Ironies, Epiphanies, and Unintended Consequences: Modern Korean History

(Response paper to Prof. Georg Iggers, intellectual historian of comparative world

historiography)
Jacqueline Pak
October 28, 2005
It is a great pleasure and privilege to be here. I am particularly honored to share the first
session with Prof. Georg Iggers who is not only an eminent intellectual historian but also
a civil rights activist. No doubt, I will continue to benefit from his many books.
With gratitude, Id like to read a few lines from his edited volume, Turning Points in
Historiography (2002), from the chapter on Nationalism and African Historiography by
Toyin Falola. This passage struck a chord with a sense of irony and resonance on the
twists and turns in the unfolding drama of historicizing modern Korea with the legacy of
colonial and dictatorial oppression and ongoing division. (passage)
Much like African or any other nationalist historiography, the struggles surrounding the
politics of historiography of Korean nationalism are still about acquiring power and
asserting identity in the world as an anticolonializing and decolonializing discourse,
contending with the past of colonialism, imperialism, Cold War, Korean War,
dictatorship, and censorship, and the present of racism, Orientalism and Marxism, among
others.
I. Introduction
I was assigned a daunting task to cover the state of modern Korean historiography in
thirty minutes. Here, I will offer a brief overview of the evolution of Korean
historiography in the West, including a review of the most heated controversy of the past
decade, the Ahn Changho controversy, which I survived the last decade to tell you about
it today. To explain the backdrop of the controversies, I will also include a critique of
methodological and philosophical issues in some of the most influential works in modern
Korean historiography.
In fact, the two most heated controversies in the previous decades were the Cumings
Origins of the Korean War and Ahn Changho controversies. And these controversies are
actually heavily coded and coiled ideological debates that continue with vengeance in
current Korea, as shown by the very recent Kang Jeonggu Incident or this October issue
of a Korean journal, Choson Monthly (Wolgan Joseon) by an activist-intellectual
condemning the careless association that a colorful academic Kim Yong-oks made about
Ahn Changho and Kim Ilsung, from the supposed meeting claimed to have taken place in
Kim Ilsungs official biography. If you believe that Kims official biography is an
accurate and dependable historical source, then its your problem.

The controversies continue to reflect the ideological nerve and political pulse of divided
Korea, where the past defines the present and nationalism is a still a hot-button issue with
strong ideological ramifications and reverberations in the political arena.
Related to these controversies, I believe that the critical points of debate in modern
Korean historiography can be broadly outlined as follows.
[[1)-internal development: foreign or indigenous origins of development (ex. Economic
development in late Choson dynasty or indigenous capitalist sprouts, such as a thousandpage work by Palais which discussed the actual lack of Silhak or Practical Learnings
modern scientific potential, whether you agree with him or not)
2)-identity: capability of self-government or democracy (This debate addresses the
inherent Korean capability for democracy, or how early democracy appears, including the
reality of nationalist struggle and leadership. This was of course used as a Japanese
rationale for colonialism, along with other nations and dictators later. My own work
addresses this issue of the indigenous development of constitutional democracy by the
preeminent nationalist leader Ahn Changho.)
3)-modernization: exploitation or benefit of Japanese colonialism (Rankean nationalist
historians vs. the leftist social scientist historians who wish to interpret colonial data
differently and ask questions about whether modernity was actually only introduced by
Japanese and Koreans could not bring it on themselves)
4)-ideology: nationalism or communism as the path of organic development and
fulfillment of national destiny and unification potential]]
II. The Evolution of Korean Historiography in the U.S.: A Critique - Strengths and
Limitations
1st Generation: Korea has been called the most successful mission field in the world in
the 20th century and indeed the Christian transformation of Korea is one of the most
phenomenal events in modern Christian history. In my analysis, this was made possible
by a unique Korean merger of nationalism and Christianity.
And the Christian missionaries such as Underwood, Appenzeller, Clark, Homer and
McCune, who introduced Korea to the world since 1884 were extraordinary men of faith
and conviction. These brave men- and women-of-God missionaries indeed became the
first generation of scholars on Asia and Korea. Yet, the early missionaries had an agenda
of Christianizing the heathens, so their descriptions of Koreans were often as barbaric or
hopeless who needed to be saved.
2nd Generation: You already know that names such as John King Fairbank, Edwin
Reischauer and Edward Wagner, who have now all passed, as the founder of China, Japan
and Korea Studies, respectively, at Harvard. The second generation included: Wagner,
and also somewhat younger Deuchler, a Swiss from Zurich who speaks seven languages
and was the first foreign woman to study Korea. There is also now retired James Palais
from University of Washington who trained many Koreanists. His students are the
mainstream academics in the U.S. today. (Maybe he was 2.5 generation as the first
student of Wagner.)

There was a kind of preoccupation that existed with Confucian metaphysics in the early
days of East Asian Studies, especially with the heavyweights such as Fairbank,
Reischauer and Wagner. Or it could be said that Confucianism was an obvious place to
seriously investigate the great civilization of the East by serious scholars in the nascent
stage of development of the field in the U.S. Later, Fairbank was, of course, criticized for
romanticizing China and Maos communist revolution too much. Also, he and
Reischauer were both indeed criticized for considering Korea only as a variant of
China. Reischauer was a son of a Christian missionary. As pioneers of East Asian history
in the U.S., they were mainly dedicated to creating the foundation of the field and a pool
of disciples. They have certainly succeeded at these tasks as the ever-growing field of the
study demonstrates.
Edward Wagner and Martina Deuchler were the only Koreanist disciples of Fairbank and
Reischauer. And I am fortunate to have had them as my mentors in the U.S. and Britain.
Among this generation, Deuchler is especially known for her work, Confucian
Transformation of Yi Korea, which set a high standard for the field.
The other influential second-generation members are Korean-Americans Chong-sik Lee
and Daesook Suh. With his biography of Kim Ilsung, Suh Dae Sook assessed and
analyzed various fictional accounts and propaganda on Kim Ilsung, a rather complicated
task. Yi Ki-baiks book, translated by Edward Wagner, remains the most famous and
widely used textbook, though Yi as a traditional historian is weak on modern Korean
nationalism or history. There was also the late Andrew Nahm whose books I recommend
to introductory students of Korea as one of the most user-friendly or reader-friendly
books.
Here, I have to offer a more strenuous critique of Chongsik Lees Politics of Korean
Nationalism, which was the most influential work in Korean nationalism since the 1960s.
Problems of Chongsik Lee: Lees tripartite division schema of Korean nationalist
leadership, mvt, politics, ideology, vision and strategy became a particularly long-lasting
paradigm which went unchallenged and unquestioned for decades. After scrutinizing the
private papers on Ahn Changho and other documents on Korean nationalist movement, I
had to problematize and confront this paradigm.
In his conventional view, the formulaic assumptions of the Korean nationalist leadership and
movement were could be summarized as a three-way division of strategic divergence: i)
diplomatism or propagandism of Syngman Rhee and So Chaepil; ii) militarism of Yi
Tonghwi and Pak Yongman; and iii) gradualist pacifism, or subsequently cultural
nationalism, of An Changho.i Such conception of tripartite division offered a
convenient and facile explanation for generations of scholars to explain away the personality
conflicts, political and professional rivalries, strategic and ideological differences,
organizational divisions and other various incongruencies and contradictions found in
Korean nationalism.

The danger with such a view was that it implicitly, if rather pejoratively, assumed that these
strategic differences between the leaders led to the inevitable division, eventual decline and
subsequent failure of the Korean independence movement. This was also sometimes
extended as an analytical tool or framework to understand the independence movement and
pioneering activism among the overseas communities, including the leaders of early
Korean-America, such as An Changho, Syngman Rhee and Pak Yongman. Yet, such an
analysis did not effectively discern the fact that the leaders, An Changho, Syngman Rhee
and Pak Yongman as well as So Chaepil, Yi Tonghwi, were at one time or another
militarist, diplomatist, or self-strengthening educator in their anticolonial revolutionary
careers.ii
3rd Generation: If the second generation Koreanists were traditional historians who were
mainly interested in Choson dynasty, many of the third generation members were modern
historians more interested in contemporary Korea and aggressively took on controversies
and debates.
By far the largest in number, many of the third generation academics have been members
of the US Peace Corps to Korea. During the 1960s, they did not believe in the Vietnam
War and avoided the draft. They went to Korea by accident and not necessarily a
choice. They learned the language, culture and history and became academics on Korea.
With this group, something of a critical mass emerged in the field. [They are considered
the revisionist or sujeong juui generation which began to criticize and re-examine
earlier works by Korean and other early Western academics.] Among them are the socalled Peace corps mafia or Palais mafia as their sheer numbers currently consist the
mainstream establishment of Korean Studies, though ideologically pitted against a rivalry
with Cumings students who are fewer and less influential. [Their deep seated conflict
was once described in Yoksa bipyong, a Korean-language journal of history.]
Since they were mostly war protesters with a particular ideological slant as a generation
with its own blend of promise and disillusionment, they are a highly politicized and
polemical group in their approach to historiography on Korea, dealing with the Cold War,
dictatorship and division.
The problems of the scholarship of this generation with similar life experiences and view
about politics and society has been widely acknowledged by now and continues to be
reassessed, as the progress of the scholarship includes the process of rectification of
earlier mistakes and misjudgments. Despite their efforts in number of dozens, the
problematique is sheer lacuna of information that needed to be filled on modern Korea in
the West.
Problems of the Palais school
Overuse of Japanese sources which are more plentiful and better organized with easier
access; Overuse of old-fashioned or dogmatic Marxist category of analysis
An unintended consequence of their work is that although they are well-meaning
progressives, their works have been nonetheless touched by Orientalist prejudice which

neglect or denigrate the scope and reality of Korean nationalism. They are also
ideologically-driven or partisan Marxist being too reductive and essentialistic. They were
heavily influenced by the Japanese left, but these works still have problems as they still
include ethnocentric pride and naivete as well as colonial superiority complex concerning
modern Korean history.
In my own view, the problem of Cumings who sells the most history books on Korea is
his tendency to adopt a post hoc divisional logic which pervades his historiography on
modern Korea during the Cold War era and beyond. He too easily accepts any and all
points of historiographical departure as the peninsular division after the Korean War. In
this way, his work offers overly reductive and ideological portrait of pre-Korean War
history. Thus, he is not able to underscore the unique paradigm and the coherence of inner
logic of the Korean nationalist leadership and movement, befitting the harsh colonial and
diasporic circumstances of Koreans.
It seems to me that his work needs to more carefully reassess the political and ideological
make-up of the Korean nationalist movement which preceded the Korean War and
division. As the grand epic of modern Korea, the philosophies, politics and strategies of
the anticolonial struggle inherently embodied the consequential seeds of historical
development and evolution, including the origins of peninsular division and war, of the
twentieth century and beyond. The history and interpretation of the independence
struggle persist as a fervently contested ground of moral-political legitimacy of divided
Korea and the enlarged identity of transnational community of diasporic Korea.
4th Generation: Emerging Korean-American (mostly bilingual 1.5) and more women
scholars.
Not all, but some of the fourth generation consist of Korean-Americans, usually of the
second-generation immigrants to the U.S. who earnestly searched for their identity and
chose to study Korea. Remember it is a generation that did not have too many career
choices between lawyer, doctor, accountant and engineer, and success was demanded as
the fulfillment of the American Dream. So even to choose the academic profession was
an existential dilemma and struggle. As academics, Korean-American men and women
of younger generation are beginning to raise their voices with different set of experiences
and perspectives. The greater diversity has widened and enlivened the quality and
quantity of discourse on Korean Studies, but also brought about controversies.
The transforming composition of race and gender in the field of Korean history naturally
invites diverse opinions and even spirited debates and conflicts. With the emergence of
this group, the debates have been characterized by revisionism to neo-revisionism and
modern to postmodern with new controversies. This postmodern generation offers new
energy and vitality with multiplicity of voices and perspectives. They are also
increasingly more interested in their own diasporic identity to enlarg the understanding
the transnational reality of Korea. Yet, some of the criticisms directed at postmodern or
cultural studies scholarship may apply to them as well.

III. Ahn Changho Controversy

Now let me turn my attention to the ACH controversy.
Who was Ahn Changho anyway?
Comparable to George Washington of the US, Gandhi of India, or Sun Yat-sen of China,
Ahn Changho was the chief architect and strategist of the Korean nationalist movement.
He created myriad associations throughout his life all over the world. ACH established
the Kongnip hyphoe (United Koreans in America, 1905) in America, Sinminhoe (New
People's Society, 1907) in Korea, Taehan kungminhoe (Korean National Association,
1912) in Manchuria, Russia and America, and Hungsadan (Young Korean Academy,
1913) in America, and subsequently in China and Korea, the Provisional Government of
the Republic of Korea (1919), the National Representatives Congress (1923), and the
Korean Independence Party (1929), among others. As an avid constitutionalist, he wrote a
series of constitutions for his revolutionary organizations and drafted the constitution of
the Provisional Government.
Inevitably, the earlier interpretations of An Ch'angho reflected and embodied the painful
legacy of colonialism, the Korean War, division and successive military dictatorships of
modern Korea. Caught at the nexus of Korean history and historiography, An Ch'angho
was misinterpreted or misjudged as a "gradualist-pacifist" by Yi Kwangsu, Chu Yohan,
Chong-sik Lee and Arthur Gardner from the 1940s to the 1970s1; "cultural nationalist" by
Michael Robinson in the 1980s2 and "self-reconstruction nationalist" by Kenneth Wells in
the 1990s3, among others. As disciple-biographers, Yi Kwangsu, the celebrated novelist
of "new literature" and Chu Yohan, the poet of "new poetry" presented An Ch'angho as a
"gradualist-pacifist" and set the tone for subsequent interpretations of An's life and
thought. If their works were marked by inconsistencies and paradoxes, Yi and Chu's
collaborations further clouded and complicated understanding of An and the Korean
liberation struggle.
Included within these exchanges was the interpretive problematique and critique of
revisionist and polemical cultural nationalism (such as by Michael Robinson and Carter
1. Yi Kwangsu, Tosan An Ch'angho, Hungsadan, Seoul, 1947; Chu Yohan, An Tosan
chnso (Complete Works of An Tosan), Samjungdang, Seoul, 1963; Chong-sik Lee,
Politics of Korean Nationalism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1965; and
Arthur Gardner, The Korean nationalist Movement and An Ch'angho, Advocate of
Gradualism, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1979.
2. Michael Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925, University of
Washington Press, Seattle, 1988.
3. Kenneth Wells , New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction
Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937, Allen & Unwin,

Eckert) as an analytical category in describing Korean nationalism and independence

leader, such as An Changho through the prism of writing by patriot-turned-collaborator
Yi Kwangsu. In this way, the controversy further touches upon the highly complex and
potentially explosive issues of patriotism vs. collaboration. For it problematizes the
previous revisionist binaries of patriot-militarist-communist vs. collaborationistculturalist-nationalist, arising from the reductive matrix of the bipolar Cold War
alignments.
Symbolizing the essential role of An Ch'angho's leadership in the anticolonial crucible
and the inquiry of nationalism in modern Korean history, the 'An Ch'angho controversy'
emerged as part of the ideologized polemics of the Kwangju-scarred decade in the 1980s.
Rather provocatively, the "cultural nationalist" critique of Robinson and others charged
that An Ch'angho was an unrevolutionary nationalist whose cultural, rather than political
and military, measures toward recovering independence were actually "a tacit acceptance
of the colonial rule", or "passive collaborationism".4 Examining the milieu of the rise of
radical leftism in the 1920s, it asserted that such cultural nationalists sought nonpolitical gradualist reform before achieving independence and only wished to work
within the Japanese colonial framework. Actually, Robinson failed to evaluate the
revolutionary military activities of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai led
by An Ch'angho and did not connect the nationalist movement within the peninsula and
without. In turn, the reality of domestic-exile linkage among revolutionary nationalists
and communists, including the war of independence, in the 1920s, was hardly considered.
After all, the locus of the action of the Korean liberation movement lay outside of Korea
in the 1920s.
Borne of such milieu, the post-Kwangju historiography on An Ch'angho in particular and
the Korean nationalist movement in general in the 1980s was excessively driven by the
political and ideological agenda of the time. In other words, the accumulative burdens of
colonial legacy as much as the politically charged discourse of the 1980s have led to a
serious misreading of the arch-patriot An Ch'angho as a passive collaborator, and
misjudgement of the overall character of the Korean independence struggle as
gradualist-pacifist or cultural nationalist.
Through his sources, it is possible to link Ans military efforts from the 1900s before the
annexation to his military unification drive in China, Manchuria and Russia for the next
several decades, until he is arrested in 1932 in China. Ans Shanghai Diaries reveal the
character of the critical formative years of the Provisional Government in Shanghai,
especially its extensive military engagements, and Ans role of leadership in forming the
Korean Independence Army.

4. Robinson adopted the radical leftist critique of the 1920s which arose from the intense
political and propaganda struggle between Korean nationalist and communists. He
examined Yi Kwangsu's Minjok kaejoron (Essay on National Character Reform).

Against the former understanding of An Ch'angho as a gradualist-pacifist or cultural

nationalist, a careful scrutiny of the private papers reveals that An Ch'angho was actually
a militarist revolutionary who sought to wage an independence war throughout his life,
rather than a 'gradualist pacifist' or 'cultural nationalist', as some of the earlier scholars
have suggested. Most of all, ACH was a republican revolutionary, pioneering institutionbuilder, constitutional writer and war strategist.
As a nascent constitutional democrat who brought about the constitutional revolution for
Koreans, ACH trusted that democracy was a matter of survival and the most radical yet
enduring revolution of all. For him, the anticolonial self-governing and the independence
war were the means; the creation of a new sovereign democracy was the end.
After being arrested in China in 1932, An was forcibly returned to Korea. In 1938, he
died from torture in the Japanese prison. His life and destiny emblematize the unfulfilled
promise of the collective quest of his nation and people. Establishing a new unified
democratic nation was indeed a life-long dream of An Ch'angho. Koreans are still in
search of An's dream for his nation.
The An Changho controversy encompassed the salient issues in the interpretations and
re-interpretations of Korean colonial history, which will, no doubt, still resonate in the
years to come. The issues were: i) gradualist pacifism vs. radical militarism; ii) new
view of revolutionary-democracy vs. old view of tripartite division of Korean
nationalist movement as xx, xx, and xx; iii) revisionism of cultural nationalism vs. neorevisionism of revolutionary nationalism; iv) patriotism vs. collaborationism in colonial
period and the complicated legacy of the issue thereafter; and v) the origins of Korean
democracy, including the origin and draftee of Korean republican constitution.
The fundamental question in the Ahn Changho controversy is: "What is the true character
and scope of Korean nationalist movement which, after all, was the defining event of
twentieth century Korea?" Discerning the genuine nature of the Korean nationalist
leadership and movement has important implications for understanding the cause and
circumstances of the Korean War, in addition to the moral-historical legacy of the divided
politics of Korea, including the development of democracy, historical consciousness and
identity formation.
IV. Conclusion: Methodological and Philosophical Landscape with a Postmodern
Footnote
Indeed, the controversies and paradigm shifts on modern Korea have emerged because of
the problems of the earlier historical legacies, such as colonialism, war, division,
dictatorships and the problem of censorship for most of the past century. There is also the
fragmentary effects of the overarching binary context of the Cold War, including Stalinist
Marxism of North Korea and narrow nationalism of South Korea, and hybrid
Orientalism of Japan and West. In the historiography of Korea and West, these have
sometimes led to purposeful colonial distortions and accidental post-colonial
misrepresentations, as well as misinterpretations motivated by well-intentioned

ideological appropriation of history as a political tool to change the dictatorial reality in

the 1980s. What I call as hybrid Orientalism of Japan and West is unique in that it is an
amalgamated framework of colonial perception filtered through the prism of Japan to the
West imposed on modern Korea. Such framework has inevitably led to the
underestimation of indigenous Korean enterprises, including the Korean nationalist
project, or the scope and progress of internal development.
In terms of how and why a controversy emerges in the field of Korean Studies, not only
an analysis or interpretation of a piece of evidence at stake, but also a matter of different
perception. Is there a structure of perception or structure edifice of prejudice, far
more deeply rooted and accumulated over time, as Edward Said suggests in his book
Orientalism?
As a humanist historian, my assessment of the main schism in the field of modern Korean
history has been between humanist empiricists vs. social science ideologues. So humanist
approach stands against social science approach; and empirical methodology stands
against the ideological methodology.
What I mean is humanist historians rely heavily on documentary evidence to understand
Korean reality often disagree with social science historians who rely on imported theories
to apply them to Korean context. My own methodology is to examine the evidence as
closely as possible and interpret the uniqueness of Korean reality in its own time and
space, rather than adopt and apply deterministic foreign theories to the Korean situation.
In other words, it seems to me that a humanist empiricist approach is to begin research
with a carte blanche as an open-minded and open-ended process, while social scientist
approach begin with already determined ideas, theories and even conclusions of foreign
import. Thus, the inherent source of conflicts and controversies arise from such
philosophical and theoretical differences and tensions.
Here, let me end on a Postmodern footnote.
This brief history of the development of Korean Studies introduces the issue of difference
of perception and perspectives between generations, gender and race. Among others,
our gender, age, race, religion, and generational space-time continuum would color and
influence our perception.
Yet, this difference in perception is also what makes the discourse in the field possible,
meaningful and alive. One cannot suppress others different points of view, because it is
unorthodox or heterodox against my own or group of colleagues who share my
views. The Choson Neo-Confucian conservatives practiced, wijong choksa (meaning
uphold orthodoxy and reject heterodoxy) by punishing those who did not hold their
rigid worldview.
How do I, as a Korean-American woman, see things differently from others? What of this
view of the Other and Gaze? What does it mean to see Korea as subject and

object? What kind of subjectivity/objectivity are we measuring? And whose yardstick

do we use to judge, measure, assess, analyze or interpret?
As I write this, I am reminded of the book, Gao Xingjians Soul Mountain which I
quite enjoyed reading the past summer. This exiled Chinese playwright and artist in
France adopts numerous narrative voices: I, You, She and He and achieves a kind of
universal transcendence by adopting and engaging various perspectives in this
autobiographical novel. The book is composed of essayistic sketches which seems at once
quite traditional Chinese and far-flung postmodern French in form. Or maybe he is
experimenting with postmodern esthetic and nihilism of formlessness.
Speaking of perspectives, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes essay talked about the great
Western literary tradition this way: I read Rousseau, or the adventures of the I: Joyce
and Faulkner, or the adventures of the We; Cervantes, or the adventures of the You. He
calls the idle, the Amiable Reader: (in this case, a small) you.
As in the case of an individual life, the ironies of Korean history are too many to ponder.
The epiphany has been to accept the unintended consequences of life and scholarship on
modern Korea, as much as my own search for roots of families of nationalist and
womens movement leaders who closely worked with Ahn Changho and Seo Jaepil, as
the road less traveled.

10

The tripartite division framework first appeared in Chong-sik Lee, Politics of Korean Nationalism,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1965. Adopting this approach, Arthur Gardner wrote The
Korean nationalist Movement and An Ch'angho, Advocate of Gradualism, Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Hawaii, 1979.
i

A series of critiques of the problems of the past decades of scholarship and its theoretical and
empirical underpinnings were offered in a number of my earlier presentations, including the shared
aspects of militarism, diplomatism and so-called gradualism that can be found among the anticolonial
Korean revolutionaries.
ii