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An Chunggŭn is frequently portrayed as having killed Itō Hirobumi primarily out of a sense of wounded nationalism. However, in this article I argue through a close reading of An’s unfinished prison essay, A Treatise on Peace in the East, and relevant court records, that in addition to nationalism, Catholicism, Confucianism and Asianism played an important role in shaping An’s worldview and convincing him that killing Itō was not only justified, but practical, as it would put into motion events that would lead to peace in the East and the restoration of Korean independence. Moreover, I contend that these worldviews are not easily isolated variables within An’s thought, but rather interacted with and shaped each other, with religion acting as an ethical foundation, as seen in the fact that An’s Confucian-Catholic morality led him to absolutize Asianism into a religious principle equivalent to obedience to Heaven. I therefore argue that An killed Itō in part because his essentially religious worldview made it appear to be a more effective means of obtaining Korean independence and peace in the East than it really was. At the same time, I show that An’s universal, religious morality prevented him from adopting a xenophobic form of Asianism and led him to search for a solution that would benefit all human beings as he sought not only East Asian, but world peace.

In the early hours of November 30, 1905, Min Yŏnghwan took his own life in protest against the Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty that had been forced on the Korean cabinet in the wake of Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905)—thus ended the career of an elite member of Korea’s Confucian ruling class, who had unique experience in dealing with foreign diplomatic officials due to his two visits to the West in 1896 and 1897. Four years later An Chunggŭn, a convert to Roman Catholicism, was hung for the assassination of Itō Hirobumi, the Japanese statesman responsible for the protectorate treaty. This article examines the ideas of these two men as expressed in their writings, namely, Min’s policy essay Ch’ŏnilch’aek (One policy out of one thousand) and other pieces from his collected works Min Ch’ungjŏnggong yugo (Posthumous works of Min Yŏnghwan), which were not inherently antagonistic to the Western powers other than Russia and focused primarily on exposing the aggressive intentions of Japan, and An’s treatise, Tongyang p’yŏnghwaron (A treatise on peace in the East), which viewed the West as posing a common threat to China, Japan and Korea that required a collective response based on racial solidarity and the mutual recognition of each state’s sovereignty and independence. The article will also examine their ideas in the context of Western views of the region as well as the responses of Western commentators to their final acts of protest.

The issue of canonicity has been widely discussed, particularly since the spread of cultural influence from the European great powers to the peripheral areas. In the past, the classical canons suppressed differences in locality, gender and generation. What matters now is to recognize the changeability, rather than the constancy, of canonicity which this article intends to observe in the historical and cultural processes of the marginal alteration of a Western canon in modern Korea. Indeed, we need to imagine how a canon exists; it is premised on the dichotomy of center and periphery, yet with its blurring relationship, it repeatedly both negates and maintains itself so as to be highlighted through its literary value. This article takes Sin Ch’ae-ho’s novel Dream Sky as a good example with which to discern the minute crack of alteration in the configuration of the canon and to scrutinize how it is shown in the peripheral literature. As a novelist as well as a historian and a revolutionary seeking national independence, Sin Ch’ae-ho always thought about the importance and possibility of social practice through literature. His activity as a literary writer partly derived from his understanding of the Italian writer Dante Alighieri; he adored Dante as an enlightened intellectual and recognized his Divine Comedy as the record of his salvation, and in writing Dream Sky he took it as his own pointer for resisting Japanese imperialism. This article aims to reevaluate Dream Sky as an aesthetic reconstruction and thus to concentrate on textual analysis, whereby I expect to re-highlight its ability to practice marginal alteration and the work of the dialogical imagination.

The ancient history and identity of Korean martial arts in general remain greatly disputed, and t’aekkyŏn has been mistakenly associated with taekwondo. The first existing reference to t’aekkyŏn dates back to the early eighteenth century. From that period until the turn of the twentieth century, a variety of records have survived, including several official and historical documents, some depictions in paintings, and a single photograph. After analyzing all these existing records, this study concludes that t’aekkyŏn in its past form was not a martial art as we understand it. Rather, it had various game-like qualities, and was also often associated with unruly behavior by individuals of the lower classes. In addition, public performances of t’aekkyŏn were probably connected to folk customs, rituals, and/or festivals, which could also explain its dancelike characteristics as a form of entertainment. While some suggest it may have had some earlier martial art roots, there are not enough existing documents to make any definite conclusion. Therefore, the current presentation of t’aekkyŏn’s as a “traditional Korean martial art” suggests an invented tradition.

This article addresses the complex process of the construction of self-identity of shamans in contemporary Korea while focusing on shamans’ consumption of such notions as tradition and modernity. The paradoxical condition, in which a shaman is ideologically identified as a religious priest as well as a cultural transmitter but is also condemned as practicing superstition, results in confusion as Korean shamans try to construct their own self-identity. When a shaman tries to construct his/her identity, there exist models of identity culturally available to him/her at a particular historical moment, which I argue are characterized by the intermingling of tradition and modernity. By analyzing two shamans’ life stories, I will provide an account of how they appropriate the memory of traditional apprenticeship under their spirit-mother/father in order not only to differentiate themselves from tradition but also accommodate themselves to it, illustrating how modern concepts such as religion and neo-shamanism are synthesized into the reconfiguring of Korean shamanship.