uncompromising principledness — his “open nationalism,” which sought to expand the category of the nation based on linguistic and cultural ties rather than bloodline, offers significant implications for today’s transition to a multicultural society. His efforts mark a vital manifestation of practical nationalism that aimed to dismantle the boundaries of the Korean national division system and embrace new national assets in the realm of culture and language.

Mo Yun-suk’s Gender Strategy and Private Writing Crossings: Based on the U.N. General Assembly in Paris, The World I Saw

Bok Gyung Yeon | 2026, 83(1) | pp.443~473 | number of Cited : 0

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In the 1950s, when they were able to think about the world through firsthand experience, Korean intellectuals visited the 3rd UN General Assembly and published their own records, and the only female writer’s record was Mo Yun-sook’s The World I Saw. In The World I Saw, the traditional gender role is followed by borrowing a strategy of “disguised apoliticality”. However, on the one hand, private utterances that deviate from the role and reveal their desires are sometimes caught. In existing studies, discussions have been mainly conducted in terms of space or ethnicity of works, but this paper tries to pay attention to Mo Yun-sook’s gender strategy and the point of selfcontradiction that deviated from it. Mo Yun-sook assumes her position as a “byeokchon girl”, which is a tool to wrap up her identity, while the pure image of the Byeokchon girl served as a reference point for judging women. Mo Yun-sook’s gender strategy was attempted in a way that advocated national consciousness and purity. On the other hand, behind this public writing, there were mixed private utterances outside the gender role that were required of women (civilians) of the time. In a heterosexual patriarchal society, women’s sexuality has been punished and managed, but in The World I Saw, women’s sexuality, which was taboo at the time, was affirmed with unavoidable self-desire, while rather objectifying male intellectuals, causing a gender reversal. The World I Saw is a complex place of writing that intersects the role of public writing called the UN General Meeting and Mo Yoon-sook’s private diary. It means that while the method of gender strategy emphasizing tradition and ethnicity encompasses the entire work, it is possible to discover private utterances about the sexuality or desires of women who have been suppressed.

May 16 as an Extension of April 19: Discourse on the May 16 Coup as a Revolution in the Early 1960s

Byeon Seong Ho | 2026, 83(1) | pp.475~510 | number of Cited : 0

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Negation of Violence and the Disappearance of the Future: Rereading Han Kang’s 1990s Novel The Black Deer (1998)

Seo Yoon Choi | 2026, 83(1) | pp.511~558 | number of Cited : 0

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This paper identifies, through a close reading of the text’s internal logic, the gap between the narrative ending of Han Kang’s early novel Black Deer (1998) and the novel’s thematic core condensed in its central image, the “black deer.” In doing so, it seeks to locate in Black Deer a singular point that cannot be reduced to either the grand narrative of “history” or a narrative of “individual authenticity.” It is worth noting that the interpretive framework centered on the keyword “orphan consciousness” — presented in Kim Byeong-ik’s criticism in the 1990s, among the earliest responses to Han Kang’s fiction — has remained largely unrevised in subsequent scholarship on Black Deer. Kim’s discussion, however, overlooks that the violence of the coal industry is represented not through the miner Im Yeong-seok, but is displaced onto his daughter, Im Ui-seon. Accordingly, this paper reads Black Deer as a text that registers the violence of the coal-mining industry. The novel’s setting, the fictional Hwanggok City, is a devastated and abandoned mining town in the wake of coal-industry rationalization policies. The landscape of Hwanggok is depicted not through the miners themselves but through Jang Jong-wook, who photographed miners underground. Kim In-young, who interviews Jang Jong-wook, anchors the narrative present; yet the figure who propels the future toward which the fiction gestures is Im Ui-seon. Living as a workingclass woman on the urban margins, Ui-seon attempts, through writing, to discover a truth that might cohere her life, but she fails to complete her writing. This failure culminates in an episode on a spring afternoon when Ui-seon runs naked through the streets and suffers a mental breakdown. The novel ends by staging the (im)possibility of her recovery from an illness rooted in the violence of the mining industry and refracted through her mother’s own mental collapse — an ending that leaves its vision of the future blank while intensifying the characters’ endless movement. By foregrounding what is distinctive in Han Kang’s early fiction through close textual analysis, this paper demonstrates a reappraisal of her literary-historical significance as a novelist of the 1990s.

The Mythological Semantic Effects of Vengeful Ghost Narratives in Modern Korean Drama: Focusing on “Oh My Ghost Clients” (MBC, 2025)

Park Jin Hee , Hong Jaebeom | 2026, 83(1) | pp.559~596 | number of Cited : 0

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Exploring Ways to Utilize Edutech in Life History Writing Classes as Lifelong Korean Language Education

Kim Su Jeong | 2026, 83(1) | pp.597~630 | number of Cited : 0

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Rethinking Emotion Research Methodologies and Reinterpreting History of Emotions Theory

ZHENGMEILING | 2026, 83(1) | pp.631~664 | number of Cited : 0

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This study reviews the current trends in Emotion and History of Emotions research and examines the theory of History of Emotions proposed by William M. Reddy and Monique Scheer, which critically approaches the intersection of three major theoretical terrains: Biological Universalism, Cognitivism, and Social Constructed Determinism. William M. Reddy, who challenged the deterministic position that reduces emotions to social regulation and structures, demonstrated emotional agency by creating the concept of a third type of emotional utterance, the so-called ‘emotives’, beyond the ‘constative’ and ‘performative’ speech discussed by J. L. Austin. Reddy argued that emotion is both speech and action, and since it is an act of attempting interpretation rather than mere reporting, it is uncontrollable; thus, emotional expression is actively ‘uttered’ by the subject. Furthermore, Monique Scheer begins with René Descartes’ unresolved problem — the fundamental issue of how substance (the body), the basis of materiality, and mind, the basis of intellectual activity, interact — known as ‘mind-body dualism’. Monique Scheer demonstrates that emotion is the product of embodied practice that transcends Biological Universalism (body) and Cognitivism (mind), beyond dualism, demonstrating that emotions are products of embodied practice. Scheer thus clarifies ‘emotion-as-practice’. And drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Monique Scheer emphasized that it must be understood as a practical field where emotion flows from the embodied ‘body’ to ‘society’ and back again to the ‘body’. The two scholars’ concepts of ‘emotives’ and ‘emotion as practice’ provide a theoretical foundation that goes beyond the existing one-way analysis and sheds new light on the subjective aspect of emotions that agentively guiding human life.

‘Republican Ideals’ and ‘Imperial Legacies’: Review of Imperial Republicanism: Self-Perceptions and Historical Narratives in Contemporary China by Yu, Yongtae

Lee, Wonjune | 2026, 83(1) | pp.667~678 | number of Cited : 0

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Engaging with China through the Narrative of the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea”: Review of Remembered War, Imagined China by Han, Dam

Song, Gabae | 2026, 83(1) | pp.679~689 | number of Cited : 0

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A New Mapping of Modern East Asian Literary History: Review of East Asian Comparative Literature: Narratives, Discourses, and Affects of Modernity by Seo, Youngchae

Seo Dong-ju | 2026, 83(1) | pp.691~715 | number of Cited : 0

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The History of Koreans’ Global Outlook: Review of Beyond the Cold War: North and South Korea’s Diplomacy toward Neutrality, NonAlignment, and the Third World, 1948–1976 by Kim, Do-min

OK Chang Joon | 2026, 83(1) | pp.715~735 | number of Cited : 0

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Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.69

2026, Vol.83, No.1