Earticle

The so-called “well-field system” (chŏngjŏnje 井田制), a field allotment and taxation method based on the operation of nine identical plots, long functioned as the dominant land system of East Asia and was admired by Mencius and Zhu Xi 朱熹. However, in the mid-Chosŏn 朝鮮 period, Han Paekkyŏm 韓百謙, a Neo- Confucian scholar, surveyed farmland on the outskirts of the walled city of P’yŏngyang 平壤 and contended that the land system there, allegedly established by the ruler Kija 箕子 of the Shang 商 dynasty, differed from the original wellfield system of the Zhou 周 dynasty. He explained that the site in P’yŏngyang was in the shape chŏn 田, not the chŏng 井 pattern of Zhou. Han maintained that the government should institute land reform based on a rearrangement of how land was partitioned. Critics of Han, however, argued that not all the arable land around P’yŏngyang was composed of chŏn-shaped plots and claimed that land reform would not be a realistic solution but rather a burden to the people. Han’s idea was significant in that it triggered a debate on land reform. As a result, many scholars called for the adoption of a 10% tax rate aimed at stabilizing the people’s welfare. The well-field debate is a true reminder that Chosŏn scholars believed that a successful land system was a precondition for realizing benevolent governance based on Confucian and Mencian thought.

The expansion of the Japanese Empire from the late nineteenth century coincided with the modernization of the nation. In this context, historical research conducted on Korea by Japanese historians from the late nineteenth century to 1945 had the double function of supporting Japan’s colonial expansion and establishing historical studies as a modern discipline, which entailed the creation of Tōyō (Japan’s Orient). While previous studies on Japanese historiography from this period have tended to focus on its function as a tool supporting Japanese colonialism and have not paid due attention to its role as a part of Tōyō, this paper examines how Japanese historians ascribed the notion of Tōyō and the position of Korea within this historical space. It achieves this by focusing on the work of Inaba Iwakichi on Korean political history. His study was based on his teacher Naito Konan’s interpretation of Chinese history. Naitō, who was a professor in the department of history at Kyōtō Imperial University, explained the Tang-Song transition as the evolution from medieval aristocracy to early modern monarchy. Following this line of thought, Inaba claimed that the political system of the Chosŏn dynasty had remained at the aristocracy stage, thus highlighting the stagnant character of Korean history. In addition, it shows that Japanese historians positioned Korea as the most backward state in Tōyō, which comprised Korea, China, and Japan.

This article explores new reading paradigms of the Korean folktale Ch’unhyangjŏn 春香傳 under Japanese colonization. I examine how Korean and Japanese literary and political intellectuals during the colonial period respectively envisioned new affiliations for Koreans through competing, yet occasionally connected, reinterpretations of Ch’unhyangjŏn. Korean intellectuals, including nationalist and leftist writers, attempted to inspire readers to imagine a new society beyond the Confucian social order through their modern interpretations that challenged conventional ways of understanding this nationally symbolic literary piece. In contrast, Japanese colonial officials confined this classical literary piece in the framework of a Korean past in an attempt to tighten their control over Koreans during Japan’s wartime mobilization. This reading practice by colonial officials, which I call the colonial interpretation, prevented open interpretive practices of Ch’unhyangjŏn that could continuously produce new values of classical Korean literature. With its historical and thematic literary power, along with its popularity, Ch’unhyangjŏn attracted intellectuals from both Korea and Japan and was used to newly affiliate Koreans with either modern Korea or imperial Japan, depending on varying political and social intentions in the early twentieth century.

The debate around the “Four Asian dragons” in the 1980s focused on the colonial origins of post-colonial Korean modernization without reference to subalterns, instead focusing on economic growth using statistical indicators and records written by elites. In contrast, the notion of a colonial gray zone underscores the limitations of such a colonial modernity approach. This debate has brought the experiences of modern elites to the fore, it has neglected those of lowerclass workers. This article re-examines colonial development by juxtaposing elite mainstream memory with subaltern counter-memory in relation to the construction of the Pujŏn River power plant. While mainstream memories emphasize cutting-edge technologies and economic accomplishments, subaltern memories reference disasters, vengeful spirits, human offerings, trauma, and ghostly pictures. This study aims to offer a new understanding of the narratives that developed between colonial and post-colonial Korea and Japan. It suggests that the scientific achievement of the mega-dam in colonial Korea was very closely associated with colonial tourism. It also examines how capitalism, embodied in such structural facilities and the tourist industry, excluded the modern experiences of subalterns during the Japanese occupation and how these experiences, excluded the records of Japanese colonial rule, came to the fore in the post-colonial era due to Minamata disease.

The bilateral relationship between South Korea and Japan has been increasingly strained since a ruling of the Korean Supreme Court in 2018, which urged Japan to compensate Korean laborers forcefully conscripted during the Japanese colonial era. Since that time, other critical events have followed, additionally aggravating bilateral ties. In this context, this study attempts to investigate the different ideological frames in editorials of two South Korean newspapers— Han’gyŏre 한겨레, a center-left newspaper, and Chosŏn ilbo 朝鮮日報, a center-right newspaper, and how the ideological frames of the papers are adjusted in the process of translation. Seemingly objective translations of news articles actually present views under the guise of facts, ultimately including ideological shifts that mislead readers. These translations facilitate ideological reinforcement.

In recent years, K-pop idols have increasingly served as ambassadors of Korea to a world audience. One novel aspect of this ambassadorship is their role as presenters of Korean traditional culture, even though they frequently know little about the traditions in question. In this paper, I conduct a close reading of the K-Community Festival 2021 as an example of a program in which K-pop idols introduce their viewers to traditional Korean arts by presenting themselves as inexpert learners. This festival, with its contradictory positioning of the idols as spokespeople for Korea who need instruction in Korean tradition, appeals to viewers by inviting the audience to identify with the idols, emphasizing its entertainment value, and using the idols as cultural intermediaries. I argue that in doing so, it devalues cultural expertise and the essentialization of tradition. Nevertheless, this and similar programs serve an important function for fans in that they offer a cultural product that can be consumed in opposition to the hegemonic cultural flows from the United States.