Routledge

Handbook of Modern Korean

History

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century when Korea became entangled in the

world of modern imperialism and the old social, economic and political order
began to change, this handbook brings together cutting-edge scholarship on
major themes in Korean history. Contributions by experts in the field cover the
late Chŏson and colonial periods, Korea’s partition and the diverging paths of
North and South Korea.
Topics covered include:

The division of Korea

Religion
Competing imperialisms
Economic change
War and rebellions
Nationalism
Gender
North Korea under Kim Jong Il
Global Korea

The Handbook provides a stimulating introduction to the most important themes

within the subject area and is an invaluable reference work for any student and
researcher of Korean history.

Michael J. Seth is Professor of History at James Madison University, USA.

Routledge Handbook of Modern
Korean History

Edited by Michael J. Seth

First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2016 selection and editorial material, Michael J. Seth; individual chapters, the contributors The right of
Michael J. Seth to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Title: Routledge handbook of modern Korean history / edited by Michael J.
Seth.
Other titles: Handbook of modern Korean history
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015026654| ISBN 9780415739313 (hardback) | ISBN
9781315816722 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Korea—History—1864–1910. | Korea—History—20th century. |
Korea—History—1945– | BISAC: HISTORY / Asia Korea. | SOCIAL SCIENCE
Ethnic Studies / General.
Classification: LCC DS907.18 .R68 2017 | DDC 951.9--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015026654

ISBN: 978-0-41573931-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-31581672-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans

by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Contents

List of illustrations
Notes on contributors

1 Introduction: understanding modern Korean history

Michael J. Seth

PART I Late Chosŏn

2 Korea by 1860
James B. Lewis

3 Competing imperialisms in Korea

Kirk W. Larsen

4 The nation, the people, and the possibilities of the post-national:

Historiographies of late nineteenth-century Korean reform movements
Joshua Van Lieu

5 Religion 1876–1910
Albert L. Park

6 The transformation of the Chosŏn economy in the Open Port Period, 1876–1910
Owen Miller

7 The 1894 Tonghak Rebellion

Carl Young

PART II The colonial period

8 The politics of assimilation: Koreans into Japanese
Mark E. Caprio

9 Colonial modernity
E. Taylor Atkins

10 Women, gender, and social change in colonial Korea

Sonja M. Kim

11 Nationalist movements before 1945

Franklin Rausch

PART III Division and war

12 The division of Korea and the rise of two Koreas, 1945–1948

Jongsoo Lee

13 The Korean War and its politics

Grace J. Chae

PART IV North Korea

14 North Korean state-making: process and characteristics

Shin Jongdae

15 North Korea’s chuch’e philosophy

James F. Person

16 A dynastic polity in economic stagnation and decline

Andrei Lankov

17 The North Korean famine

Marcus Noland

18 North Korea under Kim Jong II

Adrian Buzo
19 Marriage, family, and sexuality in North Korea
Suzy Kim

PART V South Korea

20 Trade union movements in South Korea since 1945

Jooyeon Jeong

21 Economic miracle: from post-war reconstruction to post-crisis affluence

Ingyu Oh and Hannah Jun

22 Democratization in South Korea

Gregg Andrew Brazinsky

23 Women, gender, and social change in South Korea since 1945

Laura C. Nelson and Cho Haejoang

24 The post-developmental state: economic and social changes since 1997

Jamie Doucette

25 Global Korea
John Lie

26 Inter-Korean relations, 1945–2013

Avram Agov

Index
Illustrations

Figures

17.1 Food imports and aid, 1990–2010

17.2 Total imports and commercial food imports, 1993–2010
17.3 Scenarios of food supply and minimum human need, 1990–2004
17.4 Estimates of daily per capita PDS rations

Tables

14.1 Dates of KWP meetings and main topics of discussion

14.2 Establishment of the NKPC
14.3 Establishment of the KWP
16.1 Alternative estimates of the North Korean per capita GNP
19.1 Comparison of features in patriarchal family and socialist family
20.1 Annual shifts in the number and proportions of employees in various sectors
in Korea
20.2 Numbers of union members of Korean industrial union federations
20.3 Annual sizes of union membership and numbers of enterprise unions in
Chemical Union and its major industrial branches
20.4 Annual wage growth rates bargained for in the chemical industries
20.5 Union membership in the Auto Transport Union and its city bus branch
20.6 Sizes of union membership in five enterprise unions
20.7 Annual wage growth rates achieved in firm K during the period of its
declining bargaining capacities
21.1 Korean miracle: GDP growth
21.2 Changes of top five chaebŏls
Contributors

Avram Agov is a faculty at the Asian Studies Department of Langora College in

Vancouver. He received his BA in philosophy and history at Sofia University and
completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia. He was a visiting
scholar at Columbia University on a Fulbright Fellowship. He received his MA in
Regional Studies-East Asia at Harvard University. He is currently working on a
manuscript entitled ‘North Korea in the Socialist World: Integration and
Divergence, 1945–1991’.

E. Taylor Atkins is Presidential Teaching Professor at the Department of

History, Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Blue Nippon:
Authenticating Jazz in Japan (2001) and Primitive Selves: Koreana in the
Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 (2010).

Gregg Andrew Brazinsky is Associate Professor of History and International

Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Nation Building in
South Korea: Koreans, Americans and the Making of a Democracy. His works
have appeared in numerous edited volumes and academic journals, as well as the
Chicago Tribune and CNN.com.

Adrian Buzo is currently Lecturer in Korean at Macquarie University. He holds a

doctorate in Asian Studies from Monash University, where he was also Senior
Lecturer in Korean Studies. He has also served on a number of Australian
government bodies, including the Australia Korea Foundation and has published
widely in the field of Korean language and studies. His The Guerilla Dynasty was
published in 1999, and the second edition of his The Making of Modern Korea was
published by Routledge in 2007.

Mark E. Caprio, the author of Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea,

1910–1945, lectures on Japan and Korea relations at Rikkyo University in Tokyo,
Japan. He is currently writing a manuscript tentatively titled ‘The dregs of
Japanese colonialism in liberated Korea’.

Grace J. Chae is a Research Fellow with the project ‘Beyond the Korean War’,
sponsored by the University of Cambridge and the Academy of Korean Studies.
She received her PhD in modern Korean history from the University of Chicago
(2010) and is working on a book manuscript entitled Captive Minds: Race, War
and the Education of Korean War POWs in US Custody, 1950–1953.

Jamie Doucette is Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Environment,

Education and Development at the University of Manchester. His research
interests include the political economy of Korean democratization and
development; the transformation of Korean labour relations; and the nexus
between sovereignty, territory and economy in East Asia. His articles have
appeared in such publications as Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, Critical Asian Studies and the Journal of Contemporary Asia,
among others.

Cho Haejoang is a cultural anthropologist and has been teaching at Yonsei

University since 1979. Her early research focused on gender studies in modern
Korean history; her current interests are in the areas of youth, informal life-
politics and research methodology in the global/local and postcolonial context of
modern-day Korea. She is the founding director of Haja Center, a creative
commons/cultural studio for teenagers.

Shin Jongdae is Professor of History at Kyungnam University in Masan, South

Korea. His field is modern Korean history. He has done research and published in
Korean on the history of North Korea.

Jooyeon Jeong, Professor in the Department of Economics at Korea University,

mainly examines enterprise unions and bargaining and industrial relations in
Korea from a comparative perspective. He has published several articles in major
international journals, including British Journal of Industrial Relations (1995),
Economic and Industrial Democracy (1995), International Journal of Human
Resource Management (1999), Industrial Relations Journal (2001), Journal of
Industrial Relations (2003, 2005, 2011), and the book Industrial Relations in Korea:
Diversity and Dynamism of Korean Enterprise Unions from a Comparative
Perspective (Routledge 2007).

Hannah Jun is Assistant Professor of the School of Business Administration,

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Her current research interests include
business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and socially responsible investing.
Her recent publications include ‘Beneath the Surface: A Discussion of Prominent
Ideologies and Philosophical Influences on Anglo-American Business Ethics’
(2014) and ‘Varieties of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): An Analysis of
Prominent Definitions of CSR in Korea’ (2014).

Sonja M. Kim is Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at

Binghamton University (SUNY) where she teaches courses on Korean history and
East Asia. Her main research interests and publications focus on gender, medicine
and public health in early twentieth-century Korea in edited volumes and
journals such as the Korean Journal of Medical History (Ŭisahak) and Easts. Her
book provisionally titled Caring for their Own: Women and the Making of
Modern Care in Korea is under final contract with the University of Hawai’i
Press. She is also co-editing a volume on science, medicine, and technology in
Korea.

Suzy Kim is Associate Professor of Korean History in the Department of Asian

Languages and Cultures at Rutgers University. Her publications include a special
guest-edited volume Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review on
“(De)Memorializing the Korean War” (March 2015) and Everyday Life in the
North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 was published by Cornell University Press in
2013. Her teaching and research interests focus on modern Korean history with
particular attention to social and cultural history, gender studies and critical
theory.

Andrei Lankov was born in 1963 in Leningrad (now Petersburg), Russia. He

graduated from Leningrad State University and taught Korean history at
Australian National University. Since 2004, he teaches at Kookmin University in
Seoul. His major research interest is North Korean history and society.

Kirk W. Larsen is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University.

His research focuses on East Asian international relations in the early modern
and modern periods. His publications include Tradition, Treaties, and Trade:
Qing Imperialism and Chosôn Korea, 1850–1910 (Harvard University Press, 2008).

Jongsoo Lee is Center Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian
Studies, Harvard University. Lee has served as Senior Research Fellow at the
Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul and as Associate in Research at the
Korea Institute, Harvard University. A graduate of Harvard University (MA and
PhD) and Williams College (BA), Lee is the author of The Partition of Korea after
World War II: A Global History (2005), among other publications.

James B. Lewis has studied in the United States, Korea and Japan. He is
currently the University Lecturer in Korean History and Oriental Studies,
University of Oxford. He specialises in Korean-Japanese relations and the
economic history of Chosŏn Korea. He is a member of the Council of the
Association for Korean Studies in Europe and is President of the British
Association for Korean Studies.

John Lie is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His

recent books include Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and
Postcolonial Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); and K-pop:
Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015).

Owen Miller is Lecturer in Korean Studies at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London, where he teaches modern Korean history. He was
previously a research fellow at Robinson College, University of Cambridge. Owen
received his PhD from SOAS in 2007 for a thesis on merchant-government
relations in late nineteenth-century Korea. More broadly, his research interests
include the social and economic history of nineteenth-and twentieth-century
Korea; the social history of North Korea; and Korean nationalist and Marxist
historiographies.
Laura C. Nelson is an anthropologist interested in the mutual engagements of
public policies and society/culture. Her three current South Korea-based projects
examine breast cancer as a personal experience and a political issue; the
invisibility of older women without children; and the future generation of new
Koreans born to immigrant brides. Her book Measured Excess: Status, Gender,
and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (2000) examined South Korea’s
consumer culture.

Marcus Noland is Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the

Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington, DC, and a senior
fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has written extensively
on food security in North Korea, including Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid
and Reform.

Ingyu Oh is Professor and Director of the Centre for Hallyu Studies, RIKS, Korea
University. His research interests include economic sociology, musicology and
East Asian political economy. Recent publications include ‘Comparing State
Economic Ideologies and Business Ethics in East Asia’ (2014), ‘A League of their
Own: Female Hallyu Fans and Korea-Japan Relations’ (2014), ‘Intuition and
Consilience: the Creation of Clinical and Symptomatic Knowledge in
Entertainment Industries’ (2013) and ‘Rent-sharing: Organizational and
Technological Innovations under the Military Regimes in South Korea and
Turkey’ (2010).

Albert L. Park teaches at Claremont McKenna College. A historian of Korea who

studies the intersection between political economy and culture, he is the co-editor
of Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America and the
author of Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism and Protest in Japanese
Occupied Korea.

James F. Person is Director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for

Korean History and Public Policy and Deputy Director of the History and Public
Policy Program (HAPP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars. Person holds a PhD in modern Korean history from the George
Washington University, Washington, DC, with a dissertation examining the
evolution of North Korea’s political and ideological systems from 1953 to 1967.
Person teaches courses on North Korean history at George Washington
University.

Franklin Rausch earned his doctoral degree from the University of British
Columbia in 2011 and is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of
History and Philosophy at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina. He
is the author of multiple articles on the connections between nationalism and
religion.

Michael J. Seth is Professor of History at James Madison University where he

teaches world and Korean history. His publications include Education Fever:
Society, Politics and the Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea (2002) and A History
of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present (2011).

Joshua Van Lieu is Assistant Professor of History and Curriculum Director for
the Asian Studies minor at LaGrange College. His research interests include the
intellectual, political and diplomatic histories of nineteenth-century East Asia,
with a particular focus in the politics and historiography of Chosŏn-Qing
relations.

Carl Young is Associate Professor at the Department of History of the University

of Western Ontario. His main research interests focus on the history of Korean
religions and their involvement in social and political movements. He has written
a book and several articles on the Tonghak and Ch’ŏndogyo movements.
1
Introduction
Understanding modern Korean history

Michael J. Seth

Modern Korean history, much like Korea itself, has emerged in recent years out
of the shadows of its larger and better known neighbors China and Japan. Several
decades ago it was possible to place almost all the scholarly literature on Korean
history in English on a single shelf of books. Indeed, Korea was so little
understood that when it appeared at all in Western textbooks, it often was
restricted to developments related to the Korean War and the Cold War. But in
recent years the historical scholarship available to non-Koreans has grown
enormously.
A tributary of China, a colony of Japan, it failed to emerge in Western
consciousness as a distinctive variant of East Asian culture with its own long
historical tradition. The study of Korean history was also hampered by the
formidable linguistic challenges, generally requiring at minimum the knowledge
of the difficult Korean language, and in most cases the ability to read Japanese as
well as classical Chinese. Furthermore, there were few institutions in the West
that had Korean studies programs or the staff and facilities to train scholars and
few positions for academics who had Korea as their specialty. And for those
interested in North Korea, the near impossibility of gaining access to its archives
or even entering the country was a serious impediment. As a result Korean
history was a neglected area of study.
In recent years this neglect of Korean history has been replaced by a rapidly
developing interest by Western academics. Partly this reflects the general
expansion of East Asian studies, but it is also due to South Korea’s emergence as
a major economic, cultural and political presence in the world. In 2008, South
Korea became a member of the G-20, major economic powers whose leaders meet
annually. South Korean products have penetrated almost every market and have
given the country a degree of recognition it previously lacked. South Korean
popular culture, what is called the “Korean Wave,” has made the country a major
exporter of TV dramas, movies, pop music and videos, and Seoul has become the
pop culture capital of the Pacific Rim of Asia. Furthermore, South Korea’s
“economic miracle” has drawn the interest of economists, historians, and social
scientists as well as policymakers. Many aspects of its economic development
have become models for countries from China to Chile. The country’s transition
from authori tarianism to a vibrant democracy has also been the subject of many
scholarly studies. Then of course, there is the interest in North Korea. The
country’s truculent posture, its isolationism, the security threats it poses and
more recently its human rights record have drawn international attention. And
there is a popular fascination with the seemingly bizarre behavior of its
leadership and its overall “strangeness.”
The essays in this volume both reflect this growing interest in Korea and
represent the trends in the study of modern Korean history by South Korean and
Western scholars. The modern period for Korean history has been defined in
different ways. South Korean historians often regard “modern history”
(hyŏndaesa) as beginning with the establishment of the Chosŏn period (also
referred to as the Yi Dynasty) in 1392. This handbook defines modern more
narrowly as starting from the 1860s, when the old Sino-centric political order in
East Asia began to crumble and Korea entered the world of late nineteenth-
century imperialism. Although somewhat arbitrary, the essays are then divided
into several groupings. The first is the late Chosŏn period, that is, from the start
of the modern era to the Japanese annexation in 1910 and the end of the dynastic
state. This is followed by the colonial period from 1910 to 1945, the division of
Korea in 1945, North Korea since 1945 and South Korea since 1945.
Although a significant body of Western scholarship on modern Korean history
has appeared only in the past several decades, it was preceded by earlier work in
Korea. Korean intellectuals began to study their modern history in the first
decade of the twentieth century. They already had a long, sophisticated tradition
of historical scholarship in the Chinese-style Confucian mode, but the nature of
historical literature changed when scholars began to examine their past,
employing Western concepts and analytical tools. These often came via Japanese
translations of Western works that students read while studying in Japan or that
circulated in Korea. Meanwhile, the Japanese scholars carried out historical and
archaeological research mainly focused on the early period of Korean history,
and in doing so, introduced more modern methods of historical scholarship to
Koreans. Historians and political thinkers such as Pak Ŭn-sik (1859–1923) and Sin
Ch’ae-ho (1880–1936) began reexamining Korea’s place in the world and what it
meant to be Korean. In 1908, the young Sin published an especially important
essay, “A New Reading of History” (“Toksa Sillon”), in which he borrowed the
concept of “Volk” (Korean: minjok) from Japanese and Chinese writers and placed
it at the center of history. Sin sought to replace the older narratives that
reinforced loyalty to the king with one based on a new ethnic-national identity.
The history of Korea became a history of a Korean nation and its unique cultural
tradition.
Korean historical scholarship soon became preoccupied with understanding the
loss of their country’s sovereignty in 1910 and the humiliation of Japanese rule.
Many Korean intellectuals sought to counter the work of state-sponsored
Japanese scholars that found Korean history characterized by stagnation in
contrast to the progressive societies of Japan and the West. Writers such as Ch’oe
Nam-sŏn (1890–1957) sought to create national histories that pointed to the
unique and dynamic nature of their nation’s past. Ch’oe looked for Korea’s “soul”
or ŏl, its unique Volkgeist that he traced from ancient times. Korean history
became a story of the struggle of Koreans to develop their society and maintain
their political and cultural autonomy while threatened by outsiders. Historians
such as Yi Pyong-do began to take a more academic approach to history,
attempting to produce objective scholarship. They established the Chindan
Hakhoe (Chindan Society) in 1934 to publish historical scholarship. The same
period saw an emergence of Marxist historical scholarship pioneered by Paek
Nam-un (1894–1979). This focused on class struggle, with peasant masses
struggling against their feudal, landowning exploiters. Marxists also sought to
place Korean history within the context of universal historical processes. All basic
schools were similar in their linear, progressive view of history and their
incorporation of Western concepts and categories for understanding their past.
They also saw themselves as guardians and promoters of the nationalist spirit.
Historical scholarship during colonial times, however, was hampered by Japanese
restrictions, and historians were frequently arrested.
After 1945, with the division of the country, Paek and many other leftist
historians went to North Korea. There, history had to conform to ideological
purposes to such an extent that little real scholarship could flourish. In South
Korea, scholarship on modern Korean history was hindered by a series of anti-
communist authoritarian governments which feared that the examination of the
messy origins of the South Korean state in the years since 1945 could undermine
its legitimacy. Twentieth-century history, as a result, was often avoided by
scholars.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, however, historians such as Song Kon-ho, Kang
Man-gil and Choi Jang-jip began a refocus on more recent history. Among the
issues to emerge was the origins of modernization. Yi Ki-baek, in his major work
Kuksa Sillon (A New History of Korea), incorporated American ideas of
modernization theory to trace its origins back to the emergence of modern
science and the political ideas in eighteenth century Europe. Modernization
began in Korea toward the end of the eighteenth century, he argued, when
Koreans began to adopt these Western concepts and practices. Others such as
Kang Man-gil held to the “sprouts of modernization” concept that saw an
autonomous Korean path to the modern world that began in the late Chosŏn.
These scholars, rather than seeing Korea as a stagnant society, saw it as having
its own dynamic nature. They pointed to writers, thinkers and reformers in the
seventeenth and eighteenth century, a group they labeled Sirak, who were critical
of their own society and proposed progressive changes. They saw the
development of commerce, the growth of a more monetized economy and
improvements in agriculture and technology as signs that Korea was developing
its own parallel modernization. It was not initiated by Western and Japanese
imperialist interventions in their country but hijacked by it. Many of these
writers came from or were influenced by the leftist nationalist tradition;
modernization, they often argued, came not from the top but emanated from the
common people: peasants rebelling against the feudal landlord class, low-caste
merchants seeking economic opportunities, and “middle people” (chungin), sub-
elites of talented professionals who were open to new ideas resisted by the
aristocratic class. In the past two decades, an increasing number of South Korean
historians have focused on their often troubled recent past, including the social
and political costs of South Korea’s “economic miracle.”
The lack of translations into Western languages and the nationalist
preoccupation of Korean scholars have limited the influence of these works
outside Korea. Nonetheless, most non-Korean historians have remained indebted
to their efforts. And in recent years, free from political restraints, historical
scholarship is flourishing.

Late Chosŏn
One issue examined by Western as well as Korean historians is whether Korea,
just prior to its “opening” in the late nineteenth century, was a society in
political, economic and social decline. Historians have often seen Korea as going
through a period of political stability, effective governance, economic prosperity,
cultural creativity and even technological innovation in the eighteenth century
and then falling into a period of political corruption, factionalism, weak and
ineffective rulers, economic stagnation or decline, social unrest and less cultural
creativity in the nineteenth century. James B. Lewis along with Jun Seong Ho and
Kang Han-Rog (2009) have argued that the country went into economic decline
after 1830. Lewis in this volume states that imperialism came at a time when
internal political and economic crises were coming into “conjunction.” Japanese
and Western imperialism arrived, many historians believe, at a time when the
government was weakened by fiscal problems, a subject touched upon in Owen
Miller’s essay in this volume.
Historians have attempted to understand the collapse of the old order in Korea
and the country’s loss of independence by studying the international and regional
diplomacy that country became enmeshed in. An important early work still
valuable on this was Eugene Kim and Han-kyo Kim’s Korea and the Politics of
Imperialism (1967). In later works, Kim Key-Hiuk examined the international
politics surrounding the “opening of Korea” and the collapse of the Chinese
tributary system (1980). Swiss historian Martina Deuchler documented the efforts
to adjust to the new diplomatic order (1977). Japanese specialists such as Hilary
Conroy (1960) and Peter Duus (1995) focused on Tokyo’s involvement in Korea,
while Kirk Larsen in Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and
Chosŏn Korea, 1850–1910 (2008) has looked at the role played by China during
this period, arguing that Qing was an imperial power using modern diplomacy,
international law, telegraphs and steamboats to aggressively assert itself in Korea.
More recently, Yumi Moon in Populist Collaborators: The Ilchinhoe and the
Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896–1910 (2013) has looked at the active
participation of Koreans in the annexation. Much of our understanding of the
international politics from this period is summarized in Larsen’s essay in this
volume.
Korea during this period was undergoing dynamic internal change that
historians are still exploring. Albert L. Park in this volume looks at religious
ferment and change during this period, and Carl Young (2014) in a recent work
and in this volume examines the Tonghak Rebellion in 1894 and its legacy. A
number of reform movements emerged in the late nineteenth century, which are
examined along with the historiography on them in Joshua Van Lieu’s essay.
Historians have debated over both the effectiveness of these late reforms and the
reasons why they failed to save the country’s independence. Rather than viewing
Koreans as hapless victims, and late Chosŏn internal politics as the tug and pull
of various factions by the Japanese, Chinese, Russian or other foreign patrons,
some historians studying domestic developments have found that the state was
proceeding along with reforms that were effective in some areas. But the
country’s precarious geopolitical position made reform difficult. Owen Miller in
his essay points out the inability of late-Chosŏn Korea to develop an independent
path to economic modernization as a result of Chinese and to a greater extent
Japanese economic interference. Others scholars have searched for the beginnings
of modernity and national consciousness. Koreans, because of their ethnic-
linguistic homogeneity, their geographic isolation and their country’s long
political unity, appeared to have a sense of identity as a folk or culture that went
beyond dynastic loyalty. However, most historians have argued that nationalism
is a modern identity. Andre Schmid (2002) argues for the beginnings of modern
Korean nationalism in the emergence of a community of educated readers of
journals and newspapers. Gi-Wook Shin (2006) similarly traces the emergence of
national identity as beginning at the end of the nineteenth century.

The colonial period

Historians have tried to understand to what extent Korea’s modernization was a

product of colonial rule. Related to this issue is the puzzle of how the foundations
of the two very different societies in North and South Korea can be traced to the
same colonial legacy. As a result, historians have given considerable attention to
the Japanese colonial period, 1910–1945. Arguments have been made that
colonialism in Korea did not resemble that of other colonies. It differed in that
Koreans were colonized by a neighboring people with whom they shared many
cultural traditions. Japan’s attempt at coerced assimilation gave it a unique
character, as did the intense nature of its occupation with several hundred
thousand soldiers, police and officials from the metropolitan state penetrating
deep into Korean society. And Korea underwent a greater degree of
industrialization than was the usual case for colonies. All of this made the
colonial experience of Koreans, it has been suggested, both unusual and deeply
traumatic.
Scholars are increasing our understanding of this period by placing it in the
broader context of modern colonialism. An early example of the first trend is The
Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 edited by Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie
(1984), which examines colonial Korea as part of an expanding Japanese colonial
empire. Two recent works by Mark Caprio (2009) and E. Taylor Atkins (2010)
look at the colonial rule from a broader perspective informed by recent studies of
colonialism. Caprio places colonial Korea in the larger context of colonialism,
finding that the Japanese carried out policies drawn from German and French
cultural assimilationist practices that were almost doomed to failure. In his essay
in this volume he points to the gap between the rhetoric of assimilation and
integration of Koreans into Japanese culture and society and the reality of
practices that separated the two peoples and categorized Koreans as a distinctive,
subordinate race of imperial subjects. The Koreans who accepted a larger
Japanese imperial identity were almost always disillusioned by the failure of the
Japanese to accept them. Atkins, who relies on official Japanese documents, pays
attention to metropolitan Japan, viewing Korea and Japan as a “unitary field of
study.” Drawing from the concept of Orientalism, he finds that the Japanese
needed to exaggerate the primitivism of Korea in order to elevate their own
civilizing mission. His work, much of it summarized in his essay, is revisionist in
that rather than erasing Korean culture, Japanese policy intended to “orientalize”
and market it.
Some historians have examined the economic and social legacy of Japan’s
colonial rule in Korea. Carter Eckert in Offspring of Empire (1991), a study of the
small Korean entrepreneurial class and its connections with the colonial
administration, looks at how the landowning elite and the business class
prospered under Japanese rule, providing a more complex picture of Korea during
this period. Eckert’s work is important because it provides not only insights into
the colonial period but into the post-liberation period as well, since the South
Korean entrepreneurial class has its origins in and exhibits patterns from that
earlier period. Dennis McNamara (1990), Chong-soon Kim (1998) and Soon-won
Park (1999) have also studied the entrepreneurial class. Park, in her study of the
Onoda Cement factory, also sees in colonial business and labor practices much
that presages later South Korean economic patterns. Edwin Gragert (1994) has
furthered our understanding of socio-economic history during this period with
his study of land ownership. While the attention of these studies has been more
on the economic elite, Gi-Wook Shin (1996) in Peasant Protest and Social Change
in Colonial Korea has looked at the peasantry.
Historians have looked at colonial origins of modern Korean nationalism, a
topic examined by Franklin Rausch in his essay in this book. Michael Robinson’s
examination of nationalist movements in colonial Korea, Cultural Nationalism in
Colonial Korea, 1920–1925 (1988), was influential in shaping our understanding of
the origins of the ideological divisions of post-liberation Korea. This important
work focuses on the split during the 1920s between radical and moderate
nationalists, the latter Robinson calls “cultural nationalists,” a term that has now
been widely adopted. The religious response to colonial modernity has been
studied by Albert L. Park (2015) and the important role of Christianity in shaping
nationalism by New Zealand scholar Kenneth Wells (1990).
A major concern of colonial studies has been to challenge the dominant
narrative of colonial repression and Korean resistance for a more complex
understanding of the period. In recent years there has been an explosion of
literature reexamining the colonial experience. This includes understanding the
relationship between colonialism, modernity and nationalism, and providing a
more inclusive approach that incorporates issues of gender. This is reflected in a
collection of essays edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson, Colonial
Modernity in Korea (2001). Theodore Jun Yoo has looked at gender in the colonial
period. In The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health,
1910–1945 (2008), Yoo examines how the “Korean woman” underwent a radical
transformation during the Japanese colonial period. Many women moved out of
their traditional spheres to take jobs in schools, factories, hospitals and elsewhere.
The experience of these women was complex because they faced two forms of
modernity: Western and Japanese. Some conformed to the Japanese conventions
of dress and social behavior, while others identified with and sought to follow
more radical Western models, which are issues examined by Sonja Kim in her
essay in this volume. While some of these studies looked at elite women, Janice
Kim in To Live to Work: Factory Women in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (2009)
examined what modernization meant to factory women. Another topic that has
drawn considerable attention is the “comfort women.” George Hicks (1995) was
one of the earliest scholars to examine this topic, while Sarah Soh (2008) has also
made a notable recent contribution. The best of these studies deals not only with
the victimization of the Koreans by Japanese but also with the discrimination
Korean women faced within their own society. In these studies we see an
extremely complex picture of modernization, not only Robinson’s different views
of the national agenda, but two different models of modernity.
While some Korean nationalist historians see the colonial experience as purely
exploitative and a setback in the country’s modern trajectory, much recent
scholarship has emphasized the more progressive nature of its development. As
Atkins points out in his essay in this volume, this can be exaggerated;
modernization that took place under the Japanese was a “colonial modernity,”
modernization in a colonial context. The benefits of that modernization, as others
have shown, accrued to the colonizer more than the colonized. Another
perspective is provided by Donald Clark (2003) in his account of the foreign
missionary community in Korea, providing an interesting window into colonial
life. In the early 2010s, there was a number of new studies that presented a more
complex picture of the colonial rule, including Todd A. Henry’s study of public
space in colonial Seoul (2014), Jun Uchida’s work on Japanese settlers (2011), an
examination of Koreans who fought for Japan during World War II by Brandon
Palmer (2013), the collection of essays edited by Hong Yung Lee and Clark W.
Sorenson, Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910–1945 (2013) and another
collection edited by Christopher P. Hanscom and Walter K. Lew, Imperatives of
Culture: Selected Essays on Korean History, Literature, and Society from the
Japanese Colonial Era (2013). Our picture of the colonial era through these works
has thus become more complex and nuanced.

Division and war

The division of Korea in 1945 and the Korean War that soon followed the
creation of two separate and rival Korean states was to many its great modern
tragedy. How can we account for the creation of two Koreas? How exactly did
this happened? S. S. Cho (1967) provided an early study of the division by placing
it within the geopolitics of the Cold War. Jongsoo Lee’s The Partition of Korea
after World War II: A Global History (2005) is a recent study of the diplomacy
around the division of Korea that makes use of Soviet archival material. He
argues that there is no clear evidence that the Soviet Union immediately after the
war had a set plan to create a separate state in the north. His essay in this volume
summarizes his argument and addresses some of the historiography on this issue.
While the thirty-eighth parallel was an arbitrarily drawn line imposed on the
Peninsula by the United States and the Soviet Union, historians have often traced
the foundations of the two regimes to the ideological divisions during the
colonial period, a topic touched upon in Rausch’s essay.
A long debate over the origins of the Korean War has shifted from viewing it
as an international conflict within the context of the Cold War to understanding
it within the context of a domestic revolution. The most comprehensive
treatment is by Bruce Cumings (1981, 1990), whose two-volume Origins of the
Korean War is an important study of Korea in the five years before the Korean
War. Some of the author’s arguments have been undermined by more recent
evidence, but this is still valuable as a source of information on Korean political
developments prior to the war. The first volume includes an especially valuable,
detailed study of South Korean politics immediately after liberation. Recent
studies of the Korean War itself have emphasized the brutality on both sides, the
civil war nature of the conflict and its continuation since 1953. Some have
focused on the internal conflict; others, such as Japanese historian Wada Haruki
(2014), have attempted to place the conflict within its international context
without losing sight of its dimension as a civil war. Grace Chae’s essay in this
volume points to the deep ideological division before 1945 as a contributing factor
and addresses some of the issues on the war itself.

North Korea since 1945

Despite the lack access to sources, a number of historical studies on North Korea
have appeared in recent years. Pioneering works in English were Chong-sik Lee’s
History of the Korean Workers’ Party (1978) and Dae-sook Suh’s biography of
Kim Il Sung (1988), the latter still a standard work. More recently, several
historians have focused on the establishment of the North Korean state. An
especially significant work on this topic is Charles K. Armstrong’s North Korean
Revolution, 1945–1950 (2003). By examining North Korean documents captured in
the Korean War, he was able to draw insights into the founding of the regime. He
sees the Koreans in the North as full participants in carrying out a revolution, a
revolution sponsored by the Soviet Union but also one that was a product of the
kind of radical nationalist vision that Robinson has traced. The author
persuasively argues that the North Korean government developed into a
nationalist regime from its early days. Rather than simply a creation of the Soviet
Union, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was a product of internal
Korean historical forces with Koreans as active agents. This theme has been
further explored in Suzy Kim’s Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution,
1945–1950 (2013). Suzy Kim in her essay in this volume further traces the
revolutionary impact the North Korean regime had on women and family as well
as the limits of that revolution. Others historians such as Andrei Lankov (2002),
while acknowledging the revolutionary nature of the regime and its nationalist
elements, have placed more emphasis on Moscow’s role in the creation of the
regime. An Australian scholar of North Korea, Adrian Buzo has followed
Japanese historian Wada in arguing that North Korea developed as a “guerilla
state” (1999) shaped by the experience of the youthful Kim Il Sung and his
partisans fighting the Japanese in Manchuria.
The history of North Korea since the Korean War has been the object of study
of several historians. Andrei Lankov’s The Real North Korea (2013) presents a
highly accessible study. James Person of the North Korea International
Documentation Project at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. has overseen
the largest collection of materials on North Korea in America, collecting
documents from around the world. Person himself has reevaluated some of the
standard beliefs about its history, for example, finding the role of factionalism to
be much less important than is given in most accounts (2006). Stephen Kotlin and
Charles Armstrong (2006) have looked at the role foreign aid has played in North
Korea’s economic development in the early years. Other scholars have tried to
examine the ideology and national identity of North Korea, again, grounding
their studies within the context of Korean history. Armstrong (2005) and Brian
Myers (2010) have traced a distinctive indigenous path of ideological evolution
that draws upon the country’s Confucian and Japanese imperial heritages as well
as the Stalinist model. James Person’s essay in this volume focuses on the
importance of the development of the official ideology of Juche for understanding
North Korea. Sheila Miyoshi Jager (2013) has examined both North and South
Korea’s development within the context of an ongoing Korean War, while
Charles Armstrong (2013) has examined North Korea’s relations with the rest of
the world in Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992. South
Korean scholar Lim Jae-cheon (2009) has provided a systematic look at Kim Jong
Il’s rise to power using available information to present a lucid analysis of how
that political system has evolved.
The catastrophic economic decline of North Korea and the regime’s ability to
survive has drawn the attention of scholars, three of whom are represented in
this volume. Andrei Lankov’s essay examines the roots of the economic disasters
of the 1990s in policies implemented in the 1950s and 1960s. Marcus Noland’s
research on North Korea’s famine in the 1990s and that of others is summarized
in his essay in this book. Adrian Buzo’s essay looks at the ability of Kim Jong Il
during his seventeen-year reign to maintain a disciplined political system which,
while widely despised abroad, is nonetheless durable.

South Korea since 1945

As one of the postcolonial “success stories,” scholars have produced a large body
of literature on South Korea that focuses on its economic and social
modernization as well as its democratization. Much of the literature on South
Korea’s “economic miracle” has been influenced by Joel Migdal’s theory of a
strong state (1988) able to override vested and parochial interests to push through
a national development agenda and by Chalmers Johnson’s concept of a
developmental state (1987) that gave primacy to economic development over all
other goals. These models have been adopted, modified and challenged. Eun Mee
Kim (1997) has examined how the state-directed model of economic development
needs to be seen more as an interplay between chaebŏls and the state. Other
studies looking at the complex factors that account for development include
Jung-en Woo’s Race to the Swift: State and Finance in the Industrialization of
Korea (1991) and John Lie’s Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea
(1998). Hagen Koo (2001) and others have looked at the roles various sectors of
society have played in economic development as well as the social cost of
economic modernization. Michael Seth (2002) has looked at the historical factors
that contributed to educational development and its impact on the country’s
social and economic development. His study and those by Doh C. Shin (1999),
Geir Helgesen (1998) and Denise Lett (1998) have found the persistence of
Confucian values important in shaping South Korea’s recent modernization.
Laura Nelson has examined how economic development targeted and impacted
women (2000).
In recent years, North American scholars have contributed to several
collections of essays on the Park Chung Hee era. Many of these essays argue that
any examination of South Korea as a model of how a poor country can climb out
of poverty needs to factor in the personality of Park Chung Hee and the domestic
and international politics of the time. Chung-shik Lee (2012) has added to our
understanding of this period by tracing the personal background of Park in his
Park Chung-Hee: From Poverty to Power. Other historians such as Oh Ingyu
(2000) have pointed to the thuggish and oppressive nature of the Park regime, the
collusion of government and big business, the suppression of workers as well as
other social costs, criticisms presented by Oh and Hannah Jun in their essay for
this volume.
South Korea’s turbulent political history and its transition to democracy have
also attracted the attention of historians. An early study by Gregory Henderson,
Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (1968), although now somewhat dated, is still a
provocative and insightful history of South Korea in the first two decades after
World War II. Sung-joo Han in The Failure of Democracy in South Korea (1974)
and Alexander Joungwon Kim in Divided Korea: The Politics of Development
1945–1972 (1975) looked at the pre-democratic era. South Korea’s democratization
has been examined by historian Gregg Brazinsky in Nation Building in South
Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of Democracy (2007), and in his
essay in this volume he highlights the U.S. role in democratization. Namhee Lee
has examined the place of the minjung movement in the country’s
transformation from an authoritarian to a more open society in The Making of
Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (2007).
Hwasook Nam in Building Ships, Building a Nation (2009), a case study of
shipyard labor unionism in the 1960s, places the 1980s democratization within the
context of earlier labor activism. Some scholars have moved from tracing
economic development and democratization to examining how citizenship has
been defined, the nature of ethnic and national identity and changing gender
roles. All three issues are examined in Seungsook Moon’s Militarized Modernity
and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (2005) and in Sheila Miyoshi Jager’s
Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism (2003), while
Hyung Il Pai (2000) has looked at the role of archaeology in constructing a
national identity. The essay for this book by Laura C. Nelson and Cho Haejoang
surveys the many issues and large body of literature on women and gender in
recent South Korea.
Today South Korea, once poor, isolated and little known, has become a major
player in the increasingly globalized world. Jamie Doucette’s essay in this volume
examines the changes in South Korea’s economic and social development in a
post-development state since 1997. The embracing of neoliberalism has resulted
in greater inequality while at the same time it has become a society of greater
personal freedom. John Lie in his essay looks at the society undergoing a radical
change from a xenophobic society with a strong isolationist tendency to one that
is increasingly embracing globalization.
The contrast between the two Koreas provides one of the most fascinating
puzzles that modern history can present to historians. How could two societies
that are so different emerge among such a homogeneous peoples? Nowhere in the
world do two sovereign states with such a wide gap in living standards, such
radically different economic and political systems and radically different
ideological orientations border each other. And yet within living memory they
were the same state, the same society. Both Koreas share the same historical
heritage yet in two generations have evolved so contrastingly that they provide a
unique case study of how the decisions leaders make and the paths states take in
their quest for modernization can produce widely divergent outcomes. Modern
Korean history suggests that contingency and human agency do matter in
history, matter greatly. Then there is the question of reunification. A large body
of literature has studied the relations between the two Koreas and their prospects
for unification, a topic summed up in this volume in Avram Agov’s essay. As he
points out, the tasks of reconciliation between the two Koreas are “daunting” but
not inconceivable. More studies are needed to understand just to what extent the
two Koreas have become not just two states but two nations.

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Part I
Late Chosŏn
2
Korea by 1860

James B. Lewis

Introduction
Starting a Handbook of Modern Korean History with the late nineteenth century
will naturally fail to plumb the depths of the rich tapestry that contributes to
Korean notions of kingship, state, society, culture, foreign affairs, and a host of
other things that populated the minds of nineteenth-century Koreans. It is
impossible to attempt a summation at the outset and not commit further
violations against historical sensibilities, so the best I can do is to warn the reader
that this essay can only suggest a few arguments, warnings, and suggestions
about where we are beginning and how ignorant we really are.
The first warning is already well known. We must resist ‘presentism’ and
‘futurism’. It is tempting to view the potential of the late Chosŏn period (from ca.
1600 onwards), and especially the nineteenth century before the Treaty of
Kanghwa in 1876, as nothing more than a prelude to the storms that were to
engulf Koreans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. After all, modern
times are different from premodern times, and the discontinuities clearly
overwhelm the continuities. By beginning with the late nineteenth century, we
are announcing our concern with the creation of the modern world and only
looking back for the origins of things that we know will come; why should we
pause, even briefly, to survey the death throes of things that we know will not
survive? Or, the reverse of that coin: if we must, let us identify who were the
villains and who were the heroes who misread or who clearly read the future;
where and when were the lost opportunities? Because we know that the Chosŏn
state and society failed to resist Japanese imperialism and Koreans lost their
sovereignty, we therefore run a significant risk towards engaging in a kind of
perverse Whig history: ransacking the archives for the origins of later disasters or
for wishful instances of potential salvation.
Rather, we should take the nineteenth century in its own right and see it
through the eyes of the people who knew their own past but, like most of us,
could only dimly see their own future. Concern with the problems of ‘what went
wrong’ or ‘who is to blame’ is common to later ages, like our own, when peace
and security offer the luxury of hindsight. Just as Southern Song intellectuals
pondered why the Northern Song was routed by barbarians, many of us in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries have long considered questions surrounding
a failed ‘modernity’ in nineteenth-century Korea: How and why did the society
and state that King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) envisioned fail to cope with the
challenges of the nineteenth century? What happened to the promise of the
alleged golden age of Kings Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776) and Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800)?
The Chosŏn state produced a general peace and prosperity for over five centuries
and even survived a horrible invasion from Japan in the 1590s and further
humiliations in 1627 and 1636 at the hands of the rising Manchus. What became
of that peace, prosperity, and resilience by the nineteenth century? These are not
bad questions if handled carefully.
In drawing a sharp discontinuity between the premodern and the modern,
scholars have developed a standard litany of explanations for why late Chosŏn
state and society failed to meet the various problems of the nineteenth century:
unresponsive and corrupt politics, the irrational and feudal nature of Korean-
style Confucianism, and seriously worsening economic conditions. I argue that
the internal crises met in a conjunction sometime between the 1830s and the
1860s, and then, from 1876, they were augmented by external threats beyond the
control of Koreans. The problem for us is that we have often focused solely on
the crises with judgemental hindsight, or sometimes wishful views, and in so
doing we have overlooked the rationality and ‘modernity’ that had held state and
society together.
This essay is highly selective and attempts to raise only a few questions and
point to a handful of departures for research. It is not comprehensive of the rich
and extensive secondary literature that is developing, and I would encourage the
reader to follow the growing body of literature in English and to tap the sea of
outstanding work in the Korean and Japanese languages. My overarching
argument is very simple: we would benefit by rejecting the notion of a
disjuncture between the ‘modern’ and the ‘premodern’, which was originally
designed to explain European scientific and technological prowess and came to
generalise the European political and social transition from feudal, ascriptive
societies to post-feudal, meritocratic societies.1 Korean society was not
technologically advanced but neither was it backward; it was post-feudal and
meritocratic, however imperfectly achieved, and had been meritocratic or at least
meritocratically oriented stretching back into the Koryŏ period. Chosŏn political
and social, and in some ways even economic, ‘modernities’ pre-dated European
modernities. Therefore, if we wish to gain a comparative understanding of
Chosŏn state and society in their twilight decades, I would argue that we should
approach them in search of their strengths as well as their weaknesses and
consider aspects of ‘modern rationality’2 in pre-1876 Korea.

The inherent weaknesses of meritocratic

bureaucracies and corruption
King Chŏngjo was nearly ten years old when his father was starved to death by
his grandfather, King Yŏngjo. His father, Prince Sado, never became king, and
that sad tale is related in the outstanding contribution offered by Jahyun Kim
Haboush’s translation of the writings by Prince Sado’s widow, Lady Hyegyŏng
(Haboush 1996). There we can glimpse the monstrous ideological and political
pressures on the royal family and the monstrous results they produced in driving
Prince Sado to become a psychopathic murderer. The ten-year-old boy, who was
to become King Chŏngjo, was favoured by his grandfather and succeeded King
Yŏngjo at age twenty-three. He carried on the attention to good governance
established by his grandfather, and his accomplishments were extensive. He
established the Kyujanggak, the Royal Library, in 1776 to function as a focus for
creative statecraft, bringing to mind the Chiphyŏnjŏn of King Sejong’s time. He
built the Hwasŏng Fortress in Suwŏn between 1794 and 1796 to commemorate his
father and created a satellite city for the capital. He carried forward his
grandfather’s vision of reforming the Chosŏn state and updating the fundamental
charters of the state to meet the needs of their times. He carried on King Yŏngjo’s
t’angp’yŏng ch’aek or the policy of rotating factional appointments to placate
court factions and dampen their rivalry. Revised or new publications were
continued or originated for state ritual (Sok oryeŭi 1744), diplomacy (Tongmun
hwigo 1788), history (Kukcho pogam 1782), legal codes (Taejŏn t’ongp’yŏn 1785),
literature (Munwŏn pobul 1787 and Hongjae chŏnsŏ 1799), language (Kyujang
chŏn’un 1796), reference works (Chŭngbo tongguk munhŏn pigo, begun in 1770),
and didactic literature (Oryun haengsil[-to] 1797). He knew and sponsored the
leading intellectuals of the time: Pak Chiwŏn (1737–1805), Chŏng Yagyong (1762–
1836), Yu Tŭkkong (1749–1807), and Pak Chega (1750–1815). Just a few months
before turning forty-eight in 1800, King Chŏngjo died. His sudden death
engendered suspicions that have yet to be settled. Although we have an excellent
study by Jahyun Kim Haboush of King Yŏngjo’s reign and the motivations of the
king (Haboush 1988, 2001), we lack a good study of King Chŏngjo’s reign and of
the man and his world.
Politics took a turn for the worse with the enthronement in the seventh lunar
month of 1800 of King Chŏngjo’s successor, King Sunjo (r. 1800–1834), who
ascended the throne in the same month he became ten years old. Until 1804,
Chosŏn was governed by a regent (Queen Chŏngsun, 1745–1805), a Kyŏngju Kim
woman, who authorised a Catholic persecution in 1801 and allowed the Noron
(‘Old Doctrine’ faction or ‘Patriarch’s Faction’) to come to the fore. King Sunjo
married an Andong Kim woman (Queen Sunwŏn, 1789–1857), died at age forty-
four, and his queen later served as regent for two kings: 1834–1841 and again in
1849–1852, firmly placing the Andong Kim clan in a position to exploit power to
drain the state fiscally. The first regency was for King Hŏnjong (r. 1834–1849), a
grandson who took the throne at seven and died at age twenty-one. A second
Catholic persecution was launched in 1839, and in 1840, King Hŏnjong’s mother’s
clan, the P’ungyang Cho, briefly took power until 1849, when Queen Sunwŏn
(and the Andong Kim clan) returned to power as regent. The second regency was
for King Ch’ŏljong (r. 1849–1863). Although he ascended the throne at age
eighteen, he may have been illiterate, thus allowing the Andong Kim to continue
their in-law rule of the state. King Ch’ŏljong was succeeded by King Kojong (r.
1863–1907), who also rose to the throne as a minor, age eleven. His father was
thought malleable by the Cho and Kim clans, and the father was made regent
with the title Hŭngsŏn Taewŏn’gun. He is commonly known as the Taewŏn’gun
(1820–1898, regency 1863–1873). In other words, from 1800 to the 1860s, control
of the Chosŏn state shifted from the court to the in-law clan councils with the
result that the machinery of state lost its apical arbiter, reflexive action became
very difficult, and corruption spread downwards even to local administration.
If the Chosŏn state had not persecuted Christians (i.e., Catholics) from 1801 to
1873, then a Christian connection may have opened an opportunity from the late
eighteenth century for Chosŏn society to gain access to the wider world. This
argument would have us consider that such access may have contributed to
‘modernization’ in Korea and prevented colonization by 1905, but this argument
is trapped in the pathology of a single locus of modernity. The persecution of
1801 was triggered by a perceived threat to the state (high treason as embodied
by a letter from a Korean Christian to the Bishop of Beijing requesting support
from the French Far East Fleet) and also by the ideological and social threats
lurking within the displacement of loyalty to a ‘transcendent object’, the shift to
subjectivity (Torrey 2012: 129), and the insinuation of egalitarianism. High
treason was entirely adequate to launch a persecution, but the wider significance
of the persecution was that it marked the end of a period of tolerance at the court
for diverse ideas and allowed a conservative faction (Noron) to police orthodoxy,
giving it the power to turn on its rival factions (particularly the Nam’in or
‘Southerner’ faction) with charges of entertaining heterodoxy. Koreans were not
ignorant of Christianity. Fr. Gregorio de Cespedes probably converted captured
Koreans in Japan in the 1590s. Korean intellectuals had known of Christianity
from the early seventeenth century via Beijing (Baker 2012: 2), and Koreans
influenced by their experiences in Beijing had begun professing Christianity by
the 1780s. There was an official persecution in 1785; and by the end of 1794, a
Chinese-ordained priest arrived (Cawley 2013: 24 ff.). Leading, experimental
intellectuals such as Chŏng Yagyong, who had been close to King Chŏngjo, were
implicated in the persecution, as were a number of others associated with the
Nam’in faction. Scholars debate the impact of Christianity from the late
eighteenth century. Perhaps intellectuals re-fashioned their epistemology after
exposure to Catholicism (Torrey 2012: 129), or, perhaps Christian individualism
and a greater respect for women were inserted into society and had some effect
(Choi 2012).3 But, did a reactionary Confucian mandarinate close off the
opportunity to profit from contact with Europeans and Americans and modernise
their society?
The problem is again ‘modernity’. The mandarinate and the yangban very
likely considered themselves to be ‘modern’, if we take that to indicate developed
forms of rationality not entirely bounded by feudal claims to authority.
Catholicism had long ago alienated itself from Chosŏn and probably most East
Asian societies by the 1715 Papal Bull declaring that converts could not practice
ancestral rites or attend Confucian temples. Kwŏn Kŭn (1352–1409), as early as
the fourteenth century, had clarified that ancestral ritual was not religious, that
its practice was not a worship of some ‘subtle animating principle that coheres
and does not die, but … remains in some boundless realm’ (Lee, Vol. 1, 1993: 606).
Although the Papal authority had no access to Kwŏn Kŭn’s arguments, they did
reject Jesuit and Chinese arguments that ancestral rites were a civil rite and so
failed to appreciate the ‘modern’ nature of the societies in which the rites took
place. How could Pope Clement XI (r. 1700–1721) have even understood their
arguments? European society had not yet rejected the feudal legitimation of
authority in which religion, politics, and inheritance were indistinguishable. No
European state had yet to establish a meritocratic bureaucracy. The Pope could
not be expected to understand that filial piety was the centrepiece of the
construction of loyalty to king and state in a post-feudal, meritocratic society.
Even the construction of political loyalty most commonly used in East Asia for
millennia has still never been seen in Europe. Whereas Europe and Japan used
feudal inheritance or patronclient relations and later mass nationalism to create
loyalty to king and state, the post-feudal mandarinates of East Asia (China,
Korea, and Vietnam) had, at least from the Song Dynasty, called on Confucian
ethics to overcome the self-esteem deficit among mandarins. The mandarins’
‘self-esteem deficit’ (Woodside 2006: 46–55) derived from the nature of
meritocratic bureaucracy: if they were lucky enough to have an appointment, the
mandarins had been objectively qualified to staff a bureaucracy by preparing for
examinations (at the most prestigious level) that did not test practical knowledge,
and after appointment they had to endure humiliating performance-based
accountability exercises that eroded their self-image as moral leaders. Korean
mandarins were often driven to be focused more on their own careers than on
public service. This problem now increasingly confronts most contemporary
governments and corporations, but it is not new. The problem is how to counter
careerism and obtain loyalty and dedication. Ironically, they drew on feudal
virtues of hierarchy and duty to give themselves greater purpose within a
‘modern’, impersonal institution. Filial piety (with its associate virtues in ‘chaste
women’ and ‘loyal ministers’) ameliorated the mandarins’ alienation by offering
them a noble vision of themselves and their actions.4 UK Whitehall mandarins
draw on a sense of clientage to the British monarch to satisfy similar needs, but
while Whitehall mandarins might compose position papers on care for the aged,
they will never enthuse on the virtues of filial piety or link that to loyalty to the
state.
Confucian ethics also ameliorated the ‘solidarity deficit’ (Woodside 2006: 70–
74) between the mandarins and most of the people. The mandarins obtained their
positions by demonstrating a mastery of texts and were prone to suffer from
bureaucratic subjectivity or a preference for the mastery of texts, what we might
call models concocted by inter-agency policy councils and external consultants,
over direct experience. The mandarins solipsistically and self-righteously created
visions of society that local people either could not comprehend or could not feel
any reason to act on and so met the mandarins’ initiatives with apathy and non-
compliance. Public and private rituals that celebrated filial piety (with their
‘archery rituals’ and ‘wine-drinking rituals’) as well as quasi-legal community
compacts were attempts at artificially creating corporate communities that would
help enact the bureaucracy’s visions.
In these connections, to reject filial piety was not a religious matter at all.
Rejecting the continuity of lineage was political. It was a threat to the virtues that
supported the fundamental management principles of the state, to say nothing of
the personal and social problems attendant on the implied rejection of identity,
status, and patronage.
All this is not to say that politics did not narrow from the public space of
factional debate to the kitchen governments of in-law clans or that corruption did
not grow. That did happen from King Chŏngjo’s death onwards. But even
factional struggle itself was much more than the pursuit of self-interest.
Widespread debates that involved yangban in and out of government and
occasionally crossed factional lines usually displayed sincere motivations at work
in the consideration of subjects as profound as Korean identity (Haboush 1999).
Again, the intensity and depth of such debates reflected the strength of the
meritocratic order, where most yangban had passed even more stringent
examinations than most Western universities now conduct and considered
themselves informed and meritorious. Such confidence, however, can easily spill
over into self-righteousness. Over the seventeenth century and certainly by the
eighteenth century, Korean mandarins and the wider yangban ‘public’ (Haboush
2009) were accustomed to extensive and widespread debate on Confucian ethics
and their political applications. The number of Chosŏn academies (sŏwŏn) per
capita may have far eclipsed the number of Chinese academies per capita
(Woodside 2006: 22–23), and the academies certainly took their role as sites of
Confucian cultivation very seriously (Ch’oe 1999). The yangban may have been
‘too public-spirited, with an individual and group moral zealousness that could
not be harmonized enough with that of others to permit the empire’s governance’
(Woodside 2006: 42–43) and therein we see factional struggle.
The problem in nineteenth-century Korea was that Korean kingship in the
Chosŏn period (and even earlier) had rarely been strong, much less autocratic.
Strong leadership should not be confused with autocracy. Strong leadership
makes decisions when government is divided. When King Chŏngjo passed from
the scene in 1800 and boys were placed on the throne over the course of the
nineteenth century, the state possessed even weaker authority to mediate who
was most meritorious and deserving and to impose discipline on the corrupt and
criminal. Although we know the political fortunes of those decades and some of
the results of misrule, we still lack extensive studies on the politics of the court,
the involvement of the clans, and the actual conduct of governance. We are
fortunate to have very good studies that focus on the time from the early 1860s
when state mechanisms were being refurbished so that central negligence could
be overcome and state efficacy could be strengthened. When the Taewŏn’gun
became regent from early 1864, he consciously set about trying to establish a
clear mediating authority by amalgamating power and resources around the
throne (Choe 1972 and Palais 1975). He had mixed results, but before the project
could be carried forward, imperialistic pressures came to bear on the kingdom
from the outside. The main problem was (and is today still) that meritocratic
bureaucracies are inherently weaker at creating loyalty than loyalties based on
feudalistic patronclient relations or on mass-based nationalisms or on religious
sectarianism, and the pressures on that Korean state weakness after 1876 became
overwhelming (Woodside 2006: 10). In short, Chosŏn Korea was quite ‘modern’
already.

Response from the ruled and the strength of

Confucianism
While the ruled are always unruly, the nineteenth century was a century marked
by many rebellions (seventy tax revolts in 1862 alone) (Kim 2007b: 993). Studies
of rebellions in earlier centuries offer comparative benchmarks, and fortunately,
we now have good studies of the major rebellions of 1728, 1812, and 1862 that
allow us to catch a view of the quality of Chosŏn governance over quite a long
period. These studies offer glimpses of local society as well. Rebellions generate
reports, statements, manifestoes, and other documents, and these documents offer
historians a window on locality. We need more such windows. In short, we need
more micro-history and not just of trying times but of ordinary times, as well.
In these important micro-studies of rebellions, we can also see the inadequacies
of higher officials’ bureaucratic subjectivity, the breakdown of practical
application of governance, and the complexities of local societies. Consistently,
the studies reveal attempts by local (and sometimes even central) elites to
mobilise ordinary people to participate in rebellion, belying analyses that rely on
class warfare. For example, the Musillan Rebellion of 1728 (named after the year)
was an affair of high politics and was focused on a possible coup d’état (Jackson
forthcoming). The Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion of 1812 (named after its putative
leader) grew from a conflict between central and local elites over dwindling
resources that was complicated by the peculiarities of the northern region (more
mercantile than agricultural and often the object of discrimination) (Karlsson
2000 and Kim 2007a). The Chinju Rebellion of 1862 (named after the place) sprang
from a tax-resistance movement among local elites and indicted arbitrary
taxation and extreme corruption among local officials and clerks (Kim 2007b).
Additionally, both the 1812 Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion in the north and the 1862
Chinju Rebellion in the south had complex economic circumstances behind them:
increasing monetization of the economy and increasing competition between
centre and locality over control of resources. Although prophecies and messianic
messages appeared in 1811–12, a focus on these can obscure the essential
‘modern’ characteristics of the nineteenth-century rebellions: competition over
control of the instruments of state, competition over resources in changing
economic circumstances, and calls for an end to corruption.
It also appears that the assumed rationality of the state structure was so strong
that, despite increasing class polarization and social stratification, the 1812 rebels
were engaged in a ‘defensive’ exercise and did not seek to create a new state
(Karlsson 2000: 275). Belief in the dominant ideology was still so strong in the
1860s that Confucian ideals of justice could be construed to condone violent
resistance in the 1862 Chinju Rebellion without calling for the overthrow of the
state (Kim 2007b: 1018). Although feudal in origin, Confucian ideology had been
appropriated as long ago as the Han Dynasty to shore up a post-feudal, rational
bureaucratic vision that was clearly still strong in nineteenth-century Korea.
Problems inevitably occurred, however, when the centre received incomplete or
false data, and in the course of imposing its vision, the situation worsened when
difficulties, such as local rebellions, appeared that required clear mediation.
Hence, in the course of the centre depriving the provinces of resources or seeking
to extend central control over local resources, the administrators on the ground
were forced to invent new taxes to fill the deficits opening up in their accounts.
In 1862, the central government took notice of this problem and devised reforms
of land, military, and the grain loan tax structures that would have reformed
local administration up and down the country, but the reforms lapsed and were
abandoned in the midst of royal succession in the capital (Kim 2007b: 1017–1018).
Although modern bureaucracies such as the Chosŏn state engaged reflexively
in knowledge acquisition and analysis, the weakness of bureaucratic subjectivity
was never far away. The mandarins had acquired their positions from the
mastery of classical texts and recruitment through exams that tested their
knowledge of classical texts. Their accomplishments were powerfully self-
reinforcing and imparted a feeling of ‘book-based omniscience’, which mirrored
the Enlightenment belief ‘that the rationalist use of mathematical and scientific
thinking procedures could make the entire world calculable’ (Woodside 2006: 82).
Administrators in the centre operating from bad or incomplete data and captive
to their subjectivity not only risked devising inappropriate policies, but also
commonly ‘mythologize[d] the desired future in such a text-bound way that the
future became an intellectually closed domain whose definition was controlled
almost entirely by bureaucratic elites’ (Woodside 2006: 94). Note that this
problem applies to any post-feudal bureaucracy, not just to those dominated by
Confucian ethics. Although Confucian ethics apotheosis the Zhou, it does not
mean that nineteenth-century Korean mandarins wanted to return to the sixth or
fifth century BCE. They could be just as self-reflective and future-oriented as
twenty-first century bureaucracies, but the mandarins monopolised the language
needed to discuss the future, and from that monopoly they derived their power.
Herein lies the strength of the firebrand conservative Yi Hang-no (1792–1868)
(Chung 1995), who railed against compromise with the West and Japan. Foreign
ideologies were not just alternative views of society, politics, and just about
everything else; they were rejections of the basis of the Korean post-feudal,
rational bureaucratic order.

Macroeconomic models and capitalist rationality

Controversy surrounds the economy of the late Chosŏn period. Some (Jun and
Lewis 2006; Jun et al. 2008, 2009) argue that from the late seventeenth century,
over the eighteenth century, and into the early decades of the nineteenth century
was a period of prosperity and stability. This could be called an ‘efflorescence’ or
a time in which economic expansion and creative inno vation expanded rather
rapidly only to be followed by a collapse (Goldstone 2002: 333–334), and in
Korea’s case that collapse came in the nineteenth century. The ‘efflorescence’ of
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a case of Smithian growth or
total economic growth in which the land market expanded because it was
protected by legally recognised property rights that were strengthened after the
Imjin Waeran of 1592–1598 to encourage farming.5 Although land rents and land
prices were declining, which suggest declining productivity, land conversion
from dry fields to paddy was expanding, resulting in an expansion of available
paddy land. More available land, in part spurred by speculation, contributed to
declining land rents and land prices: the quantity of paddy land was expanding
but its quality was declining from the early nineteenth century. There was an
increase in prosperity in agricultural production over the eighteenth century
because surpluses were sufficient to buoy up skilled wages and support high
prices for manufactured goods, which were traded in expanded and integrated
markets. Rice prices stabilised and rice price volatility fell over the eighteenth
century as production expanded and markets integrated, but prices and volatility
then began rising again from the middle of the nineteenth century as systemic
collapse began. General grain prices had been stable over the eighteenth century
and lower than the prices of manufactured goods, but that relationship reversed
itself from the 1830s when food prices began to rise and the prices of
manufactures began to fall, indicating that the structures of food production were
decaying and surpluses that had supported the prices of manufactures were
disappearing. Government had supplied infrastructure for irrigation and social
welfare as grain storage and tax exemptions for bad harvests, but from the early
nineteenth century, government investment in irrigation fell off considerably,
grain storage became a target for corrupt officials, and tax exemptions ceased to
be related to agricultural production from around 1860. Heavier rains over the
nineteenth century washed over progressively deforested (Totman 2004) hillsides
and silted up rivers and irrigation infrastructure, which were no longer being
maintained. Imperial pressures after 1876 opened up new economic dynamics and
distracted government, thereby considerably worsening matters.
Others dispute this depiction and argue that recovery from the Imjin War did
occur in the seventeenth century only to be followed by long, slow decline from
around 1700 to a nadir that was reached in the late nineteenth century. From 1700
until the late nineteenth century, declining real government wages, the declining
price of labour, and declining land rent indicate a decline in productivity, not a
rise (Cha 2009). Declining land rents are mirrored by declining land prices, and
both reflect declining land productivity as a result of advancing deforestation.
The decline in land productivity was somewhat offset by the state dedication to
storage that offered greater food security and encouraged the production of cash
crops and domestic manufactures. Nevertheless, markets contracted after the
mid-eighteenth century as trade with Japan was considerably curtailed from 1745
and trade with China went into deficit. Confucian ideology was ‘dogmatic’ and
‘destroyed incentives to work hard and stifled savings and investment. Instead,
the Confucian ideology encouraged people to improve their social and political
status by means of rent-seeking activities’ (Rhee 2014: 10). The ‘stagnation,
recession, and crisis’ of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘were so deep
and serious as to cause Korea eventually to be occupied by Japan’ (Rhee 2014: 2).
The overall macroeconomic situation for the eighteenth century is debatable, but
there is a general consensus that the nineteenth century, especially from around
the 1830s onwards, saw serious decline.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done to test these models and devise
alternatives. Unlike literary studies or political history, economic history relies on
quantitative data-gathering and analysis and is difficult for individuals.
Partnerships with Korean and Japanese scholars can be very fruitful. We need to
reach a finer-grained resolution on regional economies for the distribution of
products and land use. We need more work on demographic and population
history and to come to terms with very difficult questions related to biased
reporting and small data samples. Research into quality of life indicators (e.g.,
height) has just begun and is still fraught with difficulties (Lewis et al. 2013).
Work needs to be done on the prevalence of endemic disease, water quality,
hygiene, and other determinants of the quality of life.
If we return to the theme of ‘modern’ rationalities lurking in what was
supposedly a ‘premodern’ and ‘pre-rational’ world, we can find multiple
examples of ‘modern’ rationality at work in the pre-1876 Korean economy. For
example, we know that a full-blown, apparently indigenous, double-entry
accounting method was practiced by Kaesŏng merchants from at least as far back
as the 1780s and probably earlier (Jun et al. 2013), and we can find its echo in the
accounts of non-profit agricultural cooperatives from the 1740s (Jun and Lewis
2006) as well as in the accounts of eighteenth-century Confucian academies. The
extraordinary sophistication of these accounts is remarkable enough, but the
contents reveal capitalistic activities. Vast sums were being deployed as
investments in ginseng with its six-year term of maturity. There were significant
merchant groups in Kaesŏng (Kang 1978), Seoul (Kang 1979), and Tongnae (Kim
2004), aside from those merchants who possessed retail monopolies in the centre
of Seoul, which will be discussed in a later essay in this volume, but we still know
very little about the lives and commercial activities of Korean merchants.

Conclusion

Our greatest challenge is to overcome assumptions about what constitutes our

world and not confuse technological intensification with institutional
sophistication. In short, we have to come to doubt the following definition of
modernity:
When we speak of modernity, however, we refer to institutional transformations that have their origins
in the West. … In terms of institutional clustering, two distinct organisational complexes are of particular
significance in the development of modernity: the nation-state and systematic capitalist production. Both
have their roots in specific characteristics of European history and have few parallels in prior periods or
in other cultural settings. … Is modernity distinctively a Western project in terms of the ways of life
fostered by these two great transformative agencies? To this query, the blunt answer must be “yes.”
(Giddens 1990: 174–175)

If we think that our capitalist nation-states are the height of rationality and that
there is a clear disjuncture between premodern irrational behaviour and rational
modern behaviour, then we risk reducing human history before the railroad to a
timeless, agricultural idyll or a dark, oppressive purgatory, depending on your
preference. What is worse, we risk dismissing the rest of the world outside
Europe to a place where people simply waited to be given what Europeans had
made in their workshop and finally we risk ignoring lessons to be learned from
the deep experiences Koreans have had with post-feudal, rational structures.

Glossary

Chiphyŏnjŏn (集 賢 殿 ) Hall of Worthies

Chŏljong
Chŏljong
(哲 宗 ) King
Chŏng Yagyong (丁 若 鏞 , 1762–1836) personal name
Chŏngjo (正 祖 ) King
Chŏngsun (貞 純 王 后 , 1745–1805) Queen
wanghu
Chŭngbo (增 補 東 國 文 獻 備 考 , begun in 1770)
tongguk Supplemented Reference Compilation of Documents on
munhŏn pigo Korea
Hongjae chŏnsŏ (弘 齋 全 書 , 1799) Collected Poems
Hŏnjong (憲 宗 ) King
Hong Kyŏngnae (洪 景 來 , 1780–1812) personal name
Hŭngsŏn (興 宣 大 院 君 , 1820–1898, regency 1863–1873)
Taewŏn’gun
Hwasŏng (華 城 ) place name
Imjin Waeran (壬 辰 倭 亂 ) Imjin War or Hideyoshi’s Invasion of
Korea
Kaesŏng (開 城 ) place name
Kojong (高 宗 ) King
Kukcho pogam (國 朝 寶 鑑 , 1782) Precious Mirror for Succeeding
Reigns
Kwŏn Kŭn (權 近 , 1352–1409) personal name
Kyujang (奎 章 全 韻 , 1796) A Complete Rhyming Dictionary
chŏn’un
Munwŏn pobul (文 苑 黼 黻 , 1787) Beautiful Literature
Musillan (戊 申 亂 ) name of rebellion
Nam’in (南 人 ) Southerners’ faction
nobi (奴 婢 ) un-free labour
Noron (老 論 ) Old Doctrine Faction or Patriarch’s Faction
Oryun (五 倫 行 實 [-圖 ], 1797) The [Illustrated] Five Moral
haengsil[-to] Rules
Pak Chega (朴 齊 家 , 1750–1815) personal name
Pak Chiwŏn (朴 趾 源 , 1737–1805) personal name
P’ungyang Cho (豊 壤 趙 氏 ) Cho clan of P’ungyang
Sok oryeŭi
Sok oryeŭi
([國 朝 ]續 五 禮 儀 , 1744) Extended Five Rites of
State
sŏwŏn (書 院 ) private academy
Sunjo (純 祖 ) King
Sunwŏn (純 元 王 后 , 1789–1857) Queen
wanghu
Suwŏn (水 原 市 ) place name
Taejŏn (大 典 通 編 , 1785) Comprehensive National Code
t’ongp’yŏn
t’angp’yŏng (蕩 平 策 ) Policy of Impartiality
ch’aek
Tongmun hwigo (同 文 彙 考 , 1788) Diplomatic Letters
Tongnae (東 萊 ) place name
yangban (兩 班 ) civil and military officials
Yi Hang-no (李 恒 老 , 1792–1868) personal name
Yŏngjo (英 祖 ) King
Yu Tŭkkong (柳 得 恭 , 1749–1807) personal name
Zhou (周 ) Chinese dynasty

Notes
1 Looking for societies dominated by capitalism or organised as nation-states as universal markers of
modernity is probably a dead end because these characteristics seem too peculiar to Europe. Setting aside
capitalism and the nation-state, we should consider the constitution of the ‘modern’ mind. Although
Anthony Giddens clings to the nation-state and occasionally capitalism, he also offers us a summation of
‘modernity’ as a project to develop impersonal patterns of thinking (Giddens 1990: 53–54). His ideas rest
on ‘disembedding’ and the ‘reflexive appropriation of knowledge’. Disembedding begins with the
separation of time and space from place, so that time and space can be ‘emptied’ and standardised
without regard to locality. Further disembedding is achieved through ‘symbolic tokens’ and ‘expert
systems’ that require trust (with a sense of risk), not confidence. Therefore, the transition from
premodern to modern is the reorientation of perspectives from who and where people are to what
functions, almost entirely impersonal, that people perform. Finally, knowledge is reflexively acquired and
 applied: ‘social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information
about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character’ (Giddens 1990: 38). The constant
alteration means that knowledge does not produce certainty. The paradigmatic example of this is the
perspective of the natural sciences where certainty only lasts until the next laboratory test. Any appeal to
prior custom or practice carries no value, and change is normal and expected. ‘Disembedding’ and the
‘reflexive appropriation of knowledge’ were part of the scaffolding of premodern East Asian
bureaucracies.

2 Capitalism (Marx) and industrialism (Durkheim) did not come to dominate Chosŏn society, but
rationality (Weber) did (Giddens 1990: 11–12).

3 The question of Christian conversion among Chosŏn intellectuals is an excellent entry point to examine
fundamental questions of ontology, cosmology, metaphysics, belief, and the self and the state and still
has yet to be extensively explored in a self-conscious comparative framework that relativises
assumptions about modernity. We might compare Korean individualism in a post-feudal society with
European individualism in feudal societies and examine the significance of the hierarchical nature of
Catholicism in comparison with Confucianism.

4 Yi Saek (1328–1396) equates filial piety with loyalty. See 伯 中 說 贈 李 狀 元 別 (‘On the
courtesy name of Paekchung: Presented to the First Place Laureate Yi at parting’) in the fifteenth-century
literary compilation, the Tongmunsŏn (東 文 選 ), book 97: ‘When you serve your parents well, it is
called filial piety. When it is shifted to the lord, it is called loyalty. The terms (filial piety and loyalty)
may be different, but the principle is the same’.

5 In Korea (and possibly in China), the land market was a larger part of economic activity than labour
markets or capital markets; the land market was highly liquid and property rights probably more
protected than in Europe, but European labour and capital markets were more extensive, better
protected, and more elaborated.

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Confucian World, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1988; reprinted
with a new preface as The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yŏngjo and the
Politics of Sagacity, New York: Columbia University Press.
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columnists’, unpublished PhD dissertation, SOAS, University of London.
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William A. Sundstrom, eds., Research in Economic History, University of
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3
Competing imperialisms in Korea

Kirk W. Larsen

The story of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Korea is, in many ways, a

story of competing imperialisms. For many Koreans, this story is a
straightforward and tragic account of increasing Japanese power and domination
on the peninsula, culminating in Meiji Japan’s formal annexation of Korea in
1910. This quest had political, military, and economic dimensions. The Japanese
imperialists had to contend with an often-defiant Korean populace as well as
foreign competitors, chief among them the Qing Empire (China) and Czarist
Russia. But as Japan overcame these obstacles, its annexation of Korea seemed
inevitable. Some of the scholarship on this period has focused on the question of
who or what is to blame for Korea’s inability to defend itself against the Japanese
advances—was it the feckless King Kojong; his father, the “Grand Prince”
Taewŏn’gun; the yangban aristocratic elite; the unwanted meddling of Qing
China; the negligence or betrayal of the United States; or some other factor?1
However, most appear to assume that Japan’s ultimate domination of Korea was
more or less inevitable. While scholarly research has demonstrated that the actual
process of Japanese imperialism in Korea was filled with far more contingencies
and setbacks than the simple narrative of a Japanese “plot” to conquer Korea
would indicate, there remains a great deal of validity to the conventional
narrative.2 In addition, it is also illuminating to view the course of imperialism in
Korea in the nineteenth century as one of a series of competing (and often
overlapping) imperial structures and practices. These reflected a much greater
diversity of origins and influences than simply the aims and whims of Tokyo.
Korea successfully defended its position and participation in a Sino-centric
regional order until at least 1876 when the Chosŏn Kingdom signed its first
modern treaty with Japan. While rhetoric of the day emphasized modern,
Western-style treaties as the key to entering the “family” of sovereign and
independent nations, the reality of the day was one of stronger imperialist
powers imposing their will upon weaker victims. The only real question was
what type of imperialism would predominate. In the case of Korea, Meiji Japan
initiated the introduction of informal, unilateral imperialism to Korea during the
period 1876–1882. The subsequent period, 1882–1905, is characterized primarily
by Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese competition in and over Korea but all
within the framework of informal, multilateral imperial structures, most notably
the treaty port system. After 1905, with its major competitors removed from the
scene, Japan, in keeping with global trends, shifted toward a more formal
imperialism in Korea, ultimately annexing and absorbing the peninsula in 1910.

Opening the “hermit nation”

Foreigners who approached the Chosŏn Kingdom in the nineteenth century
found a Korea that appeared to be more or less content with the then-dominant
imperial structure in the region. This structure was predicated on the centrality
and superiority of China, both Ming China (1368–1644) and the subsequent Qing
Empire (1644–1912). While both sides of this relationship insisted that it lacked
coercion and was based on mutually acceptable Confucian morality, the reality
was often that the stronger Ming and Qing made onerous and difficult demands
of its Korean vassal—military assistance, human tribute, and the like—that are
difficult to fully describe if one uses only the language of the “tribute system.”
Nevertheless, by the nineteenth century, the most disagreeably coercive aspects
of the relationship had subsided and China and Korea enjoyed a comfortable
distance and a minimum of interaction. Relations between Chosŏn Korea and its
other East Asian neighbor, Japan, usually are not labeled as imperialism of either
country. Japan did attempt the conquest of Korea with the late sixteenth-century
invasions of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, but after their failure, both Japan and Korea
appear to have accepted restricting their relations to a bare minimum.
Foreign encounters with Korea in the nineteenth century generally confirmed
the oft-repeated notion that the Chosŏn Kingdom was content with its limited
relations with China and Japan and wished to be more or less left alone. But the
Korean desire to maintain its status as a “hermit” would come under increasing
challenge as the nineteenth century wore on. Western ships which were plying
the waters around China and Japan in ever-increasing numbers began to appear
on Korea’s coasts as well. And while shipwrecked crews were reasonably well
treated by the Koreans (and quickly hustled off to China for repatriation), some
Western governments longed for the greater security offered by a treaty with
Korea that would at minimum guarantee good treatment of shipwrecked sailors
and allow for ships in distress to be able to acquire food and supplies from
Korean ports.
In addition to the need for a “wood and water” treaty, some in the West
harbored the more ambitious desire to fully open Korea to diplomatic and
commercial relations with the outside world as had been accomplished
previously with China and Japan. A British newspaper confidently predicted that
“Korea will no doubt soon figure as a place of trade, through the enterprise of
Englishmen.” Other Westerners, particularly Americans, made similar predictions
for their countrymen. A third issue was the desire to propagate Christianity in
Korea. Roman Catholics had taken the lead in seeking contacts and converts in
Korea with a small but influential number of French priests illegally entering
Korea (the first arriving in 1836) and organizing congregations of Catholic
believers, some of who had converted by reading Catholic materials brought back
from China.
The typical Korean response to these foreign forays was resistance and
exclusion. Foreign explorers, merchants, and other adventurers who happened
upon Korea’s shores almost uniformly reported being informed by local officials
that their presence in Korea was illegal and unwanted. In addition, Korean
Catholic believers were subjected to periodic purges with hundreds and
sometimes thousands being executed in 1801, 1839, and 1866. Chosŏn officials
sometimes pointed to the then prevailing structure of Chinese imperialism in
Korea as a pretext for avoiding unwanted relations with outsiders. The supposed
rule that “vassals cannot conduct diplomacy” had been utilized by Korean
officials at least as early as the seventeenth century and was often deployed in
the nineteenth century (even as late as 1871) in order to convince visiting
foreigners to leave Korea alone.3 However, when the inquiring foreigners
subsequently approached Korea’s putative suzerain, the Qing Empire, they were
often informed that Chinese non-interference in Korean affairs was a bedrock
principle of the longstanding suzerain-vassal relationship, leaving the foreigners
with no one with which to negotiate on Korean matters.
The year 1866 was pivotal in the history of imperialism in Korea. The Korean
persecution of Catholics (including the execution of nine French priests) resulted
in a French military mission led by Admiral Pierre-Gustave Roze that attacked
Kanghwa Island but retreated after encountering stiff Korean resistance. Weeks
before the French assault, the General Sherman, a British-chartered American
sailing ship, sailed up the Taedong River to the outskirts of P’yŏngyang. Conflicts
with local Koreans ensued (perhaps spurred on by the relentless proselytizing of
the Welsh Protestant missionary Robert Jermain Thomas who was on board the
General Sherman) with the end result being the destruction of the ship and the
murder of all who were on board. This incident led to several American attempts
to obtain an explanation and apology for the destruction of the General Sherman,
which culminated in the 1871 American attack on Kanghwa Island. Much like the
French punitive mission of five years earlier, the 1871 Low-Rodgers Expedition
engaged in a series of violent conflicts with Koreans on the island (more than
three hundred Koreans died) but then withdrew, having failed to either obtain
more information about the General Sherman or progress toward a treaty.
In short, Chosŏn Korea had proved able to resist the encroachment of foreign
imperialism and to maintain control over the terms of how it engaged with the
outside world for decades longer than its East Asian neighbors. While military
force (or merely the threat of military force) was sufficient to force China (1842)
and Japan (1854) to open, Korean resistance, albeit sometimes with high
causalities, was able to keep foreign forces at bay.
However, changes both outside and within Korea would combine to begin in
earnest the process of opening the “hermit nation” in 1876. Internally, there
remained a strong segment of Korean officials and elites who advocated a
resistance-at-all-costs approach to foreign imperialism. The Grand Prince
T’aewŏn’gun, who ruled as regent in the place of his young son (King Kojong)
from 1864 to 1873, is thought to have embodied this type of unflinching
resistance. The T’aewŏn’gun advocated fighting back against the French in 1866
and the Americans in 1871 as well as repelling unofficial attempts by outsiders to
seek trade or plunder on the peninsula as was the case of the repeated efforts of
the German adventurer Ernst Oppert to either convince Korea to open its doors
to the outside world or, lacking this, ransack the tombs of Korean royalty (1866,
1867). But the T’aewŏn’gun was hardly alone in his determination that the
foreigners could and should be resisted with force. Neo-Confucian stalwarts such
as Yi Hang-no, Ch’oe Ik-hyŏn, Yi Man-sŏn, and Hong Chae-hak repeatedly and
publicly called for violent resistance to the “wild beasts” that were appearing on
Korea’s shores with troubling frequency.
In 1873 the T’aewŏn’gun’s son, King Kojong, felt old and strong enough to
push his father aside and begin ruling in actuality as well as in name. He proved
to be more willing to entertain the notion of negotiating with foreigners rather
than simply fighting them. In doing so, Kojong was supported by some among
the Chosŏn elite such as Pak Kyu-su, the scion of a “practical learning” (silhak)
clan. Their flexibility and pragmatism was needed in an era of growing change.
In general, the nineteenth century saw an increasing number of polities and
peoples beginning to adhere to Westphalian norms of national identity and
sovereignty and to Western modes of treaty-based diplomatic and commercial
interactions. As such, Korea increasingly stood out as a recalcitrant outlier.
“Corea cannot hope to exclude foreigners much longer,” wrote an American
diplomat in 1868.4 Korea’s neighbors had agreed to intensified relations with the
West in accordance with Western diplomatic principles. China and Japan had
even gone so far as to sign a Western-style treaty between themselves in 1871.
But it bears noting that the norm of the time was for Western powers to impose
new treaties upon recalcitrant would-be colonies at gunpoint (or by gunboat).
However, it was not a Western nation but rather Japan that finally successfully
opened Korea in 1876. In the years leading up to the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa,
Japan had begun a process of rapid modernization and Westernization often
associated with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Japan’s insistence on approaching
Chosŏn Korea as an empire led by an emperor caused no small amount of Korean
resentment and resistance. But Japan’s abolition of its system of feudal domains
(han) and their daimyo leaders meant that Korea had little choice. Previously,
most official Korean-Japanese relations were conducted between Chosŏn officials
and representatives of the Tsushima-based Sō clan. The abolition of the Tsushima
domain meant that there was literally no one other than Meiji officials with
which to conduct diplomacy.
Korea continued to resist Japanese overtures (with said resistance prompting
some Japanese to call for an attack on Korea in the “Seikanron” debates of 1873)
until yet another conflict off of the coast of Kanghwa Island prompted a Japanese
threat of forceful retaliation. The 1875 Unyō incident (in which Korean shore
batteries fired on a Japanese ship) gave Japan the opportunity to exercise the
same sort of gunboat diplomacy that had opened up Japan some two decades
earlier. But rather than fight, King Kojong—urged to compromise by an
increasingly concerned Qing Empire—agreed to a treaty that contained some of
the same types of provisions that had been used to open China and Japan. This
ushered in a new era of imperialism in Korea.
The 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa is often hailed as a milestone in Korea’s
diplomatic history and is usually regarded as Korea’s first “modern” or at least
Western-style treaty. As was often the case, actual implementation of the treaty’s
provisions would take much time and labor to secure. While Pusan, the only
allowed locale for Korean-Japanese trade for centuries, was immediately the first
port to be designated as an open treaty port, other ports such as Wŏnsan (1880)
and Chemulp’o/Inch’ŏn (1883) took years to open. It also took years before Japan
was able to establish a permanent diplomatic presence in the Korean capital. But
once these gains were achieved, Japanese merchants and adventurers moved to
Korea to pursue their fortunes in trade. There they found a ready market for
manufactured goods (mostly Western in the early years) with markups of as
much as 1000 percent being recorded. They also sought to obtain Korean
agricultural (rice, soybeans, and cowhides) and marine products for export. This
commercial activity took place under almost entirely unregulated conditions.
Chosŏn Korea had no maritime customs service, and the first few Korean
attempts to pursue tariff negotiations with Japan were rebuffed by Tokyo (in the
name of waiting until trade got on a better footing).
In short, the system that Japan implemented and enjoyed during the period
1876–1882 bore many resemblances to the treaty port system that had been
established and was developing in China and Japan save that there were no other
foreign competitors in Korea. Japan enjoyed monopolistic but informal
imperialism in Korea.

1882: multilateral imperialism comes to Korea

This system of informal unilateral imperialism was challenged and ended by a

series of events that took place in 1882. Korean officials and leaders and their
Qing Chinese counterparts were increasingly concerned about the implications of
a Japanese monopoly over access to Korean diplomacy and markets. Some
Koreans were persuaded by the essay written by the Qing official Huang
Zunxian, A Strategy for Korea, which argued that perilous times required a
pragmatic differentiation among various powers and called for Korea’s
cultivation of closer ties with the Qing Empire, the United States, and Japan in
order to deal with the growing threat of Czarist Russia and other foreign powers.
Others, including Pak Kyu-su, reached similar conclusions (this despite Pak’s
personal experience of, as governor of P’yŏngan Province, having ordered the
destruction of the General Sherman and the killing of its crew in 1866). Their
motivation often did not include any real admiration or respect for the foreigners
but rather was a pragmatic acknowledgment of contemporary power relations.
Fearing strong domestic resistance to more relations with Western nations,
King Kojong proved reluctant to take the first step toward treaty negotiations. As
a result, the Qing statesman Li Hongzhang, decided to take matters into his own
hands by offering to negotiate Chosŏn Korea’s first treaties with Western powers.
He hoped that by involving a number of foreign powers in Korea, no single
power would emerge predominant (he used the phrases “using one poison to
counter another” and “using one barbarian to control another” to describe his
strategy; a present-day description might use the term “balance of power”).
Therefore, he invited the American Commodore Robert Shufeldt, who had
previously made several unsuccessful attempts to approach Korea directly to
negotiate a treaty, to Tianjin to negotiate on behalf of Korea. The resultant Treaty
of Amity and Commerce was used as a model for treaties negotiated by Li with
the British (1882, 1883) and the Germans (1883). Once the precedent was set,
Chosŏn Korea would proceed to negotiate treaties with other major powers in
ensuing years, including Russia (1884), Italy (1884), France (1886), and the Austro-
Hungarian Empire (1892) among others.
A second development in 1882 was also initiated by the Qing Empire, albeit in
response to events on the ground in Korea. In July of 1882, Korean soldiers
mutinied to protest unequal (or absent) pay and unequal treatment. Their mutiny
soon took on political overtones as they enlisted the T’aewŏn’gun to their cause.
The rioting soldiers proceeded to attack foreigners (which at the time meant only
Japanese) and their businesses and residences in the Korean capital, and the
T’aewŏn’gun announced his intention to repudiate all of the recently negotiated
treaties. Fearing both the loss of the diplomatic gains secured by the treaties and
also the possibility of a forceful Japanese military response to the mutiny, the
Qing Empire dispatched three thousand troops from Shandong to Korea to put
down the rebellion.
The dispatch of troops to assist the Qing-invested monarch of Korea had
precedent in the history of Sino-Korean relations. Ming troops had played a
critical role in the halting of the Japanese invasions of Korea in the late sixteenth
century (1592–1598). However, in something of a break from tradition, the
Chinese troops in 1882 remained in the Korean capital even after the crisis was
ended. They constituted a powerful political force aimed at least in part on
furthering Qing interests in Korea.
Still later in 1882, the Qing Empire negotiated its own set of commercial
regulations with Chosŏn Korea. The resulting Regulations for Maritime and
Overland Trade between Chinese and Korean Subjects put in writing both Qing
claims to traditional Chinese suzerainty over Korea and the Qing assertion of
commercial access and privilege in Korea.
Taken together, these 1882 developments transformed the treaty port system in
Korea from one of unilateral Japanese privilege to one in which a number of
powers and peoples—but most notably the Chinese and Japanese—competed for
power and markets in Korea. This competition within the structure of still
informal but now multilateral imperialism would be one of the main features of
imperialism in Korea for the next two decades.
The post-1882 system also more fully resembled the treaty port system that had
been implemented in China and Japan previously. Under this system, designated
cities or towns (treaty ports) were set aside for foreign residence and commercial
activity. Within these treaty ports, foreigners generally enjoyed the privilege of
having any legal dispute being adjudicated according to foreign law and in
foreign courts (extraterritoriality or “extrality”). In addition, many treaty ports
had certain areas designated in which foreigners administered most if not all
affairs (concessions or settlements). In the case of Chosŏn Korea, these
settlements sometimes were demarcated by nationality with (usually) a Japanese
and a Chinese settlement existing side by side sometimes accompanied by an
“international settlement” set aside for Westerners. In China and Japan, foreign
merchants enjoyed the benefits of generally low tariff rates (often via “unequal
treaties” which were imposed under considerable duress) and (in China) a
Customs Service managed by foreigners. Both of these features were also
implemented in Korea.
The post-1882 system of multilateral treaty-port-style imperialism proved
resistant to the attempts of individual nations to assert exclusive privileges. This
was discovered by Japanese merchants in Pusan who sought in 1883 to exclude
newly arrived Chinese competitors from participation in commercial activities in
what was previously an exclusively Japanese domain. Chinese diplomatic
officials were able to point to treaty-guaranteed rights to force the Japanese to
back down. Chinese merchants, too, found that their efforts to take advantage of
the presence of aggressive Qing officials such as Yuan Shikai to facilitate the
evasion of customs duties (if not outright smuggling of ginseng) were stymied by
Korean customs officials, despite the fact that said officials were actually
employees of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service.
The period 1882–1894 was characterized by increasingly intense competition,
particularly between China and Japan for markets and power in Korea. By all
accounts, Chinese merchants swiftly proved to be worthy competitors to their
Japanese counterparts as they poured into Korean treaty ports (particularly
Inch’ŏn and Seoul, the Korean capital) and eagerly acquired as much ginseng and
gold dust as they could, often exchanging them for British and Chinese textiles. A
growing Japanese demand for Korean rice meant that Japan always had a larger
share of Korea’s export market, but by the early 1890s, imports into Korea were
nearly equally divided between Chinese and Japanese merchants (with merchants
of other nationalities playing a negligible role in Korea’s foreign trade).
 At the same time that Chinese merchants were challenging Japan’s dominance
in the commercial realm, Qing officials were seeking to enhance China’s political
power on the peninsula. They reveled in the Chosŏn Kingdom’s continued
dispatch of tribute missions to Beijing and sought to demonstrate Qing suzerainty
in a variety of symbolic ways at official diplomatic functions, special occasions,
banquets, and the like. But they also sought to promote and project Qing power
using an assortment of newer tactics. These included setting up and managing
Korea’s first overland telegraph lines, establishing and operating Korea’s
maritime customs service (although as noted above, not always with expected
results), and taking an active role in Korea’s attempts to borrow money from
abroad (stymying Korea’s attempts to secure loans from non-Chinese sources in
some cases and actively supporting and even subsidizing Chinese loans to the
Chosŏn government in others). In all of these areas, the Qing Empire appears to
have been far more adept at innovating and adopting the latest imperialist
techniques from across the globe than has often been recognized.
While the Qing Empire and Imperial Japan were directly competing for power
and privilege on the Korean peninsula, other imperialist powers were often
present but usually only peripherally involved in the Sino-Japanese competition
or its outcome.
Despite its significant imperial presence in South (India, Burma, etc.) and East
(Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.) Asia, Great Britain never demonstrated much
official interest in Korea and its merchants tended to follow suit. The British were
more than happy to follow the precedent set by the Korean-American Treaty of
1882 and negotiated with the Qing Empire for a British-Korean Treaty but soon
followed up with a re-negotiated treaty that was deemed more amenable to
British interests (the so-called Parkes Treaty of 1883). Subsequently, British
interest in Korea flared up periodically, usually in response to perceived Russian
designs or advances on the peninsula. Such was the case in 1885 when the British
occupied Kŏmun-do (which they had christened Port Hamilton), a small group of
islands off of the southern coast of the peninsula. The official British justification
for this act was the need to forestall Russian seizure of a Korean port (perhaps
near the treaty port of Wŏnsan). Once the Russian threat diminished, the British
withdrew in 1887. British merchants initially displayed considerable interest in
Korea, with the famed firm Jardine and Matheson setting up shop in Inch’ŏn soon
after the port was opened. However, few found lasting success (one British
observer quipped that “There is no abundance of anything in the country except
magpies”5), and Britain as a whole seemed content to allow Chinese merchants to
market and distribute British goods in Korea. The reports of British consuls
stationed in Korea are filled with lamentations concerning the lack of British
attention to or interest in Korean markets.
After its military setback of 1866, France appears to have lost interest in Korea
for the next two decades, concluding a treaty with Korea only in 1886. French
Catholics were subsequently permitted to live and preach in Korea without the
persecution of earlier decades; some were instrumental in the construction of the
still-famous Myŏng-dong Cathedral in Seoul. And while Germany was one of the
first Western powers to negotiate and sign a treaty with Korea, its presence in
Korea was negligible. The German firm Myer and Company did an often-
successful import/export and transportation business in Korea and even loaned
money to the cash-strapped Korean government at times. But few other German
companies followed its lead in Korea.
Although the United States played a significant role in the opening of Korea to
the Western world with Commodore Shufeldt’s negotiation of the 1882 Korean-
American treaty, the United States, too, seemed lukewarm at best in its interest in
Korea. American diplomats and advisors sought to push the Chosŏn Kingdom
toward what they regarded as progress and modernity. American missionaries
(mostly Protestant) set up schools and hospitals and sought Korean converts. A
few American firms, the most famous being Morse, Townsend, and Company, set
up shop in Korea, facilitating, among other things, the electrification of
Kyŏngbok Palace.
Besides Japan and China, the most significant power with abiding interests and
presence in Korea was Czarist Russia. Concerned by growing Japanese power on
the peninsula and chafing under an increasingly interventionist Qing presence in
Korea, King Kojong sought Russian assistance, going so far as to pursue a secret
alliance in 1885 and again in 1886. In both cases, once the news became public,
outcry from Great Britain, the Qing Empire, and other powers forced both the
Koreans and the Russians to back down and disavow the plans. Nevertheless,
Russia remained an interested party in Korea and emerged as the major non-
Japanese power on the peninsula following the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895).
 While many Western powers often used the rhetoric of Westphalian equality
and the “family of nations” to describe the ideal system of international relations,
actual practice diverged, often dramatically, from the ideal. Some, most
prominently the British and the Americans, tacitly and even overtly acquiesced
to Qing claims to suzerainty over Korea. While the American Commodore
Shufeldt concluded that the treaty he had negotiated in 1882 clearly established
Korean sovereignty and independence, American diplomats in Korea were later
instructed that “the agitation of the subject of Corea’s complete independence of
China, by representatives of the United States, is neither desirable nor
beneficial.”6 The British, too, had negotiated a treaty with Korea whose wording
seemed to verify Korean independence. But when the British occupied Kŏmun-do
(an obvious abridgment of Korean sovereignty in its own right), British diplomats
negotiated directly with the Qing Empire (rather than the Korean government) to
resolve the issue. More generally, most foreign powers in Korea during this
period of multilateral informal imperialism proved less interested in protecting
Korean sovereignty and more interested in securing the same unequal access to
and privilege in Korea that other powers enjoyed.

1894: turning point?

When rebels initially associated with the Tonghak (Eastern Learning) Movement
gathered momentum in the early 1890s, and marched north toward the Korean
capital in 1894, King Kojong turned to the Qing Empire, asking for Qing troops to
come to Korea to help quell the rebellion. Invoking the terms of the 1885
Convention of Tianjin, Japan followed suit and also sent troops to Korea. A tense
standoff was followed by the outbreak of the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War. To
the surprise of many, Japan won a series of victories on both land and sea.
With boots on the ground in Korea, Meiji Japan decided not only to directly
challenge Qing power in Korea but also to push the Korean government to move
in ways more amenable to Japanese interests. Japanese soldiers surrounded the
palace of King Kojong and elicited a Korean declaration of independence from
China, including the announcement of cessation of tribute missions to Beijing.
Although echoes of the customary relationship and the principles that underlay
them would still be occasionally visible in the years to come, this move (and the
subsequent dramatic series of Qing defeats in the war) effectively ended the
Qing-Chosŏn suzerain-vassal relationship. For better or for worse, Chosŏn Korea
was now firmly within the world of Western-style international relations.
Japanese pressure also led to the creation of a new cabinet that called for a
series of wideranging reforms (often referred to as the kabo and ŭlmi reforms).
Many of these were aimed at modernizing Korean politics and society along
Western lines. Others were more narrowly aimed at enhancing Japanese
commercial prospects on the peninsula. Resistance to these reforms coalesced
around defiance of the so-called top-knot edict, which required Korean males to
cut off their customary top-knot and wear their hair Western (or recent Japanese)
style, and the vocal opposition of Queen Min. Japanese displeasure at the Queen’s
defiance was manifested when a group of Japanese thugs, most likely at the
behest of Japanese official Miura Gorō, assassinated the Queen on October 8,
1895, but most of the kabo and ŭlmi reforms were not implemented.
Japan also sought to use its suddenly increased power in Korea to engage in a
series of moves aimed at enhancing Japanese commercial prospects in Korea and
sharply curtailing those of Japan’s Chinese competitors. These included pushing
for unilateral exemption from various tariff duties (as well as attempting to seize
control of the Korean Customs Service), attempting to seize Chinese property
(particularly in Inch’ŏn), and calling for the abolition of extraterritorial privileges
for Chinese in Korea. In some respects, Japan appeared to be pushing for the
return of the informal but unilateral privileges it had enjoyed during the period
1876–1882. In the words of one observer, “Japan has abolished the impalpable
suzerainty of China only to replace it by a palpable and selfish domination of her
own.”7 However, the norms of multilateral imperialism were vigorously
defended, most prominently by Great Britain. British officials went to
considerable lengths to protect the interests of Chinese merchants in Korea,
usually pointing to treaty provisions to do so. In most cases, the British efforts to
“restore [the Chinese] to equal rights with those subjects of other Powers” were
successful.8
Japan might have pushed more vigorously for an expansion of its power and
prerogatives in Korea but for the strong Korean domestic opposition as well as
the international resistance to its moves. In addition to Great Britain, Russia
spearheaded the so-called Triple Intervention, which forced Japan to relinquish
its claims to parts of the Liaodong Peninsula in China in the face of Russian,
French, and German opposition.
Fearing increased Japanese encroachment on the peninsula, Chosŏn Korea
sought aid and support from Russia. This extended so far as Russian protection of
the Korean King Kojong in the aftermath of Queen Min’s assassination. The
beleaguered Korean monarch actually resided in the Russian legation in the
Korean capital from February of 1896 to February of 1897.
Once Kojong felt secure enough to leave the protection of the Russian legation,
he took the unusual step of formally declaring that Korea was no longer merely a
kingdom (wangguk) but rather an empire (cheguk). The accompanying
appropriation of imperial symbols, rituals, and practices makes it clear that at
least some of the underlying motivation for this shift was the desire to reinforce
Korea’s separation and independence from China. The construction of the
“Independence Gate” (tongnimmun) by the Independence Club had similar aims.
However, at the same time that Korea was asserting equality vis-à-vis China with
symbols and language that would have been familiar to both Koreans and
Chinese for centuries, the establishment of the Empire of the Great Han (Tae Han
Cheguk) also highlighted the reality of late-nineteenth century power politics.
Treaties and international law might speak of sovereign equality among the
“family of nations,” but more often than not, empires violated the sovereignty of
and, in an age of “high imperialism,” colonized, absorbed, annexed, and
otherwise eliminated what were previously sovereign nations. Only empires had
a chance of survival in such a world.
Whatever the formal status of Korea and its ruler, the treaty port system in
Korea continued to expand following the Sino-Japanese War. In addition to the
three ports—Pusan, Wŏnsan, and Inch’ŏn—opened earlier, six additional ports
were opened during the period 1895–1905: Chinnamp’o (1897), Mokp’o (1897),
Kunsan (1899), Masan (1899), P’yŏngyang (1899), and Sŏngjin (1899). Merchants
flocked to many of these ports seeking to buy Korean products and sell foreign
ones. And while the general tendency of observers and historians is to describe
commercial relations in an age of imperialism as ones with imperialist winners
and colonized losers, the reality on the ground in Korea was more mixed. For
example, many Koreans were able to utilize gold—which surprisingly did not
function as a medium of exchange for most of Chosŏn Korea’s history—to
purchase desired goods such as kerosene, matches, and machine-woven textiles.
All of these foreign imports could arguably be seen to have significantly
influenced if not improved the quality of life of many Koreans. Moreover, while
the conventional narrative of nineteenth-century imperialism focuses on the
ways in which the manufactured goods of the industrial revolution often
disrupted if not destroyed local handicraft industries in the colony, in the case of
Korea, evidence indicates that imports of machine-woven cotton thread actually
enhanced the efficiency and profitability of some Korean hand-woven textiles.
On the other hand, the growing integration of Korean agriculture into regional
and even global markets meant that events far from home could have a profound
effect, often a deleterious one, on local production and prices. And few would
dispute the fact that all of the imperialists in Korea, but perhaps particularly the
Japanese, engaged in their extractive enterprises not with Korean needs or
interests in mind.
The Russo-Japanese standoff in Korea opened up the peninsula for many
powers and companies seeking lucrative concessions. American firms won
contracts to build streetcars and the first electrical grid in the Korean capital.
Another firm, the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company, secured the rights to a
very productive and profitable gold mine in Unsan. Japanese firms constructed an
ever-expanding railroad network and, one by one, sought to buy out or otherwise
marginalize and eliminate competing concessions on the peninsula.

1905: the beginning of the end

In its quest for sole possession of concessions in Korea, Japan’s most formidable
opponent was Russia. A series of consortia sought and sometimes won timber
concessions for logging along the Yalu River, but most faltered due to financial
difficulties. However, in 1903 the Yalu River Timber Company, backed by the
Czarist government, began to move forcefully not only to extract lumber from
Korea but also to solidify Russian power in the northern part of the Korean
peninsula. Russian soldiers and Chinese bandits were brought into Korea under
the guise of being lumberjacks. Russia established a virtually independent enclave
in the port city of Yongamp’o. Japan’s fear of Russia’s expansionistic intentions
and capabilities (which would be all the more easily supported by the impeding
completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad) led Japan to initiate the Russo-
Japanese War in 1904. Japan’s victories, particularly on sea, led to the Treaty of
Portsmouth and a significant weakening of Russian power in the region. As a
result, few were able or willing to protest Japan’s announcement that Korea
would be a Japanese protectorate, with Japanese officials making all of the key
foreign policy and diplomatic decisions on behalf of Korea.
This announcement was resented and resisted by many Koreans. Some of them
took to the hills and fought against the growing Japanese presence as “righteous
armies” (ŭibyŏng). This type of popular resistance to foreign, particularly
Japanese, presence in Korea had a long lineage. Violent anti-Japanese outbursts
accompanied both the 1882 soldiers’ mutiny and an 1884 coup attempt led by pro-
Japanese Korean officials. In addition, the movement that coalesced into the
Tonghak Rebellion in the early 1890s had among its diverse ideological and
practical motivations the desire to “expel the arrogant enemies from abroad.”9
Tonghak rebels agreed to disband if both the Qing and Japanese armies would
leave Korean soil. When the Sino-Japanese War and the increased presence and
activities of Japanese troops in Korea ensued instead, many Tonghak rebels took
up their arms again to fight against the Japanese and were hunted down and
killed. After 1905, many more righteous armies formed. But they, too, were
hunted down and killed by the thousands by the better-equipped and -supplied
Japanese army.
King Kojong (by then the Kwangmu Emperor of the Empire of the Great Han)
made a last ditch effort to appeal for international support by dispatching a
delegation to the 1907 Hague Conference. Due to Japanese pressure, the
delegation was not received or recognized. In the words of one scholar, “in the
summer of 1907, the world declared Korea illegal.”10 In retaliation for Kojong’s
efforts, the Japanese forced him to abdicate in favor of his son, Sunjong (or the
Yunghŭi Emperor). But few believed that Sunjong wielded any real power.
The Japanese were able to use their enhanced power in Korea to slowly but
inexorably crowd out competitors. Growing Japanese control of finance and
banking, of transportation infrastructure, of the Customs Service, and of various
levers of political power left little room for Chinese, American, or other
competitors. The forms of the treaty port system—ports, concessions,
extraterritoriality, etc.—remained in place until 1910 (or even beyond), but Korea
increasingly became a place of Japanese dominance if not monopoly.
The Japanese commercial ascent in Korea was also enhanced by a growing
industrial base in Japan which, utilizing all the advantages of late
industrialization, was increasingly able to directly challenge Western—especially
British—manufactured goods on their own terms, at least in the East Asian
region. Thus, the decline of Chinese commercial fortunes in Korea was also a
decline, at one remove, of British fortunes as well.
The Japanese statesman Itō Hirobumi was sent to Korea as the first Resident-
General in 1905. Itō was not afraid to be firm and demanding in his
administration of Korea. He expressed little to no opposition to the hunting down
and killing of righteous army guerrillas. He also was instrumental in forcing
Kojong to abdicate in 1907 as well as in the negotiation of the 1907 Japan-Korea
Treaty, which gave Japan even more power to interfere in Korean domestic
affairs. On the other hand, he steadfastly resisted the idea of full and formal
annexation of Korea, preferring the continuation of the protectorate. However,
Itō’s 1909 assassination in Harbin, China, at the hands of the Korean An Chung-
gŭn gave momentum to those in Japan calling for annexation. On August 22,
1910, Korea disappeared as a sovereign nation and was formally annexed by
Japan. Annexation also signaled the beginning of the end of the treaty port
system in Korea (which would be dismantled in the years to come) and the
effective end of competing empires in Korea (at least until the Pacific War in the
1940s).
At the end of the day, the story of Japanese dominance and ultimate
annexation of Korea was a story that had been repeated in many places across
the world. In the age of high imperialism, nearly all of Africa (Liberia and
Ethiopia excepted) and much of South and Southeast Asia were formally
colonized by one power or another. Less formal and interventionist forms of
imperialism like the treaty port system gave way to formal annexation and
absorption. For many Koreans, 1910 would usher in an era of turmoil and
suffering that in many ways would not end for at least 35 years.
 While the pre-1910 period of Korea’s history has receded further and further
into the mists of the past, there remain areas that warrant additional scholarly
attention. Promising areas of ongoing and potential future research regarding
competing imperialisms in Korea and their impact on the peninsula include a
strong strand of revisionist explorations of areas of unexpected reform, resiliency,
and innovation in late-Chosŏn Korea. These include the aforementioned arguably
positive impacts that foreign trade had on Korea and Koreans as well as the
surprisingly diverse array of reform efforts of the Kwangmu Emperor (King
Kojong’s formal title after 1897).11 In addition, explorations of this period that
better situate the various imperialist activities in Korea within regional and even
global trends and patterns will surely enhance our understanding of this critically
formative period of Korean history. As some see early twenty-first-century
patterns and developments that closely resemble the pre-1914 world of national
(if not imperial) competition and conflict, understanding the Korean peninsula in
an age of competing imperialisms may become more relevant than ever.

Notes
1 Examples of scholarship that grapples with these questions include Yi Tôk-ju, Chosônûn wae Ilbon ûi
sikminji ga doeônûnga?; Yur-bok Lee, West Goes East; Young-ick Lew, “Yuan Shih-k’ai’s Residency …”;
and Yung-hwan Jo, ed., Korea’s Response to the West.

2 Notable explorations of the contingencies and nuances of Japanese imperialism in Korea include Hilary
Conroy, The Japanese Seizure of Korea, 1868–1910 and Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword, The
Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910.

3 See, for example, Kojong sillok, June 4, 1871 (Kojong 8.4.17).

4 George F. Seward to William H. Seward, October 14, 1868. In Park, ed., Anglo-American Diplomatic
Materials Relating to Korea, 835.

5 J.C. Hall to Parkes, December 11, 1882. In Ian Nish, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs, Part I.
Series E, Asia 18601914, 118.

6 Swartout, Robert R., Mandarins, Gunboats, and Power Politics: Owen Nickerson Denny and the
International Rivalries in Korea, 93.
 7 Hillier to O’Conor, December 4, 1894. In Park, ed., Anglo-American and Chinese Diplomatic Materials
Relating to Korea, 1887–1897, 484.

8 Hillier to O’Conor, February 11, 1895. In Park, ed., Anglo-American and Chinese Diplomatic Materials
Relating to Korea, 1887–1897, 515.

9 “A Call to Arms Issued at Paeksan” in Peter H. Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization. Volume 2:
From the Seventeenth Century to the Modern Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, 364.
Among the diverse and sometimes contradictory motivations of the Tonghak rebels was a clear anti-
foreign (particularly anti-Japanese) animus. However, Tonghak manifestos also mentioned specific
aspects of foreign imperialist practice, including telegraph lines, treaty port rice merchants, and taxes on
fish and salt collected in port cities. See “Thirty Demands of the Tonghak Peasant Army” in ibid., 367–
368.

10 Dudden, Japan’s Colonization of Korea, 7.

11 See, for example, Tae-jin Yi, Kojong sidae ŭi chaejomyŏng.

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4
The nation, the people, and the
possibilities of the post-national
Historiographies of late nineteenth-century
Korean reform movements

Joshua Van Lieu

Now in the second decade of the twenty-first century, South Korea is a global
presence. South Korean corporations operate around the world as their products
and technologies are produced and consumed across the continents while people
of multiple languages and nationalities have immersed themselves in the pop-
culture artefacts of the “Korean Wave.” Considering the widespread grinding
poverty of the first decades after the Korean War, it is not hard to conceive of the
current place of Korea in the world as an emergence, as a rise of an almost
Aristotelian spontaneity. Indeed, this trope is common in academic and popular
writings alike, but it is also possible to consider the place of South Korea in the
world not as a rise but as a return. For the more than 500 years prior to the
Japanese annexation in 1910, Chosŏn state, society, and culture were deep within
the mainstreams of the philosophies, statecraft, literatures, and arts of the East
Asian world. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, decades of internal
socio-political instability coupled with an increasing chafing against the
expansion of the global capitalist economy and the associated machinations of
competing imperia provoked Chosŏn intellectuals and officials to engage in
increasingly urgent interrogations of received bodies of political and intellectual
practice. These critical engagements led to a number of social and political reform
movements seeking a rehabilitation of state and society that would shepherd a
strong, prosperous, and independent Chosŏn in the twentieth century. The late
nineteenth century thus marked the beginning of more than 100 years of both
material and epistemic violence through which the Koreas north and south have
come to dramatically reposition themselves in the modern world. This initial
period of critique and exploration has provided the frame and foundations for
Korean encounters with and shaping of the global modernities in which we now
live.

Crises of the nineteenth century

The reform movements of the late nineteenth century emerged in a society that
had already undergone considerable political and economic stresses in the
preceding decades, stresses that touched the whole of the society from the
yangban elite to the common peasantry. Growing numbers of yangban,
particularly those in rural areas outside the capital, found themselves alienated
from political and economic privilege. This is in part attributable to the weakness
of Chosŏn monarchy after 1800. Chosŏn kings of the nineteenth century all came
to the throne in compromised circumstances. King Sunjo ascended the throne in
1800 at the age of eleven and within a year the royal in-laws, the Andong Kim
clan, came to dominate the court. Upon Sunjo’s death in 1834, King Hŏnjong
ascended the throne at the age of eight and his court too was controlled by the
consort clan, the P’ungyang Cho. Hŏnjong died in 1849 without issue and was
succeeded by a distant member of the royal family living in poverty and alleged
illiteracy on Kanghwa Island. The Andong Kim managed to install one of their
daughters as the royal consort Queen Ch’ŏrin and then again reign supreme in
the Chosŏn court. When Ch’ŏlchong died in 1863 without issue, Queen Dowager
Sinjŏng and Yi Ha-ŭng brought Yi’s twelve-year-old son to the throne as King
Kojong in 1864. Kojong married a daughter of the Yŏhŭng Min clan, which came
to dominate the Chosŏn government into the 1890s and remained central to
Chosŏn politics until the end of the dynasty in 1910. This dominance of the
consort clans (sedo chŏngch’i) had implications far beyond the machinations of
court intrigue in the high politics of the capital. They secured their hegemony
through the control of government appointments, limiting access to real political
power to the scions of their houses and affiliated families. The result was a
growing body of yangban who had passed the highest of the civil service exams
but were excluded from positions in the government.
The frustration of this marginalized elite was particularly acute in P’yŏngan
Province, where successful civil service examinees suffered not only from the
grim prospects for official appointment under the restrictions of consort clan rule
but also from the regional biases of the capital bureaucracy. In the winter of 1812,
Hong Kyŏngnae and his associates, members of this thwarted regional elite, took
it upon themselves to bring the end of the dynasty. They attacked the Kasan
magistracy, killed its staff, and took over the town. Within two weeks the
rebellion had grown to seize a significant portion of the northwest of P’yŏngan
Province north of the Ch’ungch’ŏng River with little resistance as many of their
fellow elites and local officials were sympathetic to his cause. Several defeats at
the hands of government forces in the early spring forced Hong and his rebels
into a defensive posture. By the end of that summer, government forces laid siege
to the rebels at Chŏngju and eventually broke through the defences and crushed
the rebellion after four months. The Chosŏn state succeeded in subduing Hong
and his forces, but it entered into its final century facing a fundamental challenge
to its authority and legitimacy that it had not seen for generations (Kim, Sun Joo
2007a).
While the exclusive political practices of the central government limited the
prospects for political participation and advancement for an increasingly
marginalized yangban elite, the peasants who comprised the overwhelming
majority of the Chosŏn population were facing far greater existential threats in
the face of official usury under the auspices of state granaries. The state granary
system had originally been tasked with maintaining grain stores for the purposes
of providing famine relief, ensuring adequate military provisions, maintaining
price stability in grain markets by purchasing surpluses or releasing reserves, and
providing seed and working capital in the form of grain loans to enable peasants
to survive the spring and summer seasons when food stores were low and
harvests were yet to be brought in. Ideally these were to be interest-free loans,
but early in the dynasty the state began to charge interest and wastage fees. Over
the duration of the Chosŏn state, the system that was originally envisioned as a
service to impoverished peasants came to constitute a revenue stream for both
central and local governments; the grain loan system became a permanent tax. By
the nineteenth century it was common practice for magistrates to charge interest
and miscellaneous fees not only to supplement official budgets but also to enrich
themselves. By mid-century some peasants even found themselves coerced into
taking out loans at usurious rates as official corruption forced many to navigate a
precarious course between subsistence, destitution, and outright starvation (Yang
Chin-sŏk 2003a).
In the spring of 1862, peasants in Kyŏngsang Province could take no more and
rose in rebellion in Chinju. The uprising spread rapidly through Chŏlla and
Ch’ungch’ŏng Provinces to eventually include more than seventy different
locations. The geographic scope of the rebellions, however, did not translate into
a broad unified assault on the Chosŏn state itself. While the grain loan system
was one of the main reasons for the uprisings, it was not the only one (Kim, Sun
Joo 2007b). Grievances varied with local circumstances, and the targets of peasant
ire were often distinctly proximate. The rebellions did prompt the state to
institute limited reforms, but the underlying structural causes of unrest remained
largely unaddressed (Han’guk Yŏksa Yŏn’guhoe, ed., 1993; Yang 2003b; Kim
2007b).
In addition to the domestic problems the Chosŏn state faced, the decade from
1866 to 1876 saw a series of international incidents that radically and irrevocably
altered the place of Chosŏn in the world. During the summer of 1866, the General
Sherman, an American-owned and piloted merchant ship with a crew of Malays
and Chinese, sailed up the Taedong River to P’yŏngyang seeking trade. The
General Sherman refused to comply with Chosŏn instructions to await word
from Seoul and there were violent exchanges. After the death of several Koreans,
the governor of P’yŏngan Province ordered the ship destroyed; there were no
survivors. In the fall of the same year, the French launched a punitive expedition
to avenge the Chosŏn execution of a French priest. Seven ships and 600 men
under the command of Admiral Roze raided shore installations, but Chosŏn
forces repelled them. Two years later, the German adventurer launched a peculiar
expedition to disinter the Chosŏn regent’s father’s bones and hold them hostage
in order to exact a trade agreement with the Chosŏn court. Chosŏn forces quickly
dispatched Oppert and his men. In 1871, Frederick Low, United States minister to
China, and Admiral John Rodgers lead an expedition of five US naval vessels and
1,200 men to investigate the fate of the General Sherman. Initial inquiries with
Chosŏn officials produced no results. The Americans sailed closer to the mouth of
the Han River, some thirty miles from Seoul, where Chosŏn shore batteries fired
upon them. Low and Rodgers later launched a punitive attack on shore
installations on Kanghwa Island. US casualties were insignificant, but hundreds
of Koreans were killed in the ensuing combat before the Americans withdrew.
The Chosŏn government under the leadership of the Taewŏn’gun, father and
de facto regent of King Kojong, mistakenly understood themselves to have
successfully fended off the Americans, the French, and even the Germans without
taking into consideration that none of these predations was undertaken with the
intent or even authority to execute further military action. The Chosŏn
government felt these skirmishes demonstrated its ability to adequately manage
its own defence against hostile enemies and thus made little attempt to
commence the extensive technological and institutional reforms then underway
in Meiji Japan (Palais 1975). Chosŏn ignored developments in Japan at its own
risk, however. In 1875, the Japanese sent the ship Unyō to survey waters near the
mouth of the Han River. The voyage provoked fire from Chosŏn shore batteries,
providing the Japanese with the justification for returning the following year to
demand and ultimately conclude an unequal treaty with the Chosŏn government
closely reminiscent of the United States treaties imposed upon Japan in the 1850s.
Although this agreement, now known as the Kanghwa Treaty, was not fully
implemented until the 1880s, it was the first of a series of treaties the Chosŏn
state would conclude through the 1880s and 1890s with other states and marked
the beginning of a fundamental repositioning of the Chosŏn state within the
global geopolitics of the nineteenth century.
By the close of the 1870s, Chosŏn had passed through decades of political,
economic, social, and finally geopolitical transformations that signalled to some
that the existing socio-political order was incapable of responding to rapidly
changing domestic and international environments. The Qing Empire had
embarked upon a path of so-called self-strengthening in the early 1860s, and the
Japanese followed in the late 1860s with even more radical reforms under the
new Meiji order. By 1880, Chosŏn was already fifteen to twenty years behind its
neighbours, but with a younger king open to reform and a newer generation of
officials following the developments in Japan and the Qing Empire, it was indeed
plausible that Chosŏn too might mobilize to reform its social and political
institutions to meet the challenges and fully engage in the global modernities of
the late nineteenth century.

Moderates and radicals: enlightenment thought in the

1880s
By the early 1880s, there was a small group of reformist officials in the Chosŏn
court who sought social and institutional change to meet the merging domestic
and international challenges of the nineteenth century. While most of them had
come into contact with earlier forms of reformist thought during the 1870s
through figures such as Pak Kyu-su, who himself came from reformist
intellectual lineages dating back to the eighteenth century, the so-called
enlightenment party (kaehwap’a) was generally divided between two factions:
the moderates (on’gŏn kaehwap’a) and the radicals (kŭpchin kaehwap’a). The
moderates looked to the Qing model of technological transformation with limited
institutional and cultural change, while the radicals took inspiration from the
more revolutionary approach of the Meiji reforms still underway in Japan.
In 1880, Chosŏn envoy Kim Hong-jip travelled to Japan where he met with the
Qing diplomat Huang Zunxian. Huang presented him with an outline policy for
the reform of Chosŏn diplomatic and trade relations entitled Chaoxian celue or
“A Strategy for Korea.” While Huang drafted the text, it largely represented the
consensus of Li Hongzhang, Qing Commissioner for Northern Ports and chief
creator of Qing policy toward Chosŏn, and his staff. The text famously identified
Russia as the chief threat to the security of Qing, Chosŏn, and Japan and
recommended that King Kojong enter into close relations with Qing, Japan, and
the United States in order to build a matrix of overlapping treaty obligations that
would guarantee Chosŏn territorial integrity and sovereignty in the face of
possible Russian aggression. The document was also a call for Chosŏn to adopt
the self-strengthening paradigm of the Qing Empire by adopting western
military, transportation, and communications technologies. King Kojong and his
inner circle accepted the proposals with enthusiasm and after dispatching
considerable domestic opposition among conservative rural scholars in particular,
he set about implementing the proposals (Van Lieu 2010). To this end, the Chosŏn
government created a new office, the T’ongni Kimu Amun, based on the Qing
Zongli Yamen, as something of a foreign office responsible for international
relations, commercial affairs, foreign language education, military affairs, and
armaments production. Kojong also sent a mission to negotiate new protocols for
Chosŏn-Qing relations and a group of Chosŏn artisans under the leadership of
Kim Yun-sik to Tianjin to train in the most current methods and armament and
ship production in Qing armouries and students to study foreign languages.
The Chosŏn government also looked to Japan as a model of reform, sending
observers to Japan in 1881–1882 and hiring a Japanese drill instructor to train a
new unit of the Chosŏn army in modern tactics and weaponry. The resources and
pay this so-called Special Skills Unit (pyŏlkigun) received became the cause of no
small amount of resentment among the existing capital units, who by 1882 had
not been paid in months. When the quartermaster finally did distribute their pay
in rice during the summer of 1882, the soldiers found that the rice was mixed
with sand and stones to increase the weight while reducing the actual amount of
rice distributed. They exploded in revolt, killing the Japanese drill instructor and
the Japanese legation and burning down the houses of Chosŏn officials associated
with the Special Skills Unit and other reforms. The Taewŏn’gun took advantage
of the ensuing mayhem to reinstate himself as regent and systematically undo the
military and institutional reforms of the previous two years (Cho Sŏng-yun 2003).
Concerned with the possibility of Japanese military intervention in Chosŏn,
the Qing court rapidly deployed a force of some 4,500 to Seoul. Upon their
arrival, they abducted the Taewŏn’gun and detained him in Tianjin, dispatched
the Chosŏn troops who had revolted, and reinstated Kojong to the throne. This
was the beginning of a deep and direct Qing involvement in Chosŏn affairs that
was to last until the Japanese victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. For
the next two years, the Qing military presence also served to enforce Qing
interests in further reforms of the Chosŏn state. During this period, Qing
representatives oversaw the creation of the Chosŏn customs service and telegraph
lines while Qing diplomats concluded treaties securing Qing political and
commercial interests.
Moderate officials like Kim Yun-sik and Ŏ Yun-jung, among others, saw no
need to fundamentally change Chosŏn society or institutions; all that was truly
needed to meet the challenges of the age was to embrace the technologies of the
west and simply insert them into the existing socio-political milieu (Chang In-
sŏng 2002; No Tae-hwan 2005; Kim Sŏng-bae 2009). In 1968, the historian Han U-
gŭn famously characterized this stance with the phrase he coined, “eastern ways,
western means” (tongdo sŏgi) (Han U-gŭn 1968; No Tae-hwan 2005). This interest
in maintaining the socio-cultural as well as institutional status quo often led
these men to maintain a pro-Qing stance. Much like the Northern Learning
(pukhak) scholars of the turn of the end of the eighteenth century, the moderates
at the end of the nineteenth century saw the Qing Empire as the locus of practical
reform and placed trust in the integrity of the 250-year peaceful relationship
between the Qing and Chosŏn states.
The typically younger, radical reform-minded officials, however, had no
interest in or patience for piecemeal reform that did not engage in socio-political
transformation as well as technological change. Deeply suspicious of the
moderates’ dependence on both the Qing model and the Qing state, this
alternative group looked not to the north but to the east for their inspiration. In
1882–1883, several young Chosŏn officials, Kim Ok-kyun chief among them,
studied in Japan, then deep in the throes of the Meiji reforms, and came to
develop close relationships with educator and reformer Fukuzawa Yukichi. These
students returned to Chosŏn wholly unable to accept the existing order into
which the moderates sought to import their new technologies; they wanted
nothing less than revolution.
With the encouragement and the material aid of the Japanese legation in Seoul,
Kim Ok-kyun and his associates executed a coup d’état in December of 1884
(Cook 1972; Ch’ŏnga P’yŏnjippu 1983; Sin Yong-ha 2000, 2003a, 2003b; Yun
Pyŏng-hŭi 2003a, 2003b). The coup was initially a success as Kim and his party
seized control of the government and announced a fourteen-point plan to reform
Chosŏn state and society. The planned reforms included ending the tributary
relationship with the Qing Empire, which they deemed naught but “empty ritual”
(hŏrye), abolishing all formal status distinctions and adopting the principle of
equal rights for all, abolishing the grain loan system, rooting out corruption and
instituting aid for the indigent, and centralizing all fiscal affairs under the
purview of the ministry of revenue (hojo). These and other institutional reforms
were to be the beginning of transformation of Chosŏn modelled after the Meiji
reforms then still underway in Japan. As radical and potentially transformative as
these reforms would have been, the new government lasted only three days
before it collapsed under the military might of the combined Qing and Chosŏn
military units under the command of Yuan Shikai, a young Qing officer tasked
with the training and command of new units of the Chosŏn army. Aside from a
handful of armed guards from the Japanese legation, Kim and his party had no
real arms to speak of and soon fled. Kim and other made it to exile in Japan while
many more were killed on the spot or later executed for treason.
The failure of the Coup of 1884 effectively put an end to meaningful reform in
Chosŏn for the next ten years (Lew 1984). The Qing Empire installed Yuan Shikai
as a de facto imperial resident in Seoul the following year and secured
unparalleled influence in Chosŏn, with little enthusiasm for the kinds of self-
strengthening reforms it had once encouraged King Kojong to pursue only two
years previously (Larsen 2008; Van Lieu 2009, 2010). The Japanese remained
largely passive, unable to challenge Qing supremacy in Chosŏn. Those Chosŏn
reformers who remained both alive and within the country maintained a low
profile, while those who fled were trapped in a helpless exile in Japan for the
better part of a decade. Kim Ok-kyun himself fled to Japan, where he largely
refrained from political activity. Chosŏn agents eventually tracked him down
while he travelled in Shanghai and assassinated him. They brought his corpse
back to Chosŏn, where the government had it cut into pieces and put on public
display in different locations throughout the country as a warning to others who
might consider another revolution.

The Tonghak Rebellion and the Kabo Reforms, 1894–

1895

The remainder of the 1880s remained largely without serious unrest, but by the
early 1890s there were increasing tensions in the southwest of the country as
merchants from Qing and Japan scoured the countryside for rice and bean
harvests, bringing distortions to local markets and causing tensions in rural areas
where foreigners were generally not welcome. The pressures of Chosŏn’s
integration into the global capitalist system coupled with local officials leveeing
taxes and corvée for their own enrichment made for a politically fragile situation
that in 1894 erupted into violence and a rebellion of such scale that for a time it
threatened the viability of the Chosŏn state. The moving force behind this
rebellion were members of the Tonghak faith, a syncretic religion incorporating
elements of Confucianism, Daoism, and Catholicism. The founder of the faith,
Ch’oe Che-u, had been executed by the state in 1864, and by the early 1890s the
faithful petitioned the government for his exoneration without significant result.
The Tonghak finally took up arms in the summer of 1894, but by that time the
aggrieved were no longer limited to Tonghak believers but also tens of thousands
of peasants suffering under official abuse and the burdens of socio-economic
inequality. The uprising met with considerable early success and established
what amounted to a proto-state that administered large swaths of the southwest
of the country and enacted reforms that deposed corrupt officials, abolished
status distinctions, rectified systems of taxation, and curtailed foreign commercial
activity in an effort to correct local and regional market distortions (Weems 1964;
Han’guk Yŏksa Yŏn’guhoe, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997; Kallander 2013; Moon 2013b;
Young 2014).
The Chosŏn government initially found itself unable to stop the Tonghak
advance toward Seoul and called upon the Qing Empire to intervene military.
The Qing military escalation prompted the Japanese to send an expeditionary
force as well. By this time the Chosŏn government has managed to stop the
Tonghak advance through negotiation, but the close proximity of Qing and
Japanese forces soon led to combat and the opening of the Sino-Japanese War of
1894–1895 (Cho Chae-gon 2003; Pak Yŏng-jae 2003). The Japanese quickly took
Seoul and surrounded the palace. Under these circumstances King Kojong readily
agreed to a Japanese proposal to form a “deliberative council” (kun’guk kimuch’ŏ)
under the leadership of Kim Hong-jip. In the nearly six months that it was active,
from July through December of 1894, the council enacted more than 200 laws,
collectively known as the Kabo Reforms, named for the kabo year of the lunar
calendar (1894–1895) in which they began. The reforms, based in no small part on
the Meiji reforms enacted in Japan in late 1860s and through the 1870s, restricted
the Chosŏn government by establishing the post of prime minister, creating a
cabinet, and completely reorganizing the old ministries. The new government
stripped away much of the authority of the throne and placed it in the new office
of the prime minister and his cabinet, concentrated all fiscal authority in the
newly created ministry of finance, and abolished the civil service examination
system. The reforms also brought an end to slavery, yangban legal privilege,
stategranted merchant monopolies, torture, and guilt by association while
embracing the principle of the rule of law, creating a hierarchical system of
courts and a new police system, adopting the Gregorian calendar, and
implementing a Western-style education system with an emphasis on training in
the technology and the sciences (Son In-su 1980; Yu Yŏng-ik 1990; Yi Hae-myŏng
1991; Yu Yŏng-ik 1998, 2003).
The scope of the political and social change embodied in these reforms was
enormous and thus, unsurprisingly, they did not meet with the unanimous
support of the court. The king had been side-lined in the process and there were
more than a few officials, and even the politically powerful Queen Min herself,
who approved neither of the pace and content of the reforms nor of the central
role played by the officials of the Japanese legation. By 1895 the Japanese had
won a decisive victory against the Qing Empire and appeared unassailable, but
before they were able to consolidate their position, Russia, Germany, and France,
in what has come to be known as the Triple Intervention, pressured Japan into
forfeiting its lease on the Liaodong Peninsula that it had recently won in the
peace negotiations with the Qing Empire (Kang Ch’ang-il 2003). Sensing
weakness, anti-Japanese and pro-Russian elements in the Chosŏn court deposed
key pro-Japanese officials and threatened continued Japanese influence. In
October of 1895, believing her to be the locus of the anti-Japanese faction,
Japanese minister Miura Gorō sent assassins armed with swords into the queen’s
quarters where they murdered her and her ladies-in-waiting and then burned her
body on the courtyard. The assassination served only to ignite a nationwide
outrage and stir anti-Japanese sentiment into a storm of unprecedented apoplexy.
By February of 1896, the king had fled his own palace to take refuge in the
Russian legation, where he, his inner circle, and a coterie of pro-Russian officials
conducted the affairs of the Chosŏn state without consultation with the Japanese
or their now dwindled supporters at court (Yi Min-wŏn 2003a). The new
government and most of the hundreds of reforms it decreed were effectively
finished.

The Independence Club

Over the three-year period from 1894 to 1896, various factions of the Chosŏn
court had depended on direct Qing military intervention, direct Japanese military
intervention, and finally on the Triple Intervention and the provision of the
haven of the Russian legation. Sŏ Chae-p’il, Yun Ch’i-ho, and others did not see
any long-term advantage in the Chosŏn government constantly allying itself with
more powerful foreign states and instead sought to define a path of true independ
ence in which a viable Chosŏn state would have sufficient political, economic,
military, and diplomatic resources to stand on its own in the international
community. To this end, they established the Independence Club in 1896. The
club first devoted its energies to the construction of the Independence Gate
(tongnimmun) at the site of the old Gate of Welcoming Imperial Grace
(yŏngŭnmun) where Chosŏn officials once welcomed Ming and Qing imperial
envoys, the acquisition of the former official guest house for Qing envoys and
renaming it “Independence Hall,” and the creating of an Independence Park
(Chandra 1988). The club also organized a variety of educational activities,
including lectures and debates on the issues of the day pertaining to the question
of Chosŏn independence. Among the more lasting of the club’s projects was the
publication of a newspaper in both Korean (Tongnip sinmun) and English (The
Independent). The Tongnip sinmun is remarkable not only for its extensive
exploration of liberal political ideals but also for its having been published
entirely in the Korean vernacular script, now known as Han’gŭl. The club saw
independence not only as a political state of being also a cultural condition.
Rather than employ the Classical Chinese more common in formal publications
of the day, the club employed the vernacular script as a bold statement of Chosŏn
political and cultural self-reliance (Yu Yŏng-nyŏl 2003).
 When the club formed in 1896, the king was still residing in the Russian
legation. There is little about that arrangement that could be construed as
independent, so the club vociferously called for the king to return to the palace
and, moreover, declare the Kingdom of Chosŏn an empire and declare himself an
emperor rather than a king. This would place Chosŏn on the same level as the
Japanese, Qing, and Russian empires on its borders and move the Chosŏn state
that much further to safeguarding its independence in a maelstrom of global
imperial rivalries. When the king left the Russian legation and return to his
palace, he did indeed declare himself an emperor with his own reign era,
“kwangmu,” and he renamed the state “the Great Han Empire” (Yi Min-wŏn
2003b). It was not hard for the newly enthroned Kwangmu Emperor to find the
Independence Club both acceptable and useful in this period as their work of
securing Korean independence and calling for the creation of an imperial
institution was seamlessly flush with his own intent to become an absolute
monarch in both name in reality. As he moved to relocate executive and fiscal
authority in the throne, however, the Kwangmu Emperor was to clash with the
more liberal strands of the Independence Club of which he was not yet
particularly aware (Kim To-hyŏng 1994; Sŏ Yŏng-hŭi 2003; Yi Yun-sang 2003;
Hwang, 2006; Kim Do-hyung 2006; Chang Yŏng-suk 2010).
By the spring of 1898, the Independence Club was publishing editorials and
holding public discussions on representative government, popular political
participation, and the creation of a deliberative assembly to participate in the
creation and implementation of imperial policy. The club proposed the
transformation of the Privy Council (ch’ungch’uwŏn) from a body largely
without substantive role in deliberation or decision making into something of a
national assembly with a central role in policy (Chandra 1988; Wang Hyŏn-jong
2003). Increasingly suspicious of the club’s intentions, the emperor was reluctant
to accept the idea. As the throne and its conservative allies either ignored or
obstructed the move to create the assembly, the Independence Club organized
massive street demonstrations in Seoul calling not only for the creation of the
assembly but also for the full implementation of the body of reforms decreed
during the Kabo Reforms three years previously. After some waffling in
negotiations with the club, the emperor finally ordered the demonstrations
forcibly broken up and the leadership of the Independence Club arrested by the
end of 1898. The club soon collapsed, and much of its membership dropped out of
political activism. By 1899, the emperor stripped the Privy Council of all
semblance of deliberative function, utterly extinguishing the vision of a national
assembly.

The Patriotic Enlightenment Movement

The demise of the Independence Club did not signal the end of its concerns and
causes. Indeed, the opening years of the twentieth century saw a growing
concern across the country for the very issue that first animated the club: the
defence of Korean sovereignty in an increasingly hostile world. The imperial
government sold mining, communications, and transportation concessions to
foreign interests and throughout the late 1890s and early 1900s as it grew ever
more dependent upon Russian guidance and sponsorship. With the Russian defeat
in the Russo-50 Japanese War of 1904–1905, however, the Korean government
was left bereft of protection, and by the end of 1905, Japan had coerced the
Korean imperial government into a protectorate treaty that stripped it of the right
to conduct its own foreign affairs (Ku Tae-yŏl 2003). With this fundamental
assault on the sovereignty of the Korean state, the hypothetical fall to foreign
imperial powers was rapidly becoming a reality. It was during these final ten
years of the Han Empire, from approximately 1900 to 1910, that a nationwide
discourse on the nature and defence of Korean identity and sovereignty arose
that has come to be known collectively as the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement
(aeguk kyemong undong).
The Patriotic Enlightenment Movement was coeval in Korea with the
flowering of a vibrant public sphere facilitated by multiple newspapers,
magazines, and newsletters. Newspapers like the Hwangsŏng sinmun, Cheguk
sinmun, Maeil sinmun, Taehan maeil sinmun, and Kyŏnghyang sinmun, among
others, ran essays and editorials on an enormous variety of topics (Kim Min-
hwan 1988, 1996; Ch’oe Chun 1997; Han Wŏn-yŏng 2002; Robinson 1988; Schmid
2002; Kim Dong-no 2006). This newly emerging patriotic enlightenment discourse
largely followed two courses: explorations of the western political, cultural, and
institutional practices worthy of study and adoption in the struggle to fend off
the existential threat to the Korean state and re-examinations of Korean history
as part of a project to reimagine a Korean national identity that could serve as the
foundation of a strong and thriving independent nation-state (Robinson 1988;
Cho Hang-nae 1993; Ch’oe Ki-yŏng 1997, 2003; Chŏng Yong-hwa 2004). Many of
these discussions delved into a Spencerian Darwinism in which superior peoples
and states rose to dominate the world while inferior peoples, saddled with
backwardness and ignorance, were doomed to colonization and cultural
extinction (Pak Sŏng-jin 2003; Tikhonov 2010). There was an emerging consensus
that if Koreans did not refashion themselves into an educated modern people
fully cognizant of their national identity and civic duties, Korea would soon
vanish, absorbed into the empires of peoples who were fully conscious and
committed to the love, defence, and advancement of their own nations.
Historians such as Sin Ch’ae-ho (1908) and Pak Ŭn-sik (1915) attributed the
purported absence of a Korean national consciousness to centuries of
historiographic practice that emphasized participation in a universal Confucian
civilization that revolved around China while denigrating Korean language,
culture, and history collectively as a primitive vernacular that functioned to
obstruct and cloud true human civilization. For Sin in particular, Confucianism
was at the very root of Korean weakness. It was Confucianism that encouraged a
fetishization of the ancient Chinese past, the erasure of the Korean nation from
the historical consciousness of his compatriots, and the weakening of the nation
through an emphasis on scholarship and the arts at the expense of the martial
skills and values that he deemed so desperately necessary to maintain the Korean
state and people before the incoming tides of foreign aggression.
While the kinds of socio-cultural transformations for which the Patriotic
Enlightenment Movement campaigned may well have been central to the
construction of a robust nation-state capable of mobilizing in defence of its
sovereignty, the newspapers, organizations, and schools created to foster these
changes were too little too late. Indeed, it is arguable that by the conclusion of
the protectorate treaty in 1905, the struggle was already lost. Over the five years
following the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese Residency-General
systematically dismantled the Korean state until the summer of 1910 when Japan
annexed the Great Han Empire outright (Yun Pyŏng-sŏk 2003). Despite the
annexation, however, these movements continued to shape much of the future
discourses of the nation, development, and independence throughout the colonial
period and beyond (Robinson 1988; Schmid 2002; Miyoshi-Jaeger 2003; Duncan
2006). Indeed Korean incorporation into the Japanese Empire may seem to render
thirty years of reform movements an interesting yet ultimately futile exercise in
failure, but to understand these intellectual and political labours in such terms is
to turn away from the very real engagement with the modern these movements
represented. This realignment of perspective is central to the development of the
historiographies of late nineteenth-century reform during the last fifty years.

Post-war historiographies of reform

Being the twilight of the Korean dynastic state, the time of some of the earliest
Korean encounters with global modernities, and the prelude to the experience of
colonization, the late nineteenth century has been the subject of extensive
scholarly inquiry. While it is beyond the scope of the present work to cover the
entirety of the literatures on the reforms of this period, the remainder of this
chapter will discuss primarily the developments in South Korean historiography
along with a sampling of some of the more recent works in English. South
Korean historians began to look in earnest at the late nineteenth-century reform
movements in the 1960s and 1970s. These works were committed to rectifying
perceived distortions of Japanese colonial historiography and deeply informed by
modernization theory. For these historians, the reform movements represented a
pre-colonial proto-modernity that failed to mature due to Japanese colonial
intervention. The reformers were ultimately unable to modernize the nation and
therefore failed to save it from colonization. With the spread of the democracy
and mass movements of the 1980s and early 1990s, many South Korean historians
turned to uncovering a Korean history in which the masses, or the people
(minjung), were the only authentic subjects of historical change rather than the
nation unmediated by class. People’s histories written in this period still
identified the failed modernization of the nineteenth century as the prime cause
for the loss of nation sovereignty, but they located this in the movements’ refusal
to engage the masses. Without popular support, the reformers were doomed to
seek foreign sponsorship and ultimately to sacrifice the nation for the sake of
their own class interests. During the last fifteen years, research on the period in
both Korean and English has made a conscious effort to reconsider both the
nation and modernity in the late nineteenth century. Rather than judge the
reform movements by their perceived failure to modernize and rescue national
sovereignty, these works move beyond these conceptual categories to explore
both the movements’ contemporary cultural and intellec tual accomplishments
and their legacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Duncan 2006).
A sustained and systematic critique of colonial historiography did not fully
emerge in South Korea until the 1960s. During the fifteen years following
liberation from colonial rule in 1945, national division, the imposition of United
States military rule, the Korean War, the flight of left-wing historians to the
north, and the continued institutional prominence of historians trained during the
colonial period made such a critique difficult to undertake. By the early 1960s,
however, a newer generation of historians motivated by the progressive impulses
of the April 19 Revolution of 1960 and the public discord over normalization
negotiations with Japan opened a discursive space wherein the historiographical
legacy of the colonial experience was subject to direct interrogation (Ch’oe Ki-
yŏng 2003; Kim In-gŏl, 1994; Kim To-hyŏng 1997; Em 2013).
Although intended largely as a general survey of Korean history, Yi Ki-baek’s
Han’guksa sillon (A new theory of Korean history), first published in 1961,
provides a succinct summary of the emerging critique of colonial histories of
Korea. Indeed, the text opens with this declaration:
There are many tasks we must take on for the correct understanding of Korean history but the most
important work among these is the liquidation (ch’ŏngsan) of the colonial historical perspective
(singminjijuŭi sagwan).
(Yi Ki-baek 1961)

This perspective was defined first by what Yi identified as a geographical

determinism (chirijŏk kyŏlchŏngnon) in which the fact of Korea’s peninsular
geomorphology relegated it to something of a geographical and historical
footnote to the dynamic time and space of the continent. This stance precluded
the recognition of Korean historical autochthony (chayulsŏng), rendering change
attributably only to the heteronomy (t’ayulsŏng) originating from the continent.
This alleged peninsular nature of Korea ensured that no significant socio-
historical change was possible without some kind of intervention by outside
forces. A second claim closely related to the heteronomy thesis is stagnation
(chŏngch’esŏng). Unable to produce socio-historical change on its own, Korean
peoples remained largely unchanged across the millennia as they maintained
agricultural societies that never developed from feudalism to modern capitalism.
Finally, Yi pointed to Japanese colonial historians’ invocation of a debilitating
factionalism as a Korean national trait (tangp’asŏng). The culmination of this line
of scholarship, Yi maintains, is the legitimation of Japanese rule; a society that is
unable to change on its own, mired in stagnation, and incapable of self-
governance due to endless factional infighting naturally comes to be ruled by
other states and, moreover, cannot but benefit from the experience (Ch’oe Ki-
yŏng 2003; Em 2013).
This was the intellectual legacy that historians of the early 1960s had to
negotiate in order to establish a new history free from the politics inherent in the
production of colonial knowledge. They adopted an explicit agenda to write
histories of Korea that would engage in a continuous assault on colonial
perspectives by uncovering Korean historical autochthony. Often uncritically
accepting the modernization theory that undergirded the very intellectual
regimes they sought to overturn, these historians looked to produce histories
foregrounding the development of a proto-capitalism in the late Chosŏn period,
anti-colonial struggles of the independence movement, and the emergence of
enlightenment thought (kaehwa sasang) in the nineteenth century (Ch’oe Ki-
yŏng 2003). Studies of the Korean enlightenment in particular provided
opportunities to show that Korean intellectuals were well aware of the internal
and external problems facing the Chosŏn state and society in the nineteenth
century and were actively and strategically engaged in the very reforms of
thought and policy that evinced an internal dynamism to Korean intellectual and
political history.
One of the most prolific historians of the 1960s and 1970s writing on Korean
enlightenment thought was Yi Kwang-nin. Yi wrote dozens of field-defining
articles on the figures, texts, and projects of the 1870 and 1880s reform
movements. Tracing the beginnings of Korean enlightenment thought to the
1870s, Yi saw reformist impulses born largely of an intellectual curiosity about
western technologies. By the 1880s, however, this impulse was to change, Yi
maintained, to a more urgent dynamic of selective importation of modern
technologies, described by Han U-gŭn’s (1968) notion of “eastern ways, western
means.” Korean enlightenment thought changed again from the late 1890s with
the Independence Club’s interest in republicanism and sovereignty and the
development of nationalist identity politics in the Patriotic Enlightenment
Movement prior to annexation. For Yi, Korean enlightenment was a domestic
phenomenon born of an intellectual history internal to Chosŏn that over the
course of the late nineteenth century came into contact with western
enlightenment ideals to produce dialectically a phase of social development
capable of transporting Chosŏn from the pre-modern to the modern. Ultimately,
however, Yi saw the enlightenment intellectuals of the late nineteenth century as
failed conservative reformers unable to enact the systemic changes needed to
build a viable Chosŏn independence capable of withstanding the vicissitudes of
nineteenth-century imperialism (Yi Kwang-nin 1969, 1973, 1994; Yi Wan-jae,
1989, 1999).
Working from a similar theoretical stance, Kim Yŏng-ho rejected the
understanding of Korean enlightenment thought as a reaction to foreign
pressures or even as the exogenous introduction of a global capitalist modernity.
He maintained that kaehwa was itself a part of modernity. Modernity then
became for Kim not something external to the Korean historical experience but a
phenomenon arising internally as an integral part of the Korean historical
experience. The nineteenth century represented a sprouting of the modern akin to
the “sprouts of capitalism” of modern Chinese historiography. Kim called for a
historical practice that investigated the results of the clash between this
indigenous modernity and foreign political, commercial, and intellectual pressure
(Yi Wan-jae 1989).
Building on the notion of a modernity arising within Chosŏn, the work of
Kang Chae-ŏn is of particular interest in this period. He examined the roots of
kaehwa thought and linked them back to Pak Che-ga and the Practical Learning
and Northern Learning scholars of late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century
Chosŏn (Kyō Zaigen 1973; Kang Chae-ŏn 1982). Kang’s work was a pioneering
illustration of the kind of scholarship that could highlight the intellectual
vibrancy internal to Chosŏn without dependence on a heteronomous
understanding of historical change. There was some question as to how close the
relationship really was and whether future work should seek to clarify the
connections or look for the disjunctures, but even with these issues, Kang’s work
was an early model for scholarship on Korean enlightenment that did not begin
from an assumption that Korean intellectual transformation had to be the result
of external influences (Yi Wan-jae 1989).
Kang’s work was an important step in positing a connection between the
kaehwa reform movements and earlier Chosŏn intellectual currents, but the
precise points of contact and deviation remained unclear. One strand of kaehwa
research in the 1970s thus turned in earnest to the question of origins. Yi Kwang-
nin and Sin Yong-ha, among others, suggested that the reformers of the 1880s had
been influenced by Chosŏn interpreters who brought Qing texts on Western
thought and technology back to Chosŏn and by their interactions with Pak Kyu-
su and his intellectual lineage as represented by his grandfather and Practical
Learning scholar Pak Chi-wŏn (Yi Kwang-nin 1973; Yi Wan-Jae 1989, 1999; Son
Hyŏng-bu 1997). It was through this body of scholarship that the intellectual
connections between the Practical Learning and Northern Learning schools of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the various enlightenment
movements in the final decades before colonization became established in the
field of Korean history.
There was something of a consensus in the 1970s concerning the nature of the
kaehwa movements. First, kaehwa thought was not just a matter of reformist
thought imported from Japan or Qing but rather an intellectual practice born of
older Chosŏn scholarly lineages that came into contact with foreign practices and
ideas. Second, kaehwa thought arose in the mid-nineteenth century, twenty to
thirty years before the radical reformers of the 1880s turned to the Japanese
model, and set its roots in the scholarship of eighteenth-century Chosŏn
intellectuals like Pak Che-ga and Pak Chi-wŏn. Third, kaehwa thought was at its
base a body of conservative reform thought seeking to eliminate the weaknesses
of the existing order by adopting the technologies of the west. Finally, kaehwa
was bourgeois. The enlightenment thinkers across the movements from the 1880s
through to the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement of the 1900s were all of the
elite, educated classes. Their intellectual world was limited by their bourgeois
class interests and thus their reform proposals were ultimately limited. They were
incapable of contradicting their class interests and as a result failed to implement
the systemic reforms necessary to preserve the independence of the Chosŏn state
(Yi Wan-jae 1989).
Although the question of class was not at the forefront of the research on the
enlightenment movement during the 1960s and 1970s, political conflict in South
Korea from the late 1970s and into the 1980s brought a dramatic change in
perspective (Yi Se-yŏng 1997). Among the most widely recognized people’s
history scholars, Kang Man-gil (1978, 1984) was an active opponent to the
authoritarian military government under Chŏn Tu-hwan. In January of 1981, two
months after the 1980 Kwangju Massacre, Kang found himself “unemployed,” as
he put it, after having been forced to resign from the history department of Korea
University for his political activities (Kang 1994). It was during this time that he
began work on his two volumes, Han’guk kŭndae sa (Modern Korean history)
and Han’guk hyŏndae sa (Contemporary Korean history), both first published in
1984. Kang identified the masses, or the people (minjung) as the only authentic
revolutionary subject capable of instituting substantive historical change. It is
from this perspective that he provided an alternate reading of the history of
nineteenth-century Korean reform movements. Kang located the cause of the
failure of the reform movements to save Chosŏn from colonization in the social
class of the reformers themselves. From the 1880s to the 1900s, leaders of the
various reform movements looked to one another and to foreign sponsors rather
than to the Korean people for support. The result, Kang maintained, could only
be failure and the inevitable loss of national sovereignty (Kang Man-gil 1984;
Kang Man-gil 1994; Em 2013).
In his analysis of the Coup of 1884, Kang cited an interview with Sŏ Chae-p’il,
one of the central figures of the coup conspirators, in which Sŏ identified their
failure to secure the support of the people as the greatest miscalculation, an error
that fundamentally undermined the movement. This was an important admission
to Kang but not because it indicated a failure on the part of the masses to support
a potentially progressive political cause. He noted that the Korean masses had
clearly demonstrated their taste and skill for direct political action throughout the
nineteenth century both before and after the Coup of 1884. The problem was that
the radical reformers of the 1880s themselves did not arise from the masses. The
class origins of the men and their ideas was enough to ensure their failure. Kang
also noted, in absence of popular support, that the radical reformers had to look
to Japan for sponsorship, further eroding their support among the people. It was
their rejection of the Korean masses and their embrace of a foreign power that
ensured the failure of the movement. Although there have been more recent
attempts to reveal popular participation in the Coup of 1884 (Pak Ŭn-suk 2005),
Kang’s analysis remains representative of what is still a broadly accepted
understanding of the nature of the coup and the root of its failure.
The questions of autochthony and heteronomy are Kang’s central concerns in
his analysis of the Kabo Reforms. With the central role of the Japanese in creating
a political space in which the reforms could move forward, to what degree was
the reform program a Korean project and to what degree was it a Japanese
imposition? During the first two months in which the deliberative council was
active and, Kang notes, the period in which the council decreed the most
important reforms, the Japanese were distracted by on-going combat operations
against the Qing Empire, leaving Kim Hong-jip, Kim Yun-sik, and Yu Kil-chun. It
was not until the autumn when Pak Yŏng-hyo and Sŏ Kwang-bŏm returned from
exile in Japan to join the cabinet that Japanese influence overshadowed the
reforms. And yet Kang was unwilling to celebrate Kim Hong-jip and his
colleagues as exemplars of an authentic national sovereignty for they were
among the old gradualist reformers from the 1880s and had no desire to challenge
the institution of absolute monarchy; they too actively rejected the Korean
masses in favour of foreign favour as they refused to support the Tonghak rebels
in their mission to end the abuses of the state and exonerate the founder of their
faith.
Kang refused to refer to the uprising of 1894 as the Tonghak Rebellion
(Tonghangnan), preferring to call it the Peasant War of 1894 (Kabo nongmin
chŏnjaeng). There was broad peasant participation in the uprising that went
beyond the community of the faithful and the objectives of the uprising exceeded
matters of faith to include overthrowing what Kang called the “feudal system” in
order to execute an authentic socio-political transformation. He saw the uprising
as an authentic mass movement for the creation of a new society and as such was
the moment at which the Korean people came the closest to realizing their role as
the sole true subject of history. In this respect the uprising carried a historical
significance greater than any of the other reform movements of the late
nineteenth century. This movement too, in Kang’s evaluation, was to fail for the
Chosŏn state, ever willing to reject the people for the political sponsorship of
foreign powers, facilitated peasant defeat at the hands of the Japanese military.
The fate of the Independence Club was somewhat different in Kang’s
estimation for it did not meet its end through dependence on foreign powers. He
instead identified two factors that lead to its demise. The first was that the club’s
demands were too radical and too fast for the emperor to tolerate, especially as he
saw the project of the new imperial state as central to establishing in reality the
absolute monarchy that existed in theory alone in the political realities of the
previous Chosŏn state. The second was the deep elitism of the club leadership.
While their drive to establish a parliamentary body was born of their interest in
the western liberal traditions of republicanism, Kang points to their denial of the
very ability of the uneducated masses beyond the club’s membership to
participate in the political process at all. Moreover, the club was vociferously
opposed to armed peasant uprisings in the 1890s, referring to them only as
bandits to be suppressed. As in the failed reform movement that preceded them,
the Independence Club abandoned the masses and in so doing alienated
themselves from the only legitimate progressive force in Korean society.
Kang saw the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement as burdened by many of the
same errors as its predecessors. He took note first of its commitment to obedience
to the law and its refusal to advocate direct armed resistance; obedience to the
law of the residency-general was already capitulation. The movement could not
hope to successfully undermine colonial authority by submitting to it. A further
problem was the widespread acceptance of social Darwinism within the
movement. This too, Kang argued, was something of a surrender. Presaging some
of the work of Andre Schmid (2002) on this period, Kang observed that if it was,
as a function of immutable natural law, only the wealthy and powerful states and
peoples that were to survive in a world of competing empires, there was little to
recommend Korean independence. This identification with the laws and
discourses of the colonizing power was coupled with what Kang saw as the
movement’s condescension to the masses. Rather than a potent revolutionary
force, the intellectual elites leading the movement saw the people as ignorant,
pitiful, and in need of an education so as to be made aware of the conditions of
their lives and their identities as members of the Korean nation. With the
movement’s fundamental identification with the colonizing power and its
rejection of the Korean people as equal partners in forging the direction of the
nation, Kang pronounced the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement doomed to
failure from its very inception. Like the previous iterations of reform in the late
nineteenth century, Kang saw ultimately the failure of reform movements to
depend on the people. Without popular participation, a modern nation-state was
impossible, and without the modern nation-state, there was no viable resistance
to colonization. For Kang, this was the thread that ran through all the reform
movements, with the exception of the Tonghak uprising, from the moderates of
the early 1880s to the radicals of 1884 to the Kabo Reforms to the Independence
Club to the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement on the eve of annexation (Kang
1984, 1994).
While writings on late nineteenth-century reform movements have been
dominated by questions of the location of the authentic nation, the perceived
failures of modernization, and ultimately the search for the reasons these
movements failed to save Korea from colonization, more recent research
demonstrates a shift away from the nation, the masses, failed modernization, and
even the question of modernization altogether. This realignment has opened new
spaces of inquiry previously precluded by the primacy of the nation and its
discontents on the eve of colonization. Research on the late nineteenth century
has largely turned in the twenty-first to understanding the cultural moment, the
experiences of the modern in the 1890s and 1900s that came to serve as the
foundations of the places of Korea in the present.
Yi T’aejin (2000) has called for a re-examination of the Kojong reign and the
Kwangmu reforms of the Great Han Empire period. In a rhetorical style
reminiscent of the historiographical project to correct the perceived distortions of
colonial historians, Yi argued that received narratives of Kojong’s incompetence
and failure were products of western “amateur historians” and Japanese colonial
scholarship that were in urgent need of revisiting; the king-cum-emperor was not
a corrupt, self-serving, yet inept monarch but rather an enlightened ruler who
launched the nation not on a failed path but rather a succeeding but interrupted
path to modernization. His declaration of the Great Han Empire and his
assumption of the title of emperor were bold statements of Korean sovereignty to
the world. His efforts to centralize state authority in the throne were essential to
creating a modern state capable of surviving and thriving in a hostile
environment. Yi even found reason to evaluate the emperor more highly than the
Independence Club, citing its relationship with the Japanese legation. In Yi’s
estimation, the suppression of the Independence Club with its suspect contacts
with the Japanese was a perhaps unpleasant but necessary task in the
construction of an authentically powerful and sovereign state. The Japanese, Yi
suggested, ultimately intervened and terminated this path toward a mature
modernity that the Kwangmu reforms, left untouched, would have produced (Yi
T’aejin 2000; Kyosu Sinmun Kihoek 2004).
Andre Schmid’s (2002) monograph Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919 is a
broad exploration of the discursive production of the Korean nation in the
myriad publications of the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement and the first
decade of the colonial period that he posited as the foundation of modern Korean
nationalism. Here Schmid was not concerned with the question of success or
failure in resisting colonization; his work was not about what did not happen but
rather about what did. The writers and educators of the Patriotic Enlightenment
Movement produced an enduring construct of the Korean nation that arguably
remains relevant to the present day. The critical distance with which Schmid
approached the question of the Korean nation allowed for the creation of a more
permeable understanding of the domestic and the foreign. Here Schmid
understood the creation of Korean nationalist discourse not in the terms
delineated by the 1960s poles of heteronomy and autochthony. The discourses of
the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement were not, as earlier scholars like Yi
Kwang-nin or Kang Chae-ŏn might have suggested, a matter of an internally
developed intellectual system coming into contact with an external body of ideas
and practice. Schmid saw the interplay of the local and the global in this
formation of nationalist discourses from the very moment of their inception.
A further current took shape in the extensive project out of the Korean Culture
Research Institute of Ehwa University (Ihwa Yŏdae Han’guk Munhwa
Yŏn’guwŏn) on the question of modernity from 1896 to 1910. The institute had
already taken an interest in this period in previous publications (Han’guk
Munhwa Yŏn’guwŏn 1999), but it embarked upon an especially ambitious three-
volume project (Han’guk Munhwa Yŏn’guwŏn 2004, 2006, 2007) to more fully
address the origins of Korean modernity. A collective of more than a dozen
scholars working in the institute designated this time the “modern enlightenment
period” (kŭndae kyemong ki) and identified it as the moment from which the
Korean modern emerges. Through close discursive analyses of the print media of
the period, especially the Independence Club publication Tongnip sinmun, the
authors argue that the print capitalism that arose in Korea facilitated a vibrant
public sphere. This discursive space served to mediate world and self so as to
produce a distinctly modern sense of individual subjectivity, society, and political
practice. The authors argue that there was in this period a Korean modernity pre-
colonial in origin in which not only the educated elites but also the people
(inmin) came to the fore as socio-political actors and the progenitors of Korean
modernity writ large (Chŏng Sŏn-t’ae 2006, 2007; Yi Sin-ch’ŏl 2011). In recent
years the intersection of religious faith and political action manifest in the
Tonghak movement has attracted renewed scholarly attention with the work of
George Kallander (2013) and Carl Young (2014). Like Schmid, Kallander and
Young both refrain from evaluating the Tonghak faith by the metric of
preventing colonization, of success or failure vis-à-vis the nation. They look
instead to the ways in which participants understand their own involvement and
the political, social, and familial relationships that formed in Tonghak
communities and the impacts they had on the dynamics of colonial Korean
society and beyond. While Young focuses on the changes in the organizational
structure of the Tonghak faith into its later iteration as Ch’ŏndogyo, Kallander
has examined the movement as a refuge from material and physical hardship in a
world of increasing cultural and geopolitical uncertainty. In moving away from
the Tonghak movement as an exclusively nationalist, anti-colonial phenomenon,
Kallander’s work opens greater potentials for research into facets of the Tonghak
experience not often seen in previous work, such an examination of the impact of
the movement on community and family life in rural Korea at the end of the
century.
Perhaps the most radical departure from both the narratives of the nation and
modernization, Yumi Moon’s Populist Collaborators (2013b) examines the
Ilchinhoe, an organization often omitted from the historiography of late
nineteenth-century reform movements altogether. For decades written off as
treasonous stooges of the Japanese, the Ilchinhoe, or the “Advance Together
Society,” was advocate for Japanese rule in the years before the annexation.
Moon asks her readers not to judge their collaboration anachronistically but to
take into consideration the conditions and possibilities of the period in
recognition of the conceptual poverty of the collaboration/resistance binary.
Moon notes that for some, empire can represent opportunity rather than
enslavement, while aligning with the nation does not always result in freedom.
More than anything else, the Ilchinhoe, with its overwhelmingly grassroots
membership, was an organization concerned with the welfare of the common
people. This concern transcended the national and welcomed the creation of a
political order that the organization deemed capable of bringing the greatest
good. Moon thus maintains that the Ilchinhoe was neither national nor colonial,
neither traditional nor liberal. Her work abandons both nation and modernity to
create a field of vision now capable of engaging with a more complete accounting
of the myriad experiences of the colonial (Moon 2013a, 2013b).

Prospects

Research in Korean history has travelled great distances since the first
interrogations of colonial historiography in the 1960s. Much of the scholarship
through the 1980s and even beyond has been a navigation and a negotiation of
the colonial, a coming to terms with both past experience and contemporary
legacy. The field also spent years in close cohesion with the telos of
modernization theory, but here too both Korean-language and Anglophone
literatures have gone to great lengths to sever relationships with this framework
and its conceptual limitations. There is now a significant body of literature of
intellectual heft that explores the myriad facets of the fin-de-siècle Korean
modern through interdisciplinary projects that bring together the theoretical and
methodological practices of historians, political scientists, and scholars of
literature. These reconsiderations of experiences and dynamics occluded in
previous works harnessed to expunging the colonial, to rescuing the nation, and
to failures or successes of perceived processes of modernization have yielded
empirically rich and theoretically exciting results. As the field moves with greater
enthusiasm toward research in the global engagements of the Korean modern,
some of the most recent work has moved beyond the discursive communities of
Korea scholars to speak to issues of more global concern. Kallander and Moon in
particular have produced work that not only illuminates questions of concern to
that which we might call the Korea field but also speaks to larger issues of the
global with their critical engagements with dissent, resistance, collaboration, and
the production of spaces of practice beyond the binaries of national/colonial or
traditional/modern. These are intellectual spaces of global concern to which the
developing scholarship on the late nineteenth-century reform movements in all
their permutations is now poised to contribute.

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5
Religion 1876–1910

Albert L. Park

Studying the history of religion in Korea is never an easy task. This field of study
includes parties affiliated with a specific religion who compete with each other to
furnish the authoritative account on the value and influence of religion over time
in Korea. Religious parties exhaust their energies to ensure their interpretations
of the past become hegemonic in order to authorize and legitimize religious
claims and truths in the present. In particular, certain parties, especially those
related to Christianity, study Korean religious history as a trajectory of events
and developments with a beginning, middle, and end that is preordained by a
higher being. Religious parties study the past in this way with the hope of finding
the signs that will guide them to their pre determined, brighter future. They rely
on history to produce and sustain truths that help shape the contours of religious
belief and faith. For these religious parties, historical investigation is a process for
crafting a narrative of events and developments that will buttress a specific
spiritual cause and enforce religious orthodoxy.
This milieu for studying and writing about religion in Korean history has
hampered drives for critical, full inquires on the development and evolution of
religious ideas, practices, and institutions. First, religious parties have tended to
focus on the heroic, spiritual aspects of a religion to show its value, influence, and
strength. Second, they deemphasize change within the religion to show its power
of continuity from the past to the present. Focusing on the gallant periods of a
religion’s history gives a narrow picture of a religion in which all of its sides
cannot be comprehensively exposed and understood, while stressing continuity
over change ignores the influence of a person’s agency and social happenings
over a religion’s development. Failing broadly to socially contextualize the
development of religion has curbed discussions on Korean religious history.
With the exception of scholarship on the history of Buddhism in Korea by
academics such as Jin Y. Park and Robert Buswell and works on new religions by
George Kallandar and Carl Young, the inability of academic scholarship to fully
study the development of religion in relation to material events, interactions,
especially from the economic realm, only intensifies this incomplete
understanding of Korean religious history. What these works fail to appreciate
and take into account is the “lived religion” approach to studying Korean
religious history. This paradigm of analysis views “things as a result of social
processes” in that religious ideas and practices originate and gain meaning and
value in the context of social relationships, interactions, and events (Taves and
Bender 2012: 10). In particular, the lived religion approach emphasizes practices
as processes and calls attention to “its embeddedness and relations within a range
of settings and concepts” rather than studying practice as an isolated object of
study (ibid.: 13). Lived religion’s emphasis on practice not only allows for a full
explanation on how religions change over time and are related to economic,
political, and cultural processes, but it also enables engaging and viewing religion
as more than just about personal belief and spirituality.
Nowhere is the absence of the lived religion paradigm of analysis seen more
than in academic publications on the history of Christianity in Korea. Scholars
who study Protestant Christianity, such as Sung-Deuk Oak and Timothy S. Lee,
have published many works on church history that primarily emphasize the
spiritual value of and promote Christianity. The perspectives and methodologies
of missiology guide the writing and research of these scholars. A number of
works approach the study of the history of Catholicism in Korea with a very
narrow focus in that they fail to connect religious developments with social
processes. Consequently, these works prevent the study of religious issues from
becoming a platform for understanding larger issues and themes, such as
modernity, capitalism, authoritarianism, and gender inequality. Their narrow
ways of studying Christianity have only diverted readers’ attention away from
how Christianity has negotiated and changed in relation to material
transformations and developments in modern Korea and has only sustained the
substandard approach to studying not only Christianity in Korea, but also Korean
religious history.
These traditional ways of studying religion in Korean history have ultimately
framed religion as nothing other than just as a means for spiritual belief and
experiences. Yet, in closely studying religious developments between 1876 and
1910—a time when Koreans experienced the gradual loss of their political
independence and immense ruptures in their lives because of the various forces of
modernity—it becomes quite apparent that religion’s value and significance
extended well beyond the realms of the spiritual and the sacred. At that time, the
Treaty of Kanghwa (1876) linked Korea to the capitalist world system and
ushered in diverse forces and processes from the outside that tested the strength
and influence of established beliefs, customs, and institutions. The forces of
capitalism, imperialism, democracy, immigration, and science and industry
widely influenced people’s daily happenings from cities to the countryside. As
outside powers fought for control of Korea, the new and the old collided to forge
an environment of powerful social changes. From Korea’s opening to the outside
world to its colonization by Japan in 1910, this time period represented a frenzied
moment in history in which nothing, including religion, was left untouched.
This frenzied backdrop from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth
century invites a careful consideration of how religions fared and negotiated the
milieu of social change. Religions, at that time, were not isolated things, but
instead they were embedded in society and lived out within a wide range of
settings. Figures from established and new religions were creating and
reconceptualizing sacred languages, practices, symbols, and institutions in order
to adapt their respective religions to the dynamic social processes that were
playing out in society. What was clearly evident during this period was an urgent
drive by religious leaders and followers to not only survive this time of change
but also to make religion a relevant tool to represent and give meaning to the
maelstrom of changes. Koreans from all types of backgrounds sought ways to
give meaning to their new experiences because established forms of knowledge
and belief failed to do so. Responding to this new demand, religious leaders
crafted powerful languages, practices, and customs that could overcome the
limits of established belief systems. Many Koreans adopted these fresh forms of
representation and relied on them to ground their identity, make sense of new
sensations, mediate social relationships, and evaluate and negotiate their daily
happenings. During this period, religion was more than just a medium for
spiritual experiences; it also served as a medium for valuing things, structuring
behavior, enhancing and sustaining power, and increasing wealth.
Studying religious developments from 1876 to 1910 in relation to material
developments and social processes requires being mindful that religions were
embraced and practiced for various reasons other than for just encountering the
sacred. Alongside being aware of different motivations for embracing religion, it
is just as important to pay careful attention to religion being a lived process that
has been shaped by realms of power, which has been understudied by scholars of
Korean religious history. In large part, the inability of scholars to embrace
various forms of theory, especially from the fields of cultural studies and post-
colonial studies, has prevented a complete picture on how power dynamics inside
and outside of religions determined spiritual language and conditioned the
direction of religious groups and institutions. In particular, as religions became
more institutionalized, struggles over defining orthodoxy between groups within
religions led to campaigns to eliminate heterodoxy and thus differences. Being
conscious of power influencing and shaping religion in the history of Korea helps
us to avoid assuming that “religion is a transhistorical constant—whether defined
in terms of belief, feeling, or symbolic meanings” and to start instead viewing
religion as “historically distinct social forms and forces” (Boy 2011).

Legacy: a brief survey of religion before 1876

The religious landscape of Korea before 1876 featured Koreans primarily

following Buddhism, Shamanism, or Daoism. Each of these religions was popular
because of its power of valuation. Religions furnished people with languages and
signs with which they could use to evaluate the importance of something. This
process of valuation gave people a framework through which to cultivate desires,
make decisions and act creatively, and structure their behavior in relation to
others—thus informing and undergirding people’s agency. The state’s ruling
philosophy during the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910) was Neo-Confucianism, but
it allowed people to practice any religion as long as they never countered or
challenged Neo-Confucianism on any large scale. The state lacked elaborate
surveillance, punishment mechanisms, and institutional forms of violence, but it
was always committed to using any resources it had toward wiping out any
dissent.
The state showed that it would never tolerate religious opposition and dissent
through the way it cracked down on Buddhism. Buddhism entered Korea from
the middle to the late part of the fourth century and steadily grew popular among
people and rulers of kingdoms on the peninsula. Koryŏ Dynasty (935–1392)
leaders showered Buddhist monks and monasteries with tax-free lands and
servants and money and gave key monks unfettered access to the courts to be
advisors. Blaming Buddhism for weakening the finances of the state, leading
leaders astray, and breaking down the Koryŏ political order, Chosŏn leaders and
bureaucrats swiftly withdrew the institutional support Buddhists had received
from the previous state and conducted campaigns to suppress Buddhist influence
starting in the early 1400s. Some of the more aggressive actions against the
Buddhist establishment included confiscating temple land, decommissioning
hundreds of temples, forcing temple servants to become soldiers, and preventing
monks from entering Seoul and crossing the border to China. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, there were nearly 1,500 temples—down from over 2,200
temples during the end of the Koryŏ period (Kim 2012: 24–45). Yet, in spite of
these crackdowns, Buddhist groups tried to survive and maintain their influence
in society through creating new institutions and organizations, such as Temple
Fraternities (sach’algye)—voluntary organizations that engaged in economic
activities to raise money for Buddhist activities and for the maintenance of rituals
and temples.
Chosŏn kings and government hounded Buddhism because they categorized it
as heterodoxy. Defining Buddhism as heterodoxy grew out of a fear of it
weakening and delegitimizing Neo-Confucianism as the authoritative system of
knowledge to explain the workings of the universe and how things should be in
order for a harmonious social order. There was a genuine fear among statesmen
and Neo-Confucian scholars that digressing from the practice of Neo-Confucian
principles would lead to social breakdown and disorder and even the collapse of
the universe—thus ruining the potential for the establishment of an ideal present
and future. Because the state was the guardian of the ruling philosophy, it feared
that Buddhism’s delegitimization of Neo-Confucianism would also undermine its
own authority and legitimacy.
In maintaining Neo-Confucianism as the authoritative mechanism for knowing
and valuing, the Chosŏn state required people to rely on Neo-Confucianism to
make sense of their desires and emotions—to validate or invalidate them. Yet,
what happened when certain occurrences and feelings could not be made sensible
and explained by Neo-Confucianism? Were people’s feelings about death, spirits,
and the supernatural simply considered invalid and left alone because Neo-
Confucianism refused to incorporate mystical and otherworldly elements into its
cosmology? Shamanism played a significant role in people’s lives in filling in the
void left by the inability of standard Neo-Confucian language and concepts to
address certain topics. Through its elaborate cosmological order that was
inhabited, directed by, and controlled by deities, Shamanism gave people the
knowledge to make sense of the unknown and to undergo new encounters and
experiences to resolve tensions in their daily lives. For example, during periods of
droughts during the Chosŏn era, shamans (mudang) on the behalf of farmers
would perform elaborate ceremonies that called for spirits to bring rain. Women
from the landed gentry (yangban) also turned to shamans to help them
communicate with spirits in order to find the spirit of a deceased family member
or resolve a child’s illness. Shamanism gained value as a means for people to
overcome their disconcerted feelings of the unknown and any anxieties resulting
from them (Walraven 1999: 185).
Shamanism was an extremely popular religion, but the Chosŏn state never
waged an all-out battle to limit the influence of Shamanism like it had done with
Buddhism. It tried to control shamans by requiring them to register and pay taxes
and banning them from performing state-sponsored rituals and from entering the
capital, but these measures were hard to enforce. Some local government officials
took it upon themselves to limit the power of shamanism through violent
measures, such as Yi Hyŏn-san—the governor of Cheju Island who ordered the
destruction of 129 shamanistic shrines in the early eighteenth century—but there
were never any violent campaigns of persecution conducted by the central state.
Even if the state had wanted to wipe out Shamanism, it would have been
extremely difficult due to it being an unorganized religion with no system of
authority and organization over shamans that could be easily identified and
dismantled. Authorities recognized that Shamanism gave relief to people in areas
that Neo-Confucianism could not sufficiently address and that shamans were far
from being radical leaders who called on followers to reject Neo-Confucianism.
Consequently, authorities mostly let people practice Shamanism freely.
For the most part, people in the Chosŏn period formed their own moral
bricolages, which involved combining beliefs and practices from many religions
to develop their own systems of belief, that people relied upon to inform their
worldviews. As long as Koreans developed their own moral bricolages or
practiced Buddhism or Shamanism while still carrying out Neo-Confucian
practices, the state paid little attention to them. In fact, the state had little to fear
in people rejecting the ruling ideology and organizing religious-inspired
rebellions as long as the state continually pursued the construction of an ideal
Neo-Confucian and cared for the welfare of the people. Yet, starting in the
eighteenth century, Chosŏn authorities entered a period of flux that featured
ideological and social instability as natural disasters and outbreaks of diseases
worsened social and economic conditions and as certain Neo-Confucian
traditions and structure began to erode due to the rise of new forces, such as
capitalism. As social conditions deteriorated, the state struggled to uphold its
traditional Neo-Confucian responsibilities of protecting and leading because it
lacked money and resources.
The breakdown of the Neo-Confucian order led to the rise of new religions
that drew people seeking relief from the disorder. For example, Maitreyan
millenarian movements, which featured the belief that Maitreya—a Buddhist
Messiah—will appear and create a utopian world after the existing world had
fallen into a disorderly state, drew people who desired changes that would “save
the common people from starvation, epidemics, and oppression and exploitation
by the ruling class” (Ro 2002: 35). Other people turned to movements guided by
the goals outlined in Chŏnggamnok, which promised a Taoist savior creating a
new world and capital for the people. Finally, Catholicism rapidly grew after Yi
Sŭng-hun, a scholar who was baptized in Beijing in 1784, returned to Korea to
spread the new religion and its promise of salvation to all people regardless of
their standing in the social hierarchy system. It was such a popular new religion
that there were nearly 4,000 followers of Catholicism even before the arrival of
the first Catholic missionary to Korea from China in 1794. Like Buddhism and
Shamanism, these new religions offered to people alternative forms of knowing
that gave them a sacred interpretation of the transformations in society and new
values through which to make sense of feelings that resulted from the breakdown
of the long-standing order.
Unlike Buddhism and Shamanism, what was particularly striking about these
new religions was their power to lead people to question Neo-Confucianism’s
legitimacy through public acts, such as the burning of ancestor tablets by two
Catholics in 1790, and armed rebellions against the state, such as the Kyŏngnae
Rebellion of 1812. Through their experiences of these new religions, people
underwent a process of forging new identities that sprung forth awareness that
things were not right and were not going to improve. This process unleashed a
potent form of agency among followers of these new religions, which inspired
them to use violence to overcome the imbalance and instability in society. This
historical moment of new religions questioning Neo-Confucianism and rebelling
against the state largely arose because of 1) the vast changes threatening customs
and structures of traditions and 2) the state being without enough resources to
uphold the Neo-Confucian system and wipe out the new religions. The state had
crushed Catholicism through persecution campaigns in 1801, 1815, 1846, and 1866,
but it was unable to wipe out all of the new religions that were popping up daily.
Into the 1870s, there was a growing popularity for new religions among the
people because the state was unable to keep up with all of the changes in society
and carry out reforms that would align what is (material reality) with what
should be (the ideal vision of material reality) as it had done in the early and
middle periods of the Chosŏn dynasty.

Religion and modernity in late Chosŏn Korea (1876–

1910)
The rise of modernity in the late nineteenth century sprung forth even more
ruptures and changes in society that led to a sharp increase in the number of new
religions that tried to bridge the disjuncture between what is and what should be.
In the context of late nineteenth century Korea, the modern should be understood
as a chronological category that became staged or imagined through ideological
processes as a universal period of history that had its origins in the West and was
considered the crucial step toward achieving progress and the highest state of
being. The features of the modern period that had distinguished it from earlier
periods became the chief elements of a model of development that many Koreans
and non-Westerners believed they needed to adopt in order to reach the modern
stage of history. For many Koreans at that time, the process of becoming or
achieving the state of being modern required the adoption and cultivation of
particular features, especially capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization. This
normative view of the modern or modernity became dominant among leaders in
the state and intellectuals after Japan had used gunboat diplomacy to force Korea
to sign the Treaty of Kanghwa in 1876, which officially opened up Korea to the
outside world. To King Kojong and nationalist leaders, such as the leaders of the
Independence Movement, the threat of Western and Japanese imperialism to
Korea’s independence added urgency to becoming modern, which for them was a
process that mostly involved adopting ideas, customs, and institutions from the
West.
Starting in the early 1880s, the challenge for King Kojong and state officials
was to balance the new changes that resulted from modernization with the
preservation of the Neo-Confucian order. Despite embracing modernity, the state
never rejected Neo-Confucianism as its ruling ideology. It clung to traditions
while introducing vast reforms that threatened the survival of traditions because
the reforms brought changes to the political, economic, social, and cultural
realms. The growth of capitalism further threatened the survival of Neo-
Confucian practices and customs. Historical evidence has shown that the agrarian
economy featured new developments starting in sixteenth-century Chosŏn
society that signified the emergence of capitalism in Korea. At that time,
agricultural productivity increased through technological innovations and new
farming techniques. These developments resulted in surplus crops that were sold
at markets, which grew as important sites of vibrant commercial activity. At
these markets, new forms of currency, such as silver and cloth, aided the process
of selling and exchanging agricultural goods. By the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the countryside showed signs of a growing agricultural market with a
certain level of rural cultivators moving away from self-subsistence farming.
These capitalist developments gave way to many instances of elites turning away
from their traditional responsibilities for the pursuit of wealth, yangban landlords
mistreating their peasant tenants by replacing them with more productive tenants
or unwilling to provide welfare in the case of natural disasters, and people
moving up and down the social hierarchy system with wealthy merchants and
farmers purchasing the yangban social status from yangban who were in debt.
The indigenous capitalist forces combined with the new forces of modernization
to create an uneven society that looked nothing like the ideal society that had
been envisioned by Neo-Confucianism.
The changes caused from the top and below sharpened the disjuncture
between what is and what should be. This new milieu demonstrated that Koreans
were starting to enter a period of “breakdown”—“when people are expelled from
their old forms … before they can find their way in the new structures” (Taylor
2002: 99). Koreans on a mass scale turned to new religions for guidance through
and relief from this phenomenon of breakdown. Many people turned to new
religions that had emerged near the turn of the century, but other Koreans grew
enchanted with the teachings of new religions that were growing popular after
1860. The “old” and “new” new religions were similar in many ways in that they
were usually founded by a charismatic person and syncretistic. Yet, new religions
after 1860 distinguished themselves from established new religions through the
mechanisms they created to spread, promote, and institutionalize their religious
principles and practices. These mechanisms facilitated the circulation of
information, knowledge, languages, sentiments, and desires between individuals
nearby and far away from each other. In this capacity, these mechanisms fostered
vibrant networks of intimacy that forged links and exchanges between people,
which positioned them to experience new types of social relationships, develop
and reflect over their identities, and design different forms of organization. For
many followers of new religions, these networks of intimacy became the chief
mediums through which to organize people toward realizing their visions of an
ideal society that embodied the beliefs of their religion.
Among the new religions, Tonghak (Eastern Learning) became the most
effective new religion to forge vibrant networks for exchange and mobilization.
Tonghak originated from what many people perceived as the strange thought and
behavior of Ch’oe Che-u (1824–1864). The combination of his own personal
problems and the changes erupting throughout society, especially the threat of
foreigners coming to Korea, appeared to cause Ch’oe to be without direction and
full of anxiety and confusion. Confucianism, for Ch’oe, no longer helped him
understand his personal problems or the problems in Chosŏn society. Feeling
distressed and disoriented, Ch’oe had an experience one day in April 1860 that
fundamentally changed his life. According to Ch’oe, he heard the voice of Sangje,
who told him to teach humankind about the way (pŏp) and relieve humanity
from sickness. To do so, Sangje gave Ch’oe a symbol that was an “elixir of life”
and told him to teach it to others. Sangje promised Ch’oe a fulfilling immortal life
if he performed this mission. Ch’oe took the symbol, wrote it on a piece of paper,
and consumed it. Immediately, Ch’oe wrote that he grew healthier and stronger
and that his “illness” had disappeared.
Using his experience with Sangje as a source of inspiration and direction,
Ch’oe spent the following months articulating and defining the tenets of his new
religious message, especially the meanings and roles of Sangje and Chigi
(Ultimate Energy). Ch’oe eventually named his new religion Tonghak (Eastern
Learning) in 1861 and often stated that it was a mixture of many religions in that
it melded together tenets from other systems of knowledge, such as Catholicism
and Confucianism, to produce a religion that truly addressed the needs of the
people. From Buddhism, he adopted the ideas of benevolence, and he borrowed
ideas about God from the Catholic meaning of God (Ch’ŏnju). From
Confucianism and Daoism, respectively, he appropriated the idea of ideal human
relations and ethical principles and the concept of changing the internal spirit in
order to cleanse oneself from negative elements.
Among the most important elements of the Tonghak religion that Ch’oe
created and developed was the concept that humans can connect to and become
part of Ultimate Reality, which Tracy describes as the force that was the “origin
and end of all Reality” and “from which all comes and toward which all moves”
(Tracy 1987: 89). Because Ultimate Reality was a force immanent and residing in
all, Ch’oe concluded that all individuals possessed the power to become part of
and one with Ultimate Reality. Unlike the Christian concept of God as a distant
and transcendent being who possessed only divine nature, Ch’oe believed that
Ultimate Reality resided within humans, who thereby could connect with this
divine force; Ch’oe often heard Ultimate Reality reaffirming the fact that as the
main force in the universe, it resided in humans.
Ch’oe’s message drew a large following of people who found comfort in the
Tonghak message in the midst of change. Ch’oe’s proselytization campaigns
unsurprisingly concerned government officials. Worsening social, economic, and
political conditions had already begun to expose the contradictions in the
Confucian world order and had therefore undermined the state’s power and
authority to order reality. The growing popularity of Tonghak and the state’s
inability to decipher it caused the state to become uneasy about Ch’oe, and he
was arrested with other Tonghak leader and executed in 1864 for spreading a
heterodox religion. Succeeding Ch’oe, Ch’oe Si-hyŏng started the process of
transforming Tonghak into an organized religion with established doctrines, rites,
and rituals and a comprehensive structure of governance. In order to immortalize
and spread the founder’s messages, Ch’oe oversaw the compilation and
publication of Ch’oe Che-u’s essays and poems in the early 1880s. Next, Tonghak
leaders ordered followers to carry out various acts, such as attending a weekly
public worship service. Finally, they demanded followers to abide by certain
rules, such as abstain from drinking and smoking. Ch’oe, in particular, told
followers that the principle of treating and respecting each individual as divine
(sainyŏch’ŏn) should ground their behavior and actions.
These reforms and developments were expected to establish disciplined
environments that would reinforce belief among followers. Yet, Ch’oe Si-hyŏng
and other Tonghak leaders understood that belief could not be sustained by
sacred rules and practices alone. It also required the creation of an effective
leadership structure. Ch’oe Si-hyŏng built a top-down leadership organization in
which central Tonghak leaders selected and appointed other leaders to oversee
local chapters. Through this system, the top leadership maintained surveillance
and control over the local areas. The central leadership of the Tonghak group
further solidified its control over local areas and established a more efficient
organizational structure through the implementation of the p’o system in 1884.
Under this system, the supreme leader of the Tonghak was at the top. Under him
and his assistants was a regionally based organization (p’o). At the bottom, in
villages and local communities, was a local congregation (jup). A leadership
council presided over regional and local congregations. The council was made up
of a chief (kyojang), a teacher (kyosu), a chief administrator (tojip), a judge
(chipgang), a counselor (taejong), and a censor (chongjŏng). This council served
as the leadership structure in regional offices and local villages wherever
Tonghak members lived and thus maintained a disciplined environment in which
Tonghak doctrine was practiced.
There is no doubt that the process of transforming Tonghak into an organized
religion was expected to structure and punish followers in ways that would
sustain their belief and make them into ardent followers. Yet, more than just
experiencing a system of discipline, Tonghak followers also encountered a system
of circulating knowledge that exposed them to ideas that gave meaning to and
ordered the changing world around them. As followers performed rituals
communally and abided by the same rules, it organized their everyday lives and
informed social relationships and identities. Equally important, it laid the
foundation for a sacred community that could easily share information and
exchange goods. Unsurprisingly, then, this system became a valuable resource to
organize movements when a number of Tonghak followers started a rebellion
against the Chosŏn state in the 1890s over their disgruntlement over the
conditions of society and the government’s persecution of Tonghak followers. In
early 1894 in the southwestern province of Chŏlla, Chŏn Pong-jun, a Tonghak
leader, mobilized enough followers and resources to capture most of the areas in
the Chŏlla provinces by May 1894. Along the way, many slaves, daily workers,
and peasants joined this movement. An examination of the demands made by the
Tonghak leadership shows that their main grievances were against the state and
thus not a class-centered movement. They demanded abolition of unfair taxes,
punishment of corrupt local officials, and the prohibition of grain exports. The
rebellion had gained steam with its success against the Korean army, but
Tonghak forces were ultimately stopped by a combined force of Japanese and
Korean troops in December 1894.
There are still many debates whether or not the Tonghak Rebellion was a
religious-inspired movement. Indeed, despite originally being started by Tonghak
members and later supported by the main leaders of Tonghak, the Tonghak
Rebellion was less about achieving a new spiritual kingdom based on Tonghak
beliefs and more about establishing religious freedom and overcoming foreign
imperialism. In fact, the main participants in the revolution were non-Tonghak
individuals who did not see the movement through religious lenses. Even the
Tonghak core leadership, such as Ch’oe Si-hyŏng, never thought of starting a
mass social movement to create a new world where the ideal spiritual state could
unfold; only after Japan threatened Korea’s sovereignty did Ch’oe support the
emerging rebellion. What is less debated is the fact that Tonghak leaders
organized the religion in a way that supplied new networks for communication,
exchange, and organization for people.
The end of the rebellion drove many participants toward other new religions
that promised the birth of a better world. Many people turned to Chŭngsan-gyo,
which was a new religion created by Kang Il-sun. Chŭngsan-gyo promised
salvation for anyone in a new world who had “refrain[ed] from mistreating
anyone, stay[ed] away from sin, and ke[pt] a pure heart” (Ro 2002: 43). It became
a popular new religion, but it lacked the organizational power of Tonghak and
therefore never became a significant religion. One of the new religions that had
become just as powerful and influential as Tonghak was Protestant Christianity.
Unlike Tonghak and other new religions, it was not founded by a single
charismatic leader and syncretic. Yet, Protestant Christianity’s appearance in 1884
with the arrival of Dr. Horace Allen, a Presbyterian missionary, gave Koreans
another alternative system of belief to established religions—thus becoming a
new religion. In fact, it eventually developed a larger presence than Tonghak,
especially because it was supported by the Chosŏn state. After the arrival of
Horace Underwood (PCUS) and Henry Appenzeller of the Methodist Episcopalian
North Church (Methodist North Church) in 1885, King Kojong and his advisors
steadily supported Protestant Christian missionaries with the hopes of them
helping to modernize Korea by introducing Western medicine, technology, and
education.1
Contemporary Protestant Christian leaders in Korea will often attribute the
popularity of Christianity in late nineteenth-century Korea to powerful spiritual
influences. Yet, looking closely at how the religion was organized and spread
enables anyone to see that Christianity grew because it offered new religious
language to make sense of the changes in society and created institutions that
introduced mechanisms for spreading Christianity and fostering networks.
Occurrences at the P’yŏngyang Revival clearly show why so many Koreans grew
enamored with Christianity. By all accounts, the P’yŏngyang Revival in 1907
became the watershed moment that fundamentally transformed the future of
Protestant Christian activities in Korea. In January 1907, missionaries organized
several large tent meetings and prayer meetings in P’yŏngyang, which was
considered the center of Christianity in Korea. At first, the revivals evoked very
tepid responses from people who attended the various meetings, leaving both
missionaries and Korean Christian leaders deeply disappointed and with heavy
hearts. The mood of the revival, however, quickly transformed into a state of
euphoria when five to six hundred individuals participated in an all-night prayer
meeting and “man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep,
and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect
agony of conviction” (Lee 1907: 34).
Throughout the P’yŏngyang Revival and other subsequent revivals,
missionaries consistently called on Koreans to confess their sins and ask God for
forgiveness because they believed that sin was the root of all social problems.
Koreans responded to this call and revealed the transgressions they had
committed against God. Some Christians asked for forgiveness for petty crimes,
such as stealing. Many men confessed to hating others, adultery, misuse of funds
in churches, pride, envy, murder, and lusting after women (Lee 1907: 34; Ladd
1908: 107–109). The majority of people, however, confessed to sinning against the
colonial occupiers by having “hatred of the Japanese, and even … murderous
thoughts and plans towards them” (Ladd 1908: 107–109). According to observers,
the environment at the revival meetings was like a huge storm in which Koreans
spent days and nights publicly confessing their sins and seeking God’s
forgiveness and approval. One observer described the heightened state of emotion
in the revival meetings: “He [a Korean man] beat the hard wooden flooring till
his hands bled, he shrieked and begged for mercy. ‘Is this what sin is?’ said the
awe-stricken multitudes. ‘We never knew it was so awful. We had thought it a
trifle, but, behold, here is what God thinks’” (Gale 1909: 209–210). To Koreans, it
was sin that was causing their pain and suffering; it was the root of all of their
problems and separated them from God.
Urging Koreans to declare their sins and ask for forgiveness publicly,
missionaries made sin into a symbol that explained why Korean society was in a
poor state and Koreans were suffering so much. At the time of the P’yŏngyang
Revival, Koreans lived in a state of trauma in which all the political, social, and
economic events and changes, especially the 1905 Protectorate Treaty, could not
be explained by existing signs and symbols. The existing languages failed to
explain the origins of the turmoil in Korean society. Unable to supply reasons for
their current predicament, people, according to historical accounts, suffered and
were in a state of confusion and disarray. By telling Koreans to concentrate on
revealing their sins and transgressions, religious leaders enabled Koreans to make
a connection between their individual sins and the overall state of their country;
humans were alienated from God and therefore were separated from his love
because of sin.
With this meaning of sin, Koreans were able to name their suffering and
pinpoint its origins. Knowing the root cause of their problems gave Koreans the
opportunity to endure their current predicament. As Clifford Geertz points out,
religious symbolism enables humans to cope with suffering by “placing it in a
meaningful context, providing a mode of action through which it can be
expressed, being expressed understood, and being understood, endured” (Geertz
1973: 105). The revival meetings became a time when individuals learned a new
language with which to speak of their suffering and were able to identify the
source of their problems. Through this process, people could overcome the
unknown and were now equipped with the knowledge not only to overcome
their confused, traumatic state but also to endure and engage present concerns
and future possibilities.
The P’yŏngyang Revival and the overall revival movement became a defining
moment for Protestant Christians because they showed Koreans the value of
Christianity in helping them negotiate the challenges in their lives, which helped
legitimize Christianity in society. As church leaders preached about sin and the
need for repentance, Koreans encountered Christianity not only through the 321
churches that had been built by 1905, but also through the number of Protestant
institutions throughout the peninsula that had been established by Protestant
institutions. Protestant groups, for example, expanded health services in Korea by
introducing Western medicine and establishing medical facilities.2
They also established institutions to create an elaborate social service structure.
Building schools and Bible institutes became a priority because educational
institutions would be the main means to disseminate religious ideas and beliefs
and introduce knowledge and subjects taught in Western schools. PCUS and
Methodist North missionaries led the introduction of a new and elaborate
educational system in Korea by establishing primary, secondary, and high
schools as well as colleges.3 Both Presbyterians and Methodist missionaries and
the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) built technical schools called
Industrial Education Departments (IEDs) that taught Koreans about industrial
labor and industrial capitalism. Missionaries decided that industrial work was the
most suitable means to teach the work ethic because both missionaries and
Koreans thought of industrialization as a requirement to become civilized and
enlightened. Transforming Koreans into productive industrial workers was a
process open to both young males and females, but it was anything but equal.
IEDs taught vocations to males that involved machinery, while women were
expected to learn occupational skills that would require only the use of their
hands.
Practicing what students learned took place in factorylike settings in buildings
that housed IEDs. Because IEDs in the Anna Davis School, the John Wells School,
and the Songdo Textile Department taught students how to manufacture textiles,
these IEDs set up rows of hand, foot, and power looms on the main floor of the
IED buildings. Alongside technical skills, the IEDs also taught students
rudimentary business skills. At the John Wells School, students learned how to
use the abacus and perform simple arithmetic and elementary bookkeeping.
Teachers at the school also taught students “modern business methods.” The
YMCA IED offered lectures on such themes as “the dignity of labor,” “the value
of money,” and “methods in the modern business world.” These classes and
lectures provided a definition of success and showed how business transformed a
person into an upstanding Christian.
As students in IEDs prepared to establish an industrial capitalist society in
Korea by learning how to operate a business, manufacture commodities, and
market their goods, IEDs also enabled students to conceptualize Korean society as
an economic system for producing and exchanging goods and services for money
and profit. In fact, IED students could probably imagine the entire world, not just
Korean society, as an intertwined economic system as they watched the goods
they produced exported abroad. The students encountered new social imaginaries
that viewed society as the main space for the performance of capitalist activities.
Like the Physiocrats and Adam Smith, IEDs helped promote the belief that “the
most important purpose and agenda of society [is] economic collaboration and
exchange” (Taylor 2002: 105). Moreover, IED students would have believed that
these ideas about economics and society were “correct” since they were validated
by religious principles, which were considered the most authoritative and
authentic principles.
IEDs furnished young Korean students with the knowledge, practices, and
language needed to anchor their everyday lives and helped inform the kinds of
social relationships they would develop. In fact, in IEDs as well as in churches
and other Protestant institutions, Koreans developed new social relationships that
led to new commercial developments. Merchants and figures in commerce also
found opportunities to come together at church and organize groups to invest in
companies throughout the peninsula. In 1911, merchants and commercial figures
in the Presbyterian Church started the P’yŏngyang Chŏkŏm Chohap (P’yŏngyang
Saving Cooperative) and supplied capital for a silk-reeling company. Alongside
the P’yŏngyang Chŏkŏm Chohap, the Kunkŏm Chŏch’uk Siksan Chohap
(Cooperative for Thrift, Saving, and Industry) originated in 1917 through the
efforts of Korean Christian leaders, missionaries, and Korean lay leaders, who
invested in a factory that manufactured socks.
The Protestant Church furnished diverse networks for all types of organization
—even for nationalistic purposes. Inspired by the life of Jesus Christ, several well-
known nationalist leaders not only fully gave themselves to the church but also
used their resources and power to organize nationalist campaigns to strengthen
Korea politically, economically, and socially. Nationalist figures who were
devoted Christians, like An Ch’ang-ho and Sŏ Chae-p’il, believed that Christian
principles should inform a new civic morality or public virtue for Koreans and
organized movements that embodied Christian values. Attributing America’s
greatness to Christianity, Yun Ch’i-ho (1864–1945), a well-known Methodist,
spoke out about the need of Christian-based educational and social reforms to
produce a stronger national community. An, Sŏ, Yun, and others like them
believed that by embracing Christianity and adopting Western-based reforms,
Korea would become a modern, powerful country that would be able to resist
Japanese imperialism. Perhaps no one at that time was more willing to carry out
this model of religious and social development than Yi Sŭng-hun (1864–1930). Yi
is known for his nationalist activities in the Sinminhoe (New People’s
Association) and for promoting Christianity through various institutions, such as
Osan Academy (1907), which he founded as a Christian school. As a leading
merchant, Yi played an active role in organizing a number of business ventures
with fellow Presbyterians. In 1908, for example, Yi helped start Sangmudongsa,
one of the first general merchandise stores in Korea. In 1909, Yi also led the
movement to start joint-stock companies through the P’yŏngyang Chagi Chusik
Hoesa (Pyŏngyang Porcelain Company), which raised 60,000 won and employed
sixty-one Koreans by the time it closed in 1919. Behind all these business
ventures was Yi’s hope that Korean companies would be able to compete with
Japanese businesses coming into Korea and resist Japan’s takeover of the
economy and the country.
Despite these nationalistic efforts, the majority of Christians and most
missionaries were against the intersection of religion and politics. Contrary to
contemporary studies that mythologize Western missionaries and Korean
Christians as figures who fought against Japanese imperialism, missionaries, in
particular, “conceived as the ultimate goal of their missions the saving of souls,
not the amelioration of Korea’s social or political ills” (Lee 2000: 127). Because
nationalist activities and sentiments by followers could jeopardize the church’s
relationship with the Japanese and divert the church from its main priority of
converting Koreans, Protestant missionaries not only kept out of nationalist
politics but also exhorted followers to avoid worldly affairs like anticolonial
struggles. Moreover, they spoke out little, if at all, against the problems caused by
modernization, especially poverty and the dislocation of people’s lives. Homer B.
Hulbert, Dr. Frank W. Scofield, and a few other missionaries criticized Japanese
colonialism, but the majority of missionaries and Korean Christian leaders called
for followers to cultivate their personal relationship with God. For the Christian
community, the transformation of Korea should take place first in the individual
and not in society.
From the late nineteenth century into the first decade of the twentieth century,
religious language was valued for its power to interpret and make sense of the
transformations occurring in society, while religious institutions, practices,
rituals, and rules were well regarded for structuring behavior and everyday life
and creating diverse forms of organization and community. The language coming
out from the new religions, in particular, became a means for people to talk about
modern mystifications and put them into a meaningful framework that could
produce an informed awareness and a calm sensibility of the new social milieu.
Especially as the forces of modernization and government policies like the Kabo
Reforms (1894) and King Kojong’s Fourteen Article Oath (1895), which officially
dismantled the Neo-Confucian order, eroded traditions, customs, and long-
standing social relationships, the new religions laid down a system of norms,
values, and networks that could reground people’s identities and everyday lives
that had been shaken by all of the changes. The popularity of new religions
among Koreans arose from the desires for systems of knowledge to help them
negotiate the social, economic, and political processes erupting around them and
visualize the direction and make-up of the present and future.

Religion, power, and belief (1900–1910)

The waning of Neo-Confucianism and the rise of new religions contributed to the
construction of a pluralistic religious milieu with competing values and belief
systems. Koreans in late Chosŏn society even saw diversity within religious
groups themselves as followers and leaders held different interpretations of key
religious texts and what constituted as sacred practices. Leaders of religions tried
to push followers into believing in and abiding by a common set of beliefs and
practices, but followers always founds spaces of autonomy where they could
work out different religious views and encounter diverse experiences. Into the
first decade of the twentieth century, however, followers faced a growing trend
of religious organizations centralizing power. Whether out of the need for
survival or to crush dissent, certain religious organizations started to streamline
their organizations by forging a centralized system of authority, demarcating
what was orthodoxy and heterodoxy, and establishing surveillance and
disciplinary systems to ensure compliance of new rules. The new forms of power
threatened spaces of autonomy and narrow differences in thought and practice.
As such, structures of power were in place to determine attitudes, sensibilities,
desires, and ultimately what and the way followers should believe—thus showing
that matters of belief are far from just private and internal.
 Tonghak underwent significant reforms after the Tonghak Rebellion that led to
the dismantling of the existing leadership structure and the renaming of the
group as Ch’ŏndogyo in 1905. The execution of Ch’oe Si-hyŏng left a power
vacuum in Tonghak leadership between Son Pyŏng-hŭi and Yi Yong-gu. Both
men fought over the direction of Tonghak and what Tonghak stood for in society.
Son, in particular, sought to align Tonghak activities with the Chosŏn state’s
modernization programs and develop Korea into a civilized and enlightened
country, while Yi had come to support pro-Japanese organizations. Differences
over the interpretation of religious doctrines further divided both individuals. The
internal power struggle led to Yi leaving Tonghak to form Sich’ŏngyo and Son to
lead Ch’ŏndogyo as each group professed to be the true inheritors of Ch’oe Che-
u’s legacy.
Following the establishment of Ch’ŏndogyo, Son consolidated the former
Tonghak community by issuing strict rules and reforms. He issued the Charter of
Ch’ŏndogyo in 1906— a new organizational plan that centralized decision-making
power in the leader and established a new bureaucracy that included an office of
religious inspectors who communicated the leader’s commands to local followers
and required followers to be obedient to the leadership. What was emerging
under Son’s leadership was a distinct view and authoritative interpretation of
traditional Tonghak language that needed to be followed in order to be identified
and recognized as a Ch’ŏndogyo believer; it was a system of interpretation and
identification that was backed up by disciplinary mechanisms. Dissent was met
with power and punishment.
For Buddhism, differences were being narrowed through the new linkages
being established between the state and established Buddhist groups. The inflow
of Japanese Buddhist groups to the peninsula for the purpose of proselytizing to
Koreans and the desire to be free from abuses by yangban and corrupt officials
led Buddhist leaders to ask the government for a new regulatory body to oversee
Buddhism. In 1902, the Chosŏn state issued the Temple Ordinance that put
Buddhist temple and sect under that Bureau of Temple Administration, which
was overseen by the Department of the Royal Household. The ordinance
established a new administrative structure that supervised the temples and
monks. It also instituted new laws and regulations, such as conferring ranks on
monks and requiring them to be certified as monks by the state. If any monk
disobeyed the new laws, they were to be punished and disrobed (Kim 2012: 154–
157). The ordinance provided new forms of protection for Buddhists, but it also
opened it up to the possibilities of limiting diversity in Buddhism. The 1902
Ordinance concentrated power under a central authority—that is, the state—who
had the means to uniformly organize and develop Buddhism in a particular way,
which had not been the case in the late nineteenth century. It is unclear as to how
many monks and followers of Buddhism were punished for holding and
spreading different views and thus going against the ordinance, but what surely
arose was a new system to make sure that Buddhism was organized, practiced,
and believed in a singular way. In fact, as more Korean Buddhist temples forged
alliances with Japanese Buddhist temples after the Japanese Resident-General’s
Office issued the 1906 Regulations on Religion that regulated Japanese Buddhist
missionary activities on the peninsula, Korean Buddhist groups became easy
targets for outside actors with their own motivations for changing the make-up
of Buddhism. Through the 1902 Ordinance and alliances with Japanese Buddhist
temples, Korean Buddhists encountered centralized systems of power that
threatened the diversity of Buddhism.
The first wave of Protestant Christian groups centralizing activities occurred in
the first decade of the twentieth century. Immediately following the P’yŏngyang
Revival, the Presbyterian Church solidified its presence in Korea by establishing
an independent Presbytery of Korea on September 17, 1907.4 Though this form of
reorganization gave the Presbyterian Church a better way to coordinate activities
and eliminate the competition to attract Koreans among the various Presbyterian
groups, it did lead to the standardization of Presbyterian doctrines and practices.
In particular, evangelicalism became the dominate theology in the Presbyterian
Church. Imported from the United States, evangelicalism in Korea aimed to
simplify the Christian messages by plainly stressing that people were in a natural
condition of sin and therefore salvation could be procured only through their
acceptance of Jesus Christ as their savior. Moreover, Presbyterian missionaries,
especially Samuel A. Moffett, stressed that followers needed to live a pure moral
and ethical life and never subject the Bible to any forms of deeper theological
investigation because it was directly from the mouth of God. Most importantly,
missionaries demanded that followers convert others to Christianity.
Evangelicalism promoted this simple message as the crux of Christianity
instead of emphasizing theological investigation and social activism to fight
political, economic, and social injustice as central to Christian faith. Evangelicals
considered the world a place of evil and a breeding ground for sin. Therefore, in
order to maintain and preserve their moral life, evangelicals called for followers
to refrain from getting involved with political and socioeconomic issues and to
focus instead on cultivating one’s moral and religious life and spreading the
Christian message. They reinforced this message through forms of punishment,
such as demanding that followers spread the message to others as a precondition
of baptism and church membership. For those Korean followers who valued
Christianity as a vehicle for combating social and economic ills and political
oppression, they encountered a Presbyterian establishment that denied them
access to Presbyterian services and institutions and tried to limit their influence
inside and outside of the church. Influenced by the conservatism of
evangelicalism, missionaries and Korean Christian leaders tried to limit the
growth of liberal, progressive forms of theology, which were popular among
Canadian Presbyterian missions to Korea, and to eliminate dissent.
From the 1910s to the 1930s as Koreans experienced Japanese colonialism and
mass economic, social, and cultural problems that resulted from the forces of
modernity, progressive Korean Christians battled with conservative Christians
over the meaning and purpose of Christianity and the church’s resources and
institutions for the hope of realizing their respective visions of the nation-state. In
fact, this conflict between progressive and conservative forces was found in most
religious circles—both established and new. Conservatives and progressives both
valued religion because it ordered the world and grounded their daily lives and
identities. Yet, they fought over how to incorporate change into religion and
adapt religious traditions to the present. Gaining an edge in this conflict was
extremely challenging in light of the Japanese colonial state heavily regulating
religion and sometimes waging all-out wars against religion, like it had against
Shamanism since the 1910s because it was an “irrational” religion. During and
after colonialism, the challenge for many progressive religious groups was to
make sure religion remained as an open source of enchantment, exploration, and
imagination and to prevent it from becoming an unchanging force of closure,
discipline, and punishment that only features narrow thoughts and practices.
Religion today in South Korea remains a powerful force that continually
influences political, economic, social, and cultural structures at a time when
many Koreans are seeking various systems of belief for guidance and support
with rapid changes happening around them daily—just like many Koreans had in
the late Chosŏn period. Continuously studying the relationship between religion
and social trends and processes in society allows for greater understanding of
how religions change over time. Yet, more importantly, it enables for great clarity
as to why religion remains popular among Koreans and serves as a valuable tool
to negotiate modernity despite long-standing arguments by intellectuals that
religion would lose significance with the rise of modernization and secularization
and the decline of spiritual belief. In short, studying the relationship between
religion and social processes serves as a vital vehicle for raising provocative
questions and drawing up answers about the human condition under modernity
and the role of religion in creating values and mechanisms through which to
negotiate and makes sense of the myriad social, economic, political, and cultural
forces surrounding modern subjects.

Glossary

Tonghak (Eastern Learning): Tonghak was one of the first major new religions
that was founded in 1860 by Ch’oe Che-u. As a nativist religion, the main
principles of Tonghak were drawn from traditional Korean religious and
philosophical systems, such as Confucianism and Shamanism. It is mostly
known as one of the primary forces behind major peasant rebellions in the
1890s that became known as the Tonghak Rebellion.
Ch’ŏndogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way): Ch’ŏndogyo became the new
name of Tonghak in 1905. During the period of Cultural Rule (1920–1927), it
was an influential institution that had a major role in shaping the political,
economic, social, and cultural landscapes in new directions through
publications such as Kaebyŏk (Creation) and Nongmin (Peasant) and social
movements that included its rural reconstruction campaigns (1925– 1937).
The Ch’ŏndogyo church linked religious principles to social activism and
became a significant nationalist force under Japanese occupation.
Chŭngsan-gyo: Chŭngsan-gyo was a new religion created by Kang Il-sun in the
late nineteenth century. It grew in popularity in the aftermath of the Tonghak
Rebellion. Former Tonghak followers and new believers were drawn to its
message of the imminent arrival of a utopian world. It promised salvation for
all in this new world as long as individuals lived a moral and upstanding life
that avoided the mistreatment of others. It became a popular new religion,
but it lacked the organizational power of Tonghak and therefore never
became a major organized religion.
Ultimate Reality: Ultimate Reality is a religious term coined by David Tracy that
generally refers to a sacred force that is the creator and mover of all
existence. As the creative and preserving force that exists in all objects and
beings in the universe and the everyday world, Ultimate Reality, according to
Tracy, refers to specific forces in religions, such as God in Christianity.
Tonghak Rebellion: This rebellion was one of the largest peasant rebellions in
Korean history and lasted from early 1893 to December 1894. Inspired by
Tonghak (Eastern Learning), peasants sought to achieve economic security
and to expel foreigners, especially the Japanese, who threatened Korea’s
independence. Though peasants had successfully battled government troops, a
combined fighting force of Japanese and Korean troops put an end to the
rebellion.
1902 Temple Ordinance: The 1902 Temple Ordinance was a series of reforms of
Buddhism carried out by the Korean government. The government set up the
Bureau of Temple Administration to supervise and regulate temples. State
reforms were set up as way to centralize temple activities in order to thwart
the advances of Japanese Buddhism in Korea.
P’yŏngyang Revival: The P’yŏngyang Revival consisted of a series of revival
meetings held throughout P’yŏngyang and other parts of Korea in 1907.
Strong turnout and the outpouring of emotions at the meetings led to the
P’yŏngyang Revival energizing evangelicalism in Korea. The revival inspired
Western missionaries and Korean Christian leaders to organize new
campaigns to convert Koreans to Christianity.
1906 Regulation on Religion: The 1906 Regulation on Religion was issued by
Japanese authorities in Korea in December 1906. The regulation stipulated
strict controls over Buddhist missionary activities in Korea. Among the
 number of stipulations, Japanese Buddhist sects in Korea were required to
register with the Government General’s Office and receive approval for
missionary activities. This regulation further centralized Buddhist affairs in
Korea and placed them under government supervision.
Industrial Education Department (IED): Industrial Education Departments
were spaces in Protestant missionary schools where Koreans were taught the
merits of industrialization and learned skills appropriate for industrial
occupations. IEDs took place in factorylike settings where male and female
students worked with machinery, such as power looms. Western missionaries
used these spaces to discipline Koreans physically and mentally, who they
perceived as “lazy,” in order to transform them into productive workers and
to indoc trinate them with the belief that modernity could only be achieved
through industrialization.
Ch’oe Si-hyŏng (1827–1898): Ch’oe Si-hyŏng followed Ch’oe Che-u as the
leader of Tonghak. He was widely credited with turning Tonghak into an
organized religion by consecrating the teaching of Ch’oe Che-u and setting
up institutions that would spread Tonghak teachings. Following the Tonghak
Rebellion, he was executed by the government.
Son Pyŏng-hui (1861–1922): Son Pyŏng-hui was the third leader of Tonghak,
who oversaw its transition to being renamed Ch’ŏndogyo. In addition to
setting up a new bureaucratic structure, Son established a printing house to
publish and spread Ch’ŏndogyo writings. A firm believer in the concept of
Civilization and Enlightenment, Son argued for industrialization, military
expansion, and educational, health and sanitation programs. His views on
Civilization and Enlightenment were challenged by Ch’ŏndogyo figures, such
as Yi Ton-hwa, starting in the 1920s as they reconceptualized the meaning of
modernity.
Yi Seung-hun (1756–1801): Yi was the first baptized Korean Catholic in China.
He returned to Korea to promote Catholicism, which was growing as a new
religion. He was later executed by the government in 1801 for spreading
Catholic teachings.
Yi Sŭng-hun (1864–1930): Yi is known for his nationalist activities in the
Sinminhoe (New People’s Association) and for promoting Christianity
through various institutions, such as Osan Academy (1907), which he founded
 as a Christian school. As a leading merchant, Yi played an active role in
organizing a number of business ventures with fellow Presbyterians. In 1908,
for example, Yi helped start Sangmudongsa, one of the first general
merchandise stores in Korea. In 1909, Yi also led the movement to start joint-
stock companies through the P’yŏngyang Chagi Chusik Hoesa (Pyŏngyang
Porcelain Company). Behind all these business ventures was Yi’s hope that
Korean companies would be able to compete with Japanese businesses
coming into Korea and resist Japan’s takeover of the economy and the
country.
Ch’oe Che-u (1824–1864): Ch’oe Che-u founded Tonghak in 1860. As a fallen
elite, Ch’oe characterized Tonghak as mixture of various religions. He melded
together tenets from other systems of knowledge, such as Catholicism and
Confucianism, to produce a religion that would address the contemporary
needs of the people. He adopted the ideas of benevolence from Buddhism
while he borrowed ideas about God from the Catholic meaning of God
(Ch’ŏnju). Ch’oe appropriated the concept of ideal human relations from
Confucianism and, from Daoism, the idea of changing the internal spirit in
order to cleanse oneself from negative elements. The government found him
and his teachings a threat to the Confucian order and had him executed in
1864.

Notes
1 The following denominations came after the arrival of Allen, Underwood, and Appenzeller: the
Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) (1892), the Methodist Episcopalian South Church (1896),
the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, Australia (1889), and the Canadian Presbyterian Church (1898).

2 In P’yŏngyang, Presbyterian North missionaries built the Caroline Ladd Memorial Hospital in 1905, while
other Presbyterian North missionaries worked to construct Severance Medical College and Nursing
School in 1905. In many mission stations, such as Canadian Presbyterian missions, small medical
facilities existed that offered basic medical services to local people.

3 PCUS missionaries built a number of primary schools and established secondary schools for girls, such as
Sungui Girls Academy (1912), and secondary schools for boys, such as Sungsil Academy (1897) and
 Sungin Academy (1907). In Seoul, Methodist North missionaries constructed a vast array of schools,
including Paejae Boys’ School in 1885 and Ewha Girls’ School in 1886, which later became Ewha
University.

4 The new Presbytery included the Presbyterian North, the Presbyterian South, the Canadian Church, and
the Australian Church.

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6
The transformation of the Chosŏn
economy in the Open Port Period, 1876–
1910

Owen Miller

Introduction: economic problems of nineteenth-

century Chosŏn
Korea’s relative isolation from the emerging world system during the latter
centuries of the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910)1 was a double-edged sword. It
protected Chosŏn from outside interference and helped the dynasty to last an
exceptionally long time. But when the modern capitalist world did arrive, it was
a sudden and shocking experience. To make matters worse, by this time Korea’s
island neighbour had already set out decisively on the path of modernisation and
it was Japan who would eventually come to dominate the Chosŏn economy and
then annex the country in 1910.
The opening of Korea’s ports, beginning with the Kanghwa Treaty of 1876,
marked a major turning point in Korea’s history, after which it rapidly entered
the modern capitalist world. For Korea, the shock of encountering a new world
was not just political, it was undoubtedly economic too. This chapter will
consider in detail the profound economic changes wrought by that entry,
alongside the inherent problems of the pre-existing economic system and the
responses of major actors within Korean society to changing economic
conditions.
Scholarly work on the economic history of this period has been heavily shaped
by Korea’s subsequent experience of colonial rule (1910–1945). Japanese
historians of the early twentieth century such as Fukuda Tokuzō aimed to
demonstrate the inevitability of Korea’s annexation by showing that its economic
past was backward and stagnant. Korean scholars, both during the colonial
period and even more so since, have made great efforts to ‘overcome’ the
historiography of stagnation and show that Chosŏn was attempting to modernise
itself in the nineteenth century. They have also emphasised the way in which
Japanese imperialism in the late nineteenth century acted as an obstacle to
Chosŏn’s independent modernisation and the development of an indigenous
capitalism.
The debate about Korea’s late nineteenth-century economic history continues
today, with varying evaluations of the economic dimensions of the Kabo (1895–6)
and Kwangmu Reforms (1897–1907) and starkly differing opinions on the
inevitability of Chosŏn’s economic decline and eventual domination by Japan.
However, scholarship on this period has also developed in recent decades, and it
now seems possible to move beyond simple dichotomies, to take into account
both the relative weakness of the Chosŏn state and its agency in economic
modernisation. It is also possible to produce a more detailed picture of the
geopolitical setting for economic change, balancing the particular role played by
Japanese imperialism with the complexity of late nineteenth-century northeast
Asian geopolitics. The shift away from old dichotomies will be beneficial for our
historical understanding of Korea’s loss of economic and, ultimately, political
sovereignty. However, although this period is a relatively well-studied one in
Korean history, there are still many areas, such as the economics of everyday life
or the relations between the state and commerce, where future research is likely
to change our perception of late nineteenth-century Korea.2
Before turning to the main topic of this chapter, we need first to look briefly at
the state of the Chosŏn economy prior to the port opening. The economy of late
Chosŏn was far from being a ‘natural’ or ‘self-sufficient’ economy in which
commerce and manufacture barely existed, as some later Japanese historians
would come to believe.3 The market had an increasingly important place in the
economy of late Chosŏn, from the local markets that connected villages with
local and national commercial networks, through the national markets in raw
materials and luxury goods, right up to the level of international trade, which
was largely carried out through the structures of interstate tribute and diplomatic
relations within the ‘Chinese world order’.
There was a deep intertwining of state and market in late Chosŏn: since the
introduction of the Taedong tax system in the early seventeenth century, the
state had come to rely on merchants to procure the goods it needed for its own
functions and for its tribute trade with Qing China. It also came to use merchants
to transport and dispose of goods it collected as tax (mainly rice, cotton cloth and
hemp). Big merchants, for their part, relied on the state and its bureaucracy to
provide them with business and to protect their privileges against interlopers
(although exactly who counted as a privileged merchant could change over time).
Thus, despite the growth of markets, the Chosŏn state, with its formidable
capacity to collect and redistribute wealth, was still the most important
integrating factor in the late Chosŏn economy.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the Chosŏn state was facing considerable fiscal
problems, and this in turn threatened the health of the economy as a whole. The
nineteenth century was marked by a long-term trend of decreasing tax revenues
for central government, and by the 1860s, the state found itself facing serious
fiscal problems. The Taewon’gun4 attempted to solve government’s shortage of
revenue by various means, including the importation of Qing coinage and the
first minting of a multi-unit coin (the 100 mun coin, called tangbaekchŏn, minted
in 1867). However, the Taewon’gun also spent prodigiously on projects such as
the renovation of Kyŏngbokkung Palace and strengthening of the military. Thus,
by the time Korea’s modern period began in earnest with the first port opening in
1876, the government was having problems meeting its expenditure
requirements, and matters were no doubt made worse by the unexpected and
sizeable tributary expenses associated with the death of the Qing Tongzhi
Emperor in 1875. These financial problems would continue to dog the Chosŏn
government for the next two decades and had profound effects on the economy
as a whole and the ability of the state to respond to the challenges of the Open
Port Period (1876–1910). First, the government’s straitened circumstances
weakened the traditional merchant class that relied heavily on official
procurement trade and also contributed to inflationary pressures in the 1880s.
Second, its lack of revenue made it difficult for the government to carry out even
the limited modernising reforms it embarked on in the early 1880s and late 1890s
or to support any meaningful development of infrastructure, trading companies
or manufacturing. This in turn made the Chosŏn state all the more reliant on
outside powers, thus setting up a negative reciprocal relationship between
Chosŏn’s own financial weakness and the imperial designs of its neighbours,
China and Japan.

The impact of port opening

When Chosŏn signed its first modern treaty with a foreign power in 1876, it had
already been over 30 years since the Treaty of Nanking had opened Chinese ports
(besides Canton) to British trade and 18 years since Japan had signed the Ansei
Treaties with the USA and a series of other European powers. The Chosŏn
government and ruling elite was therefore at a significant disadvantage since its
two neighbours had already learned the hard way about the reality of unequal
treaties. Japan was now ready to impose one on another country.
The story of the Kanghwa Treaty is fairly well known. Japan used the very
gunboat diplomacy that had been used against itself more than 20 years earlier,
first creating a military incident off Kanghwa Island with its ship Unyō in
September 1875, then blockading the island and finally sending the Kuroda
Mission early in 1876 to negotiate a treaty. Chosŏn had rebuffed earlier attempts
by Western powers to open trading relations, even when accompanied by
military force as in 1866 and 1871. But this time there were various reasons for
Chosŏn’s decision to sign its first modernstyle treaty, among them the fact that
Japan was seen as different from the Western barbarians, a country that was at
least partially within the Chinese world order and which had previously had
neighbourly (kyorin) relations with Chosŏn. It is apparent that there was also a
great deal of naivety about what the provisions of the treaty actually meant and
no understanding of the inequality built into the terms.
Those terms were undoubtedly disadvantageous for Chosŏn, and they began
the process of weakening Korean sovereignty that culminated in the Japanese
annexation of 1910. Besides the opening of the port of Pusan and the agreement
to open two further ports in due course,5 the treaty granted extraterritorial rights
to those Japanese merchants and officials who came to live in the newly opened
ports. This was the same unequal system that the Western powers had imposed
on China and Japan, under which foreign merchants in the treaty ports who were
suspected of a crime had to be tried under the law of their own country,
effectively creating a system of impunity. The most notoriously unequal
economic provision of the treaty was the system of tariffs it introduced, under
which there was a complete moratorium for Japanese goods imported to Korea
while Korean goods exported to Japan were subject to a five per cent duty.
Chosŏn did not sign its next treaty until the United States-Korea Treaty of
1882, which was in fact negotiated on Chosŏn’s behalf by the Qing Commissioner
for Northern Ports, Li Hongzhang. This treaty had rather better terms than the
Kanghwa Treaty, recognising the autonomy of the Chosŏn state to set trade
tariffs and fixing those tariffs initially at ten per cent on imports from the US and
five per cent on Korean exports to the US. However, the Treaty did give US
residents the same property rights and extraterritorial privileges as Japanese
traders, so in that sense it was every bit as much of an unequal treaty. This was
followed rapidly in 1883 by a United Kingdom-Korea Treaty and then a series of
other treaties with Western countries, all of which were closely modelled on the
US-Korea Treaty. However, the detail of the United Kingdom-Korea Treaty was
actually somewhat worse than the US-Korea Treaty in that it denied Chosŏn’s
tariff autonomy by introducing conventional tariffs, fixed at seven-and-a-half per
cent on British imports and five per cent on Korean exports.6 It also allowed
British merchants to begin to make inroads outside of the treaty ports in the
capital itself. In fact this particular trend had already begun in 1882, and in that
case it was the Chinese who were the pioneers in opening Korea. After the Imo
Soldiers’ Mutiny of July 1882, a first modernstyle trade agreement was negotiated
between Qing and Chosŏn,7 which allowed Chinese merchants to reside and open
shops in Seoul itself, as well as travel to other parts of inland Korea and to engage
in inter-port trade. A similar agreement was reached with Japan the following
year, and thus by the mid-1880s both Japanese and Chinese merchants were
operating in the very heart of Chosŏn, competing with each other and with
Korean merchants.8
 The Treaty of Kanghwa and those that followed in the 1880s had a profound
effect on the Chosŏn economy, primarily by rapidly integrating Chosŏn into the
international system of trade. What this meant in practice was a radical shift
from a system of very limited regional trade centred on luxury goods and based
on the state-controlled tribute trade with Qing to a system of free trade with low
tariffs in which Chosŏn was very much the inferior partner, completely lacking
the productive base of the Western powers or even the emergent industry of
Meiji Japan. The opening to international trade saw Chosŏn swiftly placed in an
international division of labour in which it exported agricultural goods and raw
materials and imported manufactured goods. This can be seen clearly in the trade
figures for the period after port opening. Initially, exports of agricultural produce,
mainly cowhides and rice, outweighed imports, but as the 1880s wore on,
manufactured goods, largely cotton, increased rapidly, and from 1885 Chosŏn
began to record trade deficits that continued until the annexation in 1910. The
trade figures also show that from the late 1880s, rice and beans dominated
Chosŏn’s exports, while cotton usually made up more than half of all imports
annually from the mid-1880s up until 1900. The first decades after the opening of
ports also saw significant growth in Chosŏn’s foreign trade overall, with the real
value of trade increasing by 16 times between 1885 and 1910.9
The new international trade of the 1880s was, however, still dominated by the
two countries with which Chosŏn had traded for hundreds of years under the
traditional East Asian system of regional trade: China and Japan. On the one
hand, Japan dominated Chosŏn’s export market in rice and beans, absorbing
more than 90 per cent of Korean exports until the late 1890s. On the other hand,
imports were more balanced, most were from Japan during the Open Port Period
as a whole, but Chinese imports increased rapidly during the 1880s when Qing
dominated Chosŏn politically, to peak at 49 per cent in 1893.
The manufactured cotton cloth that made up the majority of Chosŏn’s imports
before the mid-1890s came originally from factories in Europe, mainly Britain,
and so Japanese and Chinese merchants were effectively acting as intermediaries
in trade between Korea and the capitalist countries of Europe. China’s rising
export trade with Chosŏn in the 1880s and early 1890s came from its merchants’
ability to dominate the trade in European cotton through their access to the most
important East Asian trade port: Shanghai. Japan’s failure in this intermediary
trade encouraged it to focus on exporting its own manufactured cloth to Chosŏn,
something it became increasingly successful at during the 1890s. However, the
decisive blows in the trade war between China and Korea were dealt by real
wars: first the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and then the Russo-Japanese War of
1904–5. The Sino-Japanese War in particular halted China’s challenge for
dominance of Korean imports, and the post-war period saw the Japanese share of
imports reaching 72 per cent in 1895. Although Chinese merchants returned to
Chosŏn after the war and were able to recover some of their former share of
Korea’s foreign trade, they were dealt another blow at the time of the Russo-
Japanese War, after which their share of imports dropped as low as 14 per cent in
1906.10
By the late 1890s then, the Chosŏn economy was already locked into a
particular set of economic relationships; a variation of the hierarchical
international division of labour mentioned above. On the one side, Chosŏn was a
market for the manufactured products of Japan’s newly emerging industries,
while on the other, Japan imported and consumed Chosŏn’s agricultural
products. More specifically, this has been characterised as a ‘rice-cotton exchange
system’ in which relatively cheap rice from Korea fed the workers of Japan’s
industrial areas, helping to keep wages low. Japanese-produced cotton could then
be sold in Chosŏn, helping to make profits for the Japanese textile industry.11

Government insolvency, inflation and the traditional

commercial system

It is difficult to quantify exactly the fiscal crisis of the Chosŏn government in the
1880s and 1890s, but we do know that for periods of time it had great difficulty in
paying salaries to its officials and soldiers as well as bills to merchants for the
goods it procured. Already by the late 1870s, the government owed some 1
million yang to tribute and guild merchants. A decade and a half later, in the
early 1890s, the government still owed hundreds of thousands of yang to the
guild merchants of Seoul. We also know that the recorded cash holdings of the
central government reached a nadir in 1881 at 367,000 yang, having once peaked
at 7,000,000 yang in 1809.12
The consequences of government insolvency became clear in 1882 when
soldiers in Seoul mutinied over the non-payment of salaries and the adulteration
of their rice payments. But the effects were also felt by the traditional commercial
system of the capital, centred around the merchant guilds, called sijŏn, that
supplied the government with a variety of commodities and were especially
important in procuring goods for the tribute missions to Qing. The government
traditionally paid the guilds high, fixed prices to secure the goods it needed and
allowed them to sell off large quantities of rice or cotton at market prices, often
making good profits. However, from the mid-1870s, government debts to the
merchants began to mount, although government demands for goods did not
decline but in fact increased, partly due to the increased diplomatic activity of the
period. To make matters worse, the government for the most part still demanded
the goods it purchased at the longstanding fixed prices, even while inflation
soared in the 1880s (for reasons we will return to in the next section). This
situation brought some of the merchant guilds to the brink of bankruptcy and
forced many individual merchants out of the market altogether. A particularly
acute case was that of the Myŏnjujŏn – a guild selling domestically produced silk
cloth – which in 1892 petitioned the Chosŏn government, claiming that it was
losing 80–90,000 yang a year in its trade with the government and was now owed
a total of 200,000 yang, a phenomenal amount of money for the time. It, alongside
a number of the other guilds, also complained about the problem of inflation,
which, combined with the fixed prices paid by the government, could lead to
considerable losses or at best meagre profits.
For other traditional big merchants, such as those belonging to the main cotton
guild in Seoul – the Paengmokchŏn – the biggest problem facing them was not
inflation or government insolvency but rather competition from Chinese and
Japanese merchants who had entered Seoul after the trade agreements of 1882
and 1883. As noted above, cotton cloth was the main import to Chosŏn in the
1880s and 1890s and the trade in Western-produced cloth was dominated by
Chinese merchants. This influx of manufactured cloth couldn’t fail to have a
negative effect on the business of the Paengmokchŏn in particular, although
tensions between Korean and foreign merchants were much broader. In the late
1880s this led to organised collective action by the Seoul guilds to recover their
monopolies in the face of competition from foreign merchants. This action
reached a climax in the first month of 1890 when all the Seoul guilds participated
in a merchants’ strike, closing their shops for a week and protesting in front of
the Chosŏn Foreign Office. The Chosŏn government was sympathetic to their
plight and wanted to renegotiate the terms of its trade agreements with China
and Japan in order to remove foreign merchants from the capital to Inch’ŏn or
nearby ports on the Han River. But with the powerful Chinese ‘Imperial Resident’
Yuan Shikai based in Seoul and exerting considerable political influence, as well
as strong objections from the Japanese, the government was in no position to
achieve this.13
There were a number of possible measures that the Chosŏn government could
have taken in the 1880s in order to improve its financial situation and alleviate
the problems of the merchants. Probably the most effective would have been to
completely overhaul the taxation system, consolidate the fragmented central
financial institutions and attempt to balance the budget. But this was politically
difficult to achieve in the 1880s, and by the time this sort of comprehensive
reform did get underway with the Kabo Reforms of 1894–5, the state and the
reformers were firmly under Japanese influence. Another route was to seek
foreign loans to supplement government revenues, something that Chosŏn did in
fact do in the 1880s, but only with very limited success.14
The actual approach chosen by the government was to muddle through,
continuing to spend well beyond its means while at the same time attempting to
protect the traditional commercial system from the worst of the consequences.
Certainly in the late 1880s and even in the early 1890s, the Chosŏn state was still
strongly committed to preserving the traditional commercial system centred
around the privileged merchants of the Seoul guilds. Despite its own profound
weakness, it tried to find ways of doing this, such as partially abandoning the
fixed price system, allowing merchants to be paid out of local government
revenues rather than the central coffers and cracking down on predatory
practices towards merchants by branches of government.15
The government also turned to an old and previously unsuccessful method of
supplementing its revenues: the minting of debased cash. A five mun coin called
the tang’ojŏn was minted in 1883–4 and again in 1888, with an intrinsic value
only two times that of the traditional one mun coin, while a debased one mun
coin was minted in Pyongyang in 1893. The inevitable result of the debased
coinage was series of bouts of sharp inflation, which can be seen quite clearly in
the Seoul market prices listed in government gazettes of the 1880s, Hansŏng
Sunbo and Hansŏng Chubo. This was joined by other inflationary pressures in the
1880s and early 1890s such as bad harvests and the increasing exports of Korean
rice, which meant that rice prices began to be influenced not only by conditions
in Korea but also by demand in the export market, Japan. Overall there was a
gradual tendency for the prices of Korean rice and other consumer goods to catch
up with prices in closely connected markets such as Japan. The very sharp rises in
prices in the 1880s have been termed a ‘price revolution’; a one-off
transformation that irrevocably destroyed the relative price equilibrium of the
late Chosŏn period, which had been underpinned by the powerful system of state
redistribution.16
The economic turmoil of the 1880s, particularly in Seoul, had significant social
and political consequences. The rioting and political turmoil that followed the
Imo Soldiers’ Mutiny of 1882 and the Kapsin Coup of 1884 in Seoul had an
obvious economic dimension as many ordinary city-dwellers found their
livelihoods threatened by inflation, shortages, government insolvency and the
encroachment of Chinese and Japanese merchants. There were almost certainly
other less-well-known episodes of urban unrest during this period, and it is also
known that during periods of acute inflation or shortages in the late 1880s and
early 1890s, significant parts of the capital’s population left the city for villages in
the surrounding countryside where food could be found more easily and cheaply.
In the 1890s, as Japanese merchant capital penetrated the interior of Chosŏn, the
state attempted to solve its financial crisis by raising taxes and local government
officials turned to increasingly corrupt practices, the same sorts of problems arose
in the countryside. This worsening economic situation for already poor Korean
peasants was no doubt the main impetus behind the growth of the millenarian
Tonghak movement and ultimately the huge peasant uprising that broke out
under its banner in early 1894.

New merchants and new markets

While a combination of government insolvency and the arrival of international
trade in Korea began to destroy the centuries-old traditional commercial system,
new markets and new groups of merchants also began to grow at a fast pace. In
the 1880s and 1890s, a commercial revolution was taking place in Korea. As we
have seen, this revolution could be very destructive and for many people,
including both poor city dwellers and once-wealthy merchants, it was a disaster.
But for others, there was a bonanza. In addition to the merchants who came to
Chosŏn from all over China and Japan to try their hand in the new treaty ports,
there were also many beneficiaries from closer to home. Chief among these
beneficiaries was the group of Korean merchants called kaekchu who acted as
intermediaries between foreign merchants and domestic traders. They had
existed before the port opening as a layer of merchants who helped to facilitate
trade by working as middlemen or providing financial or lodging services. Now
at the treaty ports they came to play a crucial role carrying out consignment
trade with Japanese and Chinese merchants and were able to grow rapidly in
numbers and wealth, reaching almost 500 by the late 1890s in the treaty ports of
Pusan, Inch’ŏn and Wonsan. For a while their position at the nexus between
international trade and domestic markets was very lucrative, and they were able
to open offices in Seoul and the treaty ports to represent their interests.
However, the kaekchu remained to a large extent subordinate to the Japanese
and Chinese merchants that they dealt with, unable to match their capital and
lacking in the concerted state backing that they enjoyed. Japanese merchants, for
example, were given low interest loans, while the Japanese government put
considerable efforts into supporting maritime shipping for the sake of its
merchants. In addition, the unequal treaties gave the foreign merchants a number
of advantages over their Korean counterparts, particularly in legal disputes.
Having said this, it is not the case that the Chosŏn government completely
neglected its merchants. Despite its financial constraints, it did attempt to support
the kaekchu and other merchants by providing capital from local tax receipts
using a system known as oehoek. Although this system came to be used more
frequently after the Kabo Reforms of 1894, it was still a rather unstable means of
supporting merchant capital and it could never level the playing field between
Korean and Japanese or Chinese merchants. As a result, the kaekchu became
increasingly dependent on their foreign counterparts, often relying on them for
capital, then becoming indebted to them and finally going bankrupt.17
A broader social change spurred by the opening of ports was the growth of the
landlord class in the countryside. Landlords and rich peasants were another
group who were able to benefit from the growth of international trade and the
demand for Korean rice, accumulating wealth and land as rice prices rose.
Merchants who made their fortune in the treaty ports or developing inland trade
could now invest their money in land and become major landlords. Meanwhile,
poorer peasants continued to be pushed into landless status and were not in a
position to benefit from the demand for rice since they had to either consume or
quickly sell the rice they produced.
The Open Port Period in general saw the market emerge as the dominant mode
of economic integration in Chosŏn society, while other aspects of capitalism such
as wage labour and industrial production still remained very marginal. The
number of local markets in the country had remained static during the nineteenth
century, but during the Open Port Period the numbers began to grow again as
commerce became increasingly important in the Korean countryside. At the same
time, the treaty ports themselves – Pusan and Inch’ŏn in particular – grew from
small towns to significant commercial cities, overtaking Seoul as the centre of
Chosŏn commerce. These new treaty ports, with their foreign residents and
kaekchu, began to exert a considerable force over the rest of the economy,
absorbing distribution routes and production areas into their orbit. Most
dangerously, they sucked rice out of the regions surrounding them, causing
periodic shortages, and these shortages even affected the capital and other major
cities like Pyongyang, causing unrest, as mentioned above. The Chosŏn
government attempted to ease these problems by using its power to prohibit the
export of rice (using a measure called panggok), but Japanese traders and
government objected strongly to this state intervention and brought suits for
compensation. By the late 1890s, therefore, it became increasingly difficult for the
government to use this means of controlling the market.18 The Kabo Reforms of
the mid-1890s, which will be considered in more detail in the next section, also
acted to reduce the power of the state to redistribute resources outside of the
market, chiefly by monetising taxation. This went along with the more general
decline in the economic power of the state, as recounted in the previous section,
to further spur the growth of the market. Another factor in the growth of the
market during this period was the introduction of modern financial institutions
and communications infrastructure, beginning in the second half of the 1880s.
However, an even bigger boost to market growth came in the early 1900s with
the development of a national rail network that could safely and speedily link
treaty ports, cities, commercial towns and their agricultural hinterlands.

Modernisation and industrialisation: early state-led

development versus foreign encroachment

From early in the Open Port Period the Chosŏn government adopted a pragmatic
modernisation and self-strengthening policy aimed at countering the threat from
the ‘foreign barbarians’. However, prior to the Kabo Reforms of 1894–5 this state-
led modernisation took place largely within the limits set by the framework of
the slogan ‘Eastern ways, Western means/technology’ (tongdo sŏgi). This meant
that the early reforms focused on limited changes to government institutions and
attempts at modernisation that focused on strengthening the military through
better training and more modern equipment. At the same time, the government
did begin to encourage some new forms of economic activity. In the early 1880s
the government directly set up a number of modernstyle companies and
supported others to found trading companies through special tax breaks. In 1883
the Chosŏn state set up a publications office (Pangmun’guk), which would begin
to introduce Koreans to knowledge about the rest of the world and to ideas about
capitalism, by printing the first Korean newspaper, the Hansŏng Sunbo. Then in
1884 the state established the first post office in Seoul and set up a postal service
between Seoul and Inch’ŏn, providing for the first time a public channel of
communication between the capital and the nearby treaty port. Meanwhile, the
government also began to explore ways to develop Korean industry on a more
modern basis by hiring Chinese advisors on sericulture and textile
manufacturing. It set up a model farm intended to introduce modern agricultural
techniques from the US, established a modern paper mill under state control and
supported the founding of a Korean steamship line intended to compete with the
Japanese in the early 1890s. However, all these attempts at economic
modernisation in the 1880s and early 1890s were extremely limited in their scale
and further compromised by the more general weakness of the Chosŏn state,
with its parlous finances and limited access to modern technology.
While the Chosŏn state was actively pursuing a form of limited modernisation
in the late nineteenth century, much of the new economic infrastructure and the
earliest signs of industrialisation were in fact brought to Korea by its encroaching
neighbours. It was the Chinese and Japanese who brought modernstyle banks to
Chosŏn as well as shipping lines and the telegraph system (first installed on the
Korean peninsula by the Chinese in 1885, although there was already a Pusan-
Nagasaki undersea cable owned by the Japanese). It was also they who
introduced some of the first modern manufacturing facilities, such as the brick
kilns established in the environs of Seoul in the mid-1880s by the Chinese or the
mechanised rice mills established by the Japanese in the treaty ports from the late
1880s. In order to serve Chosŏn’s growing resident Japanese communities in the
late nineteenth century, Japanese businessmen also estab lished industrial
enterprises producing soy sauce, tobacco and distilled spirits, but this sort of
small-scale manufacturing was still a far cry from the extensive industrialisation
that was taking place in Japan itself at the same time. By the end of the 1890s,
some Korean-owned factories were also being established, mainly in textiles and
often operated by government officials or rich merchants.
The reform government that came to power in the summer of 1894 with the
backing of the Japanese military forces then occupying Seoul and was led by
members of the Enlightenment Party who had long wanted to emulate Japan’s
Meiji reforms and transform Chosŏn into a strong modern nation. With some
irony they finally got their chance to enact these reforms just as Chosŏn’s two
neighbouring powers fought a bloody war for supremacy on its soil and a huge
peasant uprising wracked the countryside. Under these circumstances and after
almost 20 years of unequal treaties and foreign encroachment into the Chosŏn
economy, it is no surprise that the reformers were unable to emulate Meiji Japan
in Korea. However, the Kabo Reforms that began in 1894 and carried on into 1895
did bring many important top-down economic changes. More specifically, the
reforms represented a series of radical changes in the economic operation of the
state which then had profound impacts on society at large.19
Perhaps the most important economic reform of this period was the thorough
overhaul of taxation that simplified the diverse and complex tax system and
completely monetised it for the first time. Although taxation had already become
increasingly monetised in the late Chosŏn period, taxes were still being collected
in rice and cloth alongside cash prior to the Kabo Reforms, which meant that
these commodities were often used as currencies too and could theoretically be
exchanged with cash at official rates. Besides tax reform, a modernstyle
government budget system was introduced, the currency was placed on a silver
standard and the buying and selling of slaves was prohibited. This latter reform
was fairly straightforward since slave ownership had been declining for a long
time and all state-owned slaves had been manumitted almost a century before.20
Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 brought a decisive end to
Qing’s status as suzerain over Chosŏn, and with this centuries of Korean tribute
to China were also brought to an end. The Kabo Reforms officially declared the
abolition of the annual tribute missions, and this had significant economic as well
as geopolitical implications since the elite guild merchants of Seoul were
responsible for providing large quantities of tribute goods for the missions. With
the disappearance of this form of procurement, a large part of the guilds’ raison
d’être also disappeared. This wasn’t the only blow that the Kabo Reforms dealt to
the traditional commercial system. They also did away with the monopoly
privileges of the largest and wealthiest guilds in the capital (often referred to as
the Six Guilds) and the privileges enjoyed by the pedlars’ guilds. At the same
time, the reform government introduced new regulations on the establishment
and operation of modernstyle companies in an attempt to shift commerce from
the old monopoly-based system to one based on competition among companies.
This attempt to develop the Chosŏn economy by fostering new businesses was
one area where the aims of the Kabo Reform government clashed most clearly
with their Japanese supporters. While the former wanted to support Korean
businesses in order to strengthen the economy, the latter were already preparing
the way for their eventual colonisation of Korea and were busy seeking
concessions that would benefit Japanese capital. Thus, Japan used means such as
loan conditions to try to prevent the Chosŏn state from developing Korean
businesses. However, even after the fall of the Kabo government and the
establishment of the Great Han Empire in 1897, the new government continued
the policy of trying to strengthen Korean busi ness so that it could compete with
foreign capital. The government continued to be closely involved in the
establishment of new companies. However, unlike the self-strengthening period
of the 1880s, it did not directly establish enterprises itself but rather worked
closely with private businessmen, some of whom even came from a traditional
merchant background. The Great Han Empire government also supported the
development of modern infrastructure in the areas of communications and
shipping and founded or supported a number of schools designed to educate
engineers and businessmen.21 In 1898, the government began a much-needed
modernstyle land survey to determine the value of all land in the country and to
establish ownership rights and cultivation rights. This survey used modern
techniques and aimed at increasing tax revenues and establishing modern
property rights regulated by the state, but it was never completed and stopped at
the time of the Russo-Japanese War.22
While the Chosŏn governments of the 1890s strove to support nascent modern
industry and business, foreign capital was also making considerable headway
into the Chosŏn economy. In the mid-1890s, while Japan was temporarily on the
back foot, a variety of countries moved in to gain economic concessions. Between
1895 and 1897, US, British, French and German companies all gained mining
rights in Chosŏn, mainly for gold mines, such as the British mine at Ŭnsan in
northeastern Korea, owned by Chosen Corp. Ltd., or the American mine at
Unsan, owned by the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company. The Russians and
the Japanese gained rights to other natural resources such as timber, fishing
grounds and coal. Both the Americans and the French signed railway concession
deals in 1896, with the US businessman James R. Morse getting a concession to
build a railway between Seoul and Inch’ŏn and the French civil engineering
company Fives-Lille a similar one for a line between Seoul and Ŭiju on the border
with China. Two years later in 1898, an agreement was reached between the
Great Han Empire and a pair of American businessmen to set up a company that
would begin the electrification of Seoul, install water mains and construct a tram
system, the first in Asia. It is significant, however, that neither the Seoul-Inch’ŏn
rail line nor the Seoul-Ŭiju line were actually completed by American or French
companies, but instead hit practical and political obstacles and were taken over
by Japanese companies. This was also a sign of Japan regaining its political and
economic influence in Chosŏn in the late 1890s as it built on its dominance of
Chosŏn trade and saw off its European and American competitors.23

The Chosŏn economy in the first decade of the

twentieth century
After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, Japan was finally in a position to begin
the process of turning Chosŏn into a colony in earnest. This it did with the
Protectorate Treaty of 1905, which gave Japan complete control of Chosŏn’s
foreign relations and stationed a powerful Japanese resident-general in Seoul.
Although the Chosŏn state had been gradually losing its sovereignty over the
three decades since the Kanghwa Treaty, it was the Protectorate Treaty that put
the country firmly on the path from semi-colony to colony. As a result, Japan
was able to place its advisors into the Chosŏn government and gain almost
complete control over economic policy, setting about restructuring the Chosŏn
economy in its own favour almost immediately.
One of the first measures was a complete reform of the currency system that
abolished the existing money and introduced a new Chosŏn currency
subordinated to the Japanese yen. The basic unit of the currency system also
changed from the traditional yang (made up of 100 muncoins) to the won (using
the same Chinese character as the Japanese yen). This meant that Chosŏn was
essentially brought into the Japanese currency system, bringing great advantages
for Japanese merchants doing business in Korea. Korean merchants, however,
were hit very hard by the currency reform. Despite facing competition from
foreign merchants and losing their official monopoly, the Seoul merchant guilds
had adapted and were still dominating the capital’s retail commerce at the turn of
the century. But the 1905 currency reform caused them a huge financial shock,
leaving them extremely short of cash. As a result, many merchants had to sell or
pawn their assets to get cash, and many are said to have been bankrupted.
The Chosŏn Residency-General also carried out a reform of government
finances and taxation in 1905, which brought the tax collection system more
firmly under central control and put the state treasury in the hands of the
Japanese Dai-ichi Bank. These reforms also sought to separate more clearly the
finances of the state from the finances of the Korean imperial house. The main
aim of the reforms was to increase tax revenues in order to fund the nascent
colonial state and the infrastructure projects – chiefly the expansion of the
railway system – that the Japanese saw as crucial to their domination of Korea.
In 1909 the colonial government established the Bank of Korea (its name was
later changed to Bank of Chōsen) and transferred to it the central banking
functions formerly held by Dai-ichi Bank. In this period the Japanese Resident-
General also set up a series of other financial institutions to facilitate the
development and exploitation of the Korean economy. Among them were the
Agricultural-Industrial Bank, founded in 1906, and the Oriental Development
Company, founded in 1908. The latter played a particularly infamous role during
the colonial period by acquiring huge amounts of Korean land and also
promoting Japanese colonial settlement of Korea.
Another very important development in the years leading up to the annexation
was the breakneck construction of a nationwide rail network. The first line,
connecting Seoul with Inch’ŏn, had been taken over by the Japanese from its
American concession holder in 1898 and the bulk of the line completed in 1899. In
1905, the first major route – the Seoul-Pusan line – was completed by a Japanese
syndicate essentially controlled by the Japanese state. The Seoul-Ŭiju line, which
had originally been a French concession, was also taken over by the Japanese and
completed at speed during the Russo-Japanese War, reaching completion in 1906.
In the same year, the whole of the Chosŏn railway system, now consisting of
three lines, was formally nationalised in a move aimed at confirming the control
of the Japanese. By 1910, then, Chosŏn had 1,086 kilometres of railways, directly
under Japanese control, that linked Japan via Pusan with the main commercial
and administrative centres of the Korean peninsula and on up into Manchuria.
Although, it is worth noting that it was not until 1911 that a rail bridge over the
Yalu River was completed at Ŭiju, finally connecting the Chosŏn rail system with
Manchuria.24
Neither the Chosŏn government nor the foreign investors they initially gave
concessions to had the capital necessary to build the main trunk routes through
the Korean peninsula. In the end it was actually the Japanese state, driven
initially by military concerns at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, that carried
out the construction of the two main lines. The development of the rail system
absorbed large amounts of resources and was the focus of Japanese capital
exports to Korea in the pre-annexation period. Railways were an effective way
for Japan to increase its control over Korea economically and politically, just as
other colonial powers did elsewhere in the world. They also laid the way for its
later military expansion beyond the Korean peninsula into northern China. It was
Koreans who paid a heavy price for their construction, with large areas of land
confiscated and many thousands of Korean workers conscripted to work in
dangerous conditions as the railways were built rapidly in mountainous territory.

Conclusion

The opening of Chosŏn’s ports from the 1870s brought a series of dramatic
economic changes to Korea. The external influences and interference of this
period did not act upon an unchanging Chosŏn society but found a country
already undergoing profound changes and facing crises that were largely
internally generated. Certainly the most prominent economic change of this
period was the arrival of modern international trade, which transformed forever
the Chosŏn economy and the lives of millions of people by introducing new
commodities (principally factory-produced cotton) and spurring the production of
others (mainly rice and beans). In a short space of time, Chosŏn was detached
from the Chinese world order, with its circumscribed and ritualised international
trade, to become a small part of the global capitalist system. And as we have
seen, this had profound effects not just in the treaty ports but throughout Korean
society, as the influence of the international market reached into remote parts of
the country. The changes wrought by the arrival of international trade were often
reinforced by the financial crisis of the Chosŏn state, which in the 1880s had
reached a position of insolvency. Thus, the traditional commercial system of the
capital was hit by both competition from foreign merchants and the inability of
the government to pay for the goods it procured. It was also a combination of the
decline of state-centred redistribution and articulation with the world market that
caused the high inflation and periodic shortages of the late nineteenth century
that so affected the lives of ordinary Koreans.
 Koreans could and did respond to the economic challenges of this new period
in creative ways, both at a private level and at the level of the state. Successive
Chosŏn governments attempted – with varying success – to introduce economic
reforms, establish modern economic institutions and foster the development of
the economy through state-led or state-supported enterprises. But at every turn
these reforms and initiatives were held back by interference from the imperialist
powers, primarily China and Japan; lack of government funds; lack of knowledge
and technical expertise; and political divisions within the Chosŏn elite over
which direction to take. Meanwhile, at the private level, absorption into the
capitalist world system did mean riches for some private merchants, landlords
and farmers who had much to gain from Japan’s demand for Korean rice. Then in
the first decade of the twentieth century, Japan gained the upper hand in the
geopolitical struggle over Korea, allowing it a free hand to reform Chosŏn’s
economy in a direction beneficial to its own capital and to its broader strategic
aims.
The most prominent question arising from this period is why Chosŏn’s efforts
to effect economic modernisation in the late nineteenth century failed and Japan
was ultimately successful in colonising Korea. Like most historical questions, the
picture is complicated and multi-faceted and a full and definitive answer might
be impossible, but we can point to some of the primary factors behind this failure.
One of the most fundamental was the near bankruptcy of the Chosŏn state in the
late nineteenth century, resulting partly from its narrow and declining tax base.
Without capital, economic reforms and state-led self-strengthening were doomed
to failure. And while there were meaningful attempts at reforming the taxation
system, particularly with the Kabo Reforms, they were almost certainly too late
and probably too little, since they did little to tackle the fundamental problem of
land measurement. The governments of the late nineteenth century were
constantly plagued by political divisions and in-fighting but were also divided
around quite fundamental issues about how far reforms should go. Put simply,
there was no political revolution that could clear the way for a decisive
programme of reforms, a programme that would have to attack some vested
interests. By the time thorough reforms were carried out in 1894–5, they were
already compromised by direct Japanese interference. As was noted at the
beginning of this chapter, the weakness of the Chosŏn state forced it to rely on a
series of outside powers (China, Russia and finally Japan) and this tended to
compromise its efforts at modernisation almost as soon as they began.
It goes without saying that foreign encroachment into the Chosŏn economy
was one of the main factors behind the failure to modernise independently. As
noted at the beginning of this chapter, by the time Chosŏn was forced into the
world system, its neighbours, Japan in particular, had gained a significant head
start in the process of capitalist modernisation. Thus, from the very beginning of
Chosŏn’s entry into the global system, it faced economic interference from the
imperial powers in a variety of forms. There were the aggressive trade practices
of Japanese and Chinese merchants built on the unequal treaties and backed by
their respective governments; the manipulation of the Chosŏn government
through the control of foreign loans; the scramble for economic concessions in
the 1890s; and finally Japan’s direct takeover of Chosŏn economic policy in the
early 1900s. From the very beginning in 1876, Chosŏn had lost a considerable part
of its economic sovereignty and it was never able to regain this. For good or ill,
Chosŏn did begin the process of economic modernisation in the Open Port
Period, but it did not do so on its own terms and it did not lead to the
establishment of a ‘strong and wealthy’ independent nation, as the Meiji
Restoration had done in Japan.

Notes
1 For the most part I will use Chosŏn and Korea interchangeably in this chapter. However, the government
of the period in question will usually be referred to as Chosŏn.

2 For more on the origins of the stagnation theory of Korean history, see: Miller, ‘The idea of stagnation in
Korean historiography.’ In the 1970s a major debate developed among Korean historians over the
economic and land reform efforts of the Kwangmu government, centred around Kim Yongsŏp, Sin
Yongha and Kang Mangil. See: Kim, Y. S. ‘Kwangmu nyŏn’gan ŭi yangjŏn saŏp e kwanhan il yŏn’gu’;
Sin, Y. H. ‘Nonjaeng: <Kwangmu kaehyok non> ŭi munjejŏm’. A recent example of negative views of
nineteenth-century economic history would be Yi Yonghun’s new stagnationist historiography in
‘Chosŏn hugi kyŏngjesa ŭi saeroun tonghyang kwa kwaje’. Examples of recent innovative work on this
period include Larsen, Tradition, Treaties, and Trade; Yi, S. N. Cheguk kwa sang’in; and Duus, P., The
 Abacus and the Sword.

3 Miller, ‘The idea of stagnation in Korean historiography’, pp. 4–5.

4 As King Kojong was too young to rule, his father Yi Ha-ŭng acted as regent with the title Hŭngsŏn
Taewon’gun.

5 The ports of Wonsan (on the east coast) and Inch’ŏn (close to Seoul) were opened in 1880 and 1883,
respectively. In the years 1897–99, a series of further ports were opened to foreign trade: Mokp’o,
Chinnamp’o, Kunsan, Masan, Sŏngjin and Pyŏngyang.

6 Conventional tariffs are tariff levels that are negotiated between the two parties and then fixed, thus
abrogating the right of the parties to set their own tariffs independently.

7 Regulations for Maritime and Overland Trade (Cho-Ch’ŏng sangmin suryuk muyŏk changjŏng).

8 Larsen, Tradition, Treaties and Trade, chapters 4 and 7.

9 The figures used here are based on table 6–1 in Yi, H. C., Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, p. 258.

10 The trade figures used in these two paragraphs are based on table 6–2 in Yi, Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, p.
260.

11 Yi, H. C., Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, pp. 264–5.

12 See Pak, S. K. and Pak, S. I., ‘Chosŏn hugi chaejŏng ŭi yakhwa sijam e kwanhan koch’al’, p. 147.

13 Larsen, Tradition, Trade and Treaties, pp. 203–4; Son Chŏngmok, Han’guk kaehanggi tosi pyŏnhwa
kwajŏng yŏn’gu, pp. 182–93.

14 Larsen, Tradition, Trade and Treaties, pp. 145–157.

15 Miller, The Silk Merchants of the Myŏnjujŏn: Guild and Government in Late Chosŏn Korea.

16 Pak, I. T., ‘Sŏul ŭi sungnyŏn mit misungnyŏn nodongja ŭi imgŭm, 1600–1909’, p. 66.

17 Yi, H. C., Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, pp. 282–4.

18 McNamara, Trade and Transformation in Korea, p. 32; Yi, Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, p. 280.

19 For more on the Kabo Reforms, see: Lew, Y. I., ‘The Reform Efforts and Ideas of Pak Yŏng-hyo, 1894–
1895’; Wilkinson, The Corean Government: Constitutional Changes, July 1894 to October 1895.

20 On Korean slavery and its decline, see: Kim Bok Rae, ‘Nobi: A Korean System of Slavery’.

21 Yi, H. C., Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, pp. 276–7.

22 Choi, W. K., ‘The Legalization of Land Rights under the Great Han Empire’.
23 Duus, Peter, The Abacus and the Sword, chapter 4.

24 Yi, H. C., Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, pp. 307–13.

References
Choi, W. K. (2005) ‘The Legalization of Land Rights under the Great Han Empire’,
in Pang Kie-chung and Michael D. Shin (eds.) Landlords, Peasants and
Intellectuals in Modern Korea, Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Series.
Deuchler, M. (1977) Confucian Gentlemen and Barbarian Envoys: The Opening of
Korea, 1875–1885, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Duus, P. (1995) The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea,
1895–1910, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Furuta, K. (2001) ‘Inchon Trade: Japanese and Chinese Merchants and the
Shanghai Network’, in S. Sugiyama and Linda Grove (eds.) Commercial
Networks in Modern Asia, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Han, U. G. (1970) Han’guk kaehanggi ui sang’ŏp yŏn’gu, Seoul: Ilchogak.
Kim, B. R. (2003) ‘Nobi: A Korean System of Slavery’, Slavery & Abolition: A
Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 24:2: 155–168.
Kim, O. K. (1992) Chosŏn wangjo chaejŏngsa yŏn’gu IV – kŭndaep’yŏn, Seoul:
Ilchogak.
Kim, T. J. (1974) ‘A Survey of Government Finances of the Late Yi Dynasty
(1895–1910)’, Korea Journal, 14:2: 24–29.
Kim, Y. S. (1968) ‘Kwangmu nyŏn’gan ŭi yangjŏn saŏp e kwanhan il yŏn’gu’,
Asea yŏn’gu, 31.
Kim, Y. S.. (2005) ‘The Two Courses of Agrarian Reform in Korea’s
Modernization’, in Pang Kie-chung and Michael D. Shin (eds.) Landlords,
Peasants and Intellectuals in Modern Korea, Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia
Series.
Kuksa p’yonch’an wiwonhoe. (2003) ‘Kaehang hu ŭi sahoe kyongjejŏk
pyŏndong’, in Han’guksa, 39, Seoul: Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwonhoe.
Larsen, K. (2008) Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Chosŏn
Korea, 1850–1910, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
Lew, Y. I. (1977) ‘The Reform Efforts and Ideas of Pak Yŏng-hyo, 1894–1895’,
Korean Studies, 1: 21–61.
McNamara, D. L. (1996) Trade and Transformation in Korea, 1876–1945, Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Miller, O. (2007) The Merchants of the Myŏnjujŏn: Guild and Government in Late
Chosŏn Korea, unpublished PhD thesis, University of London.
Miller, O.. (2010) ‘The idea of stagnation in Korean historiography: From Fukuda
Tokuzō to the New Right’, Korean Histories, 2:1.
Pak, I. T. (2004) ‘Sŏul ŭi sungnyŏn mit misungnyŏn nodongja ŭi imgŭm, 1600–
1909’, in Y. H. Yi (ed.) Suryang kyŏngjesa ro tasi pon Chosŏn hugi, Seoul: SNU
Press.
Pak, S. K. and Pak, S. I. (1988) ‘Chosŏn hugi chaejŏng ŭi yakhwa sijŏm e
kwanhan koch’al’, Tongbang hakchi, 60.
Palais, J. B. (1975) Politics and Policy in Traditional Korea, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Sin, Y. H. (1978) ‘Nonjaeng: <Kwangmu kaehyok non> ŭi munjejŏm’, Ch’angjak
kwa pip’yŏng, 49: 143–183.
Son, C. M. (1982) Han’guk kaehanggi tosi pyŏnhwa kwajŏng yŏn’gu, Seoul:
Ilchisa.
Wilkinson, W. H. (1897) The Corean Government: Constitutional Changes, July
1894 to October 1895, Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate
General of Customs.
Yi, H. C. (2012) Han’guk kyŏngje t’ongsa, fifth edition, Seoul: Haenam.
Yi, S. N. (2007) Cheguk kwa sang’in, Seoul: Yŏksa pip’yŏngsa.
Yi. Y. H. (2004) ‘Chosŏn hugi kyŏngjesa ŭi saeroun tonghyang gwa kwaje’, in Y.
H. Yi (ed.) Suryang kyŏngjesa ro tasi pon Chosŏn hugi, Seoul: SNU Press.
Zo, K. Z. (1976) ‘The Impact of the Opening of Korea on Its Commerce and
Industry’, Korea Journal, 16:2: 27–46.
7
The 1894 Tonghak Rebellion

Carl Young

In the early spring of 1894, a massive peasant uprising broke out that involved
members of the Tonghak movement, a new Korean religion, as well as many
other peasants. It is known through a variety of names today such as the
Tonghak Rebellion, the Tonghak Peasant War and the Tonghak Revolution.1 This
rebellion, centred in the southern provinces of Ch’ŏlla and Ch’ungch’ŏng, was
the largest one in Korean history and involved many Tonghak adherents in its
leadership. Although the majority of the insurgents were not members of the
Tonghak religion, its organisational structure helped facilitate the organisation
and cohesion of the rebellion. The success of the rebels in early 1894 led the
Korean government to appeal to China for aid in putting down the uprising.
When China sent troops to help the Korean government, Japan used this as a
pretext to send its own soldiers to Korea, even though the Korean government
and the rebels had established an uneasy truce by this time. This led to the Sino-
Japanese War of 1894–1895, and Japan’s victory in the war marked the beginning
of its ascendancy as a modern imperial power.
The rebellion and the Sino-Japanese War also led to a domestic coup d’état in
the Korean government supported by the Japanese. The new administration
launched the modernising Kabo Reforms, which changed the traditional
governing structure of Korea between 1894 and 1896. This Japanese intervention
led to a second stage of the rebellion in late 1894, which was brutally and quickly
put down by government and Japanese troops. In spite of the rebellion’s failure, it
acted as a catalyst that helped to provoke events that profoundly affected Korea
both domestically and internationally. The 1894 Tonghak Rebellion can thus be
seen as a watershed marking a new era in Korean history. Its revolutionary
consequences are the reason why so many scholars and activists have looked at
and analysed this event so profoundly.

What was Tonghak?

Tonghak arose in the last half of the nineteenth century, a period of domestic and
international turmoil in Korea and East Asia. Its founder, Ch’oe Che-u, an
educated but impoverished yangban, started preaching his new synthesis of
Eastern philosophy and folk traditions among peasants and marginalised
members of the educated classes in southeastern Korea after a profound
experience with the divine in 1860. Ch’oe Che-u had wandered for several years
before this, searching for answers to what he felt was a spiritual void in his life
that the contemporary interpretations of Neo-Confucianism that were then
prevalent in Chosŏn Korea were unable to answer. Ch’oe Che-u was also socially
marginalised because of his poverty and his status as a secondary son born of a
concubine that barred him from many opportunities that would be open to a
person of his education. He also observed the social problems in Chosŏn Korea
and was increasingly concerned by the growing power of the West in China and
the activities of Catholics in Korea. Eventually, this led to an ecstatic spiritual
experience that occurred during a time of illness. The divine spoke to Ch’oe Che-
u in a voice that seemed to come from both within and outside himself,
something that would later develop into a belief that God pervades all creation
and all human beings. The divine revealed a sacred incantation and a diagram
that Ch’oe needed to draw and then burn and drink the ashes so that he could be
healed. Ch’oe was indeed healed after following these instructions.
Ch’oe Che-u started preaching about his experience to his family and friends
in his local area near Kyŏngju and gained a reputation as a healer with his sacred
diagram and incantations. The chanting of the various forms of the Tonghak
incantation and the healing ritual were easily accessible to those without much
education. Ch’oe Che-u also discussed his experience with scholars and laid out
his doctrine in an intellectual style as well. He emphasised how his new teaching,
which he called Tonghak, or Eastern Learning, not only combined the best of
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism but also went beyond them by revealing
the true nature of the divine that was carried within all creation. His goal was to
make his teaching a new spiritual foundation for Chosŏn society to enable it to
withstand the onslaughts of both power and ideas coming from Western
countries. The implication of this teaching was that all human beings, regardless
of status or education, carried a part of the divine within them. By applying
Tonghak teachings and rituals, one could come into contact with the divine and
bring it out within oneself and benefit both the individual and society.
This combination exercised a dual appeal to both people with some education
and those who followed a more oral folk tradition. The new doctrine also
emphasised a more direct contact with the divine for all people, regardless of
education or social class, which also drew a large audience. The popularity of this
new doctrine quickly drew the attention of local officials, who were concerned
about the appeal of this unorthodox teaching, especially for its deviations from
Neo-Confucianism and the threat to social hierarchy implied in the new doctrine.
In the end, Ch’oe Che-u was arrested and finally executed in 1864. His new
religion was declared illegal, his writings were burned, and the organisation was
forced underground.
The new religion refused to die, however. Ch’oe Che-u’s successor, Ch’oe Si-
hyŏng, reorganised Tonghak as an underground movement in the 1870s and
1880s. Although Tonghak remained illegal, persecution occurred only
sporadically, with long periods of peace in between. This allowed Tonghak to
spread and consolidate itself, mainly in central Korea and increasingly in the
southwestern part of the country. Again, the majority of the believers were poor
agriculturalists, but many of the leaders were marginalised members of the
educated classes who were alienated from the Chosŏn political and social system
and the orthodox Neo-Confucianism that gave it intellectual support.
Tonghak’s local sections were re-established in 1878, and this was further
expanded by the establishment of regional groupings (p’o) that combined many
local branches (chŏp) together in a quasi-military style by 1884. Both the chŏp
and the p’o were connected to distinct networks of Tonghak preachers and their
converts. Six officers helped run the regional organisation, and this was often
supplemented by a leader (taejŏpchu) chosen by the leaders of the local branches.
Although there is some debate about the exact timing of the organisation of
several chŏp into a larger regional grouping, names of the p’o were apparent by
1893 and numbered around 50 by that time. This period also saw a certain
standardisation of Tonghak rituals as well as the compilation of Tonghak’s
scriptures in both classical Chinese and vernacular Korean. This again allowed it
to appeal to a dual audience of marginalised educated people and poorer peasants
without much education. It could also lead to different approaches to the faith, a
more philosophical one for the educated and another that drew on the rituals
based on folk tradition for those who were less literate.
The fact that there were a variety of approaches to access divine power in
Tonghak may have increased its appeal among a wider swath of Chosŏn rural
society. Tonghak did offer opportunities for the poor and uneducated to be part
of a movement that had ways for them to directly access divine power and be
part of a network that met regularly and reinforced social relationships outside of
normal state-centred structures. The literary tradition within Tonghak was
attractive to marginalised intellectuals and permitted them also to find a new
way to find spiritual and social satisfaction. The reforms in the religion’s
organisation and the compilation of scriptures and other ritual and doctrinal
works during this period helped to bolster the effectiveness and the esprit de
corps of the new religion. These contributed to Tonghak’s growing success and
strength in spite of official government persecution. By the 1890s, Tonghak had
strong local underground networks throughout southern Korea loosely united
under Ch’oe Si-hyŏng’s religious leadership.

Early rumblings
The period from the late 1870s to the late 1880s was also an important period in
Korean political history because foreign powers and a new order of international
relations imposed by the West affected Korea in its regional position in East Asia.
Japan was the first to break down the barrier in 1876, forcing an unequal treaty
on Korea similar to those which had been imposed on itself and on China by the
Western powers. Treaties were signed with other Western powers throughout the
1880s. However, the Western powers generally had their attention diverted
elsewhere, so the main foreign competition over Korea was between Japan and
China. This international rivalry exacerbated the official corruption and social
misery already existing in Korea, with the added threat of a possible loss of
independence.
By the 1890s, Ch’oe Si-hyŏng and other leaders had left their places of refuge
in southern Kangwŏn province to pursue their activities in Ch’ungch’ong and
Ch’ŏlla provinces, where the majority of Tonghak believers were now
concentrated. After years of relative relaxation, local government persecution of
Tonghak started increasing in Ch’ungch’ong and Ch’ŏlla, further indicative of
Tonghak’s growth in these regions and growing government ideological
defensiveness. Tonghak believers also became more vocal about their desire to
clear the name of their founder and legalise their religion. This was given further
impetus by the legalisation of Catholicism as a result of the Franco-Korean treaty
in 1886. In common with other Koreans, Tonghak followers were also victims of
government corruption which led to land and tax abuses. Many were also
resentful of the growing presence of Japanese merchants, who were not averse to
exploiting and swindling Korean peasants.
All these grievances combined together in two petition movements by
Tonghak followers in 1892 and 1893 to clear Ch’oe Che-u’s name. The petition in
1892 was given from a mass meeting near Chŏnju to the governors of Ch’ŏlla and
Ch’ungch’ŏng provinces. This was done without Ch’oe Si-hyŏng’s permission by
local Tonghak leaders. The movement aimed to dis sociate Tonghak from the
label of heterodoxy. The petition was couched in very traditional Confucian
terms and asserted that Tonghak was not heretical, but instead united the best of
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, and was substantially similar to
Confucianism in its principles. It also denounced the activities of Japanese
merchants which brought difficulties to the people and also complained that
there was too much Western and Japanese influence in Korea. Finally, the
petition also protested against the persecution of Tonghak believers and
demanded the release of Tonghak prisoners and the clearing of Ch’oe Che-u’s
name. The movement had both political but also very religious demands.
The 1892 petition was rebuffed and as the persecutions and abuses continued,
pressure mounted for another petition movement in 1893. Taking advantage of
the birth of a royal prince, the petitioners were able to mix with the celebratory
crowds in the capital to stage a mass march by Tonghak followers that brought
the petition to the gates of the royal palace itself. The movement continued to
pledge loyalty to the king and emphasised that Tonghak doctrine combined the
best of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, all of which were allowed by the
state. However, unofficial actions by some of the petitioners, such as the posting
of threatening placards on the property of Christian missionaries, revealed a
strong anti-Western and anti-Japanese stance among many of the protestors.
There may even have been a desire to overthrow the government on the part of
others. The government accepted the petition and told the demonstrators to
disperse, which they did. However, no action was taken afterwards to satisfy
their demands. The movement also wound down as prominent Tonghak leaders
around Ch’oe Si-hyŏng were worried about the potential for violence, which they
opposed. There was also apparently increasing dissatisfaction from many
Tonghak petitioners that the movement was taking a more political tone,
focussing more on political reforms and anti-foreign campaigns than on clearing
Ch’oe Che-u’s name and the legalisation of Tonghak.
It is interesting to note that Ch’oe Si-hyŏng was not the prime mover behind
these demonstrations. He gave in to pressure from other Tonghak leaders, chiefly
from Ch’ŏlla province, to go forward with the petitions. It is likely that he did
this because these leaders were going to go ahead with these actions anyway and
he wanted to maintain some control over the whole process. Still, Ch’oe Si-hyŏng
originally opposed these movements, mainly because he did not think that it was
an opportune time to engage in such action. Ch’oe Si-hyŏng emphasised passive
reform, spiritual regeneration, and the importance of organising Tonghak to
improve its effectiveness in spreading its spiritual message. Growing pressure,
especially from leaders and believers from Ch’ŏlla province, forced him to
compromise and allow actions that he was not comfortable with.
The events surrounding the petition movement also revealed increasing
tensions between Ch’oe Si-hyŏng and those close to him and other Tonghak
leaders who may have had a broader socio-political agenda than Ch’oe Si-hyŏng.
This may have led to differences in doctrine and religious priorities. These trends
may have been reinforced by Tonghak’s leadership and organisational structure,
which was only loosely centralised around Ch’oe Si-hyŏng’s leadership. This
decentralised structure was effective in an era of underground preaching but
made coordination more difficult between different Tonghak leadership networks
and had the potential of giving rise to independent streams of teaching and
authority. This made it more difficult for Ch’oe Si-hyŏng to keep control over
local congregations, especially at a time of persecution that caused difficulties in
communications. This difficulty would again reveal itself in the course of the
1894 rebellion.

The first stage

Although the main Tonghak leadership wanted to settle their grievances with the
government through peaceful means, events took a violent turn when Chŏn
Pong-jun, a local Tonghak leader in Kobu in the southwestern province of
Ch’ŏlla, started an armed rebellion in the spring of 1894 after Tonghak followers
and other peasants were abused by corrupt officials. This was to become the
largest peasant revolt in Korean history, with repercussions both domestically
and internationally.
The Kobu uprising began in the first lunar month of 1894 and was led by Chŏn
Pong-jun, a local Tonghak leader. There is a great deal of confusion surrounding
many events connected to 1894 because it was such a chaotic time and there was
a large variety of localised issues that overlapped with the major events of the
two stages of the rebellion. As well, local leaders often acted for their own
motivations with little coordination with the national movement. We actually
know little about Chŏn Pong-jun, except through the small number of petitions
that he sponsored and through the minutes of his trial. He first gained
prominence in Tonghak during the 1893 petition movement and seems to have
had contacts with anti-foreign officials and the Taewŏn’gun, King Kojong’s
father, who was well known for his anti-foreign tendencies but who was now
marginalised. It appears that he was a fairly recent convert to the faith, although
his local influence and dynamism quickly brought him to prominence in local
Tonghak circles in Ch’ŏlla province. It is highly likely that he was a fallen
yangban, just like Ch’oe Che-u and many others in the Tonghak leadership,
although he could also have been a wealthy commoner. There was a wide variety
of backgrounds in the rebellion’s leadership and many of them were educated.
Although most of the rebel fighters were mainly from the lower agricultural
classes, a large proportion of the leadership came from the marginalised educated
classes or rich farmers, along with poor farmers.
Although the 1894 rebellion is often known as the Tonghak Rebellion or
Tonghak Revolution, only a minority of the peasant rebels were Tonghak
followers. However, there were many conversions to Tonghak during the
different stages of the uprising. Even in the initial uprising in Kobu, only about
300 of the approximately 500 rebels were Tonghak followers. Others had close
personal relations with Chŏn Pong-jun. Still, Tonghak believers formed an
important part of the leadership and the rank and file, and this continued through
the next stages of the rebellion. It could be that Tonghak’s congregational
organisation, and most importantly, its recent role in the petition movements of
the past couple of years, already provided experience in organisation for political
and social action that gave Tonghak followers a prominent role in the 1894
rebellion’s organisation.
Local problems had motivated the original uprising, but the close contacts
between Chŏn and other like-minded Tonghak believers in Ch’ŏlla led to the
growing spread and success of the rebellion. About a month after the beginning
of the Kobu uprising, letters were sent by the Kobu rebels to other Tonghak
congregations in Ch’ŏlla province. Demands were made to reform corruption in
official circles while maintaining support for the king and the welfare of the
nation. However, not as much emphasis was placed on what had been traditional
Tonghak demands, such as religious freedom or the clearing of Ch’oe Che-u’s
name. Uprisings spread throughout much of Ch’ŏlla province. There were some
uprisings in Ch’ungch’ong and Kyŏngsang provinces as well, but they quickly
dispersed. A possible reason is that Ch’oe Si-hyŏng’s authority was stronger here
and he may have been more successful in ordering Tonghak followers in these
provinces to cease their actions.
Not all Tonghak believers were involved in the uprising led by Chŏn Pong-jun.
Ch’oe Si-hyŏng’s initial reaction was lukewarm at best. He seemed resigned to
the fact that the rebellion had happened and praised Chŏn’s motivations of filial
piety and humanity. However, he ordered Chŏn not to be hurried in his actions
and to desist and not defy the will of Heaven. Chŏn obviously disregarded this
order and so did most of the leadership in Ch’ŏlla province that followed in the
rebellion. However, most of the Tonghak organisation elsewhere, including most
of the senior leadership that was going to assume a prominent role in Tonghak in
the years after 1894, decided to follow Ch’oe Si-hyŏng’s leadership and did not
participate in the spring uprising.2 In spite of this, there appears to have been
little outward hostility between Ch’oe Si-hyŏng and Chŏn Pong-jun. Some
scholars believe that Ch’oe’s support of the rebellion has been downplayed in
historical memory so as to protect his reputation due to the rebellion’s failure.
This division was further reflected with the increasing use of the term namjŏp,
or Southern Assembly, to describe Tonghak leaders and followers, mainly in
Ch’ŏlla province, who engaged in the first stage of the rebellion. This was used to
distinguish these Tonghak believers from the pukchŏp, or Northern Assembly,
centred on Ch’oe Si-hyŏng. The term namjŏp is rarely seen before 1894 and
appears most often in non-Tonghak government, Japanese and bureaucratic
documents relating to the uprising. However, it is clear that Chŏn Pong-jun
himself started to use this term to designate his followers in Ch’ŏlla and to
distinguish himself from the older leadership. Some have asserted that this was
mainly a geographic designation, and it is true that there was not a complete
separation of the Northern and Southern Assemblies and that Ch’oe Si-hyŏng
conserved overall religious leadership over Tonghak. However, there are also
clear differences in the emphasis placed by the leaders of the two divisions over
doctrinal, political and social issues. Ch’oe Si-hyŏng placed a much greater
emphasis on spiritual and religious issues over overt socio-political action.
Although there was technical unity between these two divisions of Tonghak,
criticism between them continued well into the late summer of 1894. This can
again be indicative of some of the challenges Tonghak faced due to its loose
decentralised leadership structure compounded by difficulties in communication
between different regional networks of Tonghak followers.
The success of the rebels alarmed the Korean government. Under previous
agreements made with China and Japan, the Korean king appealed to China to
send troops to help put down the insurgency. China agreed to send military aid,
but this led Japan to exercise its option to send troops to protect its interests as
well. The Korean government, realising its mistake, tried to make peace with the
rebels in June 1894 by allowing them some input into local government through
the establishment of advisory agencies under Tonghak rebel control called
chipkangso that were to help government officials administer areas under rebel
control. The first stage of the rebellion came to an end because both the
government and the rebels were worried about Chinese and Japanese
intervention and this forced both into a compromise that neither side was very
comfortable with.

Uneasy interlude

The Korean government’s fears of instability were well warranted. In spite of the
peace, neither Japan nor China withdrew their troops from Korea. As tensions
rose between Japan and China, the Japanese brought the Korean government
under their control by engineering a palace coup in late July 1894. This brought in
a new administration that instituted government reforms based on Japan’s Meiji
restoration. These Kabo reforms, as they are commonly known in Korean history,
addressed many of the concerns that the rebels had raised. However, the fact that
Japanese influence was behind these innovations raised suspicions and made the
reform regime increasingly unpopular. Clashes between Chinese and Japanese
forces in Korea occurred shortly after the coup, making Korea a battlefield in a
regional war for supremacy between China and Japan that would culminate in a
Japanese victory the following year. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 was
one of the major first steps of Japanese imperial expansion that would continue in
various stages up until the end of World War II.
Both the Tonghak rebels in Ch’ŏlla province and the new government in Seoul
were increasingly ill at ease with each other through the summer of 1894 in spite
of the truce. Many of the rebels shared popular unease at the dependence of the
new reform administration on Japanese support and were distrustful of the
foreign ideas on which the government’s new policies were based. The
government felt a growing anxiety that the rebels were an alternate centre of
power, almost independent of it. The summer of 1894 also saw the establishment
of the new chipkangso which gave input into local government, mainly in Ch’ŏlla
province. There were also chipkangso established in some areas of Ch’ungch’ong
province and these were supervised by Ch’oe Si-hyŏng. Again, difficulties in
communication and differing local conditions led to different versions of the aims
of the chipkangso as well as to different actions. Land redistribution appears to
have been the main unifying agenda for the chipkangso, but because of the short
time that these institutions existed (little more than three months), it is very
difficult to see much action on this issue. Tensions between the Northern and
Southern Assemblies were also evident, with some evidence of efforts to get
certain p’o to switch sides. Ch’oe Si-hyŏng was also concerned at the on-going
arms build-up in areas controlled by the namjŏp, seeing it as a threat to the areas
under his control. He actually issued an official statement that Chŏn and those
affiliated with him were traitors to the state and heretics of the Tonghak faith.
There appear to have been some divisions even within the namjŏp. Chŏn Pong-
jun was an important leader in Ch’ŏlla, but he was certainly not the only one.
There were other important Tonghak leaders in the south, such as Kim Kae-nam
and Sŏ Chang-ok, who dominated their local areas. Kim Kae-nam was
increasingly autonomous in his area and consolidated his local power without
much reference to outside leadership. He was also less cooperative with
government authorities, and when the second stage of the rebellion began in the
autumn of 1894, he was reluctant to give much support to Chŏn and the other
Tonghak rebels. There was coordination between the namjŏp leaders but also
increasing autonomous action. Again, Tonghak’s decentralised leadership
structure made it not only difficult for Ch’oe Si-hyŏng to impose centralised
leadership but also made for a lack of a unified agenda on the part of the
Southern Assembly as well.
In spite of this, there were many conversions to Tonghak during this time,
especially in Ch’ŏlla but also in other provinces. However, the situation during
the summer of 1894 reveals that there were significant tensions between Tonghak
leaders and a lack of a unified agenda among Tonghak believers, even within the
rebel faction.

The second stage

Renewed disturbances occurred in the end of the summer of 1894, when
government troops attacked Tonghak believers without regard to the distinction
between those who followed Ch’oe Si-hyŏng and those who followed the rebel
leader Chŏn Pong-jun. This engendered great indignation on the part of both
Tonghak factions and led to calls for united action to drive out all foreign troops
from Korean soil and reform the government. Although he had condemned many
of Chŏn Pong-jun’s actions as illegal, Ch’oe Si-hyŏng agreed to unite with him in
joint action to “clear the Master’s [Ch’oe Che-u’s] name and fulfil the Way” in
October 1894.
The main motivation in this second stage of the rebellion that now united
Tonghak followers was anti-Japanese action and a desire to liberate the monarch
from foreign hands. On the new reformist government’s side, a growing
apprehension of greater regional autonomy with the new role of the chipkangso
likely motivated its anti-Tonghak actions. Although Tonghak followers provided
most of the leadership and its regional structure was instrumental in organising
the rebel forces, Tonghak’s importance in the second stage of the 1894 rebellion
was less obvious than in the first stage and the proportion of non-Tonghak
participants was greater. The field of action of the rebels also expanded, some
into the central and northern provinces of Kangwŏn and Hwanghae. Kim Ku, the
Korean nationalist activist, joined Tonghak at the age of 18 in 1893 in his native
Hwanghae province. In his later memoirs, he wrote that Tonghak’s aim was to
form a new people and establish a new nation when the “True Lord would come
to Kyeryongsan.” This statement is highly reminiscent of the Chŏnggamnok, an
old prophetic and divinatory work that was popular among much of the
peasantry. It prophesied the establishment of a new dynasty of justice at
Kyeryong mountain and often acted as an inspiration for other peasant
rebellions. Again this shows the often different understandings that Tonghak
believers themselves had of their religious and socio-political motivations. In his
trial after his capture, Chŏn Pong-jun admitted that there were more non-
Tonghak participants than Tonghak believers in the rebellion.3
The forces led by Chŏn Pong-jun and those forces loyal to Ch’oe Si-hyŏng
united together in Ch’ungch’ŏng province in November 1894. After a few initial
victories over government troops, the rebel forces suffered a terrible defeat with
great loss of life in a battle near Kongju in December 1894. The rebel troops
scattered into disparate groups and were never able to recover the initiative.

The aftermath
By the beginning of 1895, the rebellion was all but over. The combined Korean
government and Japanese troops targeted the main centre of rebel power in
Ch’ŏlla and southern Ch’ungch’ŏng provinces. These areas were the centre of
Chŏn Pong-jun’s Southern Assembly (namjŏp) faction, which had participated in
the first phase of the rebellion. They had been the major focus of Tonghak
strength before the uprising, but the military action resulted in massacres of
Tonghak believers, the destruction of their religious and military organisation
and the arrest and execution of the most important Tonghak leaders of the area,
including Chŏn Pong-jun and most of his prominent lieutenants. Many believers
also fled, never to return.4 There was not much left of the Southern Assembly
faction on which to build a revitalised organisation.
The case was different for the Northern Assembly (pukchŏp) faction headed by
Ch’oe Si-hyŏng and those loyal to him. After the defeat in Kongju, Ch’oe Si-
hyŏng fled north with his loyal lieutenants, eventually ending up in the
Ch’ungju/Hongju area of north Ch’ungch’ŏng province by the end of 1894. They
later fled to Inje county in Kangwŏn province in the first lunar month of 1895.
This was familiar territory for Ch’oe Si-hyŏng as he had wandered a lot in hiding
in this area during the 1880s. Kangwŏn province had had some sporadic rebel
activity in 1894, but there were not as many Tonghak followers as in the southern
and central provinces, and the rebel movement was put down. Anti-Tonghak
activities started immediately after the uprising occurred, mainly led by local
Confucian scholars who were deeply opposed to what they perceived as
Tonghak’s heresy. Because of this, there was not as great a need for government
or Japanese troops to put down the rebellion in this area. Although government
suppression of Tonghak was not concentrated in these areas, the search for these
leaders was very intense, and there were many close calls. Government
authorities knew that Ch’oe Si-hyŏng had fled towards the east and they engaged
in great efforts to capture him. This was to start several years of wandering from
place to place amidst great suffering in the mountains of Kangwŏn and north
Ch’ungch’ŏng until Ch’oe Si-hyŏng was finally captured and executed in 1898.
Before his death, Ch’oe Si-hyŏng trained new leaders to rebuild Tonghak’s
organisation. Son Pyŏng-hŭi took over the central leadership in 1900 and
embarked on a program of reorganisation, preaching and standardisation of
doctrine. In 1906, the name of the revitalised Tonghak organisation was changed
to Ch’ŏndogyo, in part to signal a new direction for the religion in the midst of
the social and political changes happening in Korea in the early twentieth
century. Ch’ŏndogyo continued to exist after the imposition of Japanese
colonialism and was prominent in the March First anti-Japanese demonstrations
in 1919 and in other nationalist cultural and social movements in the 1920s and
early 1930s. It continues to exist as a small religion in South Korea today.
The area in southern Ch’ŏlla province continued to be a centre of peasant
resistance during the late 1890s. Localised peasant rebellions drew from some of
the teachings and most importantly, the organisation of the old Tonghak rebels.
Some former Tonghak rebels converted to Christianity (a good example of this is
the nationalist leader Kim Ku), while others gravitated to other new religions,
including the Chŭngsan’gyo movement, in the early twentieth century.

The legacy of the 1894 Tonghak Rebellion

The main aim of the rebellion appears to have been to reform social and
economic abuses, and in the second part of the rebellion, to expel foreign troops
from Korea. A further complication is that because of Tonghak’s decentralised
structure, there was often no unified agenda and there were many conflicting
views and trends. Many Koreans have attempted to show that the Tonghak
Rebellion displayed a native form of modern democracy and nationalism in order
to prove that Korea was going through the stages of progress that evolutionary
ideologies such as Marxism and modernisation theory laid out as necessary for
progress and development. However, this can be highly debatable, especially in
view of the movement’s fragmentation and lack of a unified agenda. The modern
ideas of democracy and nationalism had foreign origins, and Tonghak was not in
contact with these foreign ideas at the time of its founding or at the time of the
1894 rebellion. The fact that the Tonghak rebels may not have had an organised
programme that could bring in modern nationalism and democracy in no way
reduces their historical importance or minimises their fight against injustice.
Although the 1894 rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, it helped spark
developments that helped reform much of the corruption in government. It also
provoked events that led to the introduction of those institutions and ideas that
led to profound changes to the structure of the state and started a debate
concerning the direction of the nation in an increasingly unstable East Asia.
Ironically, these changes were initiated by a government that was supported by
the Japanese, the exact opposite of what the Tonghak rebels wanted. In spite of
this, immense changes resulted from the rebellion and Korea would never be the
same again. As a result, the 1894 rebellion proved a watershed which helped to
open up a new era in Korean history.
Because the consequences of the rebellion heralded a new phase in Korean
history, modern Korean historians, from communists to right-wing nationalists,
have written abundantly on the 1894 Tonghak peasant revolutionary movement,
each trying to incorporate it into their interpretation of Korean history. The
struggle of oppressed peasants against a corrupt and exploitative regime and the
rebels’ fight against the Japanese invaders is a great inspiration for present-day
fights against injustice and threats to the nation. Many studies of the 1894
Tonghak Rebellion are focussed on its value as an example of a heroic popular
nationalist struggle.
Mainstream South Korean nationalist histories usually consider Tonghak as
being a response to the problems of the nation during the late Chosŏn dynasty.
The following quote from an article by Shin Yong-ha is typical of many
assessments of Tonghak by South Korean historians:
Tonghak, established in 1860 by Ch’oe Che-u, was a religious thought founded and propagated to
‘sustain the nation and provide for the people (poguk anmin)’ and ‘save the oppressed people (kwangje
ch’angsaeng)’ by achieving a simultaneous breakthrough in the national and the feudal crises which the
Korean people faced in the mid-19th century.
(Shin Yong-ha 1994: 59)

Another Korean historian, Lee Young-ho, is even clearer as to the nationalist
credentials of Tonghak in the 1894 rebellion:
The Peasant War of 1894 was an anti-feudal and anti-imperialistic movement with the aim of
establishing a modern nation-state by overcoming the feudal and national crises.
(Lee Young-ho 1994: 90)

These are good examples of the general consensus that Tonghak was anti-feudal
and nationalist in nature during the 1894 peasant uprising. Tonghak is deemed to
have been created to overthrow the Chosŏn dynasty’s governmental and social
structure and contained within it the indigenous seeds that could lead to the
creation of a modern nation-state with democratic elements to replace the old
“feudal” system. According to this viewpoint, Tonghak combined the common
people’s desire for social justice, relief from oppression and participation in
government with the defence of the nation from foreign, especially Japanese,
incursions.
Young-ick Lew (1991) is one of a minority of historians who see the ideology of
the 1894 Tonghak Rebellion as a proto-nationalist, rather than a fully-fledged
modern nationalist, movement. He asserts that Tonghak at this time was more
inspired by the Neo-Confucian “Way of the Sages” than by ideas of modern
nationalism or democracy. However, he does agree that Tonghak “was infused
with a strong patriotic ardour, a burning desire to protect the nation from foreign
aggression, and with the egalitarian dream of abolishing the yangban class
system.” In this he is generally joined by the few foreign historians who have
done much work on Tonghak. The first major English-language work by
Benjamin Weems (1964) was a short, general work mainly concentrating on
internal events of the religion and how it interacted with the changes in Korean
society. More recently, books by Paul Beirne (2009) and George Kallander (2013)
have also focussed more on the internal religious history of Tonghak and its
doctrines and structure rather than engaging in the nationalist debate.
In general, the Tonghak peasant uprising of 1894 is seen within a wider context
of other movements which arose in the 1890s, including the Kabo reforms of
1894–1896 and the Independence Club in 1896–1898. These are all deemed
important in contributing to early modernising nationalism in Korea. Starting
from the early 2000s, there has been a growing trend among mainstream Korean
historians to look at the complexities of the rebellion itself and also on its
consequences. This has helped to move some of the Korean debate about
Tonghak beyond the “nation” question (although it is still important) and has
added a welcome, more multi-faceted view of Tonghak and the rebellion.
In the late 1960s, the minjung movement arose as a resistance movement
against the military regimes that ruled South Korea from the early 1960s to the
mid-1980s. The word minjung was coined late in the nineteenth century from
two Chinese characters meaning “the people” and “a group or mass.” The
minjung movement in the late twentieth century interpreted it as meaning the
“oppressed mass of the people” who are the true locus of the nation and who
produce change in history.
Minjung historiography has some similarities to Marxism. As opposed to class
struggle in Marxism, however, the minjung can be a class coalition of all the
oppressed (labourers, peasants, artisans, dissident intellectuals, etc.), albeit mainly
from the lower strata of society. The minjung are deemed to cause change in
history in their attempts to regain their subjectivity (chuch’esŏng) and exercise
their rightful role in society. Since the composition of the minjung can be
different in various periods of history, minjung historians search for groups and
movements that can be said to constitute the minjung in different points of
Korean history. Minjung historiography accepts some of the premises of more
mainstream South Korean nationalism but stresses the importance of popular
rather than elite movements. This has influenced later research by more
traditional historians, leading to a cross-fertilisation between traditional
nationalist and minjung nationalist histories.
This has led minjung historians to emphasise the 1894 Tonghak peasant
uprising as the classic example of a minjung movement, mainly because of its
origins among the oppressed peasantry. In the Tonghak Rebellion, the minjung
rises up to destroy oppression and protect the nation. One of the most prominent
minjung historians, Kang Man-gil, considers the Tonghak Rebellion “a large-scale
anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle that has important significance in the
history of the struggle of our minjung.” The exaltation of the Tonghak movement
implies a rejection of the more elite nationalist movements, such as the Kabo
Reforms and the Independence Club, that also occurred around this time and
which are traditionally considered as contributing to modern Korean nationalism.
This is mainly because they were not based on minjung culture. The Tonghak
movement is thus the proper place to look for the minjung dynamic and spirit
and the true locus of the beginnings of modern Korean nationalism. As
demonstrated by Nancy Abelman (1996) and Namhee Lee (2007), among others,
historical memory of the rebellion and its leaders, notably Chŏn Pong-jun, played
an important part in the art, music and motivational practices of the student,
farmer, and labour movements in the 1970s and 1980s.
Another important stream of nationalism is that incarnated by North Korea.
The relationship between the North Korean Communist regime and
Tonghak/Ch’ŏndogyo is a mixed one. In the late 1920s, some Ch’ŏndogyo
believers founded a political party, the Ch’ŏndogyo ch’ŏngudang (Ch’ŏndogyo
Young Friends’ Party) that advocated national self-strengthening on the basis of
Ch’ŏndogyo values. The northern wing of Ch’ŏndogyo’s political party was
forced into a coalition with the Korean Workers’ Party, along with the northern
wing of the Korean Democratic Party, and this structure still technically exists
today, although the Korean Workers’ Party selects and controls the members of
the two other parties. However, Ch’ŏndogyo as a religion, like any religion in the
north, is tightly controlled.
This leads to a mixed assessment of Tonghak’s and Ch’ŏndogyo’s
contributions to Korean history. The official North Korean history, Chosŏn
chŏnsa, praises the foundation of Tonghak by Ch’oe Che-u as a movement to
oppose Chosŏn’s feudal system and incursions by foreigners. The greatest
weakness of Tonghak is that this desire was encapsulated in the form of
“religious superstition,” which restricted the development of a “social
consciousness.” The Tonghak Rebellion was important in promoting the demise
of Korean feudalism, but the lack of a proletariat to lead the struggle doomed it to
failure and weakened its “anti-imperialistic fighting consciousness.” Tonghak
activities tend to be lumped into a “bourgeois phase” that includes the activities
of the Independence Club and culminates in the March 1919 demonstrations,
which is the terminal point of this stage.
In spite of the Tonghak Rebellion’s failure, it set off events such as the Sino-
Japanese War of 1894–1895 that marked the rise of Japanese imperialism, which
eventually snuffed out Korea’s independence in 1910. It also had a profound
impact domestically, leading to the Kabo Reforms of 1894 and thereby launching
a debate in Korea on nation-building and self-strengthening that would have a
profound effect on Korea, even as it eventually became colonised by Japan. The
rebellion’s precedent of the lowly, the oppressed and the disenfranchised rising
up against corruption and injustice still provides inspiration to contemporary
movements for social justice and continues to be an important ingredient in the
building of Korean identities. The rebellion’s on-going legacy still resonates
today.

Notes
1 It has become fashionable to use the term “Tonghak Revolution” in South Korea, especially among
progressive circles that attach a positive value to revolution as a change of political and social order.
However, in English, the use of the word “revolution” tends to be applied to successful uprisings in
which the rebels themselves take over government and establish a new order based on their agenda. As
will be seen, the Tonghak peasant rebels were ultimately unsuccessful in their uprising and the
application of their agenda. This is the reason that this article will refer to this event as a rebellion rather
than a revolution. However, this does not mean that this event did not have wide-ranging consequences
that had a strong effect on Korea’s domestic and international circumstances.

2 Some Tonghak believers outside of Ch’ŏlla province also staged disturbances during the spring phase of
the rebellion, and some Tonghak branches in Ch’ŏlla apparently were not active at this time. There
appears to have been some overlap.

3 English translations of sections of Chŏn Pong-jun’s trial and other documents related to the Tonghak
Rebellion can be found in chapter 30 of Yŏng-ho Ch’oe et al. 1997, Sources of Korean Tradition, Volume 2,
Columbia University Press, New York.

4 The most recent official Ch’ŏndogyo history, the Ch’ŏndogyo yaksa, asserts that there may have been up
to 500,000 people massacred in the aftermath of the failure of the rebellion. It is difficult, however, to get
an exact number of the people killed in the months following the rebellion.

References
Abelman, Nancy (1996) Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent, University of
California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Beirne, Paul (2009) Su-un and His World of Symbols: The Founder of Korea’s First
Indigenous Religion, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey.
Ch’oe, Chungmoo (1995) “The Minjung Culture Movement and Popular Culture”
in Kenneth M. Wells (ed.), South Korea’s Minjung Movement: The Culture
and Politics of Dissidence, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, HI.
Cho, Jae-gon (1994) “The Connection of the Sino-Japanese War and the Peasant
War of 1894,” Korea Journal, vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 45–58.
Kallander, George (2013) Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and
Early Modern Korea, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, HI.
Kim, Yong Choon and Yoon, Suk San (2007) Chondogyo Scripture: Donggyeong
Daejeon (Great Scripture of Eastern Learning), trans. Central Headquarters of
Ch’ondogyo, University Press of America, Lanham, MD.
Ko, Seok-kyu (1994) “Activities of the Peasant Army during the Chipkangso
Period,” Korea Journal, vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 31–44.
Lee, Ewha (1994) “A Study of the Relationship between the Reform of
Misgovernment and the Kabo Reform,” Korea Journal, vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter
1994), pp. 76–89.
Lee, Namhee (2007) The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of
Representation in South Korea, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Lee, Young-ho (1994) “The Socioeconomic Background and the Growth of the
New Social Forces of the 1894 Peasant War,” Korea Journal, vol. 34, no. 4
(Winter 1994), pp. 90–100.
Lew, Young-ick (1991) “The Conservative Character of the 1894 Tonghak Peasant
Uprising: A Reappraisal with Emphasis on Chŏn Pong-jun’s Background and
Motivation,” Journal of Korean Studies 7 (1990–91), pp. 149–180.
Shin, Soonchul and Lee, Jinyoung (2008) A Short History of the Donghak Peasant
Revolution, trans. Singh, Rohini and Lee, Chongmin, Donghak Peasant
Revolution Memorial Association, Seoul.
Shin, Susan (1978) “The Tonghak Movement: From Enlightenment to Revolution,”
Korea Forum (1978), pp. 1–60.
Shin, Susan (1979) “Tonghak Thought: The Roots of Revolution,” Korea Journal,
vol. 19, no. 9 (September 1979), pp. 11–19.
Shin, Yong-ha (1990) Formation and Development of Modern Korean Nationalism,
Daekwang Munhwasa, Seoul.
Shin, Yong-ha (1994) “Conjunction of Tonghak and the Peasant War of 1894,”
Korea Journal, vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 59–75.
Suh, Young-hee (1994) “Tracing the Course of the Peasant War of 1894,” Korea
Journal, vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 17–30.
Weems, Benjamin (1964) Reform, Rebellion, and the Heavenly Way, University of
Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.
Wells, Kenneth M. (1995) “The Cultural Construction of Korean History” in
Kenneth M. Wells (ed.), South Korea’s Minjung Movement: The Culture and
Politics of Dissidence, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, HI.
Young, Carl (2014) Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: The Tonghak and
Ch’ŏndogyo Movements and the Twilight of Korean Independence, University
of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, HI.
Part II
The colonial period
8
The politics of assimilation
Koreans into Japanese

Mark E. Caprio

The legacy that Japan’s assimilation policies had on colonial-era Korea (1910–
1945) was perhaps felt greatest after the country’s liberation from Japanese rule. It
was from this time that the Korean people faced the daunting task of separating
those among their fellow compatriots worthy of patriotic honors from those
guilty of traitorous crimes. Decisions regarding the latter group rested on criteria
being established that determined the acts of collaboration that were serious
enough to render punishment for betrayal of the Korean people. Similarly,
liberation also required Koreans to rewrite their national narrative to incorporate
the patriotic heroes of the past four decades of Japanese suzerainty: which acts of
heroism merited their gaining immortality? While all periods of foreign
occupation develop both supporters and detractors, it could be argued that
assimilation policy produced deeper divisions among the people it subjugated as
it preached an intention to develop a more intimate relationship between
colonized and colonizer. Indeed, it challenged these people to abandon their
“inferior” heritage for a more “advanced” one. Introduced as a gradual process,
the Japanese accelerated their efforts to assimilate Koreans as Japan expanded its
military adventures across the Chinese mainland and throughout much of the
Pacific Ocean region.
Japan’s assimilation policy aimed to culturally absorb the Korean people into
the Japanese race, at least this was the impression left by the colonizers’ rhetoric.
If successful, it would mean the Korean people absorbed as Japanese, the borders
of Japan redrawn to incorporate the Korean peninsula as one or a group of
prefectures. Korea and Koreans, in other words, would cease to exist. In practice,
however, the initial decades of colonial administration demonstrated a greater
tendency to discriminate and separate than to accept and unify. The war years
displayed signs of willingness to correct this contradiction between rhetoric and
practice, leading some to conclude that Japan was ready to implement its
assimilation goals (Fujitani 2011). However, the war’s abrupt conclusion prevents
us from advancing this conclusion. Would the Japanese have continued the
wartime advances that the Japanese allowed the Koreans had Japan retained the
Korean peninsula after the war, or were they simply temporary (and
progressively desperate) measures rendered necessary under total war
conditions? Japanese might conclude its failure to assimilate the Korean people to
be a result of the relatively short duration of Japan’s colonial rule: even under
normal circumstances they saw this as a 50-to 100-year process. However, the
available evidence also suggests that, like other similar assimilation examples, the
administration’s intention was not to assimilate Koreans as internal Japanese
subjects (kokumin) but as peripheral imperial subjects (shinmin). They would be
granted privileges as valued members of the empire but not at a level enjoyed by
their Japanese counterparts.

Goals of assimilation
The Japanese establishment of assimilation as their colonial policy can be traced
to even before the Meiji government appeared in 1868, to the late eighteenth
century when the Tokugawa regime experimented with the policy in Ezo
(present-day Hokkaido) to integrate the indigenous tribes on the island that was
being explored by Russian adventurers. The Japanese rejuvenated this policy over
the Meiji period (1868–1912) as Japan’s empire officially incorporated Ezo and
later expanded to annex the Ryukyu Islands (present-day Okinawa) and Taiwan.
Thus, by the time Korea entered the empire in 1910, the Japanese had
accumulated a rather lengthy resume of applying assimilation to peoples it
occupied. Still, Japanese writing at the time of Korea’s annexation felt compelled
to justify Japan’s choice of administration. This was probably a reaction to the
vicious attack that assimilation faced from the late nineteenth century,
particularly by Social Darwinists and Scientific Colonial thinkers who argued it
an illusion to expect that peoples of different breeds and culture could appreciate,
much less absorb, advanced political and cultural institutions that assimilation
policy introduced to them. Japanese countered by explaining that the racial and
cultural similarities that they had long enjoyed with the Korean people would
ensure them success where the European had failed. Japanese should have little
problem assimilating Koreans.
The Japanese casually drew from these European examples. Writers listed
examples of assimilation, occasionally as positive or negative models. They did
not analyze the specific differences between approaches or consider why some
European colonial powers enjoyed greater success than others. The English, for
example, offered a political variety of assimilation that contrasted with that of the
French and German culture-centered assimilation policy.1 Yet the Japanese listed
these examples as if they were all applying a set policy in their colonies. While
both forms experienced rebellions among the subjugated peoples, English efforts
succeeded in strengthening internal security: the union arrangement England
forged with these states prevented them from forming alliances with its enemies
—first the French and later the Germans. This was not always the case with the
French, whose relationship with the Algerian people was not nearly as cordial as
that which the English held with the Welsh or Scots.2
Japanese rhetoric that preached the Korean future as Japanese suggested an
intimate internal level of assimilation that the colonized were ill-prepared to
honor, one that saw the Korean peninsula eventually becoming integral Japanese
territory by a process frequently witnessed in nation-building efforts. Eugene
Weber brilliantly traces one such occurrence of this intense level of assimilation
in his history of nineteenth-century French efforts to amalgamate the “savages”
of France’s southern provinces, peoples who the northern French claimed to be
ignorant of their culture and language (Weber 1976). This effort was in part
influenced by similar unification efforts taking place at France’s eastern border in
the Prussian-led movement to unite territories that constitute the modern
German state. Indeed, similar processes of nation building also were taking place
at this time in Italy, post-Civil War United States, and Meiji, Japan. Though this
process shared resemblance to that of colonial assimilation, it differed in
intensity. The peoples involved all residing within long-established borders of the
newly formed state, they already imagined to be of the same people even though
an intense assimilation process was necessary to integrate them culturally,
politically, and economically. Thus rhetorically it made little sense to describe
this process as assimilation.
Rather, assimilation as a policy made more rhetorical sense when used to
describe a peripheral people’s incorporation into the more advanced colonizer
population, primarily because to the colonizer this hierarchical relationship
clearly justified their imposing their culture on the colonized. The assimilation
approach introduced by the Japanese in Korea resembled that seen in other
peripheral colonial situations—those just off the traditional borders of the colonial
homeland including Meiji-era additions of territories that surrounded the main
Japanese islands. The Japanese in Korea advertised a gradual advancement of the
policy that educated a minority of Koreans in the new, segregated school system
the government-general created and elicited the assistance of a minority of the
traditional Korean elite to assist the colonizers administer the territory. The
differences in the school systems underline the inferior social position that the
Korean was expected to fill. Compared to that arranged for the expatriate
Japanese, Korean elementary education was shorter in duration, accommodated
more students per class, and was funded less generously. The high concentration
on Japanese language study stole valuable time from more important subjects
that Koreans needed to compete with their Japanese counterparts. We can also
assume that the inferiority of this education, along with the stigma of having
attended a Korean school, dogged Korean youth as they sought employment or
attempted to advance their education. Similar situations were also found among
Ainu, Ryukyuan, Taiwanese, as well as Alsace and Algerian children residing in
similar colonial situations at the time.
The most interesting debates among the Japanese regarding assimilation policy
occurred soon after annexation, just before the government-general finalized its
Education Act in 1911. Those contributing their thoughts on Korean education
focused on curriculum particulars such as the language and emphasis of
instruction but also touched on the overall purpose of the education: the product
that the system intended to nurture. Many of the participants in this discussion,
who included politicians as well as academics, warned against the government-
general offering Korean students an inferior education. They questioned the bias
that the Korean was inherently inferior, arguing that, just as the Japanese at the
time of the Meiji Restoration had been behind, so too was the Korean of today.
They too could catch up if given the chance. Still others criticized assimilation as
a policy that simply attempted to clone the Korean as Japanese. One official
believed that the Korean people would be unable to advance unless the Japanese
dramatically adjusted their prejudices that viewed the Japanese-Korean
relationship in terms of superiority-inferiority. Embedded in these discussions
was the idea that Japanese were not appropriate assimilators and thus should
consider a change in policy (Caprio 2009: 92–96).
The Japanese were forced to reform their general approach to governing Korea
after the 1919 March First Independence Movement. On this occasion, Koreans,
joining other colonized peoples empowered by statements by United States
president Woodrow Wilson and Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin that condemned
colonial occupations, took to the streets to demand an end to imperial rule. The
protests, in which hundreds of thousands of Koreans in every province
participated, were brutally suppressed by the police using heavy-handed methods
that were widely condemned. These reforms generally offered the Korean people
more cultural space, though the Japanese maintained, at least in their rhetoric,
that their long-term goal remained assimilation. The reforms, pushed by Prime
Minister Hara Takashi and Governor General Saitŏ Makoto, provided Koreans
with the right to publish indigenous newspapers and assemble freely. They
encouraged the Japanese to endeavor to learn more about Korean culture and
even to study the Korean language. It has been argued that the purpose of this
switch from the brutal “military rule” (budan seiji) to “cultural rule” (bunka seiji)
served to co-opt the often illegal anti-Japanese activities by Korean intellectuals
by providing for them legitimate opportunity (Robinson 1988: 4). The
government-general argued these reforms as harboring the purpose of allowing
Japanese to more accurately read Korean sentiments as measures to prevent
future March First demon strations. Vice-Governor General Mizuno Rentarō used
the value of indigenous newspapers to express this value as follows: They offered
the administration “access to Korean thought as Koreans expressed their feelings
in their newspapers.” Likening the newspaper to a chimney that spews smoke
(Korean sentiment), Mizuno stated his belief that the reason why the March First
Movement blew out of proportion was because the Japanese lacked the means of
reading Korean intentions. Building a chimney (newspaper) to let the smoke
escape from the kitchen allowed the Japanese access to Korean sentiment and
intentions (Mizuno 1999: 52). Did this advancement of Korean language-based
media detract from Japan’s assimilation policy? Michael Robinson’s research
suggests it provided an avenue for advancing Korean identity that strengthened
the people’s ties to Korean culture (Robinson 1988, 1998). This conclusion was
also one reached by two late-1920s reports drafted by the government-general
(Caprio 2009: 255–86).
The 1920 reforms also contained a provision for increasing the number of
schools to allow more Korean children opportunity for education. However, a
more important advancement was the integration of schools for Japanese
expatriate children in 1920. Prior to this time, Korean children who wished to
pursue advanced study were required to travel to Japan, where they first had to
pass a two-year preparation course to allow them to “catch up” to the Japanese
who had spent two additional years in elementary school. The reform granted
admittance to the more advanced school system, provided the student had a
sufficient capacity in the Japanese language. Statistics suggest that the Korean
population in these schools remained consistent at ten percent up through the last
few years of colonial rule, when the Japanese ceased to offer separate figures for
Koreans and Japanese. Despite the integration of schools, the two populations
often remained segregated outside of the classroom. According to one student at
Suwŏn College of Agriculture, Japanese and Koreans lived in separate wings of
the dorm; they formed separate versions of the same club; and they even had the
university library carry separate volumes of the same book (Kang 2001: 54). On
the other hand, there are elderly Japanese who still maintain contacts with
Korean classmates from this time.
The March First Movement also had adverse influences on the views that
Japanese residents held toward the Korean people. At the time of annexation, few
outwardly expressed negative views toward annexation and their government’s
decision to adopt an assimilation policy. Ukita Kazutami, editor of the popular
magazine Taiyō, perhaps expressed a majority view in declaring, “The Japanese
should have relatively few problems in assimilating Koreans” peacefully, as in the
case of the English relationship with the Scots, and avoid the violent conditions
that the English have experienced with the Irish (Ukita 1910). Yet the
demonstrations of March 1919 left a deep and negative impression on the
Japanese, some changing their views on assimilation as they observed Koreans
marching down the streets of Seoul demanding Korean independence. The
journalist and long-time resident of Korea, Hosoi Hajime, contributed the
changes he experienced in an eight-part article that he contributed to the journal
Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (Japan and the Japanese). He wrote: “[At this moment] I
completely forgot the joy I experienced ten years previous when the lives of our
20 million Korean brothers and sisters were refocused as our compatriot siblings.”
The “naïve” Japanese, he continued, had only themselves to blame for this
disturbance as they neglected their “elder brother” responsibilities: “We treat
[Koreans] as things at the bottom. … We show no signs of love, chivalry, but only
menace.” The Japanese harbor a “stepchild mentality” toward a Korean people
they vowed to advance by colonization (Hosoi 1919).
Hosoi presents a rare case of a Japanese expression of opposition to Japan’s
assimilation policy, although the immediate post-March First Movement period
produced more open dissent than at other times. It is thus difficult to ascertain
the extent to which Japanese truly supported this policy. Jun Uchida’s work on
the Japanese settler community suggests it to have been rather extensive (Uchida
2011: 132–36). Most telling were the situations that challenged Japanese to
practice what they preached, such as a petition presented by the Chōsen sansei
shingikai kōsein (The Korean Political Participation Deliberation Committee) that
appeared in 1929 calling for Korean suffrage. At the time the Japanese
government granted a limited number of Japan-based Korean residents suffrage
privileges, calls came for these rights to be extended to the peninsula. The
National Diet rejected one such petition on the grounds that Koreans were
inappropriate for this right. They would sway the results and cause troublesome
results to emerge. This response also noted that if Japanese could only offer
Koreans partial rights, it was better to not grant them any rights at all (Caprio
2009: 138).
The relatively small number of Japanese-Korean marriages presents another
measure for ascertaining the extent to which assimilation found acceptance
among Japanese. Part of the reason behind this result may have been legal issues.
Japanese women marrying Korean men would, as was customary by law, enter
their husband’s family register and thus lose their status as Japanese. For that
reason, many married couples did not officially register their marriages as was
required. A second reason was social pressure: the Japanese community frowned
upon mixed marriages. Recollections left by Japanese women reveal their being
ostracized by their family and friends after marrying a Korean or being criticized
for even considering such a move (Takasaki 2002: 178). Finally we see hesitation
on the part of the Japanese for accepting Korean participation in the military.
This reluctance persisted even after the war turned from Japan’s favor. Lack of
trust in the Koreans eventually delayed the Japanese from including the Koreans
in the universal conscription system until the final year of the war (Palmer 2013:
98).
The inferior education system established primarily for Korean children,
although some Japanese children also attended these schools, contributed to their
maintaining a lower social status. However, the Japanese’ generally negative
attitude toward Koreans also contributed to this result. Even Koreans who had
enjoyed academic success evidently had trouble making it in their own society.
Professors of Keijō (Seoul) University noted as such in a roundtable discussion on
Korean students: few employers would accept Korean job applications, and most
people (Japanese and Korean) preferred Japanese to Korean doctors (“‘Jinkenka
no Chōsen wo Kataru’ zadankai” 1939). Other Koreans reported their Japanese
classmates securing employment at higher levels that paid higher salaries and
gaining faster promotion upon entering the government offices (Im 2011: 211–13).
The pay discrepancies persisted despite the 1920 reforms requiring both Koreans
and Japanese to be paid equally for their services. This reform, however, targeted
base pay, while neglecting “hardship” stipends established to encourage Japanese
to work on the peninsula.
The wartime situation changed Korean status as young Japanese men were
called from the peninsula to serve on the battlefield. Following the July 1937
Incident at the Marco Polo Bridge, the government-general explored different
ways in which the Japanese could develop the proper attitude required of all
Koreans under the wartime circumstances. The location of the peninsula, situated
between the Japanese homeland and the Chinese war front made Korean
cooperation particularly critical. From this time, the government-general initiated
a Naisen ittai (Japan-Korea, one body) campaign to strengthen the relationship
and to demonstrate to Manchurians the advantages that Koreans had gained by
choosing cooperation with Japan. Toward this end, it compiled a 100-plus-page
proposal and gathered a number of Japanese and Koreans to discuss how to
render practical this rather vague construct. Japanese participants tended to
emphasize the status quo as well as the positive effect that the proposal would
have on the Korean people. We find one notable exception in comments offered
by Tagawa Jōichirō, who suggested the need to integrate the two family
registration systems and ending Korean language publications. We shall see
below how the Korean comments targeted more practical modifications to help
achieve this goal (Caprio 2009: 162–63) It was under these wartime circumstances
that the Japanese instituted many of the policies that continue to haunt Japan-
Korea relations to this day. In considering these practices against Japan’s
assimilation ambition, we find a mixed degree of consistency between policy and
practice. Key to this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Korean
participation the government-general demanded was consistent with that
expected of Japanese subjects. Korean participation in the Japanese military,
which began in 1938 with the formation of a volunteer corps and continued in
1944 with forced conscription, helped advance Korean assimilation as it advanced
the colonized in an institution that Japanese men were expected to participate.
Whether the recruits were afforded treatment equal to that afforded the Japanese
recruit at a similar rank is an important question requiring further investigation.
Forced labor issues also require similar consideration. Did the recruitment and
job allocation of Koreans resemble a similar practice directed toward Japanese
subjects, or did the practice place the colonized in jobs deemed too dirty or
dangerous for Japanese labor? The latter appears to be closer to the truth,
particularly with those women forced into comfort women duty. Accurate
numbers of the number of comfort women by nationality are apparently not
available. However, although Japanese women did serve in this capacity, the
majority of women were from among the colonized (Hicks 1994: 17–18). My
purpose here is not to render moral judgment over any wartime institution but to
measure the Japanese inclusion of Koreans against that of Japanese to ascertain
the extent to which the policy was consistent with Japan’s assimilation goals as
stated in its rhetoric. Inclusion of Koreans only advanced assimilation if it
brought the colonized people closer toward an inclusion similar to that expected
of the colonizers. In one case—conscription—it did, while in another—forced labor
—it apparently did not.
Additionally, other means of Korean participation were employed by the
Japanese to argue assimilation’s success. Among the most notorious was the
Name Order of 1940 in which Koreans were pressured into adopting Japanese
names. Other measures were taken requiring Koreans to visit Shinto shrines,
properly commemorate Japanese holidays by attending ceremonies, and to
display the Japanese flag outside their homes. The government-general offices
maintained meticulous records on Korean participation. However, the question
remains as to whether these apparent displays of Japanese affinity translated in
the Korean people advancing toward integration as Japanese. That the Japanese
often tied participation to external reward (while punishing non-compliers)
weakens confidence in the conclusions drawn by the colonizers. Specifically,
often the administration used the Shinto shrine as a venue and name changing as
a criteria for distributing wartime ration tickets. The government-general
officially advised Korean name changes from 1939, and an estimated 80 percent
of Koreans complied with this directive with the idea that they could more easily
pass for Japanese if their names were Japanized. Indeed, Koreans had on occasion
adopted Japanese names for this very reason, to counter discrimination. Ken
Kawashima discusses this as a ploy adopted by Japan-based Koreans to fool
landlords who refused to rent to non-Japanese (Kawashima 2009: 106). Did this
measure succeed in its purpose: allowing Koreans to better integrate as Japanese?
Perhaps it did at the informal level. But when Koreans were required to submit
their family register, such as for school registration or job employment, they
revealed their ethnic origins as the document registered when the applicant had
adopted a Japanese name. Indeed, one such Korean found the word “Chōsenjin”
(Korean) stamped across her Japanese name on a document she required to
secure employment as a teacher. Also, as Koreans began settling into Japanese
communities, the police assumed the responsibility of distinguishing between the
two peoples. For this purpose they devised a list of characteristics unique to
Koreans that included their peculiar pronunciation of certain Japanese sounds,
the way they washed their face, the way that men looked at women, and their
walking style (Kang 2003: 63–64).
The apparent contradictions we find between Japanese words and actions
regarding Korean assimilation can be best explained in a number of ways. First,
Japan followed a rather common pattern, one observable in similar situations
such as French Algeria and German Alsace and Lorraine. Like the Japanese, these
colonizers never matched their idealist rhetoric with appropriate action, even
toward the colonized who accepted their administration and fought in their wars.
From this we can perhaps conclude cultural assimilation to have been a rather
difficult goal to realize to the extent the colonizers maintained an attitude of
superiority over the people to be assimilated. This was certainly the case shared
by Japanese in Korea. These examples also share the consistency of the expatriate
who has relocated to the colony holding the strongest feelings against
assimilation lest the uplifting of the colonized compromise the relatively superior
position they had gained upon entering this foreign society. Indeed, in general the
lifestyles of Japanese residing in the urban environments suggest a conscious
effort to avoid relationships with Koreans on a basis of equality. They could
employ them as household help or factory hands but not socialize with them as
fellow subjects of the empire. Thus from the Japanese standpoint, we can perhaps
conclude that while the Japanese preached an internal assimilation that suggested
eventual inclusion of the Korean as Japanese subjects, their policies over the
duration of this period sought to maintain the people at the lower peripheral
level. It teased the people with assimilation rhetoric while extending to them
inferior examples of institutions provided for internal Japanese subjects that
integrated the majority of Koreans at a level that would all but guarantee the
preservation of differences that separated the two peoples.

Korean responses to Japanese assimilation

Japanese rhetoric of assimilation elicited strong polemic responses from the

Koreans, primarily as it promised to, depending on one’s perspective, either take
from or give to the colonized a people’s identity. The discrepancy between
rhetoric and practice, however, could not have pleased anyone. Those opposed to
the policy were thus given justifiable reason to exploit Japan’s promises of
assimilation to strengthen Korean national sentiment. To the contrary, the
policy’s supporters could criticize Japan’s apparent unwillingness to fulfill these
promises. Indigenous newspapers provided the former with their most important
medium for voicing their objections, at least until they were ordered to close
under wartime reforms. Supporters enjoyed uninterrupted access to Japanese
publications to put forth their views and were often strongly encouraged (or
coerced) by the Japanese authorities to do so.
Cultural nationalists took advantage of the 1920 reforms to voice their general
opposition to Japanese rule. The Tong’a ilbo (East Asian Daily), one of the
newspapers allowed publication rights from this time, took the lead in criticizing
Japanese assimilation ambitions. It used its editorial section to directly attack the
Japanese culture: Japanese footwear (geta) and traditional dress (kimono) were
impractical. It attacked the schools that the Japanese established to develop
Koreans as Japanese: the system accommodated but a fraction of children
interested in attending school, and it forced them to study in a foreign language.
The newspaper soon learned that any attack on the apex of Japanese culture and
politics—the imperial household—would be severely punished. In September 1920
its publication rights were suspended for over a half-year when it argued the
three imperial treasures (the jewel, mirror, and sword) to be objects of
superstition.
Individual writers, a number who had apparently integrated to varying degrees
into Japanese society, also voiced criticism of Japan’s Korean policies. One Yi
Yŏngsun offered his remarks to the Japanese magazine Jiyŭ (Freedom) in May
1937, just months before Japan’s war in China escalated. Yi focused his
commentary, titled “Japanese-Korean Unity” (Naisen yŭwa), on areas where the
Japanese failed to live up to their assimilation promises. If, he argued, the
Japanese were serious about creating this unity, “why were Koreans not offered
military-duty rights? Is it because Koreans do not have patriotism? Why can’t the
Koreans participate in elections? Is it because they are uneducated?” He
continued by highlighting the contemptuous attitude he had experienced in his
interactions with Japanese acquaintances. He personally had invited Japanese to
his house and lent them money, only to see them leave without even saying
goodbye and without repaying their loan. Yi believed this attitude to be typical of
a people in similar shoes, likening it to that which separated blacks from whites
in the United States. Perhaps American blacks could understand the euphoria
experienced by Koreans upon hearing of Son Ki-jŏng’s victory in the marathon at
the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin—for they too no doubt had felt a similar joy in
seeing Joe Louis score knockout victories over white opponents. Yi’s attitude thus
placed assimilation’s failure on Japanese shoulders. Rather than Koreans rejecting
their assimilation advances, it was the Japanese who rejected their successes (Yi
1937: 90–92).
Other Koreans were more proactive in their support of Japan’s assimilation
policies, particularly during the heat of Japan’s wars from the 1930s. As
emphasized in the 1938 Naisen ittai strengthening report, Korean support was
vital to Japan’s success in its continental plans. Perhaps due to the expanded
opportunities that the wartime situation produced, an increasing number of
Koreans agreed to cooperate with the Japanese at this time. Some of these
Koreans were rather prominent, including the educator Yun Ch’i-ho,
independence leader Ch’oe Rin, female educator leader Kim Hwal-lan (Helen
Kim), and Korean historian Ch’oe Nam-sŏn. These Koreans appearing in
newspapers where they offered advice on how best to support Japan’s cause
surely carried tremendous influence among their readers given their name value.
Japanese also used these Koreans to assist in the recruitment of Koreans for the
volunteer military, to solicit monetary donations to the military, and to join
Japanese at rallies held to commemorate war victories.
Cooperative Koreans, many of whom sat on advisory committees for the
Japanese, were given the chance to voice their views on a number of occasions.
One venue was the committee meetings held in conjunction with the Naisen ittai
strengthening proposal mentioned above. Though a minority among the
participants, transcripts demonstrate their active participation in these gatherings.
There suggestions appear to have been more practical than those expressed by the
Japanese. Koreans advised an increase in the number of Shinto shrines to allow
Koreans more convenient access to them, a leveling of the tax system to permit
Koreans to contribute their fair share to the colony’s revenues, and increased
integration of Koreans and Japanese in the residential areas. Yi Sung-u, however,
introduced a more fundamental problem: the Japanese failure to recognize the
Korean as a potential national subject (kokumin) of the empire. To many
Japanese, he explained, Koreans remained hopelessly backward, a people
stranded in an ancient time due to inferior government management of the
colony (Caprio 2009: 189–93).
A minority of Koreans offered extreme views of support for the Japanese that
left little doubt over their belief that the superiority of the Japanese way left little
if any room for Korean identity. One such view was presented by Hyŏn Yŏngsŏp3
in his The Path that the Koreans Must Take(Chōsenjin no susumu beki michi).
Describing himself as “one Japanese national” (Nihon kokumin no hitori), Hyŏn
emphasized the optimism that the Naisen ittai movement had injected in the
Korean people. Much work remained, however, before Koreans completely
understood their imperial responsibilities. Tracing Korea’s transition from the
“hell … [of] colonial Han Chinese” rule prior to 1910, he saw Japan’s annexation
as opening the door for Korean rejuvenation, for the emergence of a shin Chōsen
(new Korea) that would replace the people’s previous han Shinajin (half-Chinese)
existence. The Korean people, however, to date had failed to take advantage of
the opportunities that annexation presented them. They continued to maintain
their traditional culture while resisting the “majestic existence” (genzen to sonzai)
of Japanese culture. Koreans must endeavor to “become Japanese” by “widely
accepting the Japanese culture.” This required their accepting the fact that Korea
would never again retain its status as an independent country. If Koreans wished
to enjoy the benefits of this people—compulsory education, military service, and
freedom of residence—they would have to demonstrate their commitment to
adopting the Japanese spirit. Contrary to the views held by Yi Yŏngsun, Hyŏn
Yŏngsŏp saw the ball as resting in the Korean court. The keys to their destiny lay
in their accepting their inescapable fate as Japanese.
How successful were the Japanese? As mentioned above, officials were able to
point to increasing numbers of Koreans participating in ways that suggested their
acceptance of Japanese assimilation policy. As the number of Korean children
attending elementary school increased, officials estimated that the number of
Koreans competent in the Japanese language increased (1933, 760,000; 1937, 1.2
million) (Caprio 2009: 145). The Japanese could also point to the increasing
numbers of Korean men volunteering for enlistment in the imperial military
(2,946 [406], 1938; 303,294 [6,300], 1943) (Kang 1997: 370), despite low acceptance
rates, as further evidence of their success. These rather impressive numbers,
however, required scrutiny rather than blind acceptance. Can we accept as fact,
as the Japanese did, that Koreans simply finishing elementary school produced
Japanese fluency? To what extent was the Korean’s decision to “volunteer” for
military service his own volition? Indeed, other criteria such as name changes,
marriages, and shrine visitations require similar consideration before conclusions
can be drawn.
The question of colonial-era collaboration remains unresolved to this day as
contemporary Koreans compile lists of those deemed guilty of traitorous crimes
more than a half-century in the past. The question also remains why heroes of
the March First Independence Movement— Ch’oe Rim and Ch’oe Nam-sŏn
helped organize the movement—would turn to supporting the Japanese a little
over a decade later. One possibility is that they had no choice should they choose
to remain in Korea: only those who left the country or chose prison life enjoyed
the luxury of non-cooperation. More recent research has suggested that
collaborator efforts were influenced by pan-Asian ideas that the Japanese had
been advanced since the beginning of the century. Koreans considered
collaborators supported a regional Asian identity over a more traditional Korean
nationalist one (Shin 2006; Moon 2013). The geopolitical situation that the Korean
peninsula confronted suggested the advantage of alliance with Korea’s Northeast
Asian neighbors, China and Japan, on a basis of equality to provide the country
with its most promising chance at regaining a sense of sovereignty. The hopes of
such Koreans may have been raised following Japan’s incorporation of
Manchuria, which was followed by calls for Koreans to be used as an example of
the benefits that the Manchurian people might enjoy should they cooperate. The
flying geese image, with Japan leading the twin rows of Asian states advancing
in V-formation, suggests otherwise. Like assimilation policy rhetoric, the
direction of the coexistence and co-prosperity promised by the Japanese would be
directed from the colonial homeland at the apex, with little input from the rear.

Conclusions
Kim Chanjung, in his review of the 100 years of “zainichi” under Japanese
imperial rule, advances the idea that Koreans have of recent made significant
advances in assimilating into Japanese society. Over the past few decades, more
Koreans have admitted that their more significant friendships are with Japanese,
rather than fellow Japan-based Koreans. Significant increases are also seen in
these Koreans marrying with Japanese and their choosing to naturalize as
Japanese. Likewise, Japanese as well are more accepting of this minority than in
the past, as witnessed by restrictions in education and employment being relaxed.
This is not to say that Japanese have completely overcome their negative
impressions of Koreans and that Koreans live free of prejudice. However, after
seven or eight decades following annexation, attitudes are progressing in a
positive direction toward successful annexation (Kim 2010, 222–52). These
advances have encouraged one zainichi scholar to foresee in the near future the
end of this minority population (Chung 2001). Although the circumstances are
very different, Kim’s analysis of contemporary successes enjoyed by Koreans
lends clues as to why the colonial and immediate postcolonial eras did not
succeed in advancing Korean assimilation. First is the time factor. As noted
above, the three-plus decades of direct Japanese rule was simply too short a time
span to except extraordinary results. Korean populations that Kim discusses have
passed through three to four generations of Japanese influence. The 60 to 80 years
corresponds roughly to the estimates made by Japanese who envisioned
assimilation as a 50-to 100-year process.
A second factor is the change in attitudes that Japanese and Koreans hold
toward each other. Unlike the years of colonial occupation, arguments can no
longer be sustained that claim absolute superiority of the Japanese over the
Korean, as they were in earlier decades. The present assimilation process assumes
a level of equality not possible up through 1945, particularly against the backdrop
of economic advancement by both Japan and South Korea. The arrogance of
superiority that most Japanese assumed during the decades of colonial rule was
perhaps the most important roadblock to realizing successful integration with the
Korean people.
Attitudes of Koreans in Japan have also been influenced by the above factors.
They entered a new relationship with the Japanese following Japan’s defeat in
World War II by assuming a touch of arrogance themselves. Japan, as defeated
nation, no longer commanding the position as global power, Koreans, as a
liberated people sought to demonstrate their independence while residing in
Japan, once even demanding a slice of Japanese territory to be administered by
Koreans. This attitude was short-lived, and Allied occupation forces
demonstrated little sympathy for Korean anti-Japanese sentiment. This helped
rejuvenate antagonistic attitudes between the two peoples and a quick return of
the colonial-era discriminatory practices. More recent generations find
themselves a minority in Japanese society but hold increasingly less affinity with
their ethnic homeland. With discrimination practices easing, and a Japanese
population increasingly more acceptable of them as Korean, these generations of
Japan-based Koreans have less incentive than their parents and grandparents to
remain at the peripheries of Japanese society.
Problems remain. Times of political discord between peninsula and archipelago
over both present and past issues remind us that Japanese-Korean assimilation
remains a work in progress. The progress that the two peoples have realized,
however, is that which could only come through a rethinking of the attitudes that
Japanese held toward Koreans over the decades of colonial rule. Indeed, the
illusion of superiority that Japan’s contemporaries brought to their colonial
administration, rather than the inability of the colonized to understand or accept
this policy, prevented the successful assimilation of any foreign people. Prime
Minister Hara Takashi, a devout assimilationist, perhaps said it best in his
criticism of Japanese administration policy in Korea following the March First
demonstrations: you cannot expect a people to change while administering them
as fools (Hara 1998). This advice continues to hold to the present.

A note on historiography

Research entertaining questions posed in this chapter has increased remarkably

as of recent. General studies that consider the sincerity behind Japan’s intentions
in promoting assimilation rhetoric have examined this issue from a policy level
(Caprio 2009) as well as at a cultural level (Henry 2014). These studies have also
considered the Korean reaction to this policy, although a dedicated examination
of the effect that Japan’s assimilation policy had in encouraging collaboration
remains to be written. Translations of Korean literature written during this
period by Japanese (Kajiyama 1995) and Koreans (Yuasa 2005; Yom 2005) have
added a direct interpretation of participant reaction to our understanding of
Japan’s assimilation policy and Korea’s reaction. Studies that isolate various
aspects of the colonial relationship that indirectly touch on various assimilation
questions have divided on their evaluation of Japanese views toward Korea and
Korean culture. On the one hand, two studies on Japanese exploitation of Korean
labor (Kawashima 2009; Driscoll 2010) adopt a critical neo-Marxian that
emphasize Japanese atrocities. On the other hand, two studies that consider
cultural exchanges under this colonial relationship (Atkins 2010; Yecies and Shim
2011) view the relationship on more benevolent terms. Two further studies that
focus on Korean acceptance into the Japanese military (Fujitani 2011; Palmer
2013) suggest that the wartime period (1931–1945) encouraged more positive
views among Japanese of this colonized people. Finally, pioneer research on the
attitudes of Japanese settlers in Korea (Uchida 2011) has demonstrated the
negative reaction to assimilation that expatriates adopted, one similar to
resistance that Europeans in French Algeria displayed to this policy. The chapter
that remains to be written is the residue that Japanese policy in general, and
assimilation policy in particular, left on the Korean peninsula following liberation
in 1945.

Glossary

Kokumin 国 民 national subjects

Shinmin 臣 民 imperial subjects
Budan seiji 武 断 政 治 military rule
Bunka seiji 文 化 政 治 cultural rule
Chōsenjin 朝 鮮 人 Korean
Geta 下 駄 Japanese traditional shoes
Kimono 着 物 Japanese traditional dress
Naisen yūwa Japanese-Korean unity
Naisen yūwa 内 鮮 融 和 Japanese-Korean unity
Naisen ittai 内 鮮 一 体 Japan-Korea one body
Han Shinajin 半 シ ナ 人 half-Chinese
Shin Chōsen 新 朝 鮮 new Korea
genzen to sonzai 儼 然 の 存 在 majestic existence
zainichi 在 日 Japan-based [Korean]

Notes
1 This is not to say that the English believed the Celtic culture that dominated these states was superior to,
or even on a par with, their culture. The Welsh remember one such attack on their language as the “Brad
y Llyfrau Gleision” (Treachery of the Blue Books) (Roberts 1998).

2 The violent confrontations that the English faced with the Irish more closely resembles this French-
Algerian relationship, a result of centuries of mistreatment of the Catholics in general and Irish in
particular.

3 Hyŏn Yŏngsŏp’s cousin, Peter Hyŏn, authored Mansei, the classic novel about a boy growing up under
Japanese colonial rule. Peter introduces his cousin as the black sheep of the family when he married a
Japanese woman. The family remained under lock and key in an isolated house in the back when guests
came to the house (Hyŏn 1986: 62).

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9
Colonial modernity

E. Taylor Atkins

A new highway now runs beneath Mt. Samhak,

And all become a playboy in the wind of automobiles.

—‘Ch’unch’ŏn Arirang’ (Kim et al. 1948: 258; Kim 1988: 10)

All usable trees were sold as telegraph poles,

All pretty girls as entertainers.

—‘Chŏngsŏn Arirang’ (Kim 1988: 10)

Old-fashioned people thought it was heresy to think things they had never thought, but it was actually
the comprehension of new truths that the old-fashioned people had never known before. A son must
always be better than his father. Otherwise there would be no such thing as progress. People who are
behind the times, however, dislike it when newcomers know more than they do. Old-fashioned people
are thus often responsible for the tragedy that results from the clash of modern and traditional thought.
—The Heartless (Mujŏng) (Yi Kwangsu 1917: 252)

The first half of the twentieth century was a bewildering, disorienting time for
Koreans. The people of Chosŏn had once prided themselves on excelling the
Chinese in the implementation of an ideal Neo-Confucian order. But in the
modern hierarchy of nations, Korea rated poorly, and in the age of ‘high
imperialism’ even such presumed moral perfection seemed of little use to the
cause of national survival. The privileged few who constituted the
‘enlightenment’ (kaehwa) generation understood well what it meant to lose
national sovereignty to Japan, accepted Social Darwinism as the merciless,
‘inviolate’ principle of international relations (Schmid 2002: 37–38), had some
notion of how industrial capitalism would affect material and social life, and
grasped the monumentality of the Yi court’s failure to prevail against both
domestic dissent and predatory foreign powers—but they were no less distressed
or flummoxed than the less worldly majority. Both the kaehwa intellectuals and
their country cousins expressed their perplexity eloquently in their respective
literatures.
The oral literature of commoners depicted a world turned upside down, if not
gone completely mad.

Those who are fluent of speech are summoned to court,

Those who can work get to the public cemetery,
Girls who can produce get to be whores,
And those who have muscles are called to slave labor.

—‘Ponjo Arirang’, Kyŏnggi (Sŏng and Chang 1949: 3–4; Cho 1974: 49)

Poisonous grass grows before a virtuous woman’s gate.

A peony flower blooms before a whore’s gate.

—‘Arirang t’aryŏng’, Muju, North Chŏlla (Im 1971: 424; Kim 1988: 9)

As soon as a new road emerged, I lost my love.

Automobiles always remind me of my lost love …

—‘Chindo Arirang’ (Kim 1988: 6)

These fragments of folk songs (minyo) from the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries depict the devastation of sacred landscapes, working bodies,
and feminine virtue. They offer prescient critiques of the transformative effects of
modern technologies and their attendant mindsets; even the wind generated by a
passing automobile could change an observer into a dandy ‘playboy’. If a sense of
loss necessarily accompanies modernity (Lears 1994: 4–5), their songs indicate
that Korean commoners grasped and felt it deeply.
For the newly emergent Korean literati—writing in vernacular han’gŭl rather
than in classical Chinese (hanmun)—modernity was not so unwelcome; indeed,
they were among its strongest advocates and beneficiaries. But they were well
attuned to its challenges and costs. They spun dramatic fictional narratives
around the very real, unprecedented ethical dilemmas and uncomfortable social
situations that the modern age and colonial subjugation presented to Koreans. Yi
Kwangsu’s 1917 novel, The Heartless (Mujŏng), opens with a series of awkward
encounters and observations that illustrate the sense of anxiety and
disorientation. Protagonist Yi Hyŏngsik, an English teacher, has a ‘code-
switching’ conversation with a friend, peppered with Japanese and English words
and phrases. He feels ‘powerless’ because ‘he did not have the power of money,
in a world dominated by money. … Most of the worries of modern day people …
had to do with not having money. It was no surprise that people valued money in
a world in which one could purchase someone’s body and even their soul if one
had the money …’. When calling on a pupil (a young aristocratic woman
preparing to study abroad in the United States) for the first time, he observes, ‘In
former times, a guest would never have been allowed past the inner door; just
being allowed to enter the inner door was a big change from the old ways’ (Yi
1917: 79–80, 131). Throughout The Heartless, characters are torn between fidelity
to the ‘old’ ideals of filial sons and ‘virtuous women’, and the ‘new’ order of ‘free
love’ (chayu yŏnae, consensual marriage without parental involvement), female
self-determination, and individual ambition. For some of the older characters,
modernity is little more than an affectation (255–259, 301); Hyŏngsik and his
fiancée Sŏnhyŏng are thus ‘children … who had lost the traditions of thought
transmitted for generations from their ancestors, and were wandering about, not
knowing what would be appropriate for them to choose from the confusion of
Western thought. They had been thrown into a world without standards for life,
or ideals of a nation, and without someone to guide them in the world’ (324).
 ‘Colonial modernity’—which Park Chan Seung (2008) has elegantly defined as
‘a particular articulation of the universal notion of “modernity” in the colonial
context’ (105)—has come into fairly widespread use as an analytical term among
scholars of modern imperialism. They have taken advantage of its concision to
depict historically specific conditions in disparate regions of the late nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century imperial world, such as Egypt, Indochine, the Dutch
East Indies, China, sub-Saharan Africa, Siam, British India, and Manchukuo.1
Although its application in Anglophone and Japanese scholarship on Korea has
been prodigious, ‘colonial modernity’ (sikminji kŭndaesŏng) has proven far more
controversial a concept among Korean scholars, some of whom regard it as
another way of unduly crediting the Japanese colonial occupation for the ‘genesis
of modernization in Korea’ (Cho 2012: 655; Lee, et al. 2013: 10–16).
The word ‘modernity’ designates a host of interrelated historical conditions
and ways of looking at time, space, and human relations: reliance on rationalism,
science, and technology to bring order and efficiency to human affairs; a notion
of progressive time, in which the present moment is perceived as a profound
departure from—and improvement on—traditions and precedents; a sense that
humanity has detached from and transcended the limits of the natural
environment; industrial capitalism and specialisation of labor; urbanism and
cosmopolitanism; mass media and consumer capitalism; individualism and
subjectivism; increased mobility of people, commodities, capital, and information;
and the rise of the nation-state as the standard unit of socio-political
organisation, governed by a centralised, bureaucratic state authority whose ever-
widening purview includes public health and sanitation, education, national
defence, legislation and law enforcement, protection of property rights, regulation
of commerce, economic planning, and credentialing. Historians generally agree
on a concept of modernity that encompasses capitalist democratic, socialist, and
fascist political arrangements. They also acknowledge that the sense of triumphal
achievement that celebrates progress is tempered by nostalgic yearning for
preindustrial modes of production and ways of life. ‘It was … modern urban life’,
Henk Schulte Nordholt (2000) observes, ‘that invented the traditional village and
produced the memory of the good old rural way of life that belonged to the past’
(102).
Whereas ‘colonial modernity’ suggests these historically specific conditions
and their attendant lifestyles and mindsets, ‘colonial modernisation’ (sikminji
kŭndaehwa) refers to the ‘compressed’ process of social, economic, political, and
cultural engineering directed toward attaining those conditions within a colony
(Lee 2011: 90). The latter phrase is the subject of much dispute among historians
of East Asia, because for some it implies that Japanese imperial rule was
beneficial to former colonies such as Taiwan and Korea and territories under
military occupation like Manchukuo and the collaborationist Reorganized
National Government of China. The colonial modernisation argument presumes
to take a neutral, clear-eyed stance, unmoved by indignant nationalist emotion; it
employs quantitative analysis to balance the humiliating loss of sovereignty and
imperial abuses against the valuable infrastructural, commercial, sanitary,
educational, and managerial investment and expertise Japanese brought to
territories under their administration. Unsurprisingly, right-wing historical
revisionists in Japan, such as the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact
(SDHF), favour this argument. However, there are Korean scholars (Kim Unt’ae
and An Pyŏngjik, among them) who do not dismiss it lightly in toto (Park 2010:
74–77), though they still take umbrage at the triumphal self-congratulation the
theory encourages in some of their Japanese counterparts.
Proponents of colonial modernisation theory contend that, whether or not
Japanese-sponsored efforts to modernise colonial and client territories were
intended to benefit local populations, they clearly did, by creating transportation
and communication infrastructure, educational and entrepreneurial
opportunities, agricultural innovation, mass media, and new technologies, all of
which enabled the colonies to integrate within the modern world. These laid the
groundwork, some say, for economic development and prosperity in the late
twentieth century, particularly in Taiwan and the Republic of Korea (Cumings
1984; McNamara 1990; Eckert 1996). Advocates of this historical narrative regard
it as far more constructive than counterfactual speculation about whether or not
Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese could have accomplished modernisation
without Japanese interference. Korean nationalist historiography (minjok sahak)
emerged in part to counter the ‘distorted’ claims of beneficent Japanese rule and
the incapacity of Koreans to self-modernise, creating an alternative balance sheet
in which the only real ‘benefit’ of colonial subjugation was a deepened
nationalist identity and spirit of resistance among the Korean people.
 If modernisation directed by the colonial regime is the process, then
presumably colonial modernity would be its result or product. But that schema
itself distorts somewhat the political agenda that is implicit in colonial modernity
scholarship, but which its critics tend to understate or overlook. For many
scholars, colonial modernity intimates greater contribution and agency from
colonised populations: rather than being a unilateral imposition by omnipotent
imperial regimes, it is a modernity conceived, refashioned, and lived by people
under colonial domination, sometimes in conformity with and sometimes in
opposition to the colonial state’s visions. Colonial modernity, then, consists of
‘neither disfigured nor unsuccessful replications of any prior stable object,
artifact, or concept from another place or time’ (Barlow 1993: vi-vii); rather, it is
an ‘alternative’ modernity selectively marshaled to promote the welfare and
improve the lives of locals, rather than to further the financial or strategic
interests of imperial overlords. If it encourages anti-colonial nationalism, it also
fosters other forms of identification that compromise the homogeneity
nationalism idealises. Traditionally disadvantaged constituencies are able to use
new mass media to participate in the public sphere and assert their interests
(Limapichart 2009). Colonial modernity is negotiated—as are most things in
colonial settings—between colonisers and colonised, and amongst the colonised,
exhibiting attributes peculiar to each locale. Therefore it is more akin to Antonio
Gramsci’s theory of ‘hegemony’ than to a model in which violent coercion is the
only means of maintaining control: conflict between the political/economic elite
and ‘subaltern’ classes is managed through a complex negotiation in which
relatively minor concessions are made to subaltern demands and sensibilities in
exchange for a more general acquiescence to authority. Hegemony is a process by
which the status quo is ‘normalised’ or ‘naturalised’, so that no other political or
economic order seems remotely viable, even to those who remain disadvantaged
by it.
Colonial modernity’s foremost theorist, Tani E. Barlow, begins from the
Marxist premise that ‘colonialism and modernity are indivisible features of the
history of industrial capitalism’ (1997: 1; 2012: 623–624). First and foremost, the
concept draws attention to the fact that modernity was imagined, constructed,
and experienced within a world of empires. Colonial modernity is thus a critique
of ‘modernisation theory’, the belief (shared by Marxists and non-Marxists alike)
that civilisations and nation-states progress at different paces through universal
stages of economic, political, and social development toward national self-
determination and emancipation of the individual citizen/subject. Modernisation
theory has a ‘tendency naively to disavow power differentials’ that colour
experiences of modernity (1997: 6) and to portray ‘Euro-American influence in
Asia [as] historically moderate, benign, humanistic, benevolent and helpful’
(2012: 623). On the contrary, exploitation of colonial resources made European,
North American, and Japanese modernisation possible; that is, modernity was not
a previously accomplished state of being that facilitated or enabled imperial
conquest and colonisation of ‘less developed’ areas of Africa, indigenous America
and Australasia, the Middle East, and Asia.
Secondly, in contrast to prior depictions of the imperial world as a field of
interaction between discrete regions at different stages of historical development
(modern or primitive, civilised or savage, East or West), colonial modernity
encourages transnational thinking and highlights ‘historical synchronicity’
(Barlow 1993: vi; 2012: 629–630); scholars thus frame metropolitan and colonised
regions as a ‘unitary field of analysis’ (Schmid 2000: 953). A corollary of this is
acknowledgment of the mutual impact of colony and métropole on one another:
although their relations are explicitly unequal, cultural influence and institutional
development flow in both directions, rather than simply from the stronger party
to the weaker. The possession of colonies profoundly transformed and defined
imperial nation-states in myriad ways, from their economic, military, and
political structures to their imaginative lives (Thomas 1994; Cooper and Stoler
1997: 1; Shin and Robinson 1999: 5; Schmid 2000: 958). Without colonialism, there
would likely have been no Tintin or Tarzan, no Bōken Dankichi or Babar the
Elephant.
If ‘colonial modernity enables us to understand synchrony between Empire
and colony’, it likewise promotes a sense of ‘diachrony between colonial and
postcolonial periods’ (Cho 2012: 59). Piercing the historiographical boundary
between ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial’ eras to examine continuities, persistent
inequities, and legacies, colonial modernity ‘helps us focus squarely on the
unevenly borne heritage of imperialist occupation and colonial domination’
(Barlow 1993: v; Dirlik 2007: 110). What some call the ‘postcolonial condition’—or,
more colloquially, the ‘colonial hangover’—thus falls within the concept’s scope.
 One of the more controversial aspects of a colonial modernity approach is its
attention to ‘everyday life’ and material culture under conditions of colonial
subjugation. The prevailing structural critiques of empire, as well as the
shopworn dichotomies of coloniser/colonised and collaboration/resistance,
obscure ‘some of the density, richness, and complexity of the original ecosystem’
in which people lived their lives (Shin and Robinson 1999: 4–5). While some
scholars welcome this attention to the ‘subconscious, intangible dimensions of
colonial life’ (particularly because it often allows for greater scrutiny of gender
and culture), critics claim it is ‘at the expense of structural historical narratives’
and the realities of colonial coercion and violence (Do 2004: 202–203; Park 2010:
70, 83; Cho 2012: 652, 656; Lee et al. 2013: 14, 16–30; Kim 1996: 21, 43). Moreover,
with its emphasis on urbanisation, consumerism, mass media, industrial
capitalism, and leisure in the ‘nascent “bourgeois public sphere”‘ (Arunima 2003:
74), colonial modernity scholarship naturally gravitates toward urban spaces and
their residents, neglecting the rural majority.
For scholars whose primary intents are to expose Japanese imperialism as
ethnocide, to document and memorialize the collective suffering of the Korean
masses (minjung), and to trace the occupation’s impact on post-liberation Korean
political and social development, studies of the ‘subjectivity’ of ‘new women’
(sinyŏsŏng) in literature, or the impact of chemical seasoning (MSG) on modern
palates (Jun 2005), for instance, seem inconsequential by comparison. In the
charged political climate of contemporary East Asia, in which the Korean and
Chinese states remain unconvinced by Japanese government expressions of
contrition for colonial and wartime atrocities, some Korean scholars think studies
of the ‘micro-dimension’ experiences and thoughts of colonised Koreans detract
from more substantial inquiries into colonial-era economic exploitation, political
repression, and human rights abuses, the effects of which linger to this day.
Frequently criticised by their North American, European, and Japanese
counterparts for their nationalist outrage, Korean historians retort that it is much
easier to take a ‘post-nationalist’ posture when one does not actually reside in a
former colony (Cho 2012: 658).
Despite such criticisms, colonial modernity remains an attractive shorthand
descriptor to many scholars who focus on the period of Japanese occupation
(1910–45). Scholars do appear to agree that a fundamental social transformation
transpired in colonial Korea (Shin and Robinson 1999: 11; Lee et al. 2013: 14). The
conditions of colonial modernity noticeably flattened the explicitly hierarchal and
patriarchal social order of Chosŏn; novel forms of prestige and identity, and new
routes to individual advancement, gradually supplanted heredity and Chinese
learning in determining social status. In The Heartless, Hyŏngsik recognises an
idle old man in P’yŏngyang who had once been a provincial official, living in
‘desolate loneliness’:

Before 1894, when the old man was in his prime, he must have thought the rivers
and mountains of P’yŏngyang, and all the people in the world existed for him.
With the cannonfire from Ŭlmil Pavilion in 1894, though … [h]e became a person
abandoned by the world, and young people whom he did not know and had
never seen before, took over. He knew nothing about railroads, telegraphs,
telephones, submarines or torpedo boats. … Since he would never realize what
this new world was like, it was as though he were living outside of the world,
even though he dwelled within it (215).

It would be overreaching to say that yangban lineage and Sinocentric erudition

lost all social importance, but they became far less valuable than a modern
education and material wealth in determining one’s social position. Never before
had it been so socially advantageous to be conversant in international affairs,
foreign languages, the natural and social sciences, mathematics, engineering, and
business (ironically, precisely the types of knowledge promoted by eighteenth-
century ‘practical learning’ [sirhak] scholars and routinely dismissed by Neo-
Confucian elitists).
There are fundamental disagreements among scholars about how
‘emancipating’ this social revolution actually was: some argue that old modes of
caste-based oppression were simply replaced with new class-and ethnic-based
ones (Park 2010: 88–96). Furthermore, since this transformation occurred within a
space under colonial dominion, there were implicit, unadvertised limits to what
an ambitious modern Korean could achieve. Even the privileged son of a former
noble house, with a degree from a Japanese university, could not realistically
aspire to a civil service or private sector career in which he would have
supervisory authority over Japanese. A well-educated daughter could hope for
little more than becoming the ‘wise mother and good wife’ (hyŏnmo yangch’ŏ, an
inversion of the analogous Japanese term ryōsai kenbō) in a scientifically
managed middle-class household, a civic ideal encouraged not only by ingrained
Confucian tradition but also by both Christian missionaries and Japanese civil
law (Choi 2009: 9). Although inequality is certainly a persistent characteristic of
capitalist modernity, in a colonial modern society the opportunities for
advancement and emancipation that modernity promised were systematically
circumscribed and unevenly distributed according to the logic of colonial
relations: regardless of education, occupation, income, or lineage, Koreans would
always be disadvantaged compared to Japanese settlers. Furthermore, in a
colonial modern society, Koreans routinely faced hard choices, mundane and
monumental, about when and how to comply or resist, or when and how to
choose national over personal and familial interests. Therein lie the conceptual
essence and key insights of ‘colonial modernity’.
Shin and Robinson (1999) have noted that modernity in colonial Korea was
refracted through the lens of imperial Japan (10). Uniquely among modern
imperial powers, from the mid-1850s Japan had itself been subjected to
substantial imperial pressure by the United States, Russia, and European
countries, via the mechanism of the unequal commercial treaty. The leaders of
the Meiji state that came to power in 1868 observed imperialist predations on the
Asian continent and fixated on the Korean peninsula as the key to their own
homeland security. With increasing rural unrest, continuing subservience to
China’s floundering Qing dynasty, and a vacillating royal court beset with
factional intrigue (which, ironically, Japanese meddling only exacerbated),
Chosŏn appeared destined to become someone’s colony, Meiji leaders surmised.
Nearly three decades before the actual annexation in 1910, Japanese officials
worked with Chosŏn dissidents to resuscitate the Korean monarchy by
undermining it, hoping to install a pro-Japanese, Meiji-like modernisation regime
to govern the peninsula.
Modernity in Korea essentially began with this generation of reformers, Kim
Okkyun (1851–94), Sŏ Chae-p’il (1864–1951), Hong Yŏngsik (1855–84), and others
who formed the Enlightenment Party (Kaehwadang). It was no accident that they
used the Sino-Korean equivalent of the Japanese term kaika (literally, ‘opening’)
from the Meiji-era slogan ‘civilisation and enlightenment’ (bunmei kaika); Kim
Ok-kyun was a disciple of Japan’s foremost public intellectual, Fukuzawa Yukichi
(1835–1901), the man who almost singlehandedly defined and embodied that
slogan for most Japanese. Another Fukuzawa protégé, Yu Kil-chun (1856–1914)
wrote, ‘In an enlightened society, myriad affairs and things are thoroughly
studied and managed, and innovation is attempted at all times. There is heroic
spirit for greater achievement, and indolence is totally absent’ (quoted in Ch’oe et
al. 2000: 250).
The kaehwa faction’s reliance on Japan may seem naïve or foolish in hindsight,
but in the 1880s its members believed that Korean independence and
modernisation would best be served by accepting Japanese assistance and cutting
ties with the Qing. Their fourteen-point agenda included the abolition of formal
status distinctions and yangban aristocratic privilege, as the Meiji government
had legally erased samurai status through a series of edicts (haitōrei) in the 1870s;
cessation of tributary relations with Qing and assertion of Chosŏn’s political
independence; land tax reform; and reorganisation of government administration,
military, and police forces (Ch’oe et al. 2000: 255–256). The failure of the
Enlightenment faction’s December 1884 coup attempt, in historian Yŏng-ho
Ch’oe’s (1982) estimation, was ‘an unmitigated disaster for modern Korea’: the
‘attempted coup totally besmirched the image of the enlightenment movement’,
and ‘deprived Korea of a viable model for reform and modernisation as the image
of Meiji Japan became tarnished in the eyes of many Koreans …’ (108, 120).
The fact that several of the Kapsin Coup’s masterminds sought refuge in Japan
inspired little confidence; those who would later aspire to bring kaehwa to Korea
would be dogged by suspicions that they were too pro-Japanese (ch’in’il) to be
trusted. Japanese sponsorship of another attempt at a Meiji-style ‘revolution from
above’, the so-called Kabo Reforms (1894–95), virtually guaranteed their failure
(Ch’oe et al. 2000: 272–276). Over the next decade, a number of private
organisations arose in the rechristened Taehan Empire to push for modernisation
through fundamental political, educational, and social reforms: some, like the
Independence Club (1896–98), Korean Association for Self-Strengthening (1906–
07), and New People’s Association (1906–11), rejected Japanese assistance; others,
particularly the Advance in Unity Society (1904–10), worked closely with
Japanese officials, believing that political reform and capitalist modernity were
unattainable without their guidance (Moon 2013). Ironically, Japanese
interventions to assist sovereign Korea’s self-strengthening efforts were so ham-
fisted and self-serving as to delegitimize and undermine the whole enterprise.
Japan was not the only source of modern ideas, institutions, technologies, and
practices in Korea. Indeed, the abortive Kabo ‘revolution from above’ was
precipitated in part by a ‘revolution from below’: the wholly indigenous,
millenarian Tonghak movement that preached social equality. Although its
original name meant ‘Eastern Learning’, as opposed to ‘Western Learning’
(sŏhak), this syncretic faith’s doctrine of ‘humans are Heaven’ (innaech’ŏn) and
admonishment to ‘treat each person as you treat Heaven’ (sainyŏch’ŏn) clearly
resonated with modern notions of the rights and dignity of the individual.
Benjamin Weems (1964) has argued that ‘the implications of the doctrine were as
staggering to the controlling groups in nineteenth-century Korea as had been the
impact of the theories of John Locke or Rousseau upon the controlling elements
in eighteenth-century France and England’ (13). In their 1894 uprising, Tonghak
rebels pointedly destroyed slave registries to throw the centuries-old slave system
into chaos and compel emancipation. Renamed Ch’ŏndogyo (Teaching of the
Heavenly Way) in late 1905, the faith became ‘modern’ in its organisational
structure, propagation tactics, and implicit nationalism. Moreover, as publisher of
colonial Korea’s longest-lived women’s magazine, New Woman (Sinyŏsŏng),
Ch’ŏndogyo sponsored a major forum for public discussion of women’s issues
(Lee 2011: 96).
Protestant missionaries from North America and Europe had a deeper impact
on notions and experiences of modernity in Korea than they did in either China
or Japan. Besides adding thousands of Koreans to the Christian flock,
missionaries opened schools, churches, clinics, and hospitals that were preferable
to what the regime offered. At the beginning of the colonial period, at least,
Korean girls were much better served by schools opened by missionary women,
where they could continue their studies much further than in the Japanese
schools; they could even aspire to enter Ewha University (founded by American
missionary Mary F. Scranton in 1886) or attend college overseas. Many Koreans
came to regard the missionary presence as a haven or refuge from their colonial
reality. They took spiritual comfort in the Christian message and detected a
distinct advantage in learning modern ways and ideas directly from ‘the source’,
rather than secondhand from their imperial overlords. They also realised that the
whole notion of ‘liberty’ was conspicuously absent from Japanese versions of
modernity. ‘When a people saturated in the Bible comes into touch with
tyranny’, Canadian missionary F. A. McKenzie (1920) wrote in the wake of the
March First uprising, ‘either one of two things happens, the people are
exterminated or tyranny ceases’ (7).
By all accounts, Korea was one of the most intensively developed colonies in
the world. The peninsula’s strategic value to Japan’s continuing encroachments
into Northeast Asia in the 1920s and 1930s was multifaceted: it was a site for
factories, mills, capital investment, and military garrisons, a source of labor, food,
and raw materials, and, eventually, even of soldiers. The consequent
transformation was most visible in cities, especially those in which substantial
numbers of Japanese settled. Kyŏngsŏng (Keijō/Seoul), Taegu, P’yŏngyang,
Mokp’o, and other Korean cities, much like urban spaces elsewhere in the
colonial world, were marked by the incongruities of the modern and the
antiquated, the Western/Japanese and the indigenous, the planned and the
unintended, a ‘mystifying mix of surface and depth, past and present,
confinement and mobility’ (Johnson 2003: 317, 330; Myers 2003; Kim 2008; Arnold
2012: 122; Min 2013: 500–501).
Case studies of the capital (Henry 2014), the old inland city of Taegu (Kim
2008) and the new port town of Mokp’o (Park 2008) depict ‘dual cities’ in which
Japanese and Korean residential areas were clearly demarcated and
improvements in infrastructure, sanitation, and other city services were unevenly
distributed. In each case, Korean residents protested against construction or
demolition projects that were of no benefit to them, but city councils dominated
by the minority Japanese habitually overrode such objections. Only adult males
who paid five wŏn in city taxes per year were eligible to vote, which virtually
guaranteed disproportionate Japanese representation in city government.
According to Park (2008), in 1935 eligible voters in Mokp’o consisted of 883
Japanese and 551 Koreans, nearly all of them industrialists, merchants, or
landowners (118–122). With so little Korean representation in city government—
and what there was comprising a compradore class deeply enmeshed in the
Japanese-dominated economy— there was little to prevent the transformation of
Korean cityscapes to serve Japanese interests. In 1906 Japanese residents
successfully conspired with a ch’in’il local governor to demolish the fortress wall
of Taegu (Kim 2008: 82–83). In Kyŏngsŏng, the Government-General of Chōsen
(GGC) tore down most of the Kyŏngbok palace complex and obnoxiously placed
its neoclassical granite headquarters in front of what was left, obscuring capital
residents’ view of their monarchy’s former grandeur.
Despite all the official propaganda about the ‘progress in Chōsen’ under
Japanese rule, Japanese settlers could be incredibly stingy about sharing its
benefits with their Korean neighbors. Japanese residents of Taegu vetoed the city
administration’s 1924 plan to upgrade the streets and sewage system in Korean
residential areas (Kim 2008: 88–89). Appeals for piped water, paved roads, street
lighting, and garbage collection in Mokp’o’s Korean North Village, to match
those of the Japanese South Village, also went unheeded (Park 2008: 123–130).
The number of rural migrants into both cities continued unabated, however,
further straining city services and exacerbating the difference in living conditions
between Koreans and Japanese.
Rural Korea lagged far behind but was by no means unaffected by modernity.
Throughout the peninsula, railroads, telecommunications, irrigation and
construction projects wrecked geomantic havoc, ignoring Korean sensibilities
about sacred spaces, auspicious landmarks, ancestral burial sites, and fertile soils.
‘Our good farm lands are taken away for railroads’, farmers wailed, ‘Our
beautiful maidens become prostitutes’ (quoted in Nahm 1975: 201). To be sure,
railroads served Japanese military and economic interests first and foremost, but,
as was the case in British India and other colonies, also facilitated the integration
of distant regions into coherent national space. In 1899, Japanese completed an
American-initiated rail line connecting Kyŏngsŏng to coastal Inch’ŏn; three years
later, they secured from the Taehan court rights to build the Kyŏngbu line
between Kyŏngsŏng and the southeastern port of Pusan. When hostilities with
Russia began in 1904, the Imperial Japanese Army rushed to complete the project
to facilitate the transport of troops to the front lines. In its urgency, the IJA
sometimes seized agricultural land and commandeered local labor. Peasants
occasionally sabotaged rail lines that passed though their lands, risking summary
execution. Within a short timespan, by linking the Kyŏngbu and French-managed
Kyŏngŭi (between the capital and Ŭiju) lines, Japanese had succeeded in
connecting the southeastern tip of the peninsula to the northwestern border with
China with 950 kilometres of rail line (Nakano 2007). A 1936 railway map shows
a substantial rail network linking the capital to Mokp’o in the southwest,
Kyŏngju in the southeast, Masan in the south, Najin in the extreme northeast,
and Sinŭiju in the northwest (where passengers and cargo could connect to the
Trans-Siberian Railroad).
As was the case in Japan, the rural peasantry, nominally esteemed in
Confucian cosmology, assumed greater prominence in the modern political
imagination. Clark Sorensen (in Shin and Robinson 1999) has argued that
colonial-era intellectuals identified agrarian cultivators (nongmin) as a Marxist
‘class’ (kyegŭp) in which the very core of Korean national identity (minjoksŏng)
resided (288–290). It was in the colonial period, then, that the peasantry assumed
political importance as the basis for ‘the people’ (minjung), the ‘agents of social
transformation and progress’ (Wells 1995: 25; Shin 1999: 792). But, again, as in
Japan, rural folk themselves saw little actual benefit from such exalted discursive
status. By the early 1930s, tenant farmers comprised over half of rural Korean
households, paying both fixed rents and variable proportions of the harvest to
absentee landlords, whose primary concern was to maximize their own wealth
through commercial agriculture. Dong-No Kim (in Lee et al. 2013) contends that
cultivators bore much of the costs for new seeds, machinery, fertilizers, and
irrigation systems for the regime’s Program to Increase Rice Production—for
Japanese consumption (162–163). Peasants were endlessly inventive in their
methods of passive resistance, sometimes replacing rice with wheat or barley, or
refusing to harvest crops altogether (Shin 1996: 137–138). Unable to thrive in the
market economy, or even to consume the crops they tended, millions of rural
Koreans flocked to cities to engage in wage labor, which promised but was no
guarantee of an improved quality of life.
However, Gi-Wook Shin and Do-Hyun Han (in Shin and Robinson 1999)
contend the GGC was not completely oblivious or indifferent to nongmin, who
were, after all, providing an increasing portion of the rice consumed in the
métropole, nor were farmers themselves passive in asserting their interests.
Agrarian activists mounted a fully realized critique of colonial modernity,
advocating agrarian self-sufficiency rather than integration into the capitalist
market, moral reconstruction, and collectivism (Shin 1999: 794–800). The state-
sponsored Rural Revitalization Program (1932–40) worked with villages to
address agrarian immiseration and resolve disputes between tenants and
landlords. Shin and Han point to ‘modest achievements in improving rural
economic welfare’ resulting from ‘noncoercive measures to cultivate consent’ in
the countryside. In a rare show of well-informed cultural sensitivity, the regime
invoked the moral principles of the traditional hyangyak (village compact) to
persuade farmers to invest in the campaign. By encouraging village collectives to
take charge of their own affairs, and ‘selectively attempt[ing] to incorporate
peasants’ demands into state policy’, the GGC sought to cultivate economic and
‘spiritual’ rejuvenation. ‘In addition to Meiji reform ideology in the form of
agrarianism and a social policy approach’, Shin and Han conclude, ‘internal
developments within Korea crucially shaped the course of the rural campaign’
(88–90, 94–95).
The cultural history of colonial Korea has benefited immensely from the
colonial modernity approach. Whereas earlier histories narrated the decline of
traditional arts and leisure pursuits, or their purposeful erasure by Japanese
assimilation policies, recent scholarship recounts the adaptation of traditional
music, dance, theater, visual arts, literature, and amusements to modern tastes
and mass-mediated modes of delivery. The everyday creative and consumptive
activities of Koreans reveal multiple complexities of life under colonial rule that
are far more compelling— sometimes even inspiring—than a simple account of
cultural degradation and atrophy. The mixture of Euro-American, Japanese, and
Korean elements made the cultural marketplace vibrant, distinctive, and
emblematic of colonial modernity.
As cinema (yŏnghwa), ‘new fiction’ (sin sosŏl), popular songs (kayo), and ‘new
theater’ (singŭk) increasingly commanded the attention of audiences, the number
of practitioners of traditional arts shrank noticeably during the colonial period;
but it is also true that, as these traditions were (re)invented, canonised, and
represented in new media, their prestige value and import as signifiers of Korean
cultural distinctiveness grew. Musicologist Andrew Killick’s (2012) examination
of ch’anggŭk opera is a terrific case study of performers adapting and
transforming their art for the modern cultural marketplace while highlighting its
ties to traditional aesthetics and Korean cultural identity. In the first decade of
the twentieth century, some artists joined forces to create troupes and
appropriated the singing techniques and canonical stories of p’ansori—originally
performed by a lone itinerant bard (kwangdae) and a drummer (kosu) in outdoor
public markets—for indoor, multi-actor theatrical stage productions. As in
Morocco (Dieste 2012), China, and Japan, the spectacle and novelty were
enhanced significantly by the onstage presence of women; some of the first
Korean actresses were former kisaeng who had been dismissed from government
employment by the Kabo Reforms.
Although its twentieth-century origins and the influence of American stage
plays, Chinese changxi (‘singing plays’), and Japanese shinpa (quasi-kabuki
agitprop melodramas) make the ‘traditionality’ of ch’anggŭk debatable (52–61),
Killick notes, it retains a ‘traditionesque’ aura: ‘Visually, ch’anggŭk is a parade of
traditional Korean clothing, architecture, and landscape; aurally, it can include
almost the whole spectrum of Korean musical styles. Thematically, it centers on
traditional Korean stories with (at least ostensibly) traditional Korean Confucian
morals’ (27). From 1903 to 1912, and again in the late 1930s, ch’anggŭk thrived as
a popular form of vernacular entertainment in both urban theaters and provincial
tent-shows. It proved popular and durable enough that the colonial regime
thought it well suited to promote its intensified ‘national language’ policy and
assimilation agenda in the late 1930s and 1940s and to foster Korean support for
the war effort (Park 2003: 103). Nayoung Aimee Kwon (2014) characterizes a 1938
Japanese production of the venerable p’ansori/ch’anggŭk opera Ch’unhyang chŏn
as an attempt to satiate parallel yet inconsonant nostalgic desires. For Koreans,
Ch’unhyang was part of the nationalist agenda to resuscitate and promote
‘national tradition’ within the cultural realm, which ‘took on rising symbolic
import as a metonym for the identity of the absent nation and its lack of political
sovereignty’ (117). For Japanese, Ch’unhyang was ‘colonial kitsch’, an exotic
curio of peninsular culture, one of many ‘mass-produced objects for
indiscriminate imperial consumption’ (115, 121).
The quintessential modern entertainment was, of course, the motion picture.
The Japanese benshi, who provided narration, context, and commentary for silent
film audiences, and whose celebrity often exceeded that of the actors onscreen,
was transplanted to Korea as pyŏnsa. In most respects, the pyŏnsa’s
responsibilities and skill set mirrored those of his Japanese counterpart (there are
no records of female pyŏnsa, although there were female benshi): in addition to
extemporaneous eloquence, charisma, and wit, he needed to be conversant
enough in foreign (Euro-American and Japanese) cultures to offer contextual
explanation during showings of imported films. Two named pyŏnsa mastered
Japanese well enough to perform for Japanese audiences. Yet the pyŏnsa was not
simply a Japanese transplant; he was an example of the refraction of imported
culture that characterizes colonial modernity. Pyŏnsa had the power to shape
audiences’ experiences and interpretations of the films they watched. Film
scholar Kim Ryŏsil (2004) makes a persuasive case that the 1926 blockbuster
Arirang was not a self-contained nationalist allegory, but became one whenever
pyŏnsa Sŏng Tong-ho (1904-?) ‘read’ it to audiences (18, 20, 21–22). When
narrating Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Sŏ Sang-p’il (1901-?) likened the slave
revolt to the Korean independence struggle (Maliangkay 2005). If Japanese police
were absent, then, pyŏnsa not only interpreted the wider world for their
audiences but also kept the embers of nationalism aflame.
Also emblematic of the complexities and paradoxes of Korean colonial
modernity were the kisaeng. These courtesan-entertainers—analogous if not quite
identical to Japanese geisha—are usually known as carriers of traditional Korean
vocal and instrumental music, dance, calligraphy, and poetry, and to some degree
that was their function in the colonial period. However, like their South Asian
counterparts, the tawa’if (Jha 2009), they were also prominent in new electronic
media as popular entertainers, performing newer Korean, Japanese, and even
Euro-American material on theater stages, radio broadcasts, and 78 RPM records.
To be sure, their greater visibility and audibility were not uncontroversial, and
traditionalists and Japanese Koreaphiles were chagrined to see kisaeng expanding
their repertoire.
The stigma of a kisaeng’s presumed sexual availability titillated and
scandalised audiences. No longer reserved for government officials, kisaeng were
‘accessible’ to a greater variety of men, anyone who could pay. The Heartless
features several lengthy ruminations by protagonist Hyŏngsik, as he struggles to
reconcile compassion for his childhood friend Yŏngch’ae and revulsion at the
(unfounded) thought of her acquiescing to the sexual demands of possibly
hundreds of ‘dissipated’ men after she became a kisaeng (Yi 1917: 111–114, 174–
175). When an elite man rapes Yŏngch’ae, he feels no remorse, since ‘the virtue of
chastity was for women of good family, not kisaeng … a special kind of creature
that was beyond morality and ethics’ (165). The Japanese regime’s decision to
license kisaeng as sex workers, legally indistinguishable from prostitutes with no
artistic skills, had significantly diminished the kisaeng’s already wobbly social
standing.
Having been released from servitude to the Yi royal house and provincial
governments, colonial-era kisaeng were trained at ‘licensing academies’
(kwŏnbŏn) (Hŏ 2008). Kwŏnbŏn were mostly self-governing and enabled kisaeng
of lower rank to breach the hierarchical structure of their profession. Several
former government kisaeng (kwangi) used kwŏnbŏn to transmit traditional arts
to a younger generation of Korean women. But kwŏnbŏn curricula also adapted
to evolving popular tastes and marketplace realities, which meant that some
kisaeng were also adept pop chanteuses (Kawamura 2001: 125–127, 147–148). Like
contemporaneous Egyptian almas, they added contemporary pop songs to the
traditional repertoire of art music that had long been their preserve (Lagrange
2009).
Although Japanese media depicted them as icons of a timeless eroticism
(Kawamura 2001; Atkins 2010: 175–184), there is substantial evidence that kisaeng
took full advantage of burgeoning mass media and their position outside of
patriarchal family structures to promote a modern consciousness and female
autonomy; recent studies indeed maintain that kisaeng were among the vanguard
of the Korean feminist movement (Min 2013: 511). Kisaeng exploited new mass-
media technologies and entertainment venues to earn their livelihoods, preserve
their independence, and participate fully in the public sphere. They took their arts
out of bars and teahouses, playing and singing music on radio broadcasts and
recordings and even performing dances in large theaters in Japan. In January
1927, seventeen kisaeng joined forces to launch a new magazine entitled
Changhan (‘Long Suffering’) to share information and dispel negative stereotypes
about themselves. ‘Henceforth, this magazine, covering the kisaeng community,
is now finally raising its voice’, Pak Nok-chu declared in the first edition (whose
cover image depicted a kisaeng in a birdcage). ‘This magazine is a mouthpiece
through which we can publicize our lives, opinions, sorrows and joys
unreservedly’ (quoted in Kim 2005). This feminist manifesto echoed similar
statements made by Japan’s ‘new women’ in the journal Bluestocking (Seitŏ,
1911–16) and two Korean publications entitled New Woman (Sinyŏja, 1920, and
Sinyŏsŏng, 1923–34), while still representing the viewpoints of a distinctive
professional class. Kisaeng would be not only the topics of public discourse, but
participants in it. The voices of kisaeng were thus distinctive, constitutive
elements of Korean colonial modernity.
Kisaeng participated in the explosive growth of the popular music industry in
Northeast Asia in the 1910s and 1920s. Most Japanese recording companies
opened facilities on the peninsula, recorded a variety of Korean singers and
instrumentalists, and imported wholesale the various genres of popular music
that were au courant in imperial Japan. Although relatively few Koreans could
afford phonographs, and slightly more could purchase radios, new forms of
popular music were prominent in urban soundscapes, blaring from cafes,
department stores, radios, and theaters. Traditional Korean fare, including
abridged p’ansori operas, vied with so-called trot (t’ŭrott’ŭ, from ‘foxtrot’, or
ppongjjak), fashionable songs (yuhaeng ch’angga), jazz (chaejŭ), popular songs
(taejung kayo), ‘new folk songs’ (sin minyo), and European classics for listeners’
attention. In fact, those who lament the ‘colonisation’ of musical culture
frequently blame Japan for the hegemony of Western art music in modern Korea.
Yet it is also true that regional indigenous styles became more widely known
nationwide as a result of electronic media (Seo 2010: 184). In Ch’ae Man-sik’s
(1903–50) novel Peace Under Heaven (T’aep’yŏng ch’ŏngha, 1938), radio enables
the oily Master Yun Tu-sŏp to hear ‘southern songs’ (namdo minyo) of provincial
Chŏlla while residing in Kyŏngsŏng (12–14).
The consumers of modern entertainments, the living embodiments of la
modernité coloniale, were young urbanites whose sensibilities favoured the new
and the now, and whose fashions, outlooks, behaviors, and mating rituals
constituted an entirely new set of ‘customs’ (p’ungsok), largely inspired by
Western movies (Min 2013: 503). Like the indigenous middle classes in other
colonial societies, ‘What they aimed at in the first place was not a nation, but a
lifestyle. And access to such a lifestyle could be obtained by joining the
framework of the colonial system and in doing so consolidating the colonial
regime’ (Nordholt 2011: 438). The appearance of ‘new women’ and ‘modern girls’,
in particular, generated a degree of moral panic and nationalist indignation, not
unlike that which afflicted ‘jazz-age’ Japan. Less judgmental observers regarded
the modern girl as ‘an embodiment of the transition from the old practices to the
new ways, an ambivalent figure who could manifest different possibilities
depending on whether she focuses on material consumption or moral vision and
advanced knowledge’ (Choi 2013: 73). Yet the controversy these icons generated
in the media—where they were vilified as decadent, bourgeois, ‘seductive’, and
materialistic—was way out of all proportion to the actual number of middle-class
urban women who could actually sustain ‘consumerism and new adventures in
urban modern space’ (Choi 2013: 72–80).
Critical public scrutiny of women’s deportment and conduct was a
fundamental characteristic of colonial modernity. In the age of high imperialism,
female autonomy was a key index for measuring a society’s progress from
savagery to civilisation (Choi 2009: 5; Tran 2012: 411). Moreover, as was the case
elsewhere in the world, conflicts between tradition and Western modernity were
‘enacted on women’s bodies and representational praxis’: women were expected
to ‘balance desired modernity against undesirable Western values’ (Oza 2006: 94;
Tran 2012: 412). That is, women’s levels of engagement in public life, their
fashion choices and consumptive habits, their interactions with men and
expectations of marriage, and their personal aspirations all indicated how
advanced or behind Korea and other colonies were compared to their imperial
masters, but also how far removed they had become from still-cherished ancestral
beliefs and customs that were the very foundations of national identity and
cultural integrity. High-profile ‘new women’ who put their Western education
and expertise to work managing households and raising children were hailed for
their contribution to the ‘revitalization of the nation’; those who expressed
‘intellectual, artistic, or sensual desires’, questioned the virtue of chastity,
publicly divorced their husbands, spent money frivolously on cosmetics and
imported luxury goods, or otherwise led ‘scandalous lives’ became ‘objects of
caricature and derision’ (Yoo 2008: 58–59; Choi 2009: 21–23; Lee 2011: 98–100;
Min 2013: 495, 507–508). This is not to say that men were exempt from scrutiny
and controversy—in 1927, one writer defined a ‘modern boy’ as a man ‘whose
facial complexion is more like a woman’s’ (quoted in Choi 2013: 76)—but Korean
men donned Western apparel and cut their long hair decades before women
followed suit, and with more official approval. Although hardly immune from
criticism, men had greater latitude when ‘going modern’ than women did (Min
2013: 511–513).
In public spaces, modernity was visually and aurally conspicuous: wires
(electrical, telegraph, and telephone), railways and paved roads, newspapers and
magazines, automobiles, brick and stone buildings, street lights and neon signs,
train whistles, radios, machinery, and other noises all signified the progress
required for civilisation. ‘The noises of the city were those of civilization. A
nation prospered the louder those noises were’, Yi Kwangsu mused wryly in The
Heartless. ‘The sounds of wagon wheels, and steam and electric-powered engines
combined to give rise to civilization in all its brilliance. Modern civilization was a
civilization of noise. There was not yet enough noise in Seoul’ (300).
But the domestic sphere, the private space that a family inhabited, and the
relationships within it could indicate modernity as well. Private life was subject
to public scrutiny and discussion; nutrition, childrearing, budgeting, furnishing,
hygiene, marital and parental relations were measured by the yardstick of
progress. Nationalist intellectuals in Korea, as in Bengal, Egypt, and elsewhere in
the colonial world, believed nation-building began at home: ‘the domestic [was]
an inseparable part of the national’, and ‘proper management’ of the household
according to best practices of ‘domestic science’ was thus an essential endeavour
(Chakrabarty 1993: 5–7; Lagrange: 2009, 242–243; Yoo 2008: 85–94 ; Choi 2009:
10–11; Lee 2011). In an influential 1930 editorial, Kang Kyŏng-nae (1906–44)
wrote, ‘childrearing and food preparation are not simply an important issue for
the home but can also be socially pertinent. In this sense, then, the domestic and
the social together make up one large cohesive body’ (quoted in Hanscom, et al.,
2013: 136).
Although care for elderly parents remained a social virtue, and
multigenerational households an economic necessity, the focus of modern
domesticity was the conjugal household—sans concubines—consisting of a wife
and husband with ‘modern consciousness’, who raised children in a deliberate,
earnest manner for future service to the nation (minjok). As prescribed in Korean
and Japanese print media in the 1920s and 1930s, such modern households were
marked by monogamous, companionate marriages between consenting adults,
frugal budgeting, industriousness, nutritious homemade meals, social awareness,
and diligent schooling. Wives were paradoxically admonished to be both
spendthrifts and consumers of a dizzying array of new products to promote the
health, wealth, and hygiene of their families. Though still outranking their
spouses in the household hierarchy, husbands were to respect their wives’
intellects and opinions and to observe sexual discipline, eschewing secondary
marriages and dalliances with kisaeng.
As Ji-Eun Lee (2011) notes, however, a perusal of mass media from this era can
be misleading: there was a basic incongruence between such ambitious discourse
and the socioeconomic realities of most Korean families. In this respect, ‘new
women’, ‘modern boys’, and ‘modern families’ reflected Korean colonial
modernity more generally. ‘Japan ran a deeply penetrating and meticulously
controlled colonial governing system’, Lee continues, ‘which rendered a colonial
culture that appeared similar to that of the empire; the resemblance is striking
when compared to British or French colonies. But inwardly, colonial space was
enormously complex and uneven, with poignant differences between Japanese
and Koreans, and between Korean people themselves’ (114–116).
In a critique of colonial modernity historiography, political scientist Hong-
Yung Lee claims that it ‘appears to make the same intellectual mistake attributed
to the Korean nationalist discourse, namely extrapolating the implications of
findings beyond what the findings warrant. … Being able to detect the subtleties,
gray areas, and contradictions of the period, while not losing overall perspective
of the basic nature of colonialism is what is required for good scholarship’ (26–
27). Specifically, Hong takes exception to studies that claim the economic growth
and prosperity in the Republic of Korea in the last quarter of the twentieth
century was a beneficial outcome or legacy of the Japanese colonial occupation.
Although I am unaware of any reputable scholar who would argue openly that
Japanese colonial rule was good for Korea (Japanese right-wing revisionists
hardly qualify as ‘reputable’), it is perhaps fair to say that in their zeal to correct
the excesses of Korean nationalist historiography and be provocative, some
historians who have embraced the colonial modernity framework have
understated the ‘colonial’ aspects of their subject matter (Do 2004). Hong is surely
right when he states, ‘The political cost of Korea’s colonial experience was too
high compared with its speculative advantages’ (25). The most conspicuous
evidence of this ‘political cost’ is the persistent ‘one nation, two states’
arrangement on the Korean peninsula, a direct consequence of the schism within
the colonial-era nationalist movement between socialist revolutionaries and
moderate ‘cultural nationalists’ (Robinson 1988). ‘In calling for reforms within the
confines of colonization’, Ellie Choi (in Hanscom et al. 2013) writes, ‘moderates
like Yi Kwangsu were criticized by more radical nationalists for ignoring their
colonized status and seeking sanctuary in the realm of culture. For Korean
bourgeois intellectuals, this retreat to culture (culturalism) was motivated by …
the desire to avoid politics altogether, to work within the parameters of the
colonial state, and to avoid interruption of their work by being arrested’ (2–3).
Like a scar, the 38th parallel bears witness to this colonial-era disagreement on
the future of the Korean nation.
To some degree the colonial modernity debate is a matter of emphasis:
whereas some scholars focus on the empowerment, emancipation, and
opportunities modernity offered to Koreans (glass half full), others stress the
discrimination, injustice, and cruelty colonialism inflicted on them (glass half
empty). As heated as the discussion about colonial modernity in Korea has been,
if it results in fuller, more nuanced and sensitive histories of the period and its
people, and in more dialogue and collaboration between Korean and non-Korean
scholars, it will have been productive.

Note
1 Colonial modernity is a rare example of a theoretical stance that originated among historians of East Asia
and was subsequently adopted by historians in other fields.

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10
Women, gender, and social change in
colonial Korea

Sonja M. Kim

Reform! … Liberation! This is the call of women who have been confined to the deep, dark, inner
chambers for thousands of years … Truly the time has come for change … In order to reform society, we
must first reform the family, society’s most basic and fundamental unit. In order to reform the family, we
have to liberate women, who are the masters of the house. And we must first liberate women if we are to
catch up with the rest of the world, be competitive, lead lives that can be respected by other states, and
transform our social structure.
—Inaugural editorial, Sin yŏja (1920)1

In 1920 the inaugural issue of the journal Sin yŏja (New Woman) called forth a
new world, premised on the liberation of women. Likening women to slaves
whose time for awakening had come, the journal modeled the feminist group
Seitō (Bluestocking) in Japan. Its founder, female literary figure Kim Wŏn-ju,
envisioned the journal to not only provide space for and voice to the literary and
artistic expressions of its female contributors but also inspire its targeted female
readership to effect social change. Women were to work in society, make gains
beyond acknowledgement provided by “empty slogans” such as “equality” or
“respect for women,” and “build a social order that is the envy of the world.”
Although Sin yŏja published only four issues, as Korea’s first journal with a clear
feminist platform, it attests to shifting attitudes in regards to gender relations in
early twentieth-century Korea. Sin yŏja also heralded an explosion of public
discussion concerning the “woman question” within an expanding publishing
landscape enabled by the Japanese colonial state’s Cultural Politics (munhwa
chŏngch’i) in the aftermath of the 1919 nationalist March First movement
(Robinson 2014).
This chapter provides an overview of the dynamic transformations related to
gender during the colonial period from 1910 to 1945. Determining whether things
were better for women under Japanese colonial rule than in the previous Chosŏn
period is not the aim. The lived experiences of women depended on a multitude
of factors, including their socio-economic class, marriage and reproductive status,
education and skills, age, family support, religion, and location (e.g. urban, rural,
industrial, near a railroad), among others. Rather, this chapter finds more
productive an examination of the development of social institutions in the realms
of education, labor, law, religion, and health which promoted gendered norms,
behavior, and structures. These, in turn, shaped the opportunities that became
available to women. Evolving at the interstices of transnational and transcultural
encounters, Japanese imperialism, and Korean nationalist politics, these
institutions grappled with Korea’s patriarchal traditions at the same time they
endorsed modernist practices.
The end result was a reconfiguration of Chosŏn Confucian gender ethics as
manifested by the modern “Wise Mother, Good Wife” (hyŏnmo yangch’ŏ)
construct. Scholars place “Wise Mother, Good Wife” at the core of a new gender
discourse emerging around the turn of the twentieth century, propagated through
schools and debated in public literary spaces and the courtroom. (Choi 2009b; Yoo
2008; Lim 2011) Stress on women’s maternal role was particularly reflected in
colonial reproductive politics. (Park 2014a; Kim 2008b) The high value placed on
women’s roles in the domestic sphere buttressed a colonial order premised on the
nuclear family as the basic unit of society. It also, however, made possible for the
agency women exercised on issues pertinent to them by providing the means by
which women worked within, chal lenged, and negotiated those social
institutions, thereby destabilizing the very harmony families managed by wise
mothers and good wives were to provide. Nevertheless, gender politics of colonial
Korea solidified the patriarchal nature of the household, laying the groundwork
for continued institutionalized forms of gender inequalities (Shin 2006; Moon
2005) and the “heteronormative assumptions” of the post-1948 South Korean state
(Choi 2015). Social change for women was also uneven, concentrated in urban
areas and on a relatively small scale.
Reframing women

As discussed in the previous chapters, the sense of urgency felt among Korean
leaders in the aftermath of the 1894 Sino-Japanese War and encroaching Japanese
imperialism fueled attempts to redefine Korea’s intellectual traditions, guide
reform efforts along the rubric “civilization and enlightenment” (munmyŏng
kaehwa), and redirect duties and loyalties of the people to new conceptualizations
of Korea as a nation. Accordingly, women and the domestic sphere with its
related institutions and practices became a major focus of attention. The
highlighting of the household and the most intimate human relations among
family members as significant components to nation-building stemmed from a
longer tradition. Confucian worldviews linked the domestic to the rise and fall of
the dynasty, radiating outward to a universal harmony “all under heaven.” Thus,
the Chosŏn court targeted kinship practices, promoted Confucian values of
filiality and wifely chastity, and prescribed spatial and symbolic divisions in the
home based on sex (Deuchler 1992). Likewise, Korean nationalist thought in the
late nineteenth century continued the organic relationship between the family
and the larger collective. On these grounds, gender ideology was an integral part
of Korea’s pursuit of modernity, and women as in other parts of the world were
incorporated into nation-building projects. Early twentieth-century primers for
women highlighted biographies of exemplary women—foreign and Asian—who
as filial daughters, faithful wives, or sacrificing mothers performed extraordinary
and patriotic feats (Hyun 2004). The roles women performed in the domestic
space framed their citizenship and shaped their interpersonal relations, education,
work, and health care. For example, in response to news of the 1898 petition to
King Kojong on behalf of women’s formal education, one writer supported the
cause, arguing that it would enable women to become better companions and
helpmates (naejo) to their husbands and educators of their children (Oh 2009).
Women, hence, were to contribute to the nation through their husbands and sons.
What a woman was to be or do, however, defied simple definitions. “Woman”
was a novel social and political category that had to be conceived on new
grounds. In fact, there was no Korean word for “woman.” Just as the term nation
(minjok) did not exist in the Korean vocabulary before this era, so too did writers
experiment with terms such as punyŏ (literally, married female) and puin
(married woman) before settling on yŏja (female person). The term today used to
translate “woman,” yŏsŏng, did not commonly appear in print media until the
1920s. These early discussions of women often portrayed them as a metonym for
the nation or marker of civilization. The position of women reflected the status of
the nation and provided the rationale for reform measures such as the eradication
of concubinage, child marriage, and social stigma against widow remarriage (Yoo
2008). Women’s education was promoted so that women could partake in nation-
building processes and the causes of “civilization and enlightenment.”
Nonetheless, these discussions also attributed women with a humanity that
granted them not only the potential but also the opportunity to act as
autonomous and equal individuals. At the same time the 1898 petition mentioned
earlier expressed women’s “loyalty and devotion to the country,” it also asserted
women had the same capacity as men at learning and thus the ability to
contribute to society in public and direct ways (Oh 2009). It is this tension
between women-as-individuals and idealization of women-in-the-household that
continued to characterize gender politics of colonial Korea.

Women’s education, shifting the domestic

The notion that proper womanhood was defined by her domestic roles coalesced
in the new schools that became available for girls. Besides court-regulated female
occupations such as the medical worker ŭinyŏ or entertainer kisaeng, women did
not receive formal education during the Chosŏn dynasty. This changed starting
in 1886 with the Christian mission school Ewha haktang, the predecessor of
today’s premier Ewha Woman’s University in South Korea. Other schools soon
followed. Between 1886 and 1910, an estimated fifty private and mission girls’
schools were established (Choi 2009a). The state opened the first public high
school for girls, Hansŏng kodŭng hakkyo, in 1908. The term “Wise Mother, Good
Wife” first emerged in Korea in 1906 in a mission statement for a private girls
school modeled on Japanese schools. Students were to learn the academic subjects
and crafts that would prepare them for their future as mothers and wives. As
private, mission, and public girl schools set out to educate women, the “Wise
Mother, Good Wife” ideal evolved “through a convergence of Chosŏn’s
Confucian notions of pudŏk (womanly virtue), Japanese gender ideology of ryŏsai
kenbo (“good wife, wise mother”), and American Protestant missionary notions of
domesticity” (Choi 2009b).
After Korea became a colony in 1910, the Educational Ordinances of the
Government-General of Korea (GGK) stipulated that higher education for girls
was to “foster in them feminine virtues … the education given there … must
conform to the cultivating of moral character and equipping them as good
housekeepers,” thereby institutionalizing “Wise Mother, Good Wife” in a
gendered curriculum.2 Schools were to train girls for their future tasks in the
home and incorporated domestic curriculum such as sewing, cooking, and
childrearing. However, by emphasizing instruction “in the knowledge and art
useful in making a livelihood,” the GGK also laid the groundwork for technical,
scientific, even vocational education students received. (Kim, In prep) It also
shaped the scientification and professionalization of housework, emphasizing
hygiene, thrift, and utility in the 1930s image of the “Wise and Prudent
Professional Housewife” (Yoo 2008).
Access to education, however, remained severely restricted. Many families
remained reluctant by custom to send their daughters to school or were limited
due to finances. Moreover, the GGK disqualified many private and mission
schools from operation and did not mandate primary education in Korea as the
Japanese government did in Japan. The number of girls’ high schools dwindled
down to six by 1919, half the number of high schools for boys (Yoo 2008). More
than 90 percent of Korea’s female population remained illiterate, with the literacy
rate improving only to a dismal 16 percent in the late 1930s (Choi 2013). Sex
ratios in schools remained skewed. In 1937, colonial statistics recorded a number
of 64,809 female students, less than one-third the figure of male students.3
Women seeking higher education often had to leave the country, with Japan as
the most common destination for study (Park 1990). Higher education marked
women with a middle-or upper-class status, prone to leftist critiques of its
bourgeois and urban nature (Choi 2009b).
While schools idealized women’s role in the newly designated private spaces of
the family and home, they did expose their students to new ideas and cultivated
skills that presented women opportunities to participate publicly in society in
ways they were unable to before, such as travel abroad, produce work in literary
publications, or financially support oneself as a professional (Wells 2004). This
gave rise in the 1920s to the phenomenon of the New Woman (sin yŏsŏng).
Associated with the female student, the term was used to differentiate young
women educated in the new forms of learning from those perceived as more
traditional women. New Woman also indicated the visible presence of “a small
group of elite women who became public figures in art, literature, educational,
journalism, and politics” (Choi 2013). A contradiction emerged. On one hand,
educated women were symbols of modernity, civilization, and pride. On the other
hand, their very public engagements raised anxieties as they permitted new
forms of social interactions between men and women. Performed in new urban
spaces of leisure such as the café, dance halls, theatre, restaurants, train station,
and department store, such male-female relations were seen to compromise
women’s sexual morality. If women postponed or rejected marriage or
motherhood, they posed a threat to the stability of the family. Women’s
consumptive behavior suggested an orientation to the individual self that flew in
the face of “Wise Mother, Good Wife.” These castigations converged on the
media icon of the Modern Girl, whose flagrant materialism, loose sexuality, and
lack of morals were often conflated with the New Woman. Such anxieties ignited
public discussions on love, female sexuality, marriage, and family. What differed
now from earlier discussions was that women such as those involved with the
journal Sin yŏja actively participated in these debates, having gained the
language and will to articulate publicly their opinions, desires, and critiques
(Kwon 1998; Yoo 2008).
The gendered configuration of women as housewives also opened the grounds
on which women demanded new relations with their husbands, thereby altering
relations within the family and producing new social affects and practices such as
romance. They called for “free love” and “free marriage,” or the freedom for
women and men to choose their spouses, producing what Bodurae Kwon calls the
emergence of romance.4 Male-female relationships could be based on mutual
respect, companionship, love, or shared mission and camaraderie such as Red
Love in leftist circles (Barraclough 2014). The romanticized domestic ideal of the
“Sweet Home” that unfolded in the 1930s may have strategically marketed
material goods such as modern residential architecture and household products to
urban housewives and placed men in income-earning roles as “Salaryman,” but it
also “invoke[ed] the idea of a nuclear family based on love, respect and sense of
selfhood” (Choi 2014). Some couples, inspired by such ideals, adapted new-style
weddings as well, such as wearing Western dress of male suit and white bridal
gown and hosting the wedding at the venue of a church (Jung-Kim 2008). In fact,
newspapers sensationalized “stories of women who committed suicide due to
early marriage, forced marriage, male infidelity, or failed relationship or
marriage” (Jung-Kim 2005). Insinuations of a lesbian relationship may have
further scandalized the double-suicide of female students Hong Ok-im and Kim
Yong-ju. But these reports suggest that women sought to actualize their desires
for new kinds of relationships with their partners to the extent that they would
choose death when those relationships did not seem possible, in this case a forced
marriage for Kim, who the media portrayed as indifferent and absent.
Other women such as artist and writer Na Hyesŏk questioned the double
standard placed on women that castigated any sexual transgressions on the part
of women while accepting men’s multiple liaisons. She critiqued the “Wise
Mother, Good Wife” ideal altogether, noting that she had not “heard of any
curriculum that emphasizes ‘good husband, wise father,’” and saw it “making
women into mere appendages of men” by exhorting women’s “conduct as good
spouse and wise parent” but failing to “develop the mind.”5 Kim Wŏnju’s 1926
short story “Awakening” depicts the classic theme of love-betrayal-abandonment,
but here the devoted and filial (to her in-laws) housewife protagonist leaves her
husband and child upon learning of her husband’s affair, mirroring Henrik
Ibsen’s Nora of A Doll’s House, literature that was central in colonial period
discussions surrounding New Women and critiques of the patriarchal family
system (Kim 2010). Civil courts faced suits from women filing for divorce from
cheating husbands and from families who sought the return of their wayward
daughters-in-law (Lim 2013). Na Hyesŏk herself divorced after she pursued an
affair of her own, unhappy in a marriage with a philandering husband (Choi
2013). Unfortunately for many women, they discovered that their relationships
with men often fell short of the ideals they fostered during their education. Kim
Hwallan forewent marriage altogether, determined to dedicate her life to the
cause of women’s education (Wells 2001).
A maternalist agenda

Women’s relationship with their children was just as ambivalent. The bio-politics
of the colonial government oriented women’s bodies and reproduction for the
management of the colonial population. In the efforts to “mobilize Koreans as
crucial human resources,” colonial administrators understood population increase
as a means of national/imperial power and thus “made explicit the maternal role
and centrality of fertile bodies for the state and empire,” particularly in the
context of imperialist expansion into Manchuria after 1932 (Park 2014a). This
skewed reproductive labor as the responsibility primarily of women, placing
women’s sexual, conjugal, and reproductive experiences and capacity under
medical and scientific scrutiny. In this way, women’s bodies became legible and
governable. The means of collecting this data brought women in contact with the
colonial state via researchers who were often bio-medical physicians. Knowledge
of female bodies invited interventions in the most private spaces in the attempts
to reform practices determined detrimental to the pro-natalist agenda of the
colonial state. For example, women’s child-birthing and -rearing customs were
the subject of health campaigns that ostensibly sought to address the problem of
infant mortality. Certain forms of contraceptives were restricted, presented as
harmful to women’s bodies and moral conduct, but as all forms became
unavailable with escalation of the Pacific War, access was likely denied when
they conflicted with pro-natalist mobilizations (Kim 2008b). Anxieties about
sterility fueled the publication of informative articles on venereal diseases. They
also provided the rationale for the introduction of prostitution licensing and
systematic inspection of women in sex industry-related work to monitor venereal
disease (Park 2014b). This intersected with new forms of sex workers such as the
kisaeng, the female entertainer with Chosŏn roots but transformed in the new
colonial economy (Barraclough 2012b), and the Café Waitress and Bar Girl,
whose emergence was directly related to the new leisure spaces of urbanizing
metropolises such as Seoul (Jung-Kim 2005).
Ironically, while promoting the interests of the Japanese empire, reproductive
bio-politics of the colonial state in Korea inadvertently converged with interests
of women, particularly those in relation to reforms in the family. For example,
Japanese physician Takaki Kudo’s gynecological research of incarcerated Korean
women concluded that the custom of marrying women early or at a young age,
often before the maturity of their reproductive organs, produced “sick wombs”
that directly correlated to Koreans’ higher propensity towards female murderers,
particularly of spousal-or husband-murder, relative to other countries (J. Park
2013). While Kudō’s statistical contradictions and data manipulation are suspect,
his research promulgations condemned early marriage and the maltreatment of
women by their mothers-in-law and husbands, practices deemed oppressive to
women. Likewise, concern for the reproductive health and increased viability of
women’s fertility promoted eugenic arguments for birth control (i.e. “limiting
birth” sana chehan) and smaller families. Mothers were to plan and space the
timing of their pregnancies so as to maximize maternal health through prolonged
postnatal care which was believed to produce healthier babies. Albeit a pro-
natalist position, these arguments were presented by women at the same time
they pushed female-centered reasons on the agenda, such as postponing
pregnancy to gain time to pursue one’s education or interests (Kim 2008b).
Women also advocated the health screening of potential husbands so that women
could avoid the misfortune of contracting venereal disease and implicitly
encouraged women’s agency in choosing a spouse. In addition, women were
exhorted to learn the new sciences in school and wield modern health practices
on themselves and in their homes so as to safeguard the viability of their fertility
and the health of their family members. This formed the rationale for women’s
higher education in the health fields and allowed for the professionalization of
women in nursing, midwifery, and medicine (Kim, In prep). Moreover, many
women actively sought new medical interventions, whether in the form of patent
medicines, infant welfare clinics, or gynecological expertise of physicians, not to
meet imperialist goals but for personal reasons, such as whether to resolve
perceived problems with fertility (including the conception and successful raising
of sons beyond infanthood) or modernist visions of domesticity (Kim 2014).
Nevertheless, female-centered arguments on the whole were subsumed to
colonial bio-politics that prioritized the stability of nuclear families with women
entrenched firmly in their proper domestic roles. Women may have sought
medical intervention to meet personal goals, but those goals were often
conditioned by the patriarchal nature of the family that necessitated the birth of
sons for lineage or household preservation. Women may have employed modern
practices and material goods, yet the new lifestyles they promoted, whether in
the Christian home, “Sweet Home,” or other home based on newly envisioned
male-female or parent-child relations, continued to premise women’s role in the
domestic space. In short, women became subjects, citizens, and members of
society foremost in their biological and social roles as mothers, as expressed in
the phrase “mothers of citizens” (kungmin chi mo, 國 民 之 母 ) repeated in
different expressions throughout the period. This explains the categorization of
women in colonial administrative thought into reproductive and non-
reproductive bodies.

Mobilizing women
The division between reproductive and non-reproductive female bodies is
perhaps most flagrant in the realm of health and medicine. The bio-medical
research on women’s bodies, for instance, posed different questions and
calibrations for women who experienced and had yet to experience menopause
(Park 2014a). Puinbyŏng or “women’s disease” was presented in print media as of
concern for women before menopause. While women were to be “Wise Mothers,
Good Wives,” it became apparent that some women were excluded from this
moniker, particularly those involved in sex-related work. Health screening of
female sex workers operated on a logic that placed them as the vectors of
venereal disease and hence a threat to the stability of the nuclear family, not on
notions of the women’s rights to adequate medical care. Medical discussions of
women’s health marginalized other concerns such as cancer that did not focus on
or were not related to women’s reproductive activity (gestation, delivery,
lactation) and fertility (Kim 2008a). Perhaps the most extreme form of colonial
mobilization of non-reproductive female bodies was the system of Japanese
military sexual slavery, euphemistically coined “comfort women” (wianbu),
which recruited an estimated 200,000 women. This system inflicted and
sanctioned institutionalized sexual violence on particular women by imprisoning
women to provide sexual services to the Japanese military at the warfront
(Chung 1997). Built on a theory of male sexuality and morale in war, this system
disproportionately mobilized lower-class Korean women, enabled by patriarchal
practices in Korea related to the labor and sex trafficking of women (Soh 2008).
This raises the question of Korean complicity in the recruitment of “comfort
women” and operation of this system as well as the continued silencing of these
women’s voices in the contemporary gendered, discursive practices that place the
chastity of Korean women and men’s humiliation or failure to protect that
chastity at the center of the issue (Yang 1998b). “Comfort women” were not to be
mothers. In fact, they were to use condoms in a time of restricted access to
contraceptives, and many testimonies attest to the forced abortions inflicted on
their pregnant bodies. Moreover, their reproductive health was of little concern,
and many report infertility and other lingering gynecological problems in its
aftermath.
The industrial sectors’ mobilization of women’s labor also operated on an axis
of women’s reproductive capacity. The visibility of the Factory Girl or yŏgong in
the 1920s and 1930s developed in the context of rapid industrialization and rural
impoverishment brought about by the colonial government’s industrial
promotion policies (Yoo 2008). Korean women’s entrance in the colonial wage
market was a highly gendered process. Young rural women migrated to work in
factories as part of family strategies that relied on their wages. In so doing, they
forged new identities and experiences that changed new dynamics in family
structures and contributed to debates on new womanhood. Their employment
heavily deployed sexual division of labor based on women’s marital and
reproductive status. Employers exploited gendered domestic norms to naturalize
manager-worker relations, with female workers placed under the paternalistic
(and potentially sexually abusive) care of male managers, a common plot in
colonial literature (Barraclough 2012a). Women workers were perceived as
temporary wage laborers, working between childhood and marriage, in tasks
premised on their supposed feminine skills and traits— dexterous fingers,
patience, docility, and endurance. They dominated light industries in textiles and
food processing. Women who worked after marriage often held jobs that offered
flexibility such as in cottage industries or piece work that could be accomplished
at home, agricultural wage work, the service sector in urban areas (restaurant,
street vendors), or part-time/seasonal hires in food processing or rubber factories
(Kim 2009). Vocational training or education offered female workers was
overwhelmingly focused on “womanly skills,” “moral cultivation” with etiquette,
and “rules for factory life” and not on technical skills that would further their
possibility for promotion or permanent employment. Similar management
techniques resurfaced in postwar industrializing South Korea, accounting for the
pattern noted by Seungsook Moon of women “mobilized to be domestic” (Moon
2005).
Female workers, however, did not sit idly to their poor working conditions.
Female workers organized numerous labor unions and strikes, raising demands
such as maternal leave, the right to nurse their children while working, and
protections at the workplace. Some resisted with their feet, their high turnover
plaguing managerial efforts to secure worker productivity. In fact, other non-elite
working women too formed consciousness of selves as working women and took
part in organized labor activities (Jung-Kim 2005). Both kisaeng and café
waitresses published their own journals, Chang Han (Lasting Regret, 1927) and
Yŏ sŏng (Woman’s Voice, 1934), respectively, seeking to better their working
conditions. Female students too organized strikes in protest of student life such as
dormitory regulations. In the 1920s, Korean nursing students at mission hospitals
waged strikes to protest their conditions both as students and as hospital workers
(Kim, In prep).
Many women found other opportunities to mobilize. During the colonial
period, women’s range of activities expanded tremendously, forming over 400
women’s organizations organized around a broad array of religious, educational,
political, and social issues. The Protestant Church presented women with
unprecedented opportunities to receive education and exercise leadership (Strawn
2013). The establishment of the Korean Young Women’s Christian Association
(YWCA) in 1923 was the culmination of Korean Christian women’s groups and
stood at the forefront of women’s organizational efforts promoting the rights and
equality of women in education, work, and the family (Choi 2013). In fact, many
of the women leaders who led more radical or alternate lifestyles were leaders in
Christian organizations. Other religious practices such as Ch’ŏndogyo, successor
to the indigenous Tonghak religion, Buddhism, and shamanism arguably posed
challenges to traditional gender roles as well and perhaps deserve more scholarly
analysis. In 1927, women’s organizations coalesced under the umbrella of the
nationalist women’s organization Kŭnuhoe. Dominated by socialist women,
Kŭnuhoe articulated an understanding of gender oppression as emerging from
socio-economic structures. Increasing pressure from colonial censors and
masculinist nationalist or socialist imperatives, nonetheless, curtailed the
integration of class struggle in the women’s movement as feminist platforms
became sidelined (Wells 1999). Leftist critiques did not disappear, however.
Recent scholarship on leftist literature suggests that while mainstream socialist
narratives may not grant “revolutionary agency nor autonomous subjectivity” to
women’s struggles and subsume their activities under the revolution, leftist
women writers such as Kang Kyŏngae produced a variant feminism to address
the plight of lower-class women (Park 1998; S. Park 2013).
Besides the pen, the courtroom was also used by women to protect and
promote their interests. A discussion of women’s rights would not be complete
without an examination of customary laws related to the family. Since the
Chosŏn period, kinship regulations held implications for women’s rights in
regards to property and ritual inheritance, marriage, divorce, exercise of legal
authority, and responsibilities toward the household and its members. The
categorization of women into primary and secondary wives, for instance, resulted
in mothers being the arbiter of social status and legitimacy to their sons in elite
families (Deuchler 1992). Scholars point to Japanese colonial legal practices that
maintained “customs” such as corporal punishment and kinship practices in a
modernized legal system with a series of customary laws (Lee 1999; Yang 1998a).
Colonial regulations restructured the family into nuclear households, appointing
the eldest son to inherit the household headship and slating younger brothers to
separate when they marry, becoming heads of their households (Sorenson 2013).
While customary family law continued the patriarchal principles of patrilineality
and primogeniture, conflicts arose when widows presumed the role (albeit
temporary) of house-heads in the absence of sons. As house-heads, widows
wielded the authority to appoint the next house-head, adopt, and manage
inherited property. When interests of widows clashed with those of the lineage, it
was often left to the courts to resolve (Lim 2011). Women figured prominently in
legal suits involving adoption and inheritance, both as the plaintiff, as women
exercised legal agency to protect their interests, and as defendants, reflecting the
anxieties posed by the reality of women’s mobility. Their physical absence
(women did leave their husbands, failed to receive a legal divorce, or lived with
other men in relationships without marriage and therefore were not recognized
by courts) posed problems for lineages that no longer saw these women as
serving their households (Lim 2013).
Yet the courts often ruled in favor of widows within the context of shifting
definitions of family that increasingly became defined legally as nuclear. This
was consistent with other legal practices that ruled in favor of the rights of the
nuclear family over that of the lineage. Revisions in 1939 to the family law
opened adoption to sons-in-law and non-kin, claiming to expand heirship rights
to daughters indirectly through their husbands. Nevertheless, colonial customary
family law failed to grant widows full inheritance rights as permanent house-
heads or expand women’s inheritance and property ownership rights in general.
By solidifying the patrilineal household-headed nuclear family now backed by
modern law, the Japanese colonial state preserved the patriarchal family order.
The postwar South Korean state continued the house-head-based nuclear family
system until the 2005 Family Law revision, which effectively abolished the house-
head system (Shin 2006).
In reflecting on her divorce, Na Hyesŏk noted the powerlessness men faced, “I
feel great pity for the men of the educated class in Korea. They aren’t allowed to
enter the political arena, which should be their primary arena. There’s no way for
them to use the knowledge they have acquired and developed.”6 Like the
rethinking of womanhood, masculinity too faced a myriad of challenges to
redefine itself in the face of Japanese colonial rule. Korean men, while unable to
take high leadership positions in politics or the government, were able to take
high-profile positions in the arts, industry, and society. Whether it was the Social
Darwinist-infused sacrificial spirit of patriotic soldiers in muscular nationalist
narratives, confidence of the successful entrepreneur, or emasculated and perhaps
effeminate media icon Modern Boy (the counterpart to Modern Girl), images of
Korean modern manhood varied (Tikhonov 2007; Jung-Kim 2005). Yet, marriage
and fatherhood were not as life-altering for men as they were for women. As Na
continued, “I also feel pity for the women of the educated class, that is, New
Women. They still spend their childhoods and married lives within the feudal
family system, so that their lives are incredibly complex and chaotic.”
The colonial period witnessed a reconfiguration of womanhood that remained
premised on women’s roles in the domestic space yet was infused with new
conceptualizations of equality, rights, and humanity. Female education guided by
the framework “Wise Mother, Good Wife” served foremost to produce mothers
and housekeepers who met collective directives. Education outfitted women with
not only what was presented then as advanced scientific learning and skills but
also the tools and confidence to raise their voices in the world of publishing,
organizations, and courtrooms. The colonial period produced a generation of
educated women who would take leadership roles in postcolonial Korea. Their
activities and publications brought to the forefront the “woman question.”
Women’s critiques themselves, however, failed to move beyond the framework of
the family as the basis of society. Even the journal Sin yŏja’s radical call for
women’s liberation was premised on her location in the domestic space. It is this
“woman question” and patriarchal nature of the family now codified by law and
practice that both emergent states (DPRK and ROK) had to grapple, as other
chapters in this volume attest.

Glossary

“Wise Mother, Good Wife” (hyŏnmo yangch’ŏ)

Cultural Politics (munhwa chŏngch’i)
Sin yŏja (New Woman, the journal)
“civilization and enlightenment” (munmyŏng kaehwa)
New Woman (sin yŏsŏng).

Notes
1 “Ch’anggansa,” Sin yŏja 1 (1920): 2–3. As translated and reprinted in Choi 2013, 30.

2 GGK, “Instructions Concerning the Enforcement of the Chosen Educational Ordinance,” November 1,
1911, in Government General of Chosen, Manual of Education in Chosen (1920), Appendix, 13. Reprinted
in Singminji Chosŏn kyoyuk chŏngch’aek saryo chipsŏng, vol. 2, Seoul, Korea: Taehaksŏwŏn, 1990.

3 P. Kim, Hakkyo pak ŭi Choŏn yŏsŏngtŭl [Korean women outside of school], translated by K. Cho and U.
 Kim, Seoul, Korea: Ilchogak, 2005, 92.

4 B. Kwon, Yŏnae ŭi sidae: 1920 nyŏndae ch’oban ŭi munhwa wa yuhaeng [Age of dating: culture and
trends of the early 1920s], Seoul, Korea: Hyŏnsil munhwa yŏngu, 2003.

5 Na Hyesŏk, “Isang chŏk puin,” Hakchigwang 3 (December 1914): 13–14. As translated and reprinted in
Choi 2013, 29.

6 Na Hyesŏk, “Ihon kobaekghang: Ch’ŏnggu ssi ege,” Samch’ŏlli 6 (1934): 84–94. As translated and
reprinted in Choi 2013, 135.

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11
Nationalist movements before 1945

Franklin Rausch

Nationalism is one of the most significant ideological forces on the Korean

peninsula today in both the north and the south. In fact, a substantial portion of
the tension in the region is connected to the failure to establish a unified state for
the Korean nation. Moreover, of the factors making unification and an easing of
tensions difficult, one of the most important is the very different forms of
nationalism followed by the north and south. While it is common to place the
origins of the division of the peninsula in post–World War II superpower politics,
its roots can also be found in the different way Koreans responded to
imperialism, particularly that of Japan, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, and the colonial period of 1910–1945, when Korea was under direct
Japanese rule. This chapter will therefore explore Korean nationalism, first by
briefly considering premodern Korean identity, and then examining the
development of nationalist thought from 1875, the year of the Kanghwa Forts
Incident, in which Japan forced Korea to “open” to the modern world, to 1945,
when Korea was liberated from Japanese rule. In particular, it will focus on how
Korean nationalists adapted other ideologies, such as liberalism or Communism,
in hopes that they would help them build a strong and independent nationstate,
and on how the colonial experience shaped Korean nationalism.

Premodern roots of Korean nationalism

Scholars of nationalism debate whether nationalism is a product of modernity or
whether it existed, at least in some form, in premodern times (Gat 2012). These
debates also influence Korean scholars, with some arguing that something very
close to modern nationalism existed in Korea since the Koryŏ Dynasty (918–1392)
or even since unified Silla (668–935) (Pak 2008). For our purposes, rather than
engaging directly with this debate, we will focus on how there did exist in
premodern Korea1 a sense that there was a close relationship between the
dynastic states that ruled the peninsula, the people who were ruled, the land on
which those people lived and which the state claimed sovereignty over, the
language they spoke, and the values they shared. While it is difficult to assess a
sense of identity among the common people, Azar Gat has pointed out that their
reactions during times of foreign invasion can provide us some sense of whether
or not a group of people feel such an identity (2012). In this case, it is worth
noting that many Koreans, including the common people, would stubbornly,
though in the end unsuccessfully, resist the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth
century. Moreover, the first written reference to Tan’gun, the mythical founder of
the Korean nation, appeared in the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three
Kingdoms), a text written shortly after Korea finally submitted to Mongol
overlordship, signifying that subjugation did not mean an end to Korean identity
(Timothy Lee 2009).2 Similarly, during the Japanese invasions of 1592–1597,
known as the Imjin War, common people, led by local gentry or Buddhist monks,
would rally to the defense of their country, even when the king or high officials
had fled (Hawley 2005).
It is true that Korea under the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910) was a vassal state
of Ming Dynasty China (1368–1644), and Korea participated, largely
enthusiastically, in the Sinocentric world order. This should not, however, be
seen as the denial of a Korean identity. Korea was still an independent country
that maintained its own army and foreign policy, and while it might adopt Ming
law, it felt free to revise that law as needed to fit Korean realities (Marie Kim
2012: 22). During this time, the deeply Confucian King Sejong even ordered the
creation of a Korean alphabet, han’gŭl (Mi-rim Yoo 2006). Moreover, the
commitment to Neo-Confucian civilization and gratitude for Ming intervention
on Korea’s behalf during the Imjin War led to such stubborn Korean resistance
that the rising Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) had to invade twice (1627 and 1636) to
obtain their submission. Even after the Ming fell, Koreans still performed
Confucian rituals venerating their emperors and identified themselves as the last
bastion of true civilization, not only strengthening, at least among the elite, their
sense of selves as Koreans but also providing them with a mission, the
preservation of that Confucian civilization (Haboush 1999). Moreover, while
Chosŏn Korea was an extraordinarily hierarchical society, the dynasty had long
encouraged the values associated with Confucian civilization, both among elites
and among the common people, and they had diffused all throughout society,
providing Koreans with shared values and decreasing the gap between elite and
commoner worldviews (Deuchler 1977). The growing sense of this identity can be
seen in the use of words like tongp’o (literally meaning “same womb” and
figuratively meaning something like “compatriot”) to refer to all Koreans. For
instance, King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776), when calling for an end to certain harsh
punishments against the common people, referred to them using this term (Pak
2010).
Thus, before the modern period, there existed on the peninsula a group of
people who spoke the same language, had their own alphabet, and had lived
under the rule of two continuous dynastic states over roughly the same territory
for nearly a millennium, giving rise to an identity that was increasingly claimed
by both commoners and elites. At the same time, this was not modern
nationalism. The commoners were still subjects—they were not expected to
participate actively or even comment publicly on government matters. Moreover,
their identity was more closely connected to the dynastic states that ruled them
than to an independent sense of Koreanness. Thus, while not quite modern
nationalism, there were the pieces of a distinctive Korean identity in existence. It
would be under the pressure of foreign imperialism that some Koreans would
begin to weld those disparate pieces together into a modern national identity.

Development of modern nationalism: 1876–1910

In 1875, a Japanese flotilla purposefully provoked the batteries of Kanghwa Fort,

an important installation that guarded the capital Seoul, into firing upon it.
Japanese forces subsequently seized the fort and used the threat of recriminations
over the incident to force the Chosŏn state to accept an unequal treaty. King
Kojong (r. 1863–1907), fearing the Japanese might invade and believing that a
more open foreign policy than that followed by his father was warranted,
accepted the Treaty of Kanghwa, which was signed in 1876. In the years that
followed, the United States and other Western powers signed treaties with Korea,
and thus the country opened to influence from nations outside the traditional
Sinocentric world order (Deuchler 1977).
The opening of the country brought Koreans into contact with numerous new
ideologies. One of the most powerful was modern nationalism, which had as its
goal the creation of a powerful nationstate in which the people would actively
identify with and sacrifice for the nation. The nation was to rule itself, to be its
own master, so domination or even substantial influence by foreigners was
anathema. For Korean nationalists, this would mean departure from the hallowed
tradition of honoring China as a suzerain and elder brother state and attempting
to establish a relationship of equality, as called for by modern international law
(Schmid 2002: 56–101). In addition to reformulating its relationships with other
countries, the Korean state also had to transform itself into a strong centralized
government that, through such institutions as public schools, could develop an
educated populace who could actively serve the nation and instill in them a sense
of nationalism. Success in such projects would in turn bring the national power
necessary to maintain independence. Moreover, because in the Western system of
international law nationstates were understood to be the only true sovereign
actors in the world, it was legal for them to impose their rule over territories
whose polities did not, in their view, measure up to “civilized” standards. Thus,
Koreans had to quickly establish a powerful nationstate or risk becoming a
colony.
Nationalism was not the only new idea to enter Korea. Other, related
ideologies came in as well. One of the most important was the concept of
“civilization and enlightenment” thought (J. bunmei kaika, K. munmyŏng
kaehwa), a term coined by the Japanese intellectual, educator, and reformer
Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) but which today could be fairly equated with
“modernity” and the process of “modernization” (Craig 2009: 33–41) This body of
thought, neither the product of a single individual or school, is defined by the
notion of progress—that such things as knowledge, the arts, culture, and
government advance through hierarchical stages, from inferior to superior. Thus,
the nationstate stood above, and was better than, the premodern state and far
beyond the tribal confederacy. The progress of knowledge was closely associated
with the great advances made in science and technology that made it possible for
the members of more advanced societies to control their environment, promising
greater prosperity, comfort, and happiness in the future (Adas 1989). Industrial
output, average lifespan, and rates of disease could all be measured empirically
and compared, providing scientific proof of which countries were more advanced,
more “civilized,” than others. Similarly, one of the highest marks of civilization
was to bring the fruits of modernity to a country that had not been able to
progress on its own, enabling nationstates to justify colonization as either an act
of altruism or enlightened self-interest (Dudden 2005: 8–9; Adas 1989: 199–270).
No contradiction was seen between imperialism and liberal democracy, which,
like empire-building, was seen as the mark of an advanced country.
While civilization and enlightenment offered promises of a glorious tomorrow
to nationalists, Social Darwinism, the application of Charles Darwin’s and
Herbert Spencer’s ideas about natural selection to human society, promised a
dark future should they fail to modernize. Social Darwinism held that the world
was an arena where vicious struggles for survival between various nations and
races took place, in Korean, literally the “strong eat and the weak are meat”
(yakyuk kangsik). If the weak failed to modernize, it was their own fault, and the
strong had every right to take from them what little they had, as they were
simply following the scientific laws of the universe (Tikhonov 2010). One reaction
to Social Darwinist visions of a world locked in eternal and bloody struggle was
Pan-Asianism. According to this ideology, though of different nations (China,
Japan, and Korea), because they were of the same (yellow) race, Asian people
should unite against (white) imperialism (Rausch 2012). Japan was often assigned
a special place by Korean nationalists as a leader and educator of other Asian
countries, as it was the first one to successfully establish a modern nationstate.
Chinese and Koreans who ascribed to Pan-Asianism hoped that Japan would act
as a benevolent leader of Asia and help them modernize without infringing on
their sovereignty. In practice, Japan would often use Pan-Asianist ideals to justify
taking increasing control over its neighbors in a way little different from that of
the white empires (Schmid 2002: 87–101; Ch’oe 2003: 104–13).
For Korea to survive as an independent country, it needed to adopt modern
nationalism and the accompanying ideologies of modernity. Doing so would
mean remaking the state and its relationship to society and the nation and
therefore naturally raised questions about identity. What did it mean to be a
Korean? What had to be criticized and abandoned? What must be reformed?
Who should Korea look to as a model of reform: China, Japan, or the United
States? How much leeway should the state allow public discussions of these
questions? Different Koreans answered these questions differently. For instance,
in 1884 a group of “progressive” Korean officials, who believed Korea should
follow Japan by adopting radical reform, launched a violent coup against another
group who followed China’s more conservative model known as “self-
strengthening.” The progressives seized the king and for three days issued
reforms influenced by civilization and enlightenment thought before a Chinese
army restored power to the king and the pro-China faction (Cook 1982).
It wasn’t just elites who reacted to Korea’s changing situation—the common
people did as well. Exposure to the vagaries of international trade combined with
religious oppression and government corruption led leaders of the Tonghak faith,
a new religion founded in Korea in 1860, to launch a rebellion in 1894. Though
the rebels, by no means all followers of the religion, initially vented their wrath
against the Chosŏn state, they also attacked foreigners, and when China and
Japan sent troops to help put down the rising, they fought with them too. Once
this proto-nationalist movement was suppressed, fighting broke out between
Chinese and Japanese troops, resulting in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895).
Japan won the war but lost the peace when King Kojong escaped its clutches and
hid in the Russian Embassy following the Japanese-ordered assassination of his
wife Queen Min (Duus 1995; Larsen 2008).
After Kojong returned to his palace in 1897, the Chosŏn state enjoyed a period
of relative peace in which it could actively pursue reform. For example, in order
to break away from the Sinocentric diplomatic order and assert its own
independence, King Kojong was transformed into the Kwangmu Emperor,
officially making him the equal of his Chinese and Japanese counterparts.
Similarly, the old gate which had been used to welcome Chinese embassies was
torn down and an “Independence Gate” erected in its place. Such changes were
not simply cosmetic. They contained within them deep shifts in how more and
more Koreans saw their country—no longer as a vassal of China but as an
independent nationstate (Schmid 2002). Similarly, there were major reforms in
the government, and many Kabo-era projects begun when Korea was briefly
under Japanese dominance, such as the cadastral survey and the household
registry, were continued. The state also proved its willingness to actively support
industry and the economic development of the country, a major change from
previous Confucian-driven neglect (Hwang 2006).
There were, however, numerous factors working against the Chosŏn
government’s transformation into a modern nationstate. As James Palais has
shown, the Chosŏn Dynasty was able to endure for so long (over 500 years)
because it effectively worked out a balance of power between the throne and the
yangban elite that served both their needs (1991: 4–19). The stability this brought,
however, made it impossible for either the monarch or officialdom to gain the
strength necessary to establish the centralized institutions needed to transform
Korea into a modern nationstate capable of defending itself from foreign empires,
overcoming opposition to reforms, or even agreeing over what reforms needed to
be taken. Moreover, the weakness of the state itself meant that it was perpetually
cash-starved, and there proved to be insufficient time for its limited program of
reforms to bear fruit before Korea’s independence fell victim to great power
politics (Larsen 2008).
The issues new ideologies also raised about Korean identity made reform
difficult, in particular because of differences of opinion regarding the relationship
between the Chosŏn Dynasty and the Korean nationstate. Those who saw the
two as inseparable, such as the royal family and those officials whose worldview
and position were dependent upon them, would not enact reforms that might
harm the interests of the dynasty. This question of the nationstate and its
connection to the dynasty led to an ambiguous relationship between the state and
non-governmental actors in the growing public sphere as newspapers began
appearing in Korea, allowing more and more Koreans to engage in public
discourse. These newspapers introduced Koreans to new concepts, such as
“nation” and “citizen” (utilizing the word “tongp’o” to ease the transition in
thinking) and also helped spread new ideas about history and culture in which
the Korean nation and people stood at the center (Pak 2008). While many of these
newspapers first appeared in Chinese or in mixed Korean and Chinese, one of the
most important, The Independent, was completely in han’gŭl (though it was also
printed in an English edition). This newspaper was the organ of the Independence
Club, founded in 1896. Dominated by pro-American proponents of civilization
and enlightenment thought, in addition to publishing its newspaper, it sponsored
public speeches, meetings, and debates. Moreover, it was particularly effective at
mobilizing public support and so played an important role in the return of the
King from the Russian consulate, his crowning as emperor, and the erection of
the Independence Gate. However, when the club was no longer deemed useful by
the state and had, by working for the establishment of a legislature that would
have real power and be filled with many members of the club, become a threat to
the old order, it was violently suppressed. Establishing a legislature and working
with the club would have helped to create the linkage between the people and the
government (nationalistic democracy) necessary for building an independent
nationstate. However, it would also have weakened the power of the monarch
and the officials dependent on him for their power and was therefore disbanded,
illustrating the limits of reform during the Kwangmu era (Chandra 1988).
Despite the crushing of the Independence Club, many Koreans were still
willing to work to transform their country into an enlightened nationstate in the
growing public sphere as private citizens. In part, this was because civilization
and enlightenment thought closely connected the progress of individuals with the
advancement of their nations, encouraging non-officials to take an active role in
national affairs. However, Korean activists disagreed over what should be done.
Some believed that Japan would benevolently help Korea to modernize and
become a truly independent state and so supported its increasing influence on the
peninsula. The leadership of the Ilchinhoe, a large and powerful populist
organization, was particularly welcoming and even petitioned Japan to annex
Korea (Moon 2013). Similarly, those Koreans who favored Pan-Asianism might
see growing Japanese involvement in the peninsula as the necessary price for
modernization. Civilization and enlightenment thought thus proved to be a two-
edged sword: nationalists frequently criticized Korea for its failure to live up to
enlightened standards in order to spur on reform, but such criticism could also be
utilized to justify Japan’s increasing control of Korea (Schmid 2002: 101–138;
Wells 1990: 48–70). Even among those who agreed that independence came first,
there was still the question of whether to resist peacefully or violently.
While Koreans struggled over the future of their developing nation, Japan
followed up its victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) by establishing a
protectorate in Korea. In 1907, the Korean Emperor secretly dispatched
representatives to the peace talks being held in The Hague. As Korea had been
forced to sign away its right to diplomatic representation in the 1905 protectorate
treaty, this act was used as a pretext to force his abdication, leading to the
ascension of his much more pliable son Sunjong (1874–1926). He in turn signed
another treaty giving Japan even more power. In addition, the Korean army was
disbanded. This turned out to be a mistake, as the now unemployed soldiers took
their arms and fled, forming “righteous armies” (ŭibyŏng) that joined other such
bands to violently oppose Japan. Their continuous attacks led Japan to undertake
a brutal pacification campaign, which resulted in the deaths of thousands, mostly
Koreans, including soldiers and civilians (Yong Ha Shin 1991: 207–276). Korean
nationalists also engaged in individual acts of violence. In 1908, Chang In-hwan
(1875–1930) and Chŏn Myŏng-un (1884–1947) assassinated Durham White
Stevens (1851–1908) (Dudden 2005: 81–89).3 In December of the following year, Yi
Chae-myŏng (1890–1910) severely wounded the pro-Japanese prime minister of
Korea Yi Wan-yong (1857–1926). He had been inspired by An Chunggŭn’s
successful October assassination of Itŏ Hirobumi (Cho 1994; Rausch 2012).4
However, these lone acts of violence were not enough, and in 1910, five months
after the execution of An Chunggŭn, Japan formally annexed Korea. Korean
nationalists had to shift from trying to save the nation to restoring it.

Nationalism: persecution and unity, 1910–1919

Armed resistance in the form of “righteous army” bands would continue for
several years after annexation, when brutal Japanese pacification campaigns
destroyed them or forced them out of the peninsula, typically to Manchuria. At
the same time, Japan enacted other policies aimed at controlling and disciplining
the Korean populace. The colonial police force (many of whose members were
Koreans) and gendarme were expanded and given the power to both make arrests
and inflict summary punishments (Chulwoo Lee 2000). For instance, the police
enforced sanitary ordinances that governed the disposal of waste and where and
how animals could be butchered, and could hand out summary punishments as
they saw fit (Henry 2014: chapter 2). The enforcement of such laws was a part of
Japan’s promise, which served to justify its colonial project in Korea, that it
would modernize the country. Modernization would also allow Japan to develop
and extract resources from Korea, strengthening the empire. As Japan had
justified its annexation of Korea by arguing that it was best suited to modernize
the country owing to their shared racial ancestry, Japan adopted a policy of
assimilation, asserting that it would raise up its long-lost Korean cousins and
make them into modern Japanese subjects (Caprio 2009). Nationalists naturally
opposed such policies, as they would weaken a sense of Korean identity. The
effects of the policy of assimilation were, however, limited because of the racial
prejudice of many Japanese who both disliked Koreans and did not want them to
rise, as doing so would make them competitors for limited jobs. Thus, schools,
which theoretically could have done much to encourage assimilation, owing to
the preferential treatment of Japanese and prejudice against Koreas, instead
served as markers of separation, rather than similarity, and encouraged resistance
to the regime (Oh and Kim 2013).
Japanese authorities used the coercive powers of the colonial state to suppress
nationalists and the threat they posed to colonial rule. For instance, the
flourishing and independent Korean-language press was shut down. Moreover,
coercion was even used against those who might peacefully challenge the state.
In 1911, 123 Korean nationalists were arrested on the false accusation that they
had plotted to assassinate the Governor General of Korea. Confessions were
obtained through the liberal use of torture, some of which even claimed that
Protestant missionaries were part of the plot and had provided weapons. In the
end, 105 of these men were sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years. While
limited somewhat by Western criticism, the savagery of such actions was a clear
signal to nationalists that they must tread carefully lest they face brutal
punishment (Kang 1997; Choi 2007).
This incident illustrates an important fact about Korean nationalism during
this time—its religious core. Of the 123 men arrested, the vast majority of them
were Protestant Christians. While foreign missionaries sought to be apolitical and
focused on evangelical activities, their status as citizens of nations that Japan had
to maintain good relations with (most were Americans and British) meant that
the Japanese colonial government did not have a completely free hand in how it
treated members of their flock. In addition, Japan had to guarantee a certain
amount of religious freedom in order to maintain its claims that it had come to
bring “civilization” to Korea. Thus, churches served as spaces where Koreans
could meet and discuss the issues they faced. Moreover, the churches and the
institutions connected to them, particularly schools, provided a structure that
could be used to organize challenges to the colonial state. Finally, while not
overtly challenging the colonial state, the democratic organization of Protestant
Christianity, particularly Presbyterianism, as well as the existence of missionary
schools, meant that Koreans would be presented with stories of freedom and
resistance against tyranny and presented with a democratic and capitalistic
modernity different from that enacted by the Japanese colonial state in Korea,
providing a foundation from which to challenge Japanese authority (Wells 1990:
84–89; Park 2014). Korean Protestant Christians even developed their own
distinctive forms of nationalism (Wells 1990). While not Christian, the successor
of Tonghak, Ch’ŏndogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way), also, in the name of
religious freedom, was given some space to develop similar ideas (Park 2015).
Koreans living outside the peninsula had more freedom to openly discuss how
the Korean nation could be restored. For instance, working in Shanghai, the
nationalist Sin Ch’ae-ho (1880–1936), who had written biographies of Korean
military heroes before annexation, continued this work in 1916 through his novel
Dream of Heaven (Kkŭm hanŭl), which was dedicated to the restoration of the
martial spirit in Korea (Jager 2003; Em 2000). This was itself a continuation of
nationalist theorists who had argued that while the Korean state, which was seen
metaphorically as a “body,” might weaken or even die, the Korean national
“spirit” could continue to live, and through cultivation, regain its state (Shin
2006). The growing popularity and promise of liberalism in the 1910s, as well as
the collapse of dynastic resistance to the Japanese colonial state (the royal family
had been incorporated into Japan’s imperial house), led to exiled nationalist
leaders Sin Kyu-sik and Pak Ŭn-sik to issue a declaration in 1917 that proclaimed
that Korean sovereignty lay not in the emperor but in the people, rhetorically
rejecting the Japanese empire’s attempt to use the house of Yi to control the
people and aligning the nationalist movement with a republican form of
government (Pak 2008).
The victory of liberal democracies in World War I (1914–1918) and American
president Woodrow Wilson’s calls for national self-determination, which
coincided with the death of Korea’s last independent monarch, Kojong,
convinced many nationalists that they should launch a movement that would
peacefully demand Korean independence. Protestant and Ch’ŏndogyo
nationalists, as well as some Buddhists, organized what has become known as the
March First Movement. All of the signatories of the March First declaration of
independence belonged to one of these three religions, and twenty-nine of them
assembled in a Seoul restaurant on that day in 1919. Their declaration was read
out loud, and they were then arrested by the police, leaving the movement
without its leaders. The declaration was read out loud by other nationalists, with
students mobilized largely through religious schools passing out copies and
national flags, leading to widespread demonstrations that quickly spread
throughout the peninsula, mobilizing as many as one million people (out of a
population of approximately twenty million) to take part. Unfortunately, national
self-determination was intended only for ethnic minorities in Europe who had
been part of the defeated Central Powers—Japan was an ally and so not affected.
Thus, the liberal democracies did not support the Korean bid for independence,
and the Japanese colonial government, shocked at the ability of Korean
nationalists to organize the movement in complete secrecy, reacted with brutal
violence, killing thousands (Chong-Sik Lee 1963; Ku 1985).
Though the March First Movement failed in its attempt to win independence
for Korea, it illustrates two important aspects of Korean nationalism. First, the
March First Movement was truly a mass movement. The suffering of colonization
and the shame of foreign rule, experienced largely through the coercive power of
the colonial state, which penetrated more deeply into society than the Chosŏn
Dynasty, led to the painful realization of the sad fate of a nation that loses its
own state. The experience of colonial rule, with accompanying ethnic prejudice,
which excluded Koreans from the higher levels of power, gave Koreans a
stronger sense of their own identity and a consequent desire to obtain their own
state which they themselves would govern. This led to a feeling of unity among
Koreans in which their national identity trumped all others, allowing people who
made conflicting religious claims to work together. Secondly, not only was
nationalism spreading among the Korean populace, it was reaching people who
had previously stood at the margins of Korean political life—the youth and
women. It was not only older men who participated in the movement, but
women as well. Even in the countryside, young female teachers might lead their
students in shouts of “Long live Korean independence!” (Hildi Kang 2001: Chapter
2). The entry of such new political actors is well illustrated by the poignant and
tragic story of Yu Kwan-sun (1902–1920). This young woman came from a rural
family who had converted to Christianity. Through their contact with Western
missionaries, Yu was able to attend a Christian school, exposing her to an
understanding of Protestant nationalism. This inspired her to take part in the
March First Movement, leading to her arrest and death from torture in a Japanese
prison. Nationalism had thus taken root as a worldview for which many Koreans,
both young and old, men and women, of different religions, would struggle and
die for.

Nationalism divided, 1919–1930s

Almost immediately following the beginning of the March First Movement,

exiled Korean nationalists leaders met in Shanghai, formally establishing the
Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in April of 1919. While very
few Koreans actually lived in Shanghai, the comparative freedom of the city and
its proximity to Korea and to the large Korean populations in Manchuria and the
Soviet Union made it an ideal location. One of the first acts of the new
government was to send a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in an
unsuccessful bid to secure Korean independence. In addition, as the provisional
government sought to establish a democratic, liberal republic, it sought assistance
from Western countries. The United States received particular attention, with the
eventual first president of the Republic of Korea, Syngman Rhee (Yi Sŭng-man)
(1875–1965), along with other Korean nationalists, making contact with American
politicians and attempting to win sympathy for Korean independence through
public speeches and publications. At the same time, despite its political
orientations, the provisional government also made contact with the Soviet
Union and received some aid from it. However, while enjoying some support at
first, by 1921, factional struggles, the heavy-160
handedness of its first executive, Syngman Rhee, and a lack of funds led to the
decline of the government’s influence. Though it would continue to exist until
Korea’s liberation in 1945, it would fail to unite all Koreans into a common
nationalist struggle (Chong-Sik Lee 1963).
The situation in Korea itself was quite complex. The March First Movement
failed in its immediate goal of securing Korea’s independence, leading to the
death of thousands. Moreover, after the refusal of Western democracies to
intervene on Korea’s behalf, it was not clear what strategy Korean nationalists
should turn to next. The Japanese colonial government, realizing that its previous
policy had been too strict, shifted to the so-called “cultural policy.” While
surveillance and the number of police actually increased under this policy, the
government relaxed some of the more onerous aspects of colonial rule, for
example by abandoning the policy of summary flogging (Chulwoo Lee 2000), and
allowed for more space for Koreans to discuss national affairs, including even the
eventual possibility of independence. Thus, though censored and at best semi-
free, Koreans were able to launch their own journals and newspapers,
establishing a public sphere in which they could discuss what direction Korean
nationalism should take (Yong-jick Kim 2013).
The new “cultural policy” led to the development of “cultural nationalism,”
which abandoned attempts at immediate political reform in favor of developing
Korea’s “culture.” Nationalists such as Yi Kwang-su, the Japanese-educated
author of “A Theory of National Reconstruction” (Minjok kaejoron) blamed
Korea’s colonization on the under-developed nature of Korean culture and
argued that elite-led mass education of the Korean people would transform them
morally and spiritually, bringing modernity and national independence
(Robinson 2014; Shin 2006). Two examples of the activities carried out by cultural
nationalists were the campaign to establish a university in Korea, which would
train leaders for the future, and a movement for Koreans to buy Korean-made
goods, which would further develop Korean business. By taking this approach,
Korean nationalists could both work for the modernization and independence of
Korea without running afoul of the massive coercive power possessed by the
Japanese colonial state. While initially meeting with success, such campaigns had
certain limitations. For instance, while it would not utilize naked coercion, the
Japanese state undercut and subverted these movements: the colonial government
established a university (though it made sure that it served the interests of
Japanese living in the colony before Koreans) and courted Korean business
leaders, encouraging them to choose class and empire over nation (Robinson
2014; Eckert 1991).
Japanese oppression had united Koreans during the March First Movement
behind a religiously affiliated leadership. However, the growing public sphere,
the failure of liberal democracies to assist Korea, and the success of the Russian
Revolution (1917) led some Korean nationalists to turn away from such
“bourgeois” forms of nationalism and look to Marxism and socialism as both an
alternative means of modernization and as a way gaining national independence.
Korean newspapers and journals began to discuss such ideas more freely and
Korean Communist parties were even established in Russia (1918) and in
Shanghai (1919). A Communist party was even established for a short time in
Korea in 1925 before it was forcibly disbanded by the Japanese colonial state (it
would be reformed and dissolved several more times) (Ch’ŏn 2008).
While the rise of the nationalist left, made possible by the new “cultural
policy,” divided the nationalist movement, there were attempts at union. For
instance, from 1927 to 1931, left and right united in the Sin’ganhoe (New Trunk
Association) to pursue nationalist activities. However, in the end, the left, led by
underground Communists, dissolved the organization, realizing that instead of
being able to use it to control the nationalist right, it was undermining their own
cohesion (Chong-Sik Lee 1963; Ch’ŏn 2008). Such a result is not surprising
considering the theoretical differences between the sides. The left saw the right,
which within the Korean was comprised almost wholly of cultural nationalists, as
unrealistic in their belief that once Korea became sufficiently advanced enough,
Japan would just peacefully permit Korean independence. Moreover, even if they
did obtain independence, Korea would still face the class divisions and economic
inequality that leftists opposed. In fact, the left saw the university and buy
Korean movements as attempts by rightist nationalists to selfishly pursue their
own class interests under the cloak of Korean nationalism. Instead of
emphasizing such bourgeois concerns, leftist nationalists argued that Koreans
should focus on the workers and peasants. Moreover, rather than pursuing
apolitical movements, nationalists should seek alliances with socialist movements
in other countries in order to bring worldwide national and economic revolutions
(Robinson 2014). Though ultimately correct that the Japanese empire would not
simply allow Korea to go without a fight, whenever the left attempted to organize
anything like a political revolution, it faced the full force of state coercion (Caprio
2013). Thus, on the peninsula itself, the rise of the left split the nationalist
movement and exposed the limitations of cultural nationalism but was unable to
establish a new strategy that could unite the movement or resolve the basic issue
that allowed Japan to control Korea: its near complete monopoly of the use of
violence.
At the center of these divisions was the fact that nationalism is not an all-
encompassing ideology that can exist on its own. Nationalism had to mix with
another ideology, be it liberal democracy or socialism, in order to establish a
working government. No longer not the only hegemonic force within Korean
nationalism, but facing criticism that religion actually prevented the rise of
modernity and national liberation, religious nationalists also looked to their own
traditions to develop ways to deal with both the problem of colonization and the
growing economic and social dislocations that arose from Korea’s increasing
integration into both the Japanese empire and the world economy. In addition to
being important leaders within traditional cultural nationalist circles that sought
to make Korea a Christian democracy similar to the United States, some religious
leaders, particularly Protestants and members of Ch’ŏndogyo, looked to a
reconstructed and revitalized countryside as providing an alternative path to
modernity outside of both industrial capitalism and socialism in which villages
organized around spirituality, self-support, and mutual aid would resolve the
serious economic and social issues Korea faced and allow the peasants to live
happy and fulfilled lives. Moreover, these movements located Korean national
identity within the countryside, with the implication that the liberation of the
peasantry would also lead to national liberation (Park 2015).
The “cultural policy” also meant a greater space for Korean scholars to conduct
research, access new intellectual trends, and publish their findings. And since
scholars who were proponents of the Japanese colonial project in Korea presented
the policy of assimilation as a kind of family reunion and presented pre-
annexation Korea as a stagnant country that could not govern itself, it was
natural for Korean nationalists to enter the world of academia to challenge such
claims, thereby chipping away at the arguments justifying colonization. In
particular, Korean nationalist historians looked back to ancient history to show
the existence of powerful, advanced Korean states. For instance, Ch’oe Nam-sŏn
(1890–1957), the author of the March First Movement’s declaration of
independence, presented Tan’gun, the putative ancestor of the Korean nation, as
a historical figure who had ruled a major civilization. Such focus on Tan’gun
pointed to an essentialized, immutable, and biological origin of Korean identity,
signifying that imperial attempts at assimilation were doomed to fail. Similarly,
studies on Korean language, linguistics, and literature were also intended to
heighten a sense of difference between Koreans and Japanese, a necessary defense
against assimilation and a foundation from which to build a future nationstate
(Shin 2006).

Years of violence, 1931–1945

While the Japanese colonial state was willing to tolerate the nationalist
movement within the peninsula to a certain degree, those who went too far faced
its coercive power, suffering torture, imprisonment, and death. The coercive
power of the government meant that, with the exception of largely spontaneous
outbursts of violence, such as the student protests of 1929 that were sparked by
Japanese harassment of Korean schoolgirls, nationalist movements within the
peninsula remained largely peaceful. In contrast, nationalists in exile had more
freedom to work for independence, and while some, like Syngman Rhee, would
utilize peaceful means, such as attempting to win American support for Korean
independence (Lew 2014), others would turn to violence. In particular, after the
mid-1910s, violent resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Korea was centered
largely in Manchuria, as large areas within it were outside the reach of Japan or
any effective government for that matter. Korean nationalists located there would
launch raids across the border into Korea or attack Japanese targets within the
region. As on the peninsula, these Korean nationalists were not united,
particularly after the Russian Revolution and the growing interest of Koreans in
Communism. Fighting could even break out between Communist and non-
Communist Korean nationalists, though over time, the former became the
dominant force, thanks to assistance from the Soviet Union and later from
Chinese Communists (Chong-Sik Lee 1963; Yŏm 2008).
Something of the shape and significance, as well as the limitations, of the
Korean nationalist movement in Manchuria can be seen in the early career of
Kim Il Sung, the future dictator of North Korea. Kim’s father died while he was
young, soon to be followed by his mother, leaving the young man an orphan.
Fortunately for Kim, he had an opportunity to receive an education, attending
both Korean and Chinese-language schools and completing the eighth grade,
before he fell in with a Communist guerrilla band in Manchuria. Kim proved to
be an adept guerrilla fighter whose active career lasted from 1932 to 1941, a time
when many guerrilla fighters were killed or defected to the Japanese. Moreover,
Kim won several significant victories against Japanese forces in battles involving
hundreds of men and even managed to destroy a Japanese police station in Korea.
However, increasing Japanese power in Manchuria forced him to retreat to the
Soviet Union in 1941, where he would remain largely inactive until Japan’s
surrender. In fact, Kim was absorbed formally into the Soviet Union’s army, a
connection that helped ensure that country’s support but illustrates the
limitations of Korea’s power. Similarly, under the principle of “one country, one
party,” Kim was forced to join the Chinese Communist Party. This, along with
the fact that Kim frequently fought under Chinese command in armies with a
Chinese majority, illustrates how Korean Communists were largely under the
control of their more powerful allies. At the same time, it was such links that
helped insure Chinese and Soviet support for the establishment of the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea with Kim at its head and his failed 1950 invasion of
Korea (Suh 1988; Yŏm 2008).
Right-wing nationalists also engaged in violence. Kim Ku (1876–1949),
operating out of Shanghai and receiving support from overseas Koreans in places
like Hawaii, organized two well-known violent attacks against Japanese targets.
The first, known as the Sakuradamon Incident, occurred in January of 1931 when
Yi Pong-chang (1900–1932) threw a hand grenade at what he thought was
Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s carriage (he had the wrong one). The attack only
killed two horses, but Japanese attempts to censor positive Chinese news
accounts of the incident led to increased tensions and were likely one of the
causes of the 1932 Shanghai Incident. The second, known as the Hongkou Park
Incident, occurred in Shanghai in April of that year and involved Korean
nationalist Yun Pong-gil (1908–1932) throwing a bomb at a crowd of Japanese
dignitaries gathered in honor of the emperor’s birthday, killing a Japanese
general and official. While Yi and Yun were executed, and Kim Ku himself would
have been captured by the Japanese if it were not for Chinese assistance, the
attacks did show that Koreans were willing to resist Japan and that at least some
were willing to die for Korean independence. Furthermore, the attacks won Kim
Ku Chinese support, allowing him to revive the moribund Korean Provisional
Government and for the training and equipping of Korean soldiers and spies to be
used against Japan. Such support would increase following Japan’s invasion of
China in 1937 (Chong-Sik Lee 1963).
While those nationalists outside of Korea could work positively for nationalist
goals, those inside the country would find it increasingly difficult after the
Manchurian Incident of 1931 to do anything but survive increasing Japanese
pressure with something of their principles intact. In response to the rise in
militarism in Japan in the 1930s, pressure on Koreans to assimilate, and after
1937, assist in Japan’s war effort against China, rapidly increased. For instance,
beginning in 1934, only Japanese could be used at schools. In 1939, independent
Korean newspapers, which had come under ever stricter censorship, were forced
out of business. In that same year, Koreans were also forced to adopt Japanese
surnames. Any independent Korean institutes were either dissolved or subverted
and taken over. Whereas during the dark years of the first decade of colonial rule,
churches had served as a sanctuary for some now limited freedom, Koreans were
forced, often through heavy-handed tactics and transparent coercion, to worship
at Shintō Shrines. Christians, particularly conservative Protestants, fiercely
opposed such measures, leading to imprisonment and the death of several dozen
while they were in custody (Choi 2007; Park 2015; Wi Jo Kang 1997).
Under such conditions, many Koreans, including nationalists, who lived under
Japanese rule were forced to publicly participate in ritualistic acts demonstrating
their loyalty to the empire, such as bowing at Shintō Shrines. For many, such acts
were carried out grudgingly and out of fear—and for the Japanese colonial state,
that was enough (Hildi Kang 2001). However, outspoken nationalists were
expected to issue public statements exhorting Koreans to participate in the war
effort, praise the emperor, and proclaim their loyalty to the empire. Nationalists
such as Ch’oe Nam-sŏn and Yi Kwang-su gave in. While such acts of national
apostasy could be read simply as giving in out of a desire to reap the benefits of
collaboration and avoid the substantial losses that would have accrued with,
what must have appeared quixotic, acts of bravery. Particularly in the early years
of the war when Japan was winning, the attractions and power of Japanese
modernity and the Pan-Asianism that promised to liberate Asia from Western
imperialism must have been persuasive. For nationalists who had spent years of
suffering and pain to seemingly no avail, with Japan promising to become ever
more powerful with the prospects of spreading its influence throughout Asia, the
temptation to join what appeared to be the winning team must have been strong
(Michael Kim 2007). Following the war, Yi Kwang-su even argued that he had
sought to act as a shield for the Korean people—resistance would not have
worked—the Japanese would have simply taken the resources and labor they
desired. Better than to work with them, in victory Koreans would share in the
spoils, in defeat, as colonial subjects, they could not be blamed (Treat 2012).
Moreover, one could in a sense both believe in the empire and be a Korean
nationalist—that seems to have been the case with Park Chung-hee, future
dictator of the Republic of Korea, who both wrote a letter in blood to the
Japanese Emperor asking to be admitted into a military academy and exalted
national heroes, such as Yi Sun-shin, famous for fighting against the Japanese
(Chong-Sik Lee 2012).
In the end, Japan would be defeated and Korea liberated, not substantially
through any Korean actions but through the forces of geo-politics. The lack of a
distinctly Korean victory meant there would be no single Korean person or party
that could claim credit and use that prestige to effectively unite the Korean
people. Instead, right-wing nationalists, through the patronage of the United
States and the United Nations, would gain power in the south, with Communist
nationalists eventually gaining power in the north under the sponsorship of the
Soviet Union. Left-and right-wing visions of what an independent and modern
Korean state should look like led to a fratricidal civil war that killed millions of
Koreans and hundreds of thousands of American, Chinese, and United Nations
forces. But unlike most other civil wars, international intervention, while aiding
the belligerents for a time, prevented them ultimately from finishing the war.
Koreans would thus obtain part of the nationalist dream, national independence,
and, at least in the south, modernity, but would still feel the heavy hand of great
power politics.
The painful psychic wound of the failure to obtain the nationalist goal of one
nation, one state, despite liberation from colonial rule, continues to haunt the
peninsula. The continued division of Korea still serves as a potential point of
conflict and of proliferation of nuclear weapons. Internally, the colonial period
and the nationalism that developed during it still influence the two Koreas to this
day. North Korean concerns about independence are rooted much in the desire to
avoid foreign domination once again, and even in a globalized South Korea, anti-
Japanese feelings, particularly over such emotional issues as the comfort women
and collaboration with the Japanese, are still strong. The anti-colonial nature of
Korean nationalism, by emphasizing the importance of autonomy and
independence, can mask the fact that Japanese nationalism has also shaped that
of Korea. North Korea’s xenophobic nationalism focused on the purity of the
Korean race owes much to Japanese ultra-nationalism (Myers 2011), and Park
Chŏng-hee (Pak Chong-hŭi) consciously patterned much of his own style of rule
after Japanese history (Chong-Sik Lee 2012).

Areas for further research

A great deal of excellent work has been done on Korean nationalism, particularly
in examining the connection between nationalism and other ideologies. Recently,
English-language scholarship on nationalism has been willing to challenge
nationalist narratives—for instance, Yumi Moon, in her work on the Ilchinhoe,
frequently seen from the nationalist perspective as arch-traitors, has sensitively
explored their perspective, showing how many of its members were guided by a
sincere populism. Similarly, Brandon Palmer’s recent work on Japanese
mobilization of Koreans for labor and military service, while carefully tracing the
use of force in such efforts, also shows that at least some Koreans volunteered
freely and used what limited agency they possessed to advance within the empire
(2013) rather than to work against it.
In general, English-language scholarship tends to focus on narratives that
challenge nationalism and to take critical approach focusing on deconstruction.
While an important balance for Korean-language scholarship, which is often
written from a nationalist perspective, the emphasis on such studies among
scholars working in English has led to certain lacunae. With the possible
exception of Gi-Wook Shin’s work (2006), there has not been a comprehensive
history of Korean nationalism in English since Chong-Sik Lee (1963). English
monographs focusing on a particular nationalist figure, even important ones such
as Kim Ku or Cho Man-sik, are also largely lacking. While religion is closely
related to Korean nationalism, studies on such connections are often
hagiographical in nature, focusing on how a particular religion helped serve the
Korean nation. A notable exception is Albert Park’s recent book on rural
reconstruction efforts among Ch’ŏndogyo activists and Protestant Christians,
which, while focusing primarily on modernity, touches on nationalism because of
its subjects focused on a distinctly agrarian Korean nation, illustrating the rich
work still yet to be done on religion and nationalism (Park 2015). More such
studies are needed, particularly ones that focus on new Korean religions, which,
despite often being established by Korean nationalist leaders, receive little
attention in English-language sources. Thus, while the foundation for research on
Korean nationalism has been established, the house is still far from complete, and
more builders are certainly needed.

Notes
1 It should be noted that the word “Korea” itself is a modern term.

2 According to legend, a god descended in what is now the Korean peninsula and was approached by a
tiger and a bear, who both wanted to be human. The god told them that they could, if they stayed within
a cave and ate only certain types of food. The tiger was unable to do so, but the bear did and was
transformed into a beautiful human woman. She and the god then begat a son, Tan’gun—the ancestor of
the Korean people.
 3 Durham White Stevens was an American who technically worked for the Korean government but
actually served Japanese interests.

4 It is interesting to note that all of these nationalists were also Christians (both Catholic and Protestant).

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Part III
Division and war
12
The division of Korea and the rise of two
Koreas, 1945–1948

Jongsoo Lee

When Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender in World War II on

August 15, 1945, there was euphoria among Koreans both in and outside the
Korean peninsula. As they rejoiced in their liberation from 36 years of Japanese
colonial rule, they expected speedy restoration of independence to Korea as a
sovereign state. However, what soon greeted them was not immediate
independence but the partition of the peninsula into two halves at the 38th
parallel by the occupying troops of the Soviet Union and the United States.
Although these foreign troops were welcomed as liberators, Koreans grew
increasingly unhappy as time went on and it became clear that immediate
restoration of independence was not forthcoming and that the partition of the
peninsula was becoming more permanent.
The story of how the Korean peninsula was partitioned at the 38th parallel is a
classic example of Great Power politics, reminiscent of the partition of the
Americas since the voyages by Columbus, the partition of Africa at the Berlin
Conference of 1884–1885 and the partition of the ex-Ottoman territories after
World War I by the European colonial powers. In these cases, “understandings”
were reached, either officially or in secret agreements, among the European
colonial powers, and the European powers arbitrarily redrew the boundaries of
these lands to suit their own interests often in ways that did not reflect the
existing political, ethnic, tribal, cultural or linguistic loyalties and solidarities. The
opinions of the native Americans, Africans, Arabs and other peoples, whose lands
were being divided up by the European colonial powers, were not consulted.
Therefore, although the masses of Koreans rejoiced on August 15, 1945, those
Korean leaders who understood the realities of international power politics and
the geopolitical balance of power in Northeast Asia had much to worry about
Korea’s future after Japan’s defeat. Kim Ku, a prominent leader of the exiled
Korean nationalist independence activists in China, later recorded in his memoirs
that the news of the Japanese surrender came not as a cause for jubilation but
rather as an occasion for utmost concern and disappointment. Leaders such as
Kim Ku knew that Japan’s defeat was achieved by the military might of the
Allied Powers and that the Koreans themselves contributed little militarily to the
Allied victory. In the case of Kim, Kim and his Korean Provisional Government
in exile in China had been covertly working with the United States Office of
Strategic Services to prepare operations by KPG’s military units in Japanese-
occupied Korea. The sudden surrender of Japan came before KPG could play this
military role in defeating Japan. The Korean leaders such as Kim were worried,
therefore, that the fate of Korea was now in the hands of the foreign powers that
defeated Japan, not in the hands of the Koreans. Their worst fear was that Korea
would once again become a playground for Great Power intrigue and rivalries
and that the Koreans would be denied full restoration of sovereignty.
True to the fears of these Korean leaders, the future of Korea in late 1945 was
precarious indeed. The only officially announced wartime international
agreement among the Allied leaders concerning Korea’s future upon Japan’s
defeat was the so-called Cairo Declaration, a joint statement issued in 1943 by the
leaders of the United States, Britain and nationalist China and later endorsed by
the Soviet Union, which proclaimed Korea’s independence in due course. The
Korean leaders welcomed this promise of independence but opposed the phrase
“in due course,” as they wanted immediate independence. Indeed, the
understanding reached among the wartime Allied leaders which underlay the “in
due course” provision was that the Koreans were not ready for self-rule and that
they needed a period of tutelage by the Allied Powers, who would administer an
international trusteeship over Korea until such time as when the Koreans would
be deemed capable of self-government.
The concept of trusteeship as contemplated by the Allied leaders during World
War II was itself based on the prior precedent of the League of Nations mandates,
which was devised by the Western Powers as a transitional governance
mechanism for the non-Western colonies of those Powers that were defeated in
World War I, namely, imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Examples of
the League of Nations mandates that were implemented after World War I
include Lebanon and Syria, both administered by France, and German Southwest
Africa (presently Namibia), which was controlled by the Union of South Africa.
Underlying both the League of Nations mandate system and the trusteeship idea
was the assumption that the people living in the territories that would be subject
to these governance mechanisms were not ready for self-rule and would need a
period of tutelage in the arts of self-governance before being granted full
independence.
In line with this view that the Koreans were not capable of immediate self-rule,
the Allied Powers during World War II, including the US, did not officially
recognize any Korean group that claimed to represent the Korean people as the
legitimate government of Korea. There were numerous Korean organizations of
varying ideological and political persuasions that were agitating for Korean
independence during the Japanese colonial rule over Korea (1910–1945), and
many of these groups, including the aforementioned Korean Provisional
Government, were based overseas given the harsh Japanese colonial rule in
Korea, which effectively suppressed pro-independence movements within the
peninsula especially after the March First Independence Movement in 1919, a
peaceful nationwide grassroots demonstration that proclaimed Korean
independence. However, later disunity among these various Korean groups that
struggled for independence from Japan was a contributing factor in this Allied
policy of non-recognition, as the Allied governments came to view the Korean
independence movement as fragmented and considered no one group as broadly
representative of the Korean people.
When the surrender of the Japanese seemed imminent in the last days of
World War II in August 1945, the United States was preoccupied with the future
of Japan, a soon-to-be defeated Great Power, and the US policy was focused on
ensuring that postwar Japan would become an ally of the United States and never
again a threat. Korea, a colonial dependency of Japan, was at best an afterthought
as a policy priority in the minds of the top US officials charged with planning the
future postwar world order. If Korea possessed a strategic value, it was thought of
mainly as an outpost for the future defense of US-occupied Japan. For the Soviet
Union, whose entry into the war against Japan in August 1945 decisively
contributed to Japan’s surrender, its leaders were also concerned with preventing
a future Japan that would be hostile to the USSR.
After all, Japan had been an imperial rival of Russia, having won the Russo-
Japanese War (1905), invaded the Russian Far East in the aftermath of the
Bolshevik Revolution and threatened the security of the USSR as an ally of Nazi
Germany. However, despite its efforts to secure a role in the postwar occupation
of Japan, the USSR was denied any meaningful role there by the United States,
which was determined to keep Japan in the capitalist world order and forestall a
rise of communism there amid conditions of war-devastation and popular
disaffection. Having been denied a role in postwar Japan, the Soviets apparently
attached more importance than did the Americans to the postwar future of Korea,
given the fact that the Korean peninsula was used by Japan in recent history as a
platform for attacks on the Russian Far East and thus possessed an important
strategic value.
Therefore, when the US officials faced the question of what to do about Korea
in the last days of World War II as Japan’s surrender seemed imminent, they
apparently had no idea beyond a vague awareness of the wartime Allied
agreement that the peninsula would be liberated from Japanese rule but would be
subject to Allied occupation until such time as when the Koreans would be
deemed capable of self-government.1 Given this, the officials in Washington,
D.C., responsible for US policies towards East Asia could manage no better than
to hurriedly entrust two colonels with the task of devising a formula acceptable
to the Soviets for the Allied military occupation of the peninsula, which would,
among other things, accept the surrender of the Japanese troops and maintain law
and order until a further Allied agreement on the future of the peninsula could be
worked out. When Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel took out a map of the
Korean peninsula and studied it on the night of August 14, 1945, they knew that
the Soviet troops were already advancing south in northern parts of the peninsula
and that the US forces were not in a position to arrive in Korea anytime soon.2
Under time pressure to propose a formula before the Soviets occupied all of the
peninsula and probably thinking that the US was militarily not in a position to
ask the Soviets to withdraw their troops completely from the peninsula, they
proposed the 38th parallel to the Soviets because it would divide the peninsula
into roughly two equal-sized halves and leave Seoul, the capital, in the proposed
US zone of occupation. The opinions of the Korean people were not consulted in
this process, and neither did it seem to dawn on these two colonels that they
could be fatally undermining the future of the Korean people by proposing a
partition of the peninsula that could become permanent.
Somewhat to the surprise of the US officials, the Soviets accepted this proposal.
There are possible reasons as to why the Soviets accepted this US proposal of the
division along the 38th parallel, one being that it reminded them of an old turn-
of-the-century spheres of influence discussion between imperial Japan and czarist
Russia to divide up the peninsula between themselves also at the 38th parallel.3 In
this fashion, therefore, the peninsula was partitioned without the consent of the
Korean people and definitely against their will. Although there were
disagreements among the Koreans, it was clear that no Korean wanted their
country to be arbitrarily divided in this manner, dealing a crippling blow to the
organic unity of their country and economy, not to mention physically separating
family members living on both sides of the dividing line and inviting the strong
likelihood of a civil war to reunite the peninsula.
The situation on the Korean peninsula in late 1945 became the following: the
occupation forces of the Soviet Union that arrived in August and of the United
States that arrived in September accepted the surrender of the Japanese and
carried out their respective occupation policies in their zones of administration,
while various Koreans groups of differing ideological and political orientations
jockeyed for leadership and legitimacy among the Korean masses whom they
purported to represent. These Korean groups and their leaders differed not only
in terms of their ideological or general political orientations but also in terms
such as their relationships with the occupation authorities and with one another.
Some of these groups and leaders spent the bulk of the Japanese colonial years
living inside Korea (such as Yo Un-hyŏng, a moderate leftist, and Song Chin-u,
Kim Song-su and Cho Man-sik, right-wing nationalists), while some spent those
years in exile overseas, including the United States (such as Syngman Rhee [Yi
Sŭng-man], a right-wing nationalist) and China (such as Kim Ku, a right-wing
nationalist, Kim Kyu-sik, a moderate rightist, and Kim Il Sung, a leftist anti-
Japanese partisan leader). Unfortun ately for the future of Korea, these various
Korean groups and their leaders could not form a united front vis-à-vis the
foreign occupation powers.
What drove these Korean groups and leaders even further apart was the
decision reached at the Conference of Allied Foreign Ministers in Moscow in
December 1945, which placed Korea under a United Nations Trusteeship for a
period of up to five years. While almost all Korean groups initially opposed this
decision, most leftist groups later changed their position in favor of it, and
thereafter the rift between the left and the right in Korea grew irreparably large,
as violence among the Koreans escalated, poisoning intra-Korean cooperation. It
was in this atmosphere of escalating tensions between the left and the right in
Korea and also between the USSR and the Anglo-American powers in the rising
global Cold War that the US-USSR Joint Commissions in Korea were convened in
1946–1947 in order to carry out the trusteeship plan as announced at the Moscow
Conference of Allied Foreign Ministers. A key element of the US-USSR Joint
Commissions was the effort to form a left-right coalition among the Korean
leaders as the nucleus of a future united Korean government that would work
with the Allied trustee powers under the proposed UN Trusteeship. However, this
effort failed, as the Americans and the Soviets could not agree on the composition
of such a coalition body and their occupation policies in their respective zones of
administration grew only more divergent as time went on.4
In the Soviet-occupied northern Korea, a radical transformation took place as a
Soviet-style socialist regime and society was built there with sweeping changes
such as land reform and nationalization of key industries. Kim Il Sung (Kim Il-
sŏng), who returned to northern Korea in 1945 as an officer in the Soviet
occupation forces, rose to power under Soviet support and managed to
consolidate his power over rivals such as the nationalist leader Cho Man-sik, who
was placed under house arrest in early 1946 for his strong opposition to the
Moscow trusteeship decision. In the US-occupied southern Korea, the American
military government made much less sweeping changes than those that were
taking place in the north, and a main focus of the occupation became the
preservation of the status quo against leftist agitation and subversion. As time
wore on, Syngman Rhee managed to prevail over other leaders such as Yŏ Un-
hyŏng, Song Chin-u, and Kim Ku (all of whom were assassinated).
With the failure of the US-USSR Joint Commissions to implement the
trusteeship, what followed next was the policy of the United States to refer the
Korean question to the United Nations General Assembly while simultaneously
making preparations for a separate South Korean state as a fallback option in case
the U.N. also failed to resolve the problem. The United Nations, then under the
sway of the United States and her allies, proceeded to set up the U.N. Temporary
Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), which was charged with the task, among
others, of observing the implementation of elections in both zones of occupation
in Korea for the creation of a unified Korean government. This effort to refer the
Korean question to the U.N., however, met the resolute opposition of the USSR,
which protested against what it regarded as the illegal transfer of the Korean
question onto the U.N. agenda and instead called for the simultaneous
withdrawal of US and Soviet troops from Korea.
Consequently, meeting the Soviet refusal to allow the entry of the UNTCOK
into northern Korea, the U.N. proceeded to observe the implementation of
elections in the US-occupied southern Korea only. In response, an important bloc
of Korean leaders in southern Korea, including not only leftists but also rightists
such as Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-sik, sought to enter into talks with the leaders of
northern Korea in order to prevent the impending permanent division of their
country. They attended a conference in Pyongyang in April 1948, where they met
with northern Korean leaders such as Kim Il Sung and issued statements
opposing the separate southern elections and voicing support for the creation of a
unified Korean government after withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea.
This effort by the Korean leaders, however, proved ineffective in preventing
the elections for the National Assembly in southern Korea, which took place in
May 1945 and led to the election of Syngman Rhee as the first president of the
Republic of Korea, which was proclaimed in August 1948. The USSR and the
northern Koreans then went ahead with their own elections for the Supreme
People’s Assembly of Korea, which took place in September 1948 and led to the
establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under the leadership
of Kim Il Sung. In retrospect, this emergence of the two rival states in the Korean
peninsula seemingly became all but inevitable when the only framework for a
unified Korean state that was agreed upon by the US and the USSR—namely, the
transition to such a state under the proposed U.N. Trusteeship—failed in its
implementation amid discord between the US and the USSR and between the
various Korean groups themselves against the background of the rising global
Cold War.
The division of Korea after World War II, which led to the rise of the two rival
Korean states in 1948 and the tragic outcome of the ensuing Korean War (1950–
1953), was therefore a complex process that needs to be examined from a variety
of angles, including international politics, domestic politics within the Korean
peninsula and relationships among the various Korean groups in the context of
World War II, postwar decolonization worldwide and the rise of the Cold War
confrontations. While there have been numerous scholarly works in the English
language on the Korean War and US-Korean relations in general, there has been
a paucity of scholarship focused on examining Korea’s division in 1945–1948.
Among the works that do deal with Korea in this period in one form or another,
one observes a pattern similar to that discernible in works addressing other areas
of early Cold War history: “traditionalists” of the 1950s–1970s who blame the
USSR for the failure of Allied cooperation after World War II and for starting the
Cold War; the “revisionists” of the 1970s–1990s who point to American
“imperialists” as the culprits for starting the Cold War; and the “post-revisionists”
since the 1990s, some of whose works can be characterized as “traditionalists plus
archives.” Representative of the “traditionalists” or “Cold Warriors” is the
monumental two-volume work by Scalapino and Lee (1972); seminal among the
“revisionists” is the two-volume work by Cumings (1981, 1990); and examples of
“post-revisionism” include Weathersby (1993).
However, on the issue of the Korean division in 1945–1948, a lack of
conceptual clarity exists in these scholarly works. Although the traditionalists
and the revisionists differ sharply as to which side they blame for the Korean
division, they have tended to assume that the division itself was inevitable and
have not examined in depth the possibilities for alternatives to the division. In
particular, scholars have paid insufficient attention to the issue of the trusteeship,
namely, the wartime decision by Allied leaders to place Korea under a four-
power trusteeship after Japan’s defeat and the subsequent agreement to
implement this trusteeship reached at the Moscow Conference of Allied Foreign
Ministers in December 1945. No work examined in detail how this trusteeship
issue was central to causing both the military partition of Korea at the 38th
parallel in August 1945 and the permanent division of Korea into the two Koreas
in August–September 1948. Lee (2005) is a relatively recent work that helps to fill
this gap in the scholarly literature.
Among the few works that address Soviet policy towards Korea in this period,
the consensus view was that Stalin was intent on creating a Soviet satellite state
in northern Korea and that he never took the trusteeship seriously, utilizing it at
best as a propaganda ploy. Lee (2005), however, argues that this view obscures
and oversimplifies what was a fluid and uncertain situation obtaining in Korea
and the world during 1945–1948. Lee also argues that this view fails to capture
the continent nature as well as the complexity and self-contradiction inherent in
Soviet policy towards Korea and elsewhere in the early postwar years. According
to Lee (2005), a work based on multilingual research including newly available
archival materials from Moscow, Stalin apparently faced two basic alternatives in
August 1945: Sovietizing northern Korea, which would create a buffer state in
northern Korea presumably buttressing Soviet security but which would also lead
the US and Japan to turn southern Korea into an outpost of a US-Japan security
alliance directed against the USSR; or working with the Western powers to
implement the trusteeship or some other mechanism for creating a unified
independent Korea, which would be neutral or friendly in its foreign policy
orientation to the USSR. Lee suggests that Stalin in 1945–1948 was at best
ambivalent about either of these choices and that his preference, if he had one,
was actually for the latter, given that a unified independent Korea on the USSR’s
border would likely be more susceptible to dictates from Moscow than from
Washington. Such a unified Korea, even if originally established as a capitalist
state with a neutral foreign policy, would have been very susceptible to
communist subversion and likely to have turned leftist.
Therefore, Lee (2005) makes the prima facie case that, similar to how Stalin
apparently approached the German problem after World War II, the Soviet
dictator apparently pursued seemingly contradictory policies for a Korean
settlement, at least in the initial stage of the Soviet occupation of Korea, and that
he apparently never entirely gave up on the possibility of reaching an
accommodation with the United States in Korea even after the failure of the
Moscow agreement until the very eve of the establishment of South Korea in
August 1948. Lee suggests the possibility that Stalin took the Korean trusteeship
plan seriously, at least more seriously than did the Americans, and that the
trusteeship was actually Stalin’s preferred policy for a Korean settlement. Based
on a consideration of both international and domestic factors, Lee (2005) attempts
to answer the question of why such alternative settlements for Korea’s future
were not adopted and why the Korean nation-building effort in 1945–1948 failed,
leading not to peaceful reunification but instead to war.
In terms of future agenda for research on Korea’s division after World War II,
the following observations, among others, may be made. First is that, as already
alluded, there is a dire lack of scholarship in any language devoted to this issue,
especially in comparison to the larger body of scholarship on the Korean War or
the much larger body of works that examine other cases of national division and
partition, such as Germany’s division after World War II. This calls for more
research on the Korean division, especially by scholars based in the English-
speaking world. Second is that there is a need for more works that place the
Korean division in a broader comparative context, making an effort to draw
comparisons with simultaneous developments elsewhere in the world (Japan,
Vietnam, Germany, Austria, Finland, etc.) and with prior examples drawn from
world history. Third is related to the second, namely the need for works that
overcome the limitations of conventional national history and diplomatic history.
Too often, scholars specializing in a national history have focused their energies
on examining developments internal to a nation or a people while paying
insufficient attention to broader international forces or at worst engaging in a
nationalistic bifurcation of “us” vs. “the foreign” as a driving force in a national
history. On the other hand, Western scholars of diplomatic history involving
non-Western peoples have sometimes focused their energies on the broader
international forces and Great Power politics while paying insufficient attention
or according insufficient agency to the domestic actors and developments inside
the non-Western countries they address. This situation calls for more balanced
and nuanced works that rectify and transcend these limitations of conventional
national history and diplomatic history.
Fourth is related to the third but going further, namely the need for works that
are in line with a current trend in historical scholarship towards “international”
or “transnational” history and “global history,” that is, works that make an effort
to address broader themes and forces in global history, such as global economy,
geography and factor endowments and transnational interactions including trade
and migrations, as well as empire and decolonization, war and peace and
nationalism and nation-building. In the case of the Korean division, more
research is thus needed that examines, for example, the division as a case study in
worldwide decolonization, Third World nationalism and nation-building and the
rising Cold War worldwide. Also welcome is more research that focuses on issues
such as the economic and social dimension of the division (for example, Korea’s
economic and strategic value to the Great Powers, including the US and USSR
with their respective capitalist and socialist world orders; the cost of the division
in terms of damage to the integrated Korean national economy, the loss of lives
and materials arising from the subsequent Korean War; the human tragedy of
family members separated by the division and the subsequent fratricide of the
Korean War; etc.). Finally, there is an overall need for more multilingual, multi-
archival scholarship that utilizes new evidence from Russia, Eastern Europe,
Japan, China, the United States, Korea and elsewhere. If and when North Korea
opens up and archival and other materials from there become available to
researchers, this will be a boon for scholarship.
Beyond the broader research agenda as outlined above, the following specific
sub-areas, among others, call for more research. First is the need for more multi-
archival research on the wartime Allied planning, including behind-the-scenes
Allied deliberations, regarding Korea’s postwar future and, in particular,
concerning the trusteeship issue, especially why and how the trusteeship idea
was applied towards Korea. In addition to unearthing any new evidence from the
United States, more evidence from the British, Russian, and Chinese archives
would contribute to a more complete understanding of the respective Allied
positions, including the US position, on this issue. Second is a fuller examination
of how and why the “in due course” phrase was included in the Cairo Declaration
on the postwar future of Korea, including the question of who was the “real
author” of this phrase. Again, more evidence from the British, Russian and
Chinese archives, as well as a more in-depth look at the evolution of the US
position papers on this issue from the initial draft proposal to the final version
approved by Franklin Roosevelt, would contribute to a more complete
understanding of the respective Allied positions, including the US position. Third
is a comprehensive analysis based on more evidence of how the United States
came to propose the 38th parallel as the dividing line and why the Soviets
accepted. At present, the standard account of this event is based on the
recollections of Dean Rusk, a direct participant in the event, as preserved in the
US government records and in his own published memoir. Researchers would
benefit from access to more first-hand evidence from the US side and also any
direct evidence from the Russian side that can shed light on this bargain struck
between the United States and the USSR.
Fourth is the need for more research on how the United States and the USSR,
during 1945–1948, related to the various Korean leaders, including right-wing
nationalists like Kim Ku and left-wing leaders like Kim Il Sung, and how the
relationships between the US and Soviet occupation authorities and these Korean
leaders helped shape the course of events in postwar Korea. Fifth is an in-depth
analysis of the interactions during 1945–1948 between the US-occupied south and
the Soviet-occupied north, such as trails of migrants, spies, political and religious
refugees and official delegations of political figures, as well as flows of goods,
commodities and raw materials including electricity. Sixth is more research on
the return or repatriation of ethnic Koreans to the Korean peninsula from the
overseas Korean diaspora after World War II, including those who had been
relocated to various parts of the Japanese empire as soldiers, forced laborers and
“comfort women” (i.e. those forced into sexual slavery). The return of large
numbers of these ethnic Koreans to Korea after World War II, whether from
China, Japan, Russia, the United States or elsewhere, had a big impact on the
developments in the Korean peninsula leading to the national division and the
subsequent Korean War. As is the case in the first three sub-areas of research
outlined in the previous paragraph, progress in these sub-areas of research
outlined in this paragraph will depend in part on the availability of new evidence,
archival and otherwise.

Notes
1 This assessment is based on the official US documents that are heretofore accessible to researchers. No
effort is made here to speculate on the possibility of a “secret understanding” reached between the US
and the USSR prior to Japan’s surrender concerning the future of the Korean peninsula. The existence of
 any such behind-the-scenes agreement, even if real, is not supported by these official documents, which,
by their nature, document official deliberations and actions of the policymakers.

2 There is some uncertainty about the exact date of this event, as an alternative account of this same event
states it took place the night of August 10–11, 1945. The account of this event narrated here is largely
based on the recollections of Dean Rusk as preserved in the official US documents and also included in
his published memoirs.

3 For a fuller discussion of the possible reasons why the Soviets accepted this US proposal of the division
along the 38th parallel, see Jongsoo Lee, The Partition of Korea after World War II: A Global History
(New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 39–45.

4 For a fuller discussion of the failure of the US and the USSR to cooperate in Korea in 1946–1948, including
the failure of the effort to form a left-right coalition among the Korean leaders, see Lee (ibid.), pp. 86–
126, 147–154.

References
Armstrong, Charles K. (2003) The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Bunche, Ralph J. (1945) “Trusteeship and Non-Self-Governing Territories in the
Charter of the United Nations,” The Department of State Bulletin, December
30, 1945, vol. VIII, no. 340, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office:
1037–1044.
Byrnes, James F. (1947) Speaking Frankly. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.
Churchill, Winston and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1984) Churchill and Roosevelt: The
Complete Correspondence, Volumes I–III, Warren F. Kimball, editor.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cumings, Bruce (1981) The Origins of the Korean War, Volume I: Liberation and
the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Cumings, Bruce. (1990) The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II: The Roaring of
the Cataract, 1947–1950. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gaddis, John Lewis (1997) We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Gaddis, John Lewis. (2005) The Cold War: A New History. New York, NY:
Penguin.
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi (2006) Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender
of Japan. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Ku, Kim (2000) Paekpom Ilchi: The Autobiography of Kim Ku, Jongsoo Lee,
translator and annotator. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Kovalenko, I. (1985) “The Rout of Japanese Militarism and the National Liberation
Revolutions in Asia,” Far Eastern Affairs, no. 4.
Lankov, Andrei (2002) From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea,
1945–1960. London: Hurst & Company.
Leffler, Melvyn P. (1992) A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the
Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Leffler, Melvyn P.. (2007) For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet
Union, and the Cold War. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
Lee, Jongsoo (2005) The Partition of Korea after World War II: A Global History.
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Matray, James I. (1985) The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea,
1941–1950. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
McCune, George M. (1947) “Korea: The First Year of Liberation,” Pacific Affairs,
vol. 20, no. 1: 3–7.
Plokhy, S. M. (2011) Yalta: The Price of Peace. New York, NY: Penguin.
Rusk, Dean (1990) As I Saw It, Daniel S. Papp, editor. New York, NY: W. W.
Norton & Co.
Scalapino, Robert and Chong-sik Lee (1972) Communism in Korea. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Truman, Harry S. (1955) Memoirs, Volume One: Year of Decisions. New York, NY:
Doubleday & Co.
Van Ree, Erik (1989) Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, 1945–1947,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weathersby, Kathryn (1993) Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean
War, 1945–1950: New Evidence from Russian Archives, Cold War International
History Project, Working Paper No. 8. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
13
The Korean War and its politics

Grace J. Chae

Remembering a war notoriously referred to as one that is “unknown” or

“forgotten” carries with it a hefty burden to restore honor to the lives lost and
affected by such devastating violence. However, as this war erupted during a
volatile and uncertain climate of postcolonial liberation from Japan and
escalating Cold War tensions—a time when local and international parties
violently clashed over differing political ideologies, motivations, and expectations
—its telling is fraught with both complexity and controversy. Restricted or
unopened archives, changing memories, and still politically sensitive debates
exacerbate attempts to accurately comprehend this moment. There is no one
history of the Korean War. Thus, this chapter not only provides a historical
overview of general events and significant themes, but also a conscious
recognition of how this history has been and continues to be told. In this way, the
Korean War’s place in history becomes more than just a historical episode, but
one that provides a lasting lesson on how history, politics, and scholarship
intersect.

Historiography
A general review of Korean War historiography, specifically Western and East
Asian scholarship, not only reflects academic trends across various disciplines
and areas of study (e.g. critical shifts in postcolonial and postmodern studies), but
also changing political climates in both the United States and East Asia that often
influenced the kinds of narratives and tones that emerged. South Korean-
language studies on the Korean War, for example, were largely unformed during
the 1950s and 1960s due to the chaos of war, dictatorships, censorship, and
postwar reconstruction. What little was produced by Koreans remained, over the
course of decades, consistent with the official view of the Republic of Korea
(ROK) Government that the war was an unprovoked aggression coordinated by
the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. Many scholars were not only inhibited
by the state, which fostered and propagated conservative viewpoints and an
overwhlemingly anti-communist culture, but also by the mere fact that they were
witnesses to the brutality of the war and were weary of lenient considerations of
North Korean intentions (C.B. Kim 1996: 158).
It was the 1970s that produced a significant shift among Korean War
scholarship produced in South Korea. Largely due to new funding initiatives and
partnerships between the United States and the Republic of Korea (e.g. via the
Ford Foundation, the 1961 Fulbright-Hays Act, etc.), some students were able to
study abroad in the United States and Europe (Cumings 1999: 180). These scholars
gained exposure to critical and progressive viewpoints like world-systems
analysis and Marxism, which were restricted under Korea’s authoritarian
regimes. However, many of these students, as Kim Chull Baum has found in his
study of Korean War historiography, were scholars of international politics and
tended to remain somewhat conservative in their understanding of the war by
insisting that responsibility for the devastation remained at the feet of foreign
powers. It was not until Korean historians began to take up the mantle with the
release of US and British military and state documents, along with captured
North Korean documents, during the 1970s and 1980s that critical analyses began
to emerge that considered the war as an internal conflict exacerbated by
imperialist policies (C.B. Kim 1996: 158).
For example, Kim Hak-joon’s Korean Affairs and International Politics (1975)
was not only the first Korean-language study to use military archival documents,
but it was also the first to explore controversial issues surrounding the Korean
War, despite heavy censorship under the Chun regime. In his later work on the
history of the Korean War (1989), Kim more freely reveals that there was a split
in the North Korean leadership regarding whether to continue the fight beyond
1951. Pak Myung-lim (1996) examined captured North Korean documents
alongside South Korean documents to provide a closer study of the internal
conditions that led to the pursuit of unification by force, adding complexity to
our understanding of the decision-making process to go to war. After South
Korea’s democratization in the late 1980s, historical study of the Korean War has
grown more diverse and more inclusive of what were once regarded as radical
viewpoints.
By the 1990s, the release of Chinese and Russian documents, partly aided by
normalized relations between Seoul and Moscow and Seoul and Beijing, began to
lend support to the traditionalist view that the war was an international conflict
and instigated by North Korea. Much like the debate among English-language
scholars, an exploration of which follows, the debate amongst Korean scholars
has taken a similar turn based on the availability of archival documents from all
sides and changing political climates. Attempting to bridge the gap, much of
today’s scholarship seeks to explore the Korean War as a combination of
domestic and international factors both in its origins and outcome. In addition,
current Korean-language scholarship has now begun to incorporate
interdisciplinary studies to examine the sociological, psychological, and cultural
impact of the war (C.B. Kim 1996: 164–165).
English-language studies published in the 1950s and 1960s suffered from their
own lack of access to declassified documents and the vociferous tide of anti-
communist sentiments that swept across the country. As a result, early works
exhibited an almost formulaic depiction of the Korean War as a United Nations
“police action” against an unprovoked 25 June 1950 North Korean invasion
designed by the Soviet Union. This toed the Truman administration’s
containment policy line, originally suggested by George F. Kennan in his “Long
Telegram” (1947), arguing intervention as a necessary action for collective
security against communist aggression, a view presented before the American
public and the world.1 Meanwhile, Soviet and North Korean officials cast the
United States and South Korea as solely responsible for instigating hostilities with
the aim to ignite a civil war, invoking a defensive response from their side. Thus,
as historian Steven Hugh Lee writes, “The issue [regarding the origins of the
Korean War] was drawn into the vortex of superpower attempts to justify their
respective positions in their international rivalry” (Lee 2001: 6). It was regarded as
a proxy war between international superpowers.
I.F. Stone’s original 1952 publication, The Hidden History of the Korean War,
was the earliest monograph to gather available documents and reports to swim
against this current in its consideration of internal/domestic factors in the origins
of the war and its critique of the US government’s handling of the United
Nations. It was, of course, met with disdain and was pushed into the shadows
until the release of declassified government documents in the 1970s gave
credence to some of his findings. In the meantime, orthodox works like those by
David Rees (Korea: The Limited War [1964]) remained authoritative sources.
However, as information became more available, scholars began to explore other
dimensions of the war. The release of The Foreign Relations of the United States
1950 in 1976 enabled William Stueck, for example, to explore shifts in American
policies towards China as a result of the war in his own 1981 book The Road to
Confrontation. James Matray’s The Reluctant Crusade (1985) examined US State
Department records to trace shifts in American foreign policy from restraint to
global intervention in Korea, while also acknowledging that the origins of the
conflict perhaps bore deeper than 1950.
Growing disillusionment in the mid-to late 1960s with the Vietnam War, along
with mounting unease with the relationship between US academia and the
government that had developed out of state-funded “area” and “national
character studies” during World War II, led to the emergence of a new crop of
Western scholars willing to critically explore US policies in East Asia.2 This
signified an important shift in Korean War historiography. Rather than 25 June
1950 marking the beginning of the Korean War, scholars—many of whom had
developed sympathies towards their countries of study from their experiences as
Fulbright Scholars and Peace Corps volunteers, something Vincente Rafael refers
to as “sentimental imperialism”— began to more closely study the colonial and
post-liberation history of Korea to reveal more multidimensional factors (Rafael
1999: 1214). Their work exhibited a break from orthodox scholarship in the
United States that framed Korean history in terms of a linear development that
justified US intervention in the language of assistance. Furthermore, exploration
of military documents began to shed light on some of the more brutal tactics used
by the US military against North Korean targets, as explored by English
diplomatic and military historian Callum MacDonald in his Korea: The War
Before Vietnam (1986). Australian historian Gavan McCormack’s Cold War, Hot
War (1983) also raised questions regarding whether the US Air Force (USAF)
might have used biological weapons against the North Koreans, in addition to
positing that the South had instigated the war.
Drawing extensively from newly declassified documents released during the
1970s, Bruce Cumings’ two-volume work (1981, 1990), as noted by many scholars
of Korean studies (e.g. Lee 2001, Yuh 2010), boldly critiqued the pervading Cold
War narrative of the origins of the Korean War, arguing instead that the US
military occupation and foreign policy had in fact obfuscated a domestic
revolution that had roots long before liberation and might have been in the
Korean people’s best interests. Cumings’ publications challenged, and continue to
chafe against, orthodox and conservative viewpoints that still contend that North
Korea’s invasion of the South was a product of Soviet and Chinese machinations
or that the war was largely an inter national conflict. At the same time, his work
profoundly resonated with many Korean and American researchers by
inaugurating critical scholarship into Korean studies while still mildly supporting
“internal development” positions through his recognition of Korea’s inherent
dynamism through the rise of peasant resistance and nationalism during the
precolonial period (Shin 2003: 168). Cumings’ critique of American military
occupation, in particular, was powerful among Korean students suffering under
the rule of the US-supported Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan dictatorships,
whereby the oppressive National Security Laws gave the regimes carte blanche to
indefinitely detain and torture students for expressing leftist sympathy or
criticism against the ROK government or the United States.
Although arguments over the domestic versus international origins of the war
have dominated debates within Korean War scholarship, the increased
availability, albeit still limited, of Chinese and Russian documents beginning in
the 1990s has provided researchers with new opportunities to better assess the
complexities of the war. Evidence from US, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and
Russian materials, most comprehensively brought together by Wada Haruki’s
recently translated The Korean War: An International History (2013), which
examines in great detail the war as a regional conflict, demonstrates that the
decision to invade South Korea on that fateful June day was indeed a result of
close coordination between North Korea and the Soviet Union. However, unlike
the one-dimensional Cold War assessments of Soviet domination over decisions
to launch an offensive across the 38th parallel, top-secret correspondences
between North Korean and Soviet officials reveal that North Korean leaders were
in fact active campaigners for invasion over a more reluctant Stalin. This level of
agency paralleled what we have long known about South Korea’s President
Syngman Rhee’s own aggressive campaign to launch a military campaign to
reunite the peninsula.
The final act was also achieved in close coordination with the Chinese,
demonstrating a growing Sino-North Korean partnership. This complements
Chen Jian’s findings in his China’s Road to the Korean War (1994), which
examines China’s post-revolutionary internal political development and its
impact on the decision to enter the war as a vanguard against Western
imperialism in Asia. In balance with the colonial, post-liberation, and domestic
circumstances of both Koreas, alongside the emerging Cold War climate of
contending superpowers, including China’s ascendance, we can now better
appreciate the multidimensional, or what Lee regards as the “symbiotic,”
relationship between civil and international factors that not only led to the
Korean War, but also impacted how it was carried out (Lee 2001: 7).

Colonial origins
While responsibility for Korea’s geographic division could be placed at the feet of
American military planners in 1945, its political division could be attributed to its
colonial experience. As American and European imperial powers focused much
of their attention on opening China to global trade during the mid-nineteenth
century, Korea remained relatively marginal until Japan’s own imperial
aspirations turned towards the tiny peninsular country. This began with the 1876
Kanghwa Treaty, which led to other unequal treaties with the United States,
France, etc. Despite resistance from Confucian conservatives, some yangban
(literati) and government officials in Korea’s Chosŏn Dynasty (1492–1910) began
to seek political, ideological, and material solutions to meet the onslaught of
Japanese and Western colonial ambitions. Out of various self-strengthening
approaches emerged early forms of modern Korean nationalism (Eckert et al.
1990: 201–214). Alas, in spite of such efforts, Korea became Japan’s colony in
1910.
Over nearly four decades of colonial rule, underground and exiled nationalist
groups fervently sought independence through various means. Kim Il-sung and
Syngman Rhee shared a common history as fighters for Korean independence
with deep and long-lasting contempt for Korea’s colonial subjugation. Their
experiences and divergent ideologies during this formative period greatly
impacted their respective leadership approaches of a later divided Korea.
Rhee, a descendant of a modest family of aristocratic lineage, was educated in
both the traditional Confucian system and, later, at an American Christian
school. He developed into a conservative political activist who joined the reform
movement of the Independence Club in the mid-1890s that sought to adopt
Western approaches to modernize the Chosŏn state. After falling out of favor
with the king, he spent several years in prison before leaving for Hawaii and the
US mainland, where he received his doctorate from Princeton University. There,
he began to aggressively campaign for a Korean-American partnership by
appealing to US officials and the American public for Korean independence
(Oliver 1954: 1–114).
At the close of World War I, the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and
Japan convened in Paris as the principal powers in charge of formulating a plan
for peace. In his “Fourteen Points” speech at the Paris Peace Conference in
January 1919, President Woodrow Wilson insisted upon the fundamental
importance of preserving and defending liberty through a union of nations. His
fourteenth point spoke to the principle of “self-determination” in his appeal for
“mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity,” even for
“small states,” emboldening Koreans like Rhee.3
In Korea, on 1 March 1919, over one million Koreans participated in a
nonviolent, popular protest called the “March 1st Movement,” or Samil Undong,
that lasted for several weeks against Japanese colonial occupation. They were met
with brutal repression. Despite American missionary pleas for international
sympathy for the tens of thousands of civilian victims, no Western nations
stepped forward to intervene (Eckert et al. 1990: 276–279). As one of many exiled
nationalists responding to this crisis, Rhee helped form the Korean Provisional
Government (KPG) in Shanghai for which he temporarily served as President. In
September, the New York Times published an article citing his proclamation for
Korea’s independence from Japan titled “‘President’ Rhee Renounces Japanese
Sovereignty and Asks for Recognition.” In it, he stated, “We accept and agree to
the American principles of democracy and self-government enunciated by
President Wilson during the Great War, the principles of a liberated mankind, of
equal justice for all nations alike, be they weak or strong, and of the derivation of
their just powers by governments from the consent of the governed.”4 However,
despite such declarations that were rooted in the language of Wilson’s own
speeches, those principal powers in Paris did little to respond to Korea’s pleas.
After relinquishing the KPG presidency to Kim Ku, an advocate for organized
violence against the empire, Rhee focused on his diplomatic efforts and became
widely recognized in Korea as a Christian, anti-communist, conservative
defender for Korean independence despite continued ambivalence, indifference,
or, in some cases, irritation amongst American officials (Oliver 1954: 142–144).
For other Korean independence fighters, continued rebuffs by Western nations
convinced them of the weakness of diplomatic approaches. The 1917 Russian
Revolution inspired many to look to guerrilla warfare and Marxist revolution as
an alternative. While communist movements within Korea experienced brutal
suppression by the colonial police, others were able to gain footholds in Siberia,
China, and elsewhere, reflecting a scattered Korean diaspora during the colonial
period. Many of these exiled nationalists served in the Soviet Army and the
Chinese Communist Party during the 1920s through the 1950s. Among these
participants, Kim Il-sung ascended as a junior revolutionary who joined the
Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army and led raids against Japanese officials and
Korean collaborators in Manchuria. He later served with the Soviet Army and
returned to Pyongyang (P’yŏngyang) after the US bombing of Hiroshima on 6
August 1945 (Lee 2001: 14–16).
It was the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into the
maelstrom of World War II and squarely into Japan’s colonial territory and into
Korea. And, it was during this subsequent decade that Korea’s geographic
division took root. It began in November 1943 when President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and Prime Minister Winston
Churchill met in Cairo to outline their plan to defeat Japan. In their December
radio release, the Allied leaders expressed their sympathies for the “enslavement
of the people of Korea,” but asserted that self-rule would come “in due course.”5
This reflected Roosevelt’s gradualist vision of a new liberal world order of
reconfigured economic and political relationships that would replace the old
colonial economy and, ultimately, achieve American hegemony. In his private
letters, Roosevelt reflected on the future of former colonies like Korea, French
Indochina, British India, and the Dutch East Indies: “there are many minor
children among the peoples of the world who need trustees, [especially] the
brown people of the East” (as cited in Hunt 1987: 162). Only under a paternalistic
policy of trusteeship could these “many minor children” achieve a level of
preparedness for self-rule.
After Roosevelt’s death on 12 April 1945, American officials continued to
pursue modified versions of his trusteeship idea. A few days before the Enola Gay
was to drop “Little Boy” on Japan, Colonels Dean Rusk and Charles H. Bonesteel
selected the 38th parallel to demarcate Soviet and American zones in Korea. In
US policy formulations, Korea would factor as a key component to containing
communism and reviving Japan’s industrial economy. Shortly thereafter, Korean
leaders began to prepare for self-government. People’s committees also sprang up
in rural areas with aims to dismantle the colonial apparatus, including rounding
up individuals who served in the colonial police and landowners who preyed on
vulnerable Koreans and profited from collaboration with the Japanese.
Predictably, American officials disapproved of such efforts, viewing them as
radical leftist extensions of Soviet influence (Cumings 1997: 185–187). Ignorant to
key historical factors, like the centuries-long impact of class divisions between
landed, educated elites and a large peasant population that regarded wealthy
landowners as having continually benefited from the colonial period and with the
Americans (e.g. brothers Kim Sŏng-su and Kim Yŏn-su, Song Chin-u, etc., who
established the Korean Democratic Party [Eckert 1991: 30–32]), American
officials failed to recognize that “the political fault line was not right versus left,
but patriot versus collaborator” (Cumings 1997: 198).
As American and Korean conservative leadership worked together to suppress
local efforts to purge colonial vestiges, eruptions of violence began to mount
throughout the peninsula. This rending apart of the country, between left and
right factions, peasants and proprietors, resistant fighters and collaborators
(though the lines were not always so clear or divisive), is powerfully portrayed in
Im Kwon-t’aek’s dramatic film entitled Taebaek Sanmaek (Taebaek Mountains)
(1994). By 1948, partisan and guerrilla fighters in southeast Kyŏngsang and the
agriculturally rich, and traditionally rebellious, southwest Chŏlla provinces
turned their vitriol against the repressive Korean National Police (KNP) and the
Republic of Korea Army (ROKA), a majority of which was made up of Koreans
who had served the colonial machinery. The two most infamous events were the
bloody 1948 Yŏsu and Cheju Rebellions (Cumings 1997: 217–224). In that same
year, the Republic of Korea was proclaimed on 15 August with Syngman Rhee as
president.
Meanwhile, Koreans in the north had a different trusteeship experience (we
know this from North Korean documents captured by US military forces during
the Korean War).6 After liberation, People’s Committees appeared throughout
northern Korea with the approval of the Soviets. During the trusteeship period,
Soviets worked rather loosely with communists and nationalists, as compared to
American-directed efforts to build a centralized administration in South Korea.
Out of an emerging coalition of leaders, Kim Il-sung began to maneuver into a
position of leadership, surpassing communists who had cut their teeth surviving
in Korea during the colonial period and those who had worked with the Soviets
or Chinese abroad. By February 1946, a central administration was in the works
and land reform measures began, which included purging state institutions of
“reactionary” Koreans and those who served the colonial apparatus (Cumings
1981: 414).
By late summer, the North Korean Workers’ Party (NKWP) overshadowed
other political groups, and economic planning began along the lines of the Soviet
model. At this juncture, Kim and his allies successfully removed a majority of
political threats, including Christians and nationalists, through social, economic,
and political alienation and exclusion. Meanwhile, they encouraged people with
peasant backgrounds to join the NKWP. Self-criticism sessions were routinized
and surveillance was in full force. By the end of 1946, the press was under tight
control and all non-leftist opposition was eliminated (Cumings 1997: 226–235).
On 9 September 1948, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was
formed and Kim Il-sung was named its premier.
Storm rising

Although the early Sunday morning of 25 June 1950 has been seared in American
memories as the start date of the conflict in Korea, it was rather a coalescence of
rising tensions and skirmishes between two competing factions that had been
taking place for some time along the 38th parallel. By the summer of 1949, both
North and South Korean leaders saw war as the only means to unification. In
May, fights along the border began to escalate between North and South Korean
forces. As early as June, heavy fighting on the Ongjin Peninsula alerted American
intelligence officials of the possibility that a civil war could break out at any
moment and by either side. While both sides were guilty of igniting violent
confrontations, both were also hoping that the other would be the first to commit
a full breach so as to force their respective reluctant large-power holders to come
to their aid.
The compulsion to reunite a country that had never been divided in its
thousands-year history, nor ever should have been, was considerably strong on
both sides. But, neither was in a position to launch a war. For Rhee, despite his
persistent efforts to convince his American advisors of the imperative to invade
the North and unite the country under the ROK flag, he failed to rally the
necessary support and approval as the US government began to draw down its
troop presence. Ambassador John J. Muccio, explicitly warned President Rhee
that the United States would not provide any military support should the South
engage in provocative actions, even threatening to withdraw economic aid (at the
time, around $100 million per year) (Lowe 1997: 71).
Kim Il-sung faced his own difficulties obtaining guarantees of Soviet support
(Weathersby 1993: 28). The summer of 1949 was also too early; tens of thousands
of his troops were still in Manchuria assisting Mao’s People’s Liberation Army
against Chiang’s Kuomintang (KMT) troops since 1947. This move would prove
to be a savvy one. By lending his support, Kim not only secured an “I-O-U” from
Mao that would come into play in the next couple of years, he also gained battle-
seasoned troops. After a period of relative quiet brought on by Korea’s harsh
winter, war came, and with Stalin’s tacit approval, it came at the hands of Kim Il-
sung in June 1950 (Cumings 1997: 239). While evidence shows that Stalin’s
reluctant approval for Kim to invade was accompanied by equally ambivalent
material support, for which payment was expected, Mao was making
preparations to make good on his promise to return Kim’s favor with troops
(Wada 2014: 20).
Fighting erupted on the Ongjin Peninsula; both sides claimed one provoked the
other in the early morning hours of 25 June 1950. By 5 a.m., it had moved
eastward across the 38th parallel. The North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) dealt
a heavy and concerted blow against the Republic of Korea Army and advanced,
for the first time, towards Seoul, the South’s capital city (Lee 2001: 44). The
NKPA, consisting of many veterans of anti-colonial struggles against the
Japanese and volunteers who backed the communists against the KMT in China,
met comparatively little resistance against the greener ROK forces.
US Secretary of State Dean Acheson heard about the fighting while at his
Maryland country house on Saturday; President Truman was at home in
Missouri. Acheson and Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk decided to bring
the Korea question before the United Nations, a more amenable body than the US
Congress. They also planned to argue for increased military aid to the Republic of
Korea, American air support for evacuation, and orders to move the Seventh Fleet
into the Taiwan Straits to stave off any possible acts of aggression between the
communist Chinese and the nationalist government that had fled to Taiwan.
Truman declared US actions in Korea a “police action,” thereby avoiding a formal
declaration of war that would require legislation by Congress (Edwards 1998: 3).
The United Nations passed “Resolution 84” on 27 June recommending that “the
members of the United Nations furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea
as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace
and security to the area.”7 In the absence of the Soviet Union’s representative
Jacob Malik at the Security Council, in protest of the UN’s refusal to admit China
as a member, the UN approved military action in Korea. By the night of 28 June,
Seoul had fallen and South Korean forces were in disarray, an event witnessed by
famous political cartoonist Kim Song-hwan, or “Gobau,” during his adolescence
and recorded in vivid pen and watercolors (Salmon 2009: 1–13). Many Korean
refugees fled ahead of the NKPA’s march into Seoul, while others welcomed their
arrival. After a week in Seoul, likely waiting for supplies from the rear, the NKPA
continued its southward move and rooted out “reactionaries” on the way. Local
guerrilla forces, which had led campaigns against the KNP and US military before
being shut down in years prior, emerged out of hiding to help reorganize the
countryside. Focused on the redistribution of rice stocks and land, the return of
people’s committees speaks strongly to the anti-feudal and anti-colonial roots of
this conflict (Cumings 1990: 666–690).
Interestingly, even surrender leaflets aimed at enemy forces produced by both
the North Koreans and the Americans speak to the multifaceted nature of the
conflict. For North Korean-produced leaflets, South Korea is depicted as returning
to colonial dependency as a puppet of Japan and the United States; for American-
produced leaflets, North Korea is drawn as a political stooge of China and the
Soviet Union (Chae 2010: 34). Chŏng Yong-uk, Professor of Korean History at
Seoul National University, argues North Korea’s depiction of a subordinate South
Korea speaks more to the question of legitimacy and which of the two
governments rightfully represented the new, postcolonial Korean nation: the anti-
colonial struggle being a constitutive force in the establishment of the North
Korean state (2004: 217–226). For example, one NK leaflet caption reads: “The
American invaders and the weak Rhee Syngman are dragging the Korean
people’s Japanese enemies back to our homeland and are rushing to make our
people into American slaves. If the spilled ancestral blood in the war against them
is precious, then rise up against the American invaders and the Rhee Syngman
traitorous gang” (as cited in Chae 2010: 69). For the American-produced leaflets,
however, Chŏng identifies how the US government insisted on the ideological
and global dimensions of the war, with North Korean soldiers serving as fodder
for Soviet and Chinese aims. Even the divergent leaflet themes underscore the
dualism of the Korean conflict as one that was both domestic and international.
As the People’s Army continued to press against ROK and UN troops,
American intelligence personnel discovered more than met the eye with regards
to the makeup of enemy forces. Early reports found that enemy soldiers were
slipping through the front lines as civilians to gain a forward position behind
ROK and US troops. The Counter Intelligence Corps reported seeing “[h]undreds
of North Korean soldiers […] wearing civilian clothing and mingling with
refugees.”8 Although the NKPA recruited willing South Koreans into their units
as they swept south, losses incurred by contact with US and ROK forces also
resulted in forcible conscription of civilians. According to a Seoul Sinmun report,
the NKPA “increased indiscriminate forced recruiting of all youth” to fill their
dwindling armies.9 As a result of the military’s inability to distinguish enemy
troops from civilians, men, women, and children alike were swept into POW
camps. Growing fear of disguised North Korean combat troops also led to horrific
policy decisions for indiscriminate strafing of populations by air, leaving
thousands of innocents dead. One particularly dreadful case took place at No Gun
Ri, as accounted in Charles Hanley et al.’s The Bridge at No Gun Ri (2001).
By the end of July, the North Koreans had pushed the ROK and UN forces to
the southeast corner of the peninsula forming the Pusan Perimeter (delineated by
P’ohang to the north, Chinju-Masan to the south, and Taegu in the center). In late
August, the fighting along the Nakdong River reached its climax as the NKPA
tried to break through the Pusan Perimeter to finish the war. However, by
September, the NKPA felt the strains of weak supply lines, dwindling forces, and
growing American and ROK resistance and was unable to penetrate further.

Turning tides
It was not until General Douglas MacArthur’s famed Inchon (Inch’ŏn) landing on
15 September 1950 that the tides turned, so to speak.10 It was a massive
amphibious counterattack against North Korean forces that brought with it a
large number of captured enemy soldiers. In just one month, prisoner-of-war
counts increased from several dozen to over 100,000 (Chae 2010: 2–3). They
quickly gained control of Inchon and cut North Korean supply lines. Meanwhile
the U.S. Eighth Army and ROK forces broke out of the Pusan Perimeter and
chased the retreating enemy north. On 27 September, after Washington had
consulted with its allies regarding war aims, MacArthur, commander of the UN
forces, received permission to pursue the enemy into North Korea as long as he
did not cross into Manchuria and there were no signs that the Chinese and
Soviets would intervene. After retaking Seoul and handing it back to Rhee on 29
September, ROK forces crossed the 38th parallel on 1 October and pursued the US
military’s new strategy of “rollback,” forgoing the original goals of containment
toward a UN-sponsored goal of unification (Lee 2001: 47–50).
By early to mid-October, ROK troops penetrated twenty-five miles north of the
parallel. They reported no resistance and believed that they had the People’s
Army on the run. What American commanders did not realize was that the
NKPA’s withdrawal was also a strategic one; they hid in tunnels, mountains, and
within villages above the 38th parallel as UN and ROK troops thinned out across
the territory in their march north, becoming increasingly vulnerable to attacks
from the rear. This was a conventional and guerrilla war, reflecting Kim Il-sung’s
“hit and run” training developed against the Japanese during the colonial period
(Cumings 1990: 729–733).
As ROK and US troops charged north, rightist groups and the KNP began their
work in villages in the rear. Focused on the political reorganization of northern
villages, they systematically rooted out communists and collaborators, and they
punished family members associated with “red sympathizers.” Reports of mass
executions by the South were rampant, underscoring the brutality of a war that
was civil and international in nature (Cumings 1997: 281–282).
Early American intelligence reports showed no firm indication that the
Chinese would intervene, with MacArthur giving Truman his assurances during
their 15 October Wake Island meeting (Foot 1985: 78–80). However, recent
evidence shows that Mao, owing much to Kim’s assistance during the Chinese
civil war, had already made preparations to send “volunteers” (called Chinese
Communist Forces [CCF] by the Americans or Chinese People’s Volunteers
[CPV] by the Chinese) to assist North Korea should their campaign falter (Lowe
1997: 219). On 3 October, the Chinese premier warned the United States that if
they crossed the 38th parallel, Chinese forces would be compelled to enter the
war. When MacArthur pressed his troops across the parallel, Mao informed Stalin
that he would begin preparations for intervention by providing, in total, 200,000
troops (Lee 2001: 51). The Soviet Union prepared to provide limited cover in
aircrafts disguised with Chinese markers along the south Manchurian border.
On 26 October, the Korean Military Advisory Group, a US military unit
charged with the logistical support of ROK troops, reported that Sino-North
Korean troops were counterattacking UN units along the frontlines at Unsan, just
below the Yalu River (Wada 2014: 144). This marked China’s first intervention.
By this time, UN forces were pinned down and fell into disarray as Chinese and
North Korean troops began to attack from the front and the rear. On 14
November, MacArthur launched a general offensive to trap NKPA forces and, for
a few days, appeared to have succeeded until the enemy began to retaliate on 25
November and China launched the second phase with its 200–300,000
“volunteers.” North Korean guerrillas also began enveloping UN troops from
behind in coordination with the North Koreans People’s Army, trapping them at
the Chosin Reservoir. On 6 December, communist forces regained Pyongyang
and by the end of the month, Seoul was at risk of falling, again (Lowe 1997: 235).
Although the Chinese intervention was not the first time American military
planners considered using the atomic bombs during the Korean conflict
(MacArthur first suggested it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July 1950), it did bring
them close to resolute action. Reintroducing the idea, MacArthur wanted to
create a cordon sanitaire along the border between Manchuria and North Korea
by dropping 30 to 50 bombs. Truman also began to hint at the potential use of
atomic bombs in order to avoid the possibility of a third World War. In the end,
with no indication of further Soviet involvement or advancement by Chinese
troops beyond the parallel, Truman set aside his plans (Cumings 1997: 288–292).11
General Matthew B. Ridgway, who assumed command of the Eighth Army in
December 1950, launched an aggressive campaign called “Operation
Thunderbolt,” which involved heavy bombing campaigns against the Chinese
and North Koreans. After fighting back China’s third intervention, he retook
Seoul and established the “Kansas Line.” This brought the fighting back to the
area just north of the 38th parallel. After MacArthur was dismissed on 11 April
1951 due to continued insubordination, Ridgway took over command of UN
forces and stabilized fighting. Recognizing a possible ceasefire opportunity,
George Kennan and Jacob Malik met at the end of May and agreed to begin
discussions on how to end the conflict (Edwards 1998: 6).

Stalemate and politics of choice

The armistice negotiations originally commenced in Kaesong on 10 July 1951,

much to the chagrin of both Kim and Rhee, who wanted to continue their
respective campaigns to unite the country by force. However, the talks halted
when the communist side charged the UN Command with violating the neutral
zone. In October, the talks were moved to Panmunjom (P’anmunjŏm) with a new
demarcation line. After settling a majority of the agenda items within the first
few months, the final question of prisoner of war repatriation, originally thought
to be straightforward, posed the greatest obstacle. After sixteen months of
negotiations, when the US side first put forward its contentious proposal of
“voluntary repatriation” in January 1952, representatives finally resolved the
matter on 8 June 1953 and signed the ceasefire agreement on 27 July 1953 (Foot
1990: xiii–xv).
In original discussions regarding the treatment of POWs during the 1949
Geneva Convention, the US delegation disregarded exceptions to the “automatic
repatriation” rule when the Austrian delegation first introduced possible
conditions for it. As the Under Secretary of State at the time, Dean Acheson
recalled Soviet concerns about whether “a prisoner of war might not be able to
express himself with complete freedom when he was in captivity” (as cited in
Foot 1990: 88). As a result, the final language in Article 118 dictated that the
repatriation of all captured soldiers take place “without delay after the cessation
of active hostilities.”12 However, the realization that approximately 40,000
captured POWs were South Koreans impressed into the North Korean Army
raised immediate doubts for the United States as to whether it was prudent to
proceed with automatic repatriation of all POWs under UN custody (Foot 1990:
103).
In the most basic sense, this problem points to the overarching reality of the
Korean War that is often pushed out of our minds when studying it from the
perspective of how US foreign policies emerged during the beginning of the Cold
War—that it was also a civil war. In a nation divided as part of post-World War II
reordering, many Koreans confronted, for the first time, the harrowing and
defining question of whether their futures lay in the North or the South. In this
uncertainty, many were caught on the wrong side of that artificial latitudinal line
and found themselves in the hands of the US military as captured enemy soldiers.
American officials, reminded of the horrors that millions of Soviet soldiers faced
when they were automatically repatriated at the close of World War II and
working under the assumption that North Korea and China were communist
puppet regimes under the stranglehold of the Soviet Union, began to regard
automatic repatriation as a probable death sentence for many of the prisoners in
its custody. In addition, as psychological warfare emerged as another means to
subvert the legitimacy of communists, the prospect of using voluntary
repatriation in the propaganda war seemed convincingly more promising. On 2
January 1952, the United States presented the position of “voluntary repatriation”
to the negotiators at Panmunjom (Chae 2010: 241).
According to Rosemary Foot’s account of the armistice negotiations in A
Substitute for Victory (1990), an important diplomatic history of American
strategies that had to balance political and military objectives at the negotiating
table, the army’s chief of psychological warfare General Robert McClure
advocated voluntary repatriation as an ideological opportunity to position the
United States in a humanitarian posture vis-à-vis the communists (Foot 1990: 87).
Gradually convinced of the ideological benefits, Dean Acheson contended that a
forced return of prisoners “would be repugnant in our most fundamental moral
and humanitarian principles of the importance of the individual, and would
seriously jeopardize the psychological warfare position of the United States in its
opposition to Communist tyranny” (as cited in Foot 1990: 91). It was a new
moment of how the rights of foreign prisoners of war were to be negotiated
during wartime, at a time when the principles of human rights were just
beginning to gain currency in a postcolonial world. The communists immediately
rejected this idea as a clear violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention. The
American side argued that its humanitarian concerns for the welfare of the
individual remained in line with the spirit of the Convention. Though neither
side was an official signer, both sides insisted that they were compelled by its
intentions.
Meanwhile, inside the UN-run POW camps, emerging power struggles, basic in
their initial nature, succumbed to more ideologically driven parties, particularly
after NKPA agents and southern Anti-Communist Youth League members
infiltrated the camps (Chae 2010: 131).13 Reports of violent clashes between
groups of supposedly “pro-” and “anti-” communist factions (although most
prisoners were less ideologically driven than motivated by diverse personal
circumstances that reflected the chaos of a nation abruptly split in two), as well
as between prisoners and ROK and US Army guards, grew. Coupled with the
intensifying political contest at Panmunjom (P’anmunjŏm) and rising prisoner
protests regarding voluntary repatriation policies enacted in the camps, the dam
burst when communist prisoners captured the camp commander, Brigadier
General Francis T. Dodd. In response, combat units armed with tanks,
flamethrowers, machine guns, concussion grenades, and tear gas faced rock-
throwing, Molotov cocktail-hurling, barbed-wire-swinging prisoners. During the
seven-month crackdown, 577 prisoners of war were killed (Chae 2010: 261).
In the 16 December 1952 issue of the New York Times, the communists, again,
submitted to the world stage their protests against voluntary repatriation as
attempting to manipulate prisoners into refusing repatriation. In the article,
Chinese representatives argued against the American insistence for voluntary
repatriation “because it recognizes the ‘desire’ of the prisoners of war to ‘refuse
repatriation,’ a ‘desire’ created by the United States side.” Through education and
screening programs designed to orient prisoners towards the benefits of one
political system (liberal democratic societies) over another (socialist and
communist societies), in conjunction with growing violence in the camps, the
notion of a “free choice” was a fallacy.14
The communists were not without contradiction or malefaction in their own
treatment of UN and ROK prisoners of war. Just as many North Korean captives
were tortured or executed by ROK soldiers upon capture, South Korean prisoners
were also vulnerable to vengeful forms of cruelty by their enemy counterparts.
Many UN prisoners were found dead, some executed with hands bound, others
due to starvation or illness, along treacherous “death marches” to POW camps
beyond the frontlines. Both sides were guilty of atrocities. For those UN soldiers
that made it alive to the permanent camps established along the Yalu River, they
gradually met improved conditions as the Chinese communists took
responsibility for their care (see Carlson 2002).
The Chinese and North Koreans jointly handled approximately 13,000
prisoners, a substantially lower number compared to the 160,000 prisoners (at its
highest) managed by the Americans. Drawing from their experience during the
Cultural Revolution, the Chinese embarked on programs to educate UN captives
in communist ideology. Contrary to sensationalist depictions of UN prisoners
being “brainwashed” and reprogrammed through Pavlovian conditioning, as
dramatized in John Frankenheimer’s iconic film “The Manchurian Candidate”
(1962), communist educators utilized films, literature, lectures, discussions, and
criticism sessions to persuade prisoners of the benefits of communism.15 Those
who participated in the programs did so for various reasons, namely due to: 1)
genuine interest in communism; 2) boredom; or 3) they wanted to better their
situation in the camps. Black soldiers, who had been integrated into the US Army
for the first time, reflecting important shifts in US domestic race relations, were
especially targeted by communist educators to reflect upon the inequities
perpetrated by capitalist societies, as depicted in Hubert Bailey’s autobiography
Black Boy, What Are You Fighting For? (1966). Interestingly, the infamous
twenty-one American POWs who refused to return to the United States, which
included three African-Americans, ignited a national crisis regarding the duties
of American servicemen captured by enemy forces (see Pasley 1955), as well as
cultural debates regarding diminished American masculinity (see Carruthers
2009). This led to the formation of the 1955 U.S. Military Code of Conduct,
famously tested during the Vietnam War by captured Navy pilots like Everett
Alvarez, Jr. and John McCain.

Conclusion
As a so-called “limited war,” both sides violently engaged one another along the
front lines without any clear strategies for victory; meanwhile, the political
battles continued at Panmunjom and on the world stage. During the nearly two
years of negotiations and stalemate over the issue of voluntary repatriation, tens
of thousands of soldiers were killed on the front lines, and civilian causalities
numbered in the millions. It was during these months that the US military
launched its most protracted aerial campaigns from bases in Japan and Okinawa,
smothering the North with napalm. In spring 1953, the USAF destroyed dams and
reservoirs that would not only devastate newly planted rice paddies, but would
starve out the northern population in the coming months. In the end, the combat
death toll reached approximately 33,000 Americans; 115,000 Chinese; 215,000
North Koreans; 58,000 South Koreans; and one to two million civilians. With
Dwight D. Eisenhower as the newly elected American president and the death of
Stalin in March 1953, new UN forces Commander General Mark W. Clark signed
the armistice agreement on 27 July 1953. But, the ceasefire was not a peace treaty.
While general fighting has been suspended, one visit to the Demilitarized Zone
(DMZ) or a review of today’s world headlines renders palpable the still-volatile
tensions between the Koreas and the parties that fought on either side. Of such a
suspension to the Korean War, historian Bruce Cumings sadly reminds us that
“the terrible tragedy was that the war solved nothing: only the status quo ante
was restored, only an armistice held the peace” (Cumings 1997: 298).

Notes
1 Kennan, G.F. (1947) ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’ Foreign Affairs 25, No. 4: 566–582.

2 See, Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars.

3 Wilson, W. ‘Fourteen Points’, presented at Paris Peace Conference, Paris, January 1919.

4 ‘“President” Rhee Renounces Japanese Sovereignty and Asks for Recognition; Plans Government Based on
Principles Expressed by Wilson, Lincoln, and Washington’, New York Times 1 September 1919: p. 2.

5 ‘Cairo Communique,’ from the United States Department of State/Foreign Relations of the United States
diplomatic papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943.

6 For an in-depth view into “everyday life” accounts, see Kim 2013.

7 ‘UN Security Council Resolution 84’

8 ‘Monthly Report of Counter Intelligence Corps Activities, 1 October 1950 for Month Reported’.

9 ‘Doraol ŭiyonggun’ (‘Returning Righteous Army), Seoul Sinmun, National Library, South Korea 15
November 1950.

10 What made the landing possible was a small window of time during which the tides were high enough to
accommodate the battleships. During low tide, the water was known to drop as much as 32 feet,
revealing a mosaic of darkly carved, almost alien-looking muddy flats that can be seen today from
bridges heading towards Seoul in one direction, and Inchon International Airport in the other.

11 Although there was no concrete plan to launch atomic weapons against the Chinese or North Koreans,
the US Air Force ran bombing simulations in September and October 1951 under Operation Hudson
Harbor, sending bombers into the north to drop empty atomic casings (Cumings 1997).

12 United Nations, Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1949, II. Art. 118.
13 Only a small percentage of prisoners actually grappled with ideological issues. Most wondered about
their families, while others were drawn into certain groups due to generational, class, regional, and/or
religious affiliations.

14 ‘Chinese Communist and U.S. Statements on Korea,’ New York Times, 16 December 1952: p. 8.

15 During the August and September months of 1953, Edgar Schein, a psychologist at MIT and with the US
Army’s Operations Research Office, interviewed American repatriates processed at Inchon and on US
naval ship General Black. In his article entitled ‘The Chinese indoctrination program for prisoners of
war: a study of attempted “brainwashing”’ in Psychiatry (1956), he confirmed that there was nothing new
or menacing to the Chinese techniques. The so-called mental erasure of American soldiers was
accomplished through a typical collection of “group discussion, self-criticism, interrogation, rewards and
punishments, forced confessions, exposure to propaganda and information control” (as cited in Winn
2000: 7).

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Part IV
North Korea
14
North Korean state-making
Process and characteristics

Shin Jongdae

Introduction

Understanding North Korea’s present and future requires an awareness of the

country’s state-making process. The end of World War II, the division of the
Korean Peninsula, and the start of the Cold War created a sort of special “critical
juncture” where the state and its institutions were able to exist on a continuous
basis. The focus of historical institutionalism centers on the fact that an
institution has a certain degree of “path dependence” and can continue to exist if
that institution is decided by the choices of a special period under decisive
conditions. The institutional formation and characteristics of the central elements
of North Korea’s political system—the Party, military, and central government—
that were formed in the compressed period between 1945 and the establishment
of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948 have remained almost
unchanged up to this day. As a result, a clear understanding of the Kim Jong Un
regime requires grasping the origins and characteristics of North Korea’s state-
making process.1
Studies on North Korea’s state-making process have viewed it with a wide
range of perspectives. One perspective argues that the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) held considerable influence on North Korea’s state-making
process. (Scalapino and Lee, 1972) According to this view, the establishment of
the North Korean government was a series of political processes that occurred in
line with a pre-planned program by the USSR, while the political, economic,
social and cultural aspects of those areas under Soviet military influence were
transformed by Korea’s communist party, in line with Stalin’s wishes. This
analysis is based on the idea that the handling of important issues concerning
North Korea from August 1945 to a certain period required the permission of
Stalin and other high-ranking Soviet officials in Moscow. The Soviet military did
in fact establish a central government institution and police offices in each region
and worked hard to lead North Korea’s state construction by sometimes
intervening in the minute details of the statebuilding process.
Yet another perspective is that North Korea’s leaders themselves led the
formation of their power structure (Cumings, 1990). This perspective argues that
North Korea’s communists were not closely linked with the Soviet-led
international communist movement, but were rather more autonomous and
nationalistic in nature. Proponents of this argument say that not only did Kim Il
Sung and other North Korean leaders have experience fighting against the
Japanese, but the USSR also had to watch their own actions in North Korea in
consideration of their relationship with the US. As such, in contrast with the
Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, the North Korean government had a certain
degree of independence from the Soviets. Bruce Cumings, for example, argues
that North Korea developed its own autonomous political system in the late 1940s
under the influence of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, and
that its political system had internal characteristics as a “revolutionary nationalist
corporative.”
Cumings argues that North Korea’s state-making process was a “uniquely
North Korean phenomenon” and argues this likely was based on influence from
traditional Confucianism. However, Charles Armstrong recently went one step
further and argued that the origins of North Korea could be found in North
Korea’s geographical situation and recent historical legacy rather than simply due
to a revolution from the outside. In essence, Armstrong argues that the tradition
of Choson Dynasty-era Confucian ideology, which emphasizes ideological
awareness rather than physical conditions, influenced North Korea’s political
leadership and that the North Korean system was formed through a combination
of top-down communist planning and bottom-up geographical conditions
(Armstrong, 2003).
The question of how to measure Kim Il Sung and other anti-Japanese fighters’
influence during the state-making process, how to prescribe the military and
party relationship during the state-making process, and even deciding on a period
in time North Korea’s state-making process took place are all continuing
academic disputes. The most significant reason these disputes are continuing is
because North Korean documents are unavailable to scholars—despite the fact
North Korea has been in existence for some 70 years. While scholars are able to
view North Korean military documents captured during the Korean War, and
Soviet-era documents released after the end of the Cold War, the documents in
existence have not answered all the questions concerning the who, when, and
how of North Korea’s state-making process.
As a result, any study on North Korea’s state-making process must balance its
analysis on two broad areas of thought: the external factory theory (Soviet
influence) and the internal factory theory (autonomous revolution). If too much
focus is placed on the former perspective, there is no way to explain North
Korea’s unique characteristics or autonomy. Likewise, if too much emphasis is
placed on the latter, then the historical fact that the USSR had a decisive role in
the state-making process may be overlooked. North Korean documents—when
they are released—will likely reflect this complex understanding of the period.
Understanding the mutual relationship between the “internal” and “external”
factors inherent in the diplomatic policy decision process is required for a
complete understanding of the era.
As such, this paper aims to examine the characteristics of North Korea’s state-
making process with a focus on the establishment of the Korean Workers’ Party
(KWP), the North Korean People’s Committee (NKPC), and the Korean People’s
Army (KPA) from liberation in August 1945 to the proclamation of the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on 9 September 1948.

Establishment of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP)

As the Korean Peninsula found itself liberated after World War II, there were a
wide range of leftist forces with experience fighting the Japanese in the northern
part of the peninsula. This environment ensured that the early power structure of
the KWP was composed of a wide range of political forces. The KWP began as a
simple political association but gradually became a party centered on the
leadership of Kim Il Sung, until ultimately it became the cradle of a one-man
leadership system. There were, of course, several power conflicts during this
progression that were coupled with changes in the Party’s structure.
After liberation, communists in northern Korea moved to establish a political
party that would have a monopoly over power in the northern part of the
country. The real formation of the KWP started with the establishment of the
North Korean Branch Bureau of the KWP. From 5–8 October 1945, before the
holding of the Conference of Responsible Leaders and Enthusiasts of Five
Northwest Provinces of the Korean Communist Party, a preliminary meeting
between the two groups was held in secret in Pyongyang. During this meeting,
the establishment of an implementation department and central party leadership
institution was discussed and a decision to create the North Korean Branch
Bureau of the KWP was made. Following this, Kim Il Sung and some 70 other
well-known communists from northern Korea held a meeting on 13 October 1945,
in Pyongyang and decided to create a North Korean Branch Bureau of the KWP
independent of the pre-existing Central Party in Seoul. Then, in accordance with
the 13 October meeting’s decision, the North Korean Branch Bureau of the KWP
was established on 20 October. The First Secretary was Kim Yong-bŏm, who
represented the communist party in South Pyongan province, and the Second
Secretary was O Ki-sŏp. Another 17 Executive Committee members were also
elected.
This meeting allowed Kim Il Sung to analyze the political situation both at
home and abroad, make the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic a
fundamental political duty, and raise the question of holding a National Party
Representative Meeting to deal with the Party construction project. Kim then
proclaimed a new Party organization platform and political platform and
presented the “Four National Objectives.” These “Four National Objectives”
included the thorough formation of a democratic national unification platform to
establish a Democratic People’s Republic; the cleansing of remaining supporters
of Japanese colonialism, international anti-communist forces, and all other anti-
socialist forces; the establishment of a basis for the construction of an
independent democratic nation through the organization of a people’s committee
and democratic reforms; and the expansion of the Party (I.S. Kim, 1947: 26–27).
Of course, due to the existence of a Central Party in Seoul and the dynamic
relationship between communist forces, the North Korean Central Communist
Organization Committee was never established. Even at that time, Kim Il Sung
had not yet won complete hegemony over the North Korean communists.
Despite these restrictions, however, the Seoul Central Party’s General
Secretary Pak Hŏn-yŏng had no choice but to accept the establishment of the
North Korean Branch Bureau of the KWP ten days after it was established on 23
October 1945. This moved the leadership of the North Korean communist
movement from Seoul to Pyongyang.
The North Korean Branch Bureau (NKBB) of the KWP held a series of
Expanded Executive Committees (EEC) and increased its hegemony through the
reestablishment of its political platform and refining its organizational system.
During the 2nd EEC on 15 November 1945, Kim Il Sung argued that a discussion
must take place on establishing a National Unification Platform Committee and
Central Government Institution for the establishment of a Democratic People’s
Republic. Given that Kim Il Sung was calling for the establishment of such
institutions after a People’s Republic of Korea had already been proclaimed in
Seoul, this meant that the North Korean Branch Bureau had become independent
of the Central Party in Seoul. Following this, during the 3rd EEC from 17 to 18
December 1945, as the independent activities of the provincial and local parties
continued, the question of reorganizing the Party organization and placing it
under a central authority was discussed. This meeting adopted measures to make
farmers Party members, issue a one-party-pass system, and improve procedures
for entering the Party. Moreover, Kim Il Sung, who had become the NKBB
Secretary, strongly moved forward with centralizing the authority of the Party,
strengthening the central party’s control over local parties, and proposing new
policy platforms.
During the 4th EEC on 15 February 1946, Kim Il Sung called for the destruction
of factions, strengthening of organizational life, promotion of the North Korean
People’s Committee, and expansion of campaigns to support the committee.
These proposals soon led the North Korean Central Party to fall under Kim Il
Sung’s control. Ultimately, as Kim Il Sung strengthened and solidified his
singular position, the NKBB changed its name to the North Korean Communist
Party in April 1946 in order to heighten its status.
As Kim Il Sung’s NKKB progressed in its activities, political changes on the
Korean Peninsula accelerated the establishment of the KWP. After the suspension
of the First Joint US-USSR Commission in Korea on 8 May 1946, the North
Korean communists began mobilizing their forces to establish a national people’s
government under the foundation of “revolutionary democratic base theory.” In
short, this meant that the creation of the KWP would establish a strong,
independent communist movement in North Korea, and would lead to the use of
a wide range of neutral forces in both North and South Korea to expand
communist influence on political events in South Korea. Importantly, Kim Il Sung
aimed to increase his power both qualitatively and quantitatively through this
process.
The 7th EEC, held from 22–23 June 1946, decided to move forward with
merging political parties in order to “establish a strong democratic independent
nation” in northern Korea. On 26 June the North-South Communist Party High
Official Committee was held and called for the successful joining of the three
parties and the establishment of a “united front” of political parties.
Of those parties within the Choson Independence Alliance, the North Korean
Communist Party’s (NKCP) Friendship Party, which had changed its name to the
Korean New Democratic Party (KNDP), was a target for alliance. The KNDP was
led by Kim Tu-bong, Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik and others, and had been established to see
the creation of a Korean Democratic Republic. The reason the KNDP was a target
for a merger was to allow the KWP to expand its popular base of support to allow
the smooth advance of the national unification movement.
On 23 July 1946, the KNDP sent a letter to the NKCP proposing the merger,
and at the 8th EEC on 27 July 1946, the new political party was named the North
Korean Workers’ Party (NKWP). At the Expanded Joint Party Central Committee
on 29 July 1946, the “Two Party Merger Decision” and “Proclamation” were
adopted. With this as a basis, a ceremony to establish the NKWP was held on 28
August 1946 and was attended by representatives from each province. In a speech
during the ceremony, Kim Il Sung called for the Provisional People’s Committee
to gradually become a People’s Committee in order to construct a democratic
independent country, and called for the nationwide acceleration of the land
reform, labor laws, nationalization of important industry, and democratic reform
of the people’s education system. Moreover, the preliminary steps proposed by
the Expanded Joint Party Central Committee formed the basis of the adoption of
the five-article, 41-clause “Party Rules.” This committee also elected 43 Central
Party members including Kim Tu-bong, Kim Il Sung, and Chu Yong-ha.
Following this, the 1st Central Committee of the NKWP was held on 31 August
1946, and was presided over by Kim Il Sung. This committee formed the Political
Committee and elected Kim Tu-bong as chairman, Kim Il Sung and Chu Yong-ha
as vice chairmen, and Hŏ Ka-i and Ch’oe Ch’ang-Ik as committee members. It
also established the Standing Committee, which provided leadership and carried
out Party-related projects. The NKWP was a political party for people because it
stated in the first clause of its regulations that its duties were to “construct a
democratic independent Korean nation” and, in the second clause of its Party
Rules, that it was to “be the representative and supporter for the benefit of
Korean laborers, construct a strong democratic independent Korean nation that
can preserve the democratic freedom of the labor masses, and improve the
political, economic and cultural standards of the labor masses.” While the Party
held to some degree of Marxist-Leninism doctrine, Kim Il Sung in October 1945
said that the duty of the Party was to construct a “democratic people’s republic”
and construction of a communist nation was the ultimate goal. He further said
that the Party should gradually move forward with the required and appropriate
moves and doctrine.

Table 14.1 Dates of KWP meetings and main topics of discussion

Meeting
Meeting title Main topics of discussion
date

Korean Communist
1945.10.10–
Northern Regional Office Proposed the Four National Objectives
13
Establishment Rally
1st Expanded Executive
Committee (EEC) of the Discussed land, industry, education
1945.10.16
North Korean Branch and culture issues
Bureau (NKBB)
Bureau (NKBB)
Discussed the establishment of the
1945.11.15–
2nd EEC of the NKBB National Unification Association and
17
Central Government Institution
Discussed laborers, farmers becoming
1945.12.17– Party members, issuing a single-
3rd EEC of the NKBB
18 partypass, improvement of Party entry
rules
Discussed cleansing of factions,
4th EEC of the North strengthening of organizational life,
Korean Communist Party 1946.2.15 promoting the North Korean People’s
(NKCP) Committee, and starting promotional
movements
Discussed implementation of land
5th EEC of the NKCP 1946.3.4
reform, creation of police force
Discussed end of land reform and
6th EEC of the NKCP 1946.4.10
future objectives
1946.6.22–
7th EEC of the NKCP Implemented the Labor Law
23
8th EEC of the NKCP 1946.7.27 Merger between NKCP and KNDP
North Korean Workers
1946.8.28– Establishment of NKWP and election
Party (NKWP)
30 of Central Party members
Establishment Ceremony

The NKWP started to establish itself as the highest leadership institution in

North Korea, as it was connected loosely with other labor and popular
organizations. Figures who were in charge of the Party’s major positions like Kim
Il Sung and Kim Tu-bong held multiple positions within the People’s Committee.
Furthermore, as the military and political organizations undergirding the Party
and nation fell under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s power
structure became one centered on Kim Il Sung. The NKWP’s establishment led to
the creation of a Standing Committee and Political Committee inside the Central
Party Committee, and this gave its members a small degree of authority, which
led naturally to the strengthening of Kim Il Sung’s status within the Party and
leadership system. Kim Il Sung moved to strengthen his leadership system and
place his own supporters inside the Party by moving forward with the one-party-
pass initiative, and decisions related to cadre placement and movement.
Simultaneously, while Pak Hŏn-yŏng’s defection to the North in October 1946
led to some activities by the northern branch of the South Korean Workers’ Party
(SKWP), Park and his party’s real influence had fallen drastically following the
establishment of the NKWP and its expansion of power. As a result, the
significance of the NKWP being established was that it was the only strong leftist
party that held leadership over all communist movements in the country. While
the NKWP’s Central Committee and other central institutions were somewhat of
a political alliance, in reality they formed the basis for a single leadership system
under Kim Il Sung.

Establishment of the North Korean People’s

Committee (NKPC)

In order to examine the establishment of the North Korean People’s Committee

that followed the launch of the NKPC in November 1946 (Ryu, 2004:41–92) there
is a need to examine the activities of the Soviet Army based in northern Korea
after liberation and the how the local people’s committees were established.(S.B.
Kim, 2011:28–29) Following liberation, people’s committees sprouted up in each
of North Korea’s provinces and they formed a variety of departments to deal with
cleansing Japanese colonialism supporters and managing local affairs. For
example, in North Hamgyong Province—even before the Soviet Army entered the
area— the Communist Association and North Hamgyŏng Province National
Building Preparation Committee (NBPC) was recognized by the Soviet Army and
became the North Hamgyong Province People’s Committee on 30 August with
Cho Man-sik as chairman. Soon the Soviet Army reformed this group into the
South Pyongan Province People’s Political Committee and kept Cho as its
chairman.
As this shows, in general the people’s committees were established under an
alliance between nationalist and socialist forces, and this fell into the Soviet plan
of created forces that were friendly to the Soviets. The Soviets were well aware
that they could not handle the Korean question all by themselves and had plans
to consider the interests of the US and other countries. In short, in the beginning
of the Soviet presence, they supported the establishment of local people’s
committees and tried to use them to manage the affairs of state, but also made
efforts to stay in the background (Ryu, 2004:55).
However, the local people’s committees, as they became more centralized,
ultimately moved toward becoming the NKPC. The Conference of Responsible
Leaders and Enthusiasts of Five Northwest Provinces of the Korean Communist
Party from 8–10 October 1945, was hosted by the Soviet Army Command and led
to the regional people’s committees becoming more unified. In people’s
committee meetings held in each province on 19 November 1945, the Soviet
military government and North Korean leadership succeeded in establishing the
ten administrative departments for the unified management of North Korea’s five
provinces. This process led to the completion of a unified tax system and creation
of a police force. That being said, the activities of the ten departments were
independent of each other in each province, the activities did not last long, and
other reasons, including the lack of Korean experience and lack of
communication between the central and regional institutions, led the Soviet
Army Command to view the whole project as a failure. However, the
establishment of the ten administrative departments overcame the complexity
managing the once disparate local people’s committees and their establishment
ensured the efficiency and unification of managing local affairs. Given that the
later North Korean Provisional People’s Committee and its central department
inherited the system of the ten administrative departments, the experiment had
some impact on the establishment of the future North Korean government.
As the people’s committees became more centralized, the international political
situation gradually led to the establishment of an independent government
within North Korea. Before the opening of the First US-USSR Joint Committee,
the North Koreans and Soviets had two goals: 1) apply the format of the
government established in North Korea into the provisional Korean government;
2) secure the North Korean system as a response to the establishment of an
independent government in South Korea. In February 1946, political parties
including the NKBB of the KWP established a committee to construct a central
institution in North Korea and appointed Kim Chae as chairman, and Kang Yang-
uk and Chu Yong-ha as vice chairmen. On 7 February a preliminary meeting by
the political parties was held to establish the NKPC, and on the 8th, an expanded
meeting of provincial, city and gun people’s committee representatives was held
to establish the North Korean Temporary People’s Committee (NKTPC) with Kim
Il Sung as chairman, and Kim Tu-bong and Kang Yang-uk as vice chairmen.
The NKTPC was considered the highest administrative institution in North
Korea and had judicial and legislative authority. According to the regulations
concerning the establishment of the NKTPC, it “has the authority to legislate and
announce temporary laws for the people, social groups and national institutions
(Clause 3); correct incorrect decisions by each department and provincial people’s
committees; and is the highest administrative sovereign unit in North Korea
(Clause 4).” The NKTPC had to “conduct the laws and decisions announced by
the Soviet Military Command” so North Korea’s authority was shared between
the NKTPC and the Soviet Military. The 11 national objectives solidified
arguments for the NKWP’s democratic base theory in preparation for the US-
USSR Joint Commission. On 23 March 1946, the 20 platforms, which solidified the
11 objectives even more, included the cleansing of Japanese colonial ist elements,
a guarantee of democratic freedom, the establishment of democratic elections, the
securing of democratic rights of the people, the nationalization of industry, land
reform, and democratic reform as the fundamental tasks for the provisional
democratic government.
The various policies that were implemented immediately after the
establishment of the NKTPC not only set the basic direction of North Korea’s
state-making process but formed the basis for North Korean communists to
organize and solidify North Korean society in a way that was favorable to
themselves. The land reform project was completed thoroughly and swiftly under
the basic principle of free forfeit and free distribution. Land reform was swiftly
completed due to the mobilization of the people by local political parties and
social groups, and the project reflected directly the enthusiasm of the farmers at
the time, thus increasing the authority of the government.
Beginning with land reform, the government implemented taxes of agricultural
goods, a labor law, a gender equality law, the nationalization of important
industry, education reform, the systemization of local people’s committees, and
the reorganization of administrative units. The measure to nationalize important
industries was significant because it aimed to destroy the colonial-era ownership
system and both restore and secure a planned economy. As the industrial sector
came under the control of the communist party and people’s committees,
communist party cadres were not only able to grow their power, but establish
themselves as a both economic and social leaders.
As the NKTPC began its activities and the basis of statebuilding commenced,
the halt of the US-USSR Joint Commission on 8 May 1946, allowed the North
Korean communists to place more emphasis on establishing a national people’s
government in accordance with the revolutionary democratic base theory. By
November 1946, the North Korean communists believed that the results of the
democratic reforms had been shown, and the systemic framework of the North
Korean government had been formed. As such, they attempted to create legal
government institutions. In August 1946, citizen passes were issued to facilitate
the holding of an election. During the 2nd EEC of the Provisional People’s
Committee on 5 September 1946, it was proposed that each people’s committee be
confirmed through an election.
Through these preliminary preparations, the TPC held an election on 3
November 1946, where 3,459 provincial, municipal and local people’s committee
members were elected. The NKWP received the highest support of all the parties
with 32% of the vote. In February 1947, provincial, municipal and other local PC
meetings were held, and the land reform law, industry nationalization law, labor
law, gender equality law and other laws that had formed the basis of democratic
reform over the past year were officially approved. Finally, on 20 February, the
NKPC was created and became recognized as North Korea’s highest
governmental organ. The establishment of the NKPC was approved under the
precondition of “until the establishment of a unified temporary government by
the US-USSR Joint Commission.” Ch’oe Yong-gŏn, who chaired the Central
Committee of the North Korean Democratic National Unification Front, proposed
Kim Il Sung as the chairman of the NKPC and the body adopted this proposal. On
22 February, the NKPC became the country’s highest executive institution with
Kim Il Sung as its chair, and along with the Pyongyang Special City People’s
Committee (PC), six provincial PCs, 12 municipal PCs, and 90 local PCs were
established.

Table 14.2 Establishment of the NKPC

Major event Date Details

Major event Date Details

Conference of the
1945.10.8– Discussion on the new government organ
Five Provincial
10 system
People’s Committees
Creation of the North
Implementation of a central administrative
Korean 10
1945.11.19 unit by sector to for economic linkage
Administrative
between each province
Departments
Establishment of Role of North Korea’s highest
North Korean administrative unit decided, nationalization
1946.2.7–8
Provisional People’s of important industry, land reform and
Committee democratic reform conducted
Election of North
Election of provincial, municipal, and local
Korean People’s 1946.11.3
People’s Committee members
Committee members
Establishment of NKPC becomes country’s highest executive
North Korean 1947.2.22 unit through regular election with Kim Il
People’s Committee Sung as chairman

Discussions on passing a constitution were held during the NKPC’s third

meeting, 18–19 November 1947. During the meeting, 31 temporary constitution
legislation members were delegated to discuss the issue, and the group’s first
meeting was held on 20 November. On 29 April 1948, this special committee
unanimously adopted a draft of a constitution. The draft upheld sovereignty for
the people with the people’s committees as the basis, and focused on “people’s
democracy” due the fact in the economic sphere it recognized state ownership,
cooperative ownership and individual ownership.
The characteristics and significance of the NKPC are as follows. First, the
NKPC was an extension of North Korea’s People’s Committees and the ten
administrative departments and was significant for having gained legitimacy
through an election. Second, the NKPC was created as the highest executive
organ separate from the NKPM, where the NKPC held executive functions while
the NKPM held sovereignty. Third, while the NKPC did succeed with the TPC’s
democratic reforms, it moved to bring socialist change to the country. Fourth, the
establishment of the NKPC meant that the influence the Soviet military had on
North Korean politics had decreased.

Establishment of the Korean People’s Army (KPA)

The creation of the Korean People’s Army on 9 February 1948 occurred within
the mutual relationship between the Party and military. In short, the creation of
the Party and military were closely related to each other.
The major turning point in the establishment of the KPA was due to the Soviet
military. On 12 October 1945, the Soviet military ordered the disarmament of all
organizations in northern Korea and the creation of a new police force. At the 5th
EEC of the KWP, the decision to officially create a regular military force was
made. The NKTPC led the creation of a security force to protect the border, the
38th parallel and railways.
In June 1946 in Kaech’on, South P’yŏngan province, a security cadre training
camp, which would serve as the central base for the future regular military, was
established, and on 8 July the North Korean Central Security Cadre School was
opened to train military cadres. The security force, which would become the basis
for the army, navy and air force, was also created. In early October 1945, marine
security divisions were established along the coasts, and in December 1946, these
were expanded to form the coast guard. In October 1945, civilians led the
formation of the Sinuiju Airbase in Sinuiju, and in August 1947, a regular plane
division was formed, which later become the air force.
On 15 August 1946, the cadre training division, as the managing organ of all
armed forces, was newly created. This institution was led by the regular
military’s chiefs of staff, with Ch’oe Yong-gŏn as commander, Kim Il Sung as
deputy commander, and Mu Chŏng as artillery commander. These former
guerrilla fighters took the highest-ranking positions in the military, which
strengthened Kim Il Sung’s and the guerrilla faction’s control over the regular
armed forces. In September 1946, a Soviet military advisor group arrived in North
Korea and was stationed at each training camp and military school to accelerate
the creation of the armed forces. This process brought once disparate armed
forces to unite under the single authority of the cadre training division, and this
division was headed by former guerrilla fighters like Ch’oe Yong-gŏn, An Kil,
and Kim Il Sung.
On 15 April 1947, Kim Il Sung sent a message to the Soviets requesting
weapons and other material for the North Korean military, and the Soviets
responded by sending weapons and equipment. This allowed the NK forces to
expand to 6–7 divisions and two army groups. On 17 May 1947, Kim Il Sung
instituted a new hierarchy system and the base was renamed to the “People’s
Group Army” (PGA). Ch’oe Yong-gŏn was kept as head of the PGA, along with
the other chiefs of staff. Following decisions made by the KWP Central
Committee on 2 February 1948 and the NKPC on 4 February, the National
Security Department was established as the North Korean military’s
administrative headquarters and Kim Ch’aek was named its head. This allowed
fluid management between the government and military.
On 9 February 1948, the KPA was officially established. Kim Il Sung
emphasized that the KWP was “a Korean people’s army made by the Korean
people,” and not for the Party. Ch’oe Yong-gŏn was named head of the KPA
Central Command, Kim Il the deputy commander and cultural commander, and
Mu Chŏng the artillery commander. The KPA First Division commander was
Kim Ung, Second Division Commander Yi Lee Chong-song, and the head of the
Third Hongsong Infantry Brigade was Kim Kwang-hyŏp.
After the KPA was officially established, the number of soldiers in each
division increased due to cooperation with Party organizations. Moreover, the
KPA’s fighting power decisively increased as the Chinese-Korean soldiers
returned to North Korea following their participation in China’s civil war. This
led to an increase from 27,000 soldiers in 1948 to 120,000 soldiers in 1950.

Table 14.3 Establishment of the KWP

Major event Date Details

All armed groups must disband and

Soviet Commander Order
5th EEC of the Central
NKCP
1945.10.12
establishment of new police force
1946.3.4 Decision to establish police force
Establishment of Defense
Cultivation of officers for national
Officers Training School 1946.6
defense
(DOTD)
Establishment of Defense Acts as highest unit of the regular
1946.8.15
Officers Training Division military
DOTD is expanded and
Ch’oe Yong-go˘n is maintained as
renamed the People’s 1947.5.17
head of PGA
Group Army
KPA Central Command establishment
KPA (Korean People’s
1948.2.8 and Ch’oe Yong-go˘n named as
Army) established
Supreme Commander

In summary, former guerrilla fighters centered-around Kim Il Sung became the

central force in solidifying social forces under the cooperation of the SAC. During
the vacuum period (May 1946 to May 1947) until the 2nd US-USSR Joint
Commission was held, they created and expanded their military power. As the
possibility of establishing a unified North-South government faded, a regular
army called the People’s Group Army was created on 17 May 1947, and this was
made official on 9 February 1948. The establishment of the KWP was an
inherently developmental process and, along with the Party and people’s
committees, formed the material basis of North Korea’s statebuilding.

Characteristics of North Korea’s statebuilding process

The influence of the anti-Japanese guerrilla faction and Kim Il Sung’s

autonomy

The anti-Japanese guerrilla faction played an important role in the North Korean
statebuilding process and allowed Kim Il Sung to have decisive influence within
the Party and military2 (H.S. Paek, 1994:396–398). The guerrilla faction, which
was more or less Kim Il Sung’s political capital, had been relatively weaker than
other forces but had an outstanding ability to be cohesive. Kim Il Sung, through
the anti-Japanese campaigns and “Arduous March” had a unique identity and
confidence that was distinguished even among other Korean communists. During
the campaigns against the Japanese, the experience of political training he
received allowed him to demonstrate a high degree of political influence among
the many forces that existed in North Korea following liberation (K.U. Kim,
2003:106–110).
The guerrilla faction began appearing in Pyongyang in early September 1945
and expanded its influence. The faction was able to carry influence for several
reasons. First, Kim Il Sung was already well known to Koreans due to his armed
campaigns against the Japanese in the 1930s. Second, even though he was under
the control of the Soviet army, he displayed a high degree of independence (Seo,
1998:269). Third, he displayed a strong sense of uniformity compared with other
political forces. Fourth, he made the armed struggle against the Japanese a central
platform while placing priority on personally dominating the military. Moreover,
because there was no legitimate platform as important as having the experience
of fighting against the Japanese, Kim was able to emphasize his experience and
expand his influence domestically while retaining a certain degree of autonomy
from the Soviets.
As we examined in the process of establishing North Korea’s regular army, the
emphasis on the military strength of the guerrilla faction, its strong cohesiveness,
and legitimacy all played a major role in its domination of the country’s military
forces. Following the establishment of the North Korean government, the
guerrilla faction became the generational cradle of the North Korean power elite
and became the central symbol in strengthening the justification for Kim and his
successors.

Soviet influence

While there was some degree of academic discussion on the influence of the
Soviets during North Korea’s statebuilding process, generally it is understood the
Soviets had considerable impact on the period. Soviet policies had a major impact
on important phases of the statebuilding process and tremendous influence of the
creation of regular military forces (Wada, Seo and Nam, 2003:72–73).
 First is the impact Stalin’s orders had on overall Soviet policy. After the Soviets
occupied northern Korea on 20 September 1945, Stalin ordered that the Soviets
should “support all of northern Korea’s anti-Japanese democratic parties and
organizational blocks in order to establishing a proletariat democratic power,”
and that the Soviets should “not interrupt the formation of anti-Japanese
democratic organizations and parties, and instead support them.” Then on 12
October 1945, the Soviet military permitted the establishment of anti-Japanese
democratic organizations and activities. Given that the NKBB of the KWP was
created the very next day on 13 October means there is a high possibility that the
Soviet military cleared the way for it. (K.U. Kim, 2003:152) As a result, socialist
forces were able to expand significant political influence due to Stalin’s orders for
support of their activities.
The orders Stalin made in July 1946 also became the procedures for creating
the Party and military. Stalin appeared to have decided to just turn North Korea
into a socialist country after the failure of the First US-USSR Joint Commission at
the end of June 1946. In the middle of July 1947, Stalin proposed during a meeting
with Kim Il Sung and Pak Hŏn-yŏng the merger of the Communist and New
Democratic Parties to create a new party. This led to the merger of the two
parties and a drastic increase in members and increased influence (Wada, Seo,
Nam, 2002:83–84).
Moreover, during the creation of the People’s Committee, the Soviets did not
get involved in the specifics of its establishment or composition, but they did
manage, to some degree, the establishment of the Department of Civil
Administration (DCA) and its political issues. The head of the DCA, Andrey
Romanenko, took over the administration work managed by the local people’s
committee and placed advisors in each province (Ryu, 2004:58).
Additionally, the Soviets played a decisive role in the establishment and train
of the KPA. Following the return of the Korean volunteer army, they received
Soviet-style basic training as they were integrated into the regular army. There
were at least three Soviet advisors for each regiment, and training plans followed
Soviet military principles. This allowed soldiers who had experience fighting
against the Nationalists in China to complete 2–4 months of training before being
integrated into the North Korean army (K.U. Kim, 2003:577).
Relationship between the Party and military

While the Party and military were somewhat separate organizations, the
experience of building the Party was used in creating the military and this led to
the KWP being created in a short period (Jang, 2012:169). The creation of
education programs was required for establishing the Party, military and
government. One area in which the relationship between the Party and military
was prominently displayed was in how the educational system used during the
creation of the Party was the same as the political education system used in the
military. Another point showing how the establishment of the Party and military
was similar was that the Pyongyang School Political Class was turned into the
North Korean Communist Central Officers Training School, while the military
class became the Central Defense Officials Training School. Moreover, a cultural
department was formed and a Soviet political committee member system was
adopted in order to establish a culture and political department. As a result, the
Party had some degree of influence over the military.

Beginning of “nation approval diplomacy” by the Soviet Union and

China

The North Korean leadership’s goal was to create a socialist country, and as such
the country’s diplomacy was focused on creating a favorable international
environment. As such, North Korean policymakers placed as their diplomatic
policies’ major goals: 1) creation of a favorable international environment for
establishment of their government and implementation of socialism; 2)
establishment of a united provisional government that would prevent national
division; and 3) after the creation of the government, build the basis for activities
on the international stage. (Park, 1985:60)
In accordance with these goals, North Korea created a host of organizations
that conducted exchanges with the various international organizations and
formed the basis to enter the international stage through Party-to-Party
exchanges rather than nation-to-nation diplomacy. After the government was
proclaimed on 9 September 1948, it began establishing diplomatic relations with
socialist countries like the Mongolian People’s Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and Romania.
Of course, while diplomatic relations with Eastern European countries were
established and cooperation began with third-world countries, the most
important relationships North Korea had were with the USSR and China. North
Korea understood the USSR to be a proactive supporter of the Korean National
Liberation Movement and the only ally to protect and support the country and
revolution. During the country’s statebuilding process, Soviet authorities’ and the
military’s influence was absolute.
While North Korea received proactive guidance and support from the USSR
during its statebuilding process, it also actively moved to establish relations with
China. The North Korean government supported the Chinese Communist Party
during the course of the Chinese Civil War, including sending a volunteer army
of some 100,000 men led by Ch’oe Kwang and other former guerrilla fighters;
large numbers of artillery and ammunition; permission for Chinese soldiers to
move through the Korean Peninsula to enter China’s northeastern provinces; and
permission for Chinese soldiers to use the North Korean region as a rear base. As
a result, the solidarity between Kim Il Sung and the Chinese Communist Party
grew, and the return of soldiers who fought in the Chinese Civil War to North
Korea greatly assisted the construction of the country’s regular military forces.
The relationship with China was strengthened even more through the Korean
War and the relationship became a major pillar of North Korean diplomacy.

Conclusion

To understand present-day North Korea it is important to first understand how

the country was established. As the above shows, Kim Il Sung and North Korea’s
leadership built the basis for North Korea’s system by dominating the Party,
government organs, and military. We must focus on this state-making period
because the framework of Kim Il Sung’s system was built during this period and
was maintained, strengthened, and continually institutionalized, even after the
Korean War. While the Kim Il Sung one-man leadership model was not fully
institutionalized until the 1960s and 1970s, we are able to examine the KWP’s
domination during the state-making period and the fluid relationship between
the Party and State systems. This framework requires close examination because
it has continued even today with the third-generation succession to Kim Jong Un.
This paper’s main points can be summarized into the following. First, the
KWP’s origins can be found in the establishment of the KCP NKNF. On 13
October 1945, around 70 of the most famous communists in northern Korea met
to form an organization that would be separate from the Central Party in Seoul.
During the 2nd EEC of the NKNF on 14 November 1945, a discussion was held
concerning the organization of a central government organ. Through a series of
expanded plenums, the Party’s control over the central system and local parties
occurred, along with a merger with the Korean New Democratic Party. The KWP
was formed between 28 and 30 August 1946.
Along with the establishment of the KWP, the NKPC was established. After
liberation, each people’s committee in the provinces became part of a new
government organ system following the Five Provincial People’s Committees and
later as the ten administrative departments were established. As the NKTPC was
established between 7 and 8 February 1946, it became North Korea’s most
powerful administrative unit and began nationalizing important industries and
implementing land reform and democratic reforms. Following this, a people’s
committee election was held and on 22 February 1947, the North Korean People’s
Committee was established with Kim Il Sung as its head.
Finally, the establishment of the KWP was established, similarly to the Party
and government organs. The Soviets released an order to disband all armed
organizations and created a new police force. This was followed by the
establishment of the Defense Officers Training Facility and training cadres began.
On 15 August 1946, the Central Defense Officers Facility was established, and
military power increased.
It is a fact there have been a wide variety of discussions concerning North
Korea’s state-making process. It is unquestionable that the Soviets, including
their aid and guidance, played a decisive role in the early stages of statebuilding
and in the KWP’s establishment. However, it is also true that internal factors like
Kim Il Sung and the partisan faction’s leadership also played an important role.
Moreover, factors such as the Confucian tradition and unique social-cultural
environment also made North Korea’s state-making process different than those
in Eastern Europe. The special succession structure between Kim Il Sung, Kim
Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un originated from these social and cultural factors. As a
result, future research on North Korea’s state-making process will have to explain
how these social-cultural factors combined to impact North Korea’s state-making
process.

Notes
1 For more on historical institutionalism please see S. Steinmo, K. Thelen, and F. Longstreth, eds.,
Structuring Politics: Historical institutionalism in comparative analysis (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992).

2 For more on this see Han H.K., “Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il Sung in
Eastern Manchuria” (Ph.D. diss., 1999). University of Washington.

References

North Korean References (in Korean)

Kim, I. S., (1947) The One Year Anniversary of the North Korean Workers’ Party,
Pyongyang: Korean Workers’ Party Publishing.
Park, T.H. (1985) Diplomatic History of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Vol.1, Pyongyang: Social-Science Publishing.

South Korean References (in Korean)

Jang, S. J. (2012) ‘The Formation and Significance of the Party-Military

Relationship During the Establishment Period of the North Korean Military,’
Modern North Korean Research, 15. 3, pp. 169–196.
Kim, K.U. (2003) North Korean Political History Research 1: History of the Party,
State and Military Establishment, Seoul: Seonin.
Kim, S.B. (2011) 20th Century Korean History: North Korean History 1, Seoul:
Critical History.
Paek, H.S. (1994) ‘Kim Il Sung’s Autonomy Issue During the Formation of the
North Korean State.’ International Political Review, 28. 2, pp. 396–399.
Paek, S.H. (2005) ‘Research into Characteristics of North Korean Diplomacy
During the State-Establishment Period,’ North Korean Research Academic
Review, 9. 2, pp 233-254.
Ryu, G.J. (2004) The Formation Process of the North Korean State: Research on the
Organization and Activities of People’s Committees, Seoul: Kyungnam
University Press.
Seo, D.M. (1998) ‘The Historical Formation of North Korea’s Party-Military
Relationship: Focus on the Period of Establishment to Right Before the Korean
War’ Diplomatic-Security Research 3.
Wada, H., Seo, D.M., and Nam, G.J. (2002) North Korea, Seoul: Dolbaegae.

English-Language References

Armstrong, C.K. (2003) The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Cumings, B. (1990) The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. II, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Paik, H.S. (1993) ‘North Korean State Formation, 1945–1950,’ (Ph.D. diss.),
University of Pennsylvania.
Scalapino, R.A. and Lee, C.K. (1972) Communism in Korea, Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Seiler, S.A. (1994) Kim Il-song, 1941–1948: The Creation of a Legend, the Building
and a Regime, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.
Strong, A.L. (1950) Inside North Korea: An Eyewitness Account, Montrose, CA.
Suh, D.S. (1988) Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader, New York: Columbia
University Press.
Yang S.C. (1994) The North and South Korean Political Systems: a Comparative
Analysis, Boulder CO: Westview Press.
15
North Korea’s chuch’e philosophy

James F. Person

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) upholds the
concept of chuch’e (also spelled Juche) as the nation’s official political
philosophy. North Korea today maintains that chuch’e, often translated as “self-
reliance,” is an idea that has “clarified the philosophical principle that the man
[sic] is the master of everything and that he decides everything and, on this basis,
illuminated the absolutely correct way of shaping man’s destiny.”1 In this respect,
chuch’e turns Marxism-Leninism, which places material conditions as the driving
force in historical progress, upside down. Establishing chuch’e, according to
official website of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, means “adopting
the attitude of a master towards the revolution and construction of one’s country.
It means maintaining an independent and creative standpoint in finding solutions
to the problems which arise in the revolution and construction. It implies solving
those problems mainly by one’s own efforts and in conformity with the actual
conditions of one’s own country.”2 In practice, chuch’e has meant many things
over the years and was later transformed into an instrument of autocratic rule,
but at the basis of the idea is an effort to promote and sustain an autonomous
national subjectivity.
North Korea claims that the concept of chuch’e was original to the country’s
founding leader, the anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter Kim Il Sung, who led the
country from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1993. This claim is inaccurate,
as chuch’e as an expression of national subjectivity had been part of nationalist
discourse in East Asia since the late nineteenth century. Following the imposition
of the Western nation-state system and post-Westphalian concept of sovereign
equality in the late nineteenth century, Japanese scholars, starting with Fukuzawa
Yukichi, first imported, translated, and assimilated the term.3 In Korea, the term
emerged as part of a project to produce an autonomous Korean subjectivity by
nationalists of every political persuasion concerned with safeguarding, and later
restoring, Korea’s national sovereignty. Such individuals included the anarchist
historian Sin Chaeho (Sin Ch’ae-ho), conservative Kim Ku, progressive activist
Yeo Unhyeong (Yŏ Un-hyŏng), and Marxist historian Paek Namun (Paek Nam-
un).
Kim Il Sung reportedly used terms expressing an autonomous Korean
subjectivity throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. However, his earliest known
use of the term chuch’e was in April 1955, though he is best known for having
used the term more extensively in a speech in December of the same year. The
speech, entitled “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing
Juche in Ideological Work,” was delivered on December 28 to propaganda and
agitation workers following the conclusion of an enlarged plenary session of the
Central Committee (CC) of the ruling Korean Worker’s Party (KWP). The speech
focused primarily on perceived mistakes in the fields of ideology, literature, and
education, but also touched upon problems with North Korea’s foreign relations.
The speech bore a distinctive postcolonial nationalist character as Kim called for
the formation of a national subject after centuries of Korean leaders willfully
subordinated the country to China, followed by decades of Japanese colonial rule.
He criticized the work of party propagandists for dogmatism and formalism and a
lack of chuch’e, i.e. a lack of national subjectivity, through their mechanical
replication and celebration of foreign cultural, economic, and political practices.
Examples he gave of these shortcomings included the celebration of foreign
literature while ignoring the achievements of Korean writers, not teaching
Korean history while teaching Soviet history, and promoting Soviet economic
achievements while ignoring the accomplishments of Korea’s own postwar
economic transformation. “In our propaganda and agitation work,” Kim noted,
“there are numerous examples where only things foreign are extolled while our
own are slighted.”4 Kim complained of seeing displayed in a democratic hall of
culture diagrams illustrating the Soviet Union’s Five-Year Plan, but nothing on
North Korea’s own Three-Year Plan; images of the Siberian steppe in a People’s
Army rest home; and portraits of only foreign cultural figures, including
Mayakovsky and Pushkin, in primary schools. The imitation and glorification of
foreign cultural, political, and economic practices conveyed a message to the
Korean people that Korea had little of value to celebrate. It was a speech
fundamentally concerned with instilling national pride in the Korean people.
Analysts of North Korea have long treated Kim’s use of the term chuch’e in
the December 1955 speech as a declaration of a singularly Korean ideology of
“self-reliance” and, as such, as a declaration of independence from the Soviet
Union and China.5 It is also treated as the opening salvo in a major attack on Kim
Il Sung’s political opponents. The speech has therefore been portrayed as a
watershed moment in the ideological history of North Korea. These analyses in
many ways reflect the later status chuch’e was given by the North Koreans, but it
does not reflect the reality of the period. For one, these interpretations ignore the
fact that Kim Il Sung did not use the term chuch’e again until the early 1960s.
Moreover, by the time North Korea began to treat chuch’e as an official
governing ideology, the idea had transformed significantly. In December 1955,
Kim’s use of the term chuch’e was not an expression of a unique and fully-
formed North Korean ideology. What is missing from many analyses of the
speech is the context in which it was delivered. Two contemporary developments
in particular are necessary to consider.
First, following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in March 1953, the
socialist camp, which had become much more diverse after the Second World
War, had many problems with which to grapple. The new Kremlin leadership
recognized that the differing national perspectives and interests of other socialist
countries could not be indefinitely suppressed as they had been under Stalin.
Moscow’s relations with Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia epitomized many of the
challenges facing the Soviet leadership. Tito had liberated his country from Axis
powers with limited direct support of the Soviet Red Army, and therefore felt less
compelled to subordinate Yugoslavia’s interests to those of Stalin’s Soviet Union
after the war. From 1948, Tito faced the very real prospect of Soviet aggression
because of his independence. However, starting in 1955, Nikita Khrushchev
lessened tensions with Tito, and began softening the Soviet line on issues such as
the universality of the Soviet experience and the Soviet model, and how to
account for historical and national peculiarities. This is a process that started in
the summer of 1955 with a Soviet-Yugoslav summit. But there were limits to the
degree of autonomy and national distinctiveness Moscow would tolerate. Just
over a year after the process of reconciliation with Tito’s Yugoslavia began,
Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary to protect socialism against so-called
“reactionary elements” of the Hungarian party.
Kim Il Sung, like Tito, believed in the need for greater autonomy and the need
to account for national peculiarities. However, when he delivered his speech in
December 1955, Moscow was still reconciling with Yugoslavia and continued to
struggle with these questions. Accepting differences had not fully become the
norm in the socialist camp. It is therefore important not to place too much
emphasis on Kim exercising more autonomy and expressing national
distinctiveness as part of a Soviet-sanctioned, bloc-wide trend.6 This is
particularly the case because in 1955 Moscow had not been accepting of—and
actively sought to thwart—North Korean policies that did not follow the Soviet
model. Therefore, Kim’s December 1955 speech was in part an attempt by Kim to
minimize Moscow’s ability to impose on North Korea Soviet experiences and
models in economic development and culture. He did this by discouraging
officials in the ruling Korean Worker’s Party from mechanically replicating
Soviet practices. This is the critical context missing from most analyses of the
December 1955 speech in which Kim Il Sung used the term “chuch’e.”
Over the previous two years, ever since the Korean War armistice, Kim Il Sung
had been engaged in a protracted debate over postwar economic development
strategies within the ruling Korean Worker’s Party (KWP). His vision for postwar
reconstruction was also directly challenged by the patron allies financing
national reconstruction. At stake were principled positions on the vision for a
postwar North Korea. On one side of the debate inside the KWP was Kim Il Sung,
who did not wish to simply reconstruct the factories destroyed during the war
but promoted a policy of general industrialization in an effort to rectify colonial-
era distortions to the national economy and to strengthen national security. Kim
Il Sung sought to maximize the use of the massive amounts of aid given to North
Korea after the war to replace the country’s poorly integrated industrial structure
with complementary industries. Through a short-term dependence on foreign aid,
Kim sought to establish an independent national economy and prevent future
dependency relationships. On the other hand were officials who considered the
restoration and expansion of light industry, consumer goods, and agriculture to
be the priority for reconstruction in order to rapidly elevate standards of living.
This position was inspired by the Soviet “New Course,” the short-lived post-Stalin
policy of increasing the production of consumer goods and further developing
light industry and agriculture. Those advocating this position were Soviet-
Koreans and China-returned Koreans, ethnic Koreans who returned to northern
Korea from the Soviet Union and China after the country’s liberation from Japan
in 1945. Having spent considerable segments of their lives outside Korea in either
the Soviet Union or China, these officials were strong advocates for the economic
policies advanced by the more established Soviet and Chinese communist parties.
Soviet-Koreans and China-returned Koreans were also guilty of other forms of
foreign emulation that frustrated North Korea’s postcolonial nationalist leader
Kim Il Sung. In addition to the portraits of Russian cultural icons in classrooms
and murals of Soviet landscapes in resorts for the Korean People’s Army, Soviet-
Korean officials in charge of textbook production simply translated Soviet
textbooks into Korean without any revisions, even when they contained basic
mistakes about Korean geography and history.
Kim Il Sung was also under pressure from his patron allies, particularly the
Soviet Union, to modify his postwar economic development strategy. Moscow,
which gave one billion rubles in aid to North Korea in 1953, earmarked all but
three percent of the aid for specific projects. These included the reconstruction of
Japanese-built factories that had been destroyed during the war, but were not
located near resources (the Japanese had constructed factories in locations
convenient for shipping resources to the metropole, but not close to resources).
Other projects were focused on the construction of factories that would lead to
the improvement of living standards, including textile mills and canneries. The
Soviet restrictions on aid to North Korea limited Kim Il Sung’s ability to achieve
the goals of his development strategy and eliminate future dependency
relationships since Korea would still not be able to produce finished goods.
During his frequent meetings with Soviet officials, Kim was encouraged to
modify his pro-industry policies. More than the internal KWP debate, Soviet
efforts to influence North Korean development strategies reduced Kim Il Sung’s
freedom of action and ability to achieve his goals. However, it was the perceived
collusion of his domestic opponents with Moscow that likely frustrated the North
Korean leader the most.
In December 1955, therefore, Kim Il Sung used the term chuch’e in the speech
to admonish Soviet-Koreans and China-returned Koreans for formalistically
imitating the policies of larger socialist countries without developing their
knowledge of Korean history and customs or familiarizing themselves with local
conditions. While there was little he could do about restrictions placed on Soviet
aid to North Korea, it was within his power to discourage KWP members who
were originally from the Soviet Union and China from mechanically replicating
and promoting foreign practices. Kim Il Sung perceived the emulation of Soviet
cultural, political, and economic practices as part of a broader problem that was a
remnant of Korea’s long history of glorifying the cultures, traditions, and political
practices of more advanced neighboring countries, including China, Japan, and
from 1945, the Soviet Union. The speech might therefore be interpreted as an
attempt by Kim Il Sung to decolonize the Korean mind. For Kim, establishing an
autonomous Korean subjectivity meant abandoning sadae, the practice of
“serving the great,” observed for centuries toward China, the “middle Kingdom.”
His intent was national subject formation and instilling a sense of national pride.
This was the start of a campaign to form a unified national will, or subject, which
would motivate the behavior of all Koreans, particularly the Soviet-Koreans and
China-returned Koreans, in support of national goals.
While Kim Il Sung cannot be credited with introducing the idea of chuch’e as
an expression of an autonomous national subjectivity, he can be credited for
giving it saliency starting with the December 1955 speech and later when he
introduced other terms expressing an autonomous Korean subjectivity in politics,
economics, and national defense. Chuch’e would serve as the binding ideology
with the practical applications of chaju (independence in politics), charip (self-
sustenance in economy), and chawi (self-defense in national defense). The
introduction of these ideas transformed chuch’e into a complete set of practical
policy applications designed to minimize Soviet and Chinese influence on North
Korea.
Chaju, the first of the practical applications of chuch’e Kim introduced, was
formally announced in December 1957, though it developed in response to an
event that occurred in the summer of 1956. Despite having introduced chuch’e in
December 1955 as a way of discouraging Soviet-Koreans and China-returned
Koreans from mechanically replicating the political practices of other socialist
countries, it was only a matter of months before they once again took inspiration
from events unfolding in Moscow and called for political reform in the DPRK.
Following the February 1956 Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, scene to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s famed “secret speech”
that launched the policy of de-Stalinization, Soviet-Koreans and China-returned
Koreans campaigned to limit the cult of personality in North Korea. They did so
by directly criticizing the practices of Kim Il Sung and other leading KWP
officials, and by encouraging foreign leaders to challenge the North Korean
leader directly in meetings during the summer of 1956. When Kim Il Sung failed
to respond to these pressures and even dismissed the idea that the DPRK had a
problem with the cult of personality, Soviet-Koreans and China-returned Koreans
attempted to force change by raising the matters in a meeting of the KWP CC in
August 1956. This political challenge, while never perilous for Kim Il Sung, was
greater than the previous economic challenge and demonstrated that these critics
would continue to act as conduits of foreign influence as long as they remained
in influential posts in the Party. The chief critics were immediately purged from
the KWP after the August Plenum. This included four individuals who fled to
China, where they informed the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party of
the developments in North Korea.
The following month, China and the Soviet Union dispatched a joint party
delegation to Pyongyang to investigate the actions of Kim Il Sung. The joint Sino-
Soviet delegation directly interfered in North Korean politics by ordering the
North Koreans to publish accounts of the August meeting and demanding the
reinstatement of those purged and the release of other individuals from prison.
These actions greatly disturbed Kim Il Sung, demonstrating the tremendous
influence of North Korea’s putative allies over the trajectory of political
developments. With Soviet and Chinese officials distracted by anti-communist
uprisings in Poland and Hungary in late 1956, Kim Il Sung took measures to
minimize the influence of Moscow and Beijing by purging most remaining
Soviet-Koreans and China-returned Koreans, as well as those who took their
orders directly from them. The following year, after Moscow issued a statement
on sovereign equality and respect for the internal affairs of all countries of the
socialist camp in November 1957, Kim Il Sung declared chaju to be the official
policy of the KWP. This measure was designed to impress upon Moscow and
Beijing the reality of North Korea’s sovereignty and to minimize their impact on
the trajectory of political developments.
The second practical application of chuch’e, charip, or self-sustenance in
economics, was developed by virtue of necessity. In the years after the Korean
War, North Korea was utterly dependent on the Soviet Union, China, and other
countries in the socialist camp for economic support. Pyongyang was forced to
develop self-reliance in economics for two reasons. First, by the time the DPRK
was launching its Five-Year Plan in 1957, socialist countries had begun to reduce
their post-Korean War aid. This was in part a result of disagreements over the use
of aid, but also due to worsening relations after the political events of August and
September 1956. The second, and perhaps greater reason, was that North Korea
had come under increasing pressure from the Soviet Union and other socialist
countries to coordinate production and industrial development through the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). Since the DPRK had not
yet rectified colonial-era distortions to its economy, Kim Il Sung resisted pressure
to coordinate production with more advanced socialist countries, recognizing that
Korea would be discouraged from developing industries already existing in other
countries and would instead serve as a source of raw materials. The country
would forever remain dependent on foreign countries for finished goods. Just as
Joseph Stalin had adopted the autarkic policy of socialism in one country when
the Soviet Union was isolated, weak, and vulnerable in the 1920s, Kim Il Sung
adopted autarky to prevent the exploitation of North Korean resources.
To compensate for the reduced amounts of assistance, the North Korean
leadership mobilized indigenous human and material resources. This was
achieved through mass campaigns, such as the Cheonlima (Ch’ǒllima)
Movement, which promoted Kim Il Sung’s voluntaristic vision for achieving the
goals of the North Korean revolution, which demanded maximum sacrifice for
minimal reward. Through these measures, despite reductions in foreign aid,
North Korea achieved the goals of its Five-Year Plan well over one year ahead of
schedule. Self-sustenance in economy did not mean self-sufficiency. North
Korean leaders understood that they could not produce everything needed. While
never integrating into or coordinating development with COMECON, North
Korea nonetheless maintained robust bilateral trade relationships with
COMECON member countries.
The development of the third practical application of chuch’e, chawi, or self-
defense in national defense, was also by virtue of necessity. North Korea’s
security was put in jeopardy following the May 1961 coup d’état in South Korea
that brought to power the anti-communist military junta of Park Chung Hee.
Despite having signed a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance
with the Soviet Union in July 1961 (and another with China one week later),
North Korea became suspicious of Moscow’s credibility as a patron ally following
the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which Kim viewed as capitulation to the
United States. Kim Il Sung believed his suspicions about Moscow’s credibility and
commitment to the security of its ally was confirmed when the Soviets refused to
supply the DPRK with 100 million rubles’ worth of military equipment in
December 1962. Therefore, from December 1962, North Korea developed
autonomous defense capabilities by adopting a so-called equal emphasis policy
(p’yǒngjin) line, whereby heavy industry and national defense capabilities would
be developed simultaneously, at the expense of consumer goods and light
industry. Starting in early 1963, North Korea also began to explore the possibility
of developing an indigenous nuclear deterrent. By 1965, the share of expenditures
from the national budget allotted to national defense was approximately 30
percent, up from 4.3 percent in 1956.7 Even after relations with Moscow improved
in late 1964, and the Soviets resumed providing North Korea with military
assistance, Pyongyang never abandoned its policy of self-defense in national
defense, refusing to fully entrust national security to a foreign nation.
In April 1965, Kim Il Sung traveled to Indonesia on the occasion of the tenth
anniversary of the first Bandung Conference of African and Asian countries. This
was the first and only trip he made outside of the socialist camp. While in
Jakarta, Kim delivered a lecture at the Ali Archam Academy of Social Sciences
entitled “On Socialist Construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
and the South Korean Revolution,” where he gave full articulation to chuch’e as a
complete set of practical policy applications. He described chuch’e as a “unique
and creative stand which opposes dogmatism and applies the universal truth of
Marxism-Leninism and the experience of the international revolutionary
movement to one’s country in conformity with its historical conditions and
national peculiarities. This represents an independent stand of discarding the
spirit of relying on others, of displaying the spirit of self-reliance and solving
one’s own affairs on one’s own responsibility under all circumstances.”8 He
similarly described each of the practical applications of chuch’e in politics,
economics, and in national defense.
Within two years, however, the chuch’e again underwent a transformation.
Starting with the military coup in South Korea in May 1961, North Korea faced
multiple threats to its national security. In 1965, South Korea and Japan, both
strong allies of the United States, normalized relations as Washington pushed for
the creation of a Northeast Asian Treaty Organization. Also, the Sino-Soviet split,
which became open in the early 1960s, divided the socialist camp and placed
North Korea, which bordered both countries, between a rock and a hard place. As
Moscow and Beijing quarreled, from the mid-1960s, the United States rapidly
escalated its presence in Southeast Asia. Finally, from 1966, China launched the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and relations between Beijing and
Pyongyang deteriorated to the point of armed clashes along their shared border.
North Korea’s status quo had never been more unfavorable.
Yet, starting after the Second Party Conference of the KWP in October 1966—
precisely at a time when North Korea faced such perilous security challenges—
members of Kim Il Sung’s inner circle began to challenge the continued emphasis
on simultaneously developing the heavy industry and national defense sectors of
the national economy. They advocated for more investment in light industry and
the production of consumer goods to elevate standards of living in the DPRK. To
be sure, this was a very sensitive subject. After nearly fifteen years of ambitious
back-to-back economic plans and near constant mobilization, North Korea was
transformed from a country devastated by the Korean War to one that was
moderately industrialized. It remained far more developed than South Korea until
the early 1970s. However, the North Korean people still did not enjoy a quality of
life commensurate to the labor they had invested in recovery and
industrialization. While there had been plans to focus on improving living
standards for the North Korean people at the start of the Seven-Year Plan
(originally scheduled for 1961–1967), those plans were indefinitely shelved after
the 1961 military coup in South Korea. Critics of the continued focus on heavy
industry and national defense, including Pak Geumcheol (Park Kǔm-ch’ǒl) who
had been among the most influential officials in the DPRK, engaged in economic
populism by traveling throughout the country, delivering speeches declaring the
need to drastically improve the lives of the masses after years of sacrifice.
Because of the numerous threats facing the country, Kim Il Sung undoubtedly
perceived this as a direct challenge to his national security imperatives.
Starting in March 1967, Kim Il Sung took steps to eliminate pluralism in the
KWP. He delivered a speech entitled “On Improving Party Work and
Implementing the Decisions of the Party Conference,” in which he advocated for
enshrining chuch’e as the official ideology of North Korea and for transforming it
into a monolithic ideological system (yuil sasang ch’egye).9 Unless this system
was fully established, Kim warned, “it is not possible to ensure the unity of
ideology and will.” The establishment of the monolithic ideological system was
necessary, Kim argued, to ensure that the KWP would be turned into a “militant
organization” that would be capable of “lead[ing] the revolution and construction
with success.” He gave examples of disunity in the KWP, such as in 1956, at a
time when “Juche was not firmly established.” Kim placed great emphasis in the
speech on accepting the orders of the KWP and the leader unconditionally.10
In May 1967, Pak and his associates were purged from the KWP during the
Fifteenth Plenum of the Fourth KWP CC.11 Pak’s challenge in 1966 and 1967 in
many ways resembled that of the Soviet-Koreans and China-returned Koreans
from 1953 to 1956, though Pak did not have foreign backing. Kim took steps to
eliminate the possibility of future challenges by transforming chuch’e into a tool
for suppressing pluralism. This process was central to the establishment of the
Kim Il Sung autocracy. In December 1967, Kim delivered a speech entitled “Let Us
Embody the Revolutionary Spirit of Independence, Self-Sustenance, and Self-
Defense More Thoroughly in all Branches of State Activity” to North Korea’s
rubber-stamp legislative body, the Supreme People’s Assembly. In the speech, he
presented a ten-point platform for establishing the monolithic ideological system
in North Korea. This required, above all, absolute loyalty to Kim. It also provided
specific guidelines for applying the principles of chuch’e to all fields of
governance, including politics, economics, and national defense, and also to
national reunification, international trade, science and technology, and
international affairs. The ten points of the monolithic ideological system
eliminated pluralism in the KWP, mandated ideological purity, and made the
word of the sovereign, i.e. Kim Il Sung, absolute. This platform became the
foundation for idolization of Kim, and turned him into an absolutist, supreme
leader. Kim was thenceforth referred to by the title Suryǒng, or “Great Leader,”
who would shepherd the masses. Further turning Marxism-Leninism on its head,
according to North Korean theorists, it is the Suryǒng who is the leading force of
the working class in historical development. The cult of personality surrounding
Kim Il Sung was extended to members of his family, including to his son and also
to his ancestors. Extreme forms of veneration, including the displaying of lapel
pins bearing Kim’s image, became mandatory. Moreover, North Korean
authorities took a series of measures to eliminate foreign influences, including
banning foreign books and music.
With the introduction of the monolithic ideological system in 1967, chuch’e
ceased to become the practical set of policy applications designed to safeguard
Korean sovereignty by minimizing the influence of Moscow and Beijing on the
trajectory of political, economic, and cultural developments. It became, for all
intents and purposes, a tool of suppression and autocratic rule. North Korea
elevated chuch’e to the level of a philosophy or ideology. This was likely, at least
in part, to elevate Kim Il Sung to be on par with Mao Zedong, whose own
eponymous ideology was being discredited through the tumult of the Cultural
Revolution. North Korean propagandists began to refer to chuch’e as
“Kimilsungism.” Instrumental in the transformation of chuch’e was Kim Il Sung’s
son and future successor, Kim Jong Il. The junior Kim was aided in his efforts to
utilize chuch’e to establish dictatorial powers even Stalin would envy by a
philosophy professor at Kim Il Sung University named Hwang Jang-yop (Hwang
Chang-yǒp). For his role in this process, Hwang, who in 1997 defected to South
Korea, was known as an architect of chuch’e. In 1972, chuch’e was enshrined in
the national constitution as the official ideology of North Korea. In 1974, the ten
points of the monolithic ideological system were updated when Kim Jong Il was
internally designated successor to his father. The updated ten points established
more control over every aspect of life in North Korea. Every point was
subdivided, with each demanding absolute loyalty to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong
Il. Every member of society was expected to memorize and live by these rules.
From the late 1960s, North Korea began to assert that Kimilsungism was a
model of politics, economic development, and foreign relations to be emulated in
other former colonial and semi-colonial countries. Pyongyang began to support
so-called chuch’e study groups around the globe, constructed chuch’e farms in
developing countries, and dispatched officials to teach North Korean methods of
industrial and agricultural development. North Korea even dispatched instructors
to Ethiopia in order to teach the techniques for “mass games,” the synchronized
social-realist spectacles that in North Korea glorify the achievements of the Kim
family.12 This experiment to bring chuch’e to the world ultimately failed as the
North Korean model itself began to falter in the 1980s. Moreover, the ideas
behind chuch’e were so uniquely suited to the particularities of North Korea that
even with adaptation, it was difficult to export.
Kim Jong Il’s credentials to lead North Korea after Kim Il Sung were in part
established by portraying himself as the individual most qualified to interpret his
father’s idea. In 1982, the book On the Juche Idea was published in Kim Jong Il’s
name, establishing him as the final authority over the interpretation of the
official state ideology. The same year On the Juche Idea was published, the junior
Kim oversaw the construction of the 558-foot Juche Tower (three feet taller than
the Washington Monument) in the center of Pyongyang to celebrate his father’s
philosophical contribution to the world.
Following the death of Kim Il Sung in 1993, Kim Jong Il added to chuch’e by
incorporating, in 1996, sǒngun chǒngch’i, or military-first politics. Sǒngun,
according to Kim Jong Il, was a system of politics which “solves all problems
arising in the revolution and construction on the principle of giving priority to
the military affair and advances the overall cause of socialism relying on the
army as the pillar of the revolution.”13 The need for a military-first policy,
according to North Korean propagandists, was the collapse of the socialist camp
and the threat posed by US hegemony.
Chuch’e and the North Korean founding leader Kim Il Sung are still central
features in the everyday lives of North Koreans. In 1997, North Korea introduced
the chuch’e calendar, a variation of the Gregorian calendar starting with the date
15 April 1912, Kim’s date of birth, as year one.
Chuch’e today remains the official ideology of North Korea, though, it has
been transformed significantly since Kim Il Sung first used the term in 1955. The
idea started as an expression of an autonomous Korean subjectivity, developed
into a set of practical policy applications to minimize foreign influence on the
DPRK, and was subsequently distorted into a tool of suppression and autocratic
rule. Nonetheless, many of the very postcolonial nationalist ideas inherent to
chuch’e early in its evolution in North Korea, including the desire to minimize
the impact of larger countries on the trajectory of political, cultural, and
economic developments, continue to inform North Korean policies.

Notes
1 Kim Jong Il, “The Juche Philosophy is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy” Kulloja, 26 July 1996.
www.korea-dpr.com/lib/108.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2015.

2 “Juche Ideology,” Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Official Website of the DPR of Korea.
http://www.korea-dpr.com/juche_ideology.html. Accessed 17 June 2015.

3 See Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press,
2008).

4 Kim Il Sung, “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work” in
Yongho Choe, Peter H. Lee, et al., Sources of Korean Tradition: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth
Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), p. 422.

5 Andrei Lankov claims that the speech was “the first authentic statement to enunciate explicitly the juche
principle.” Bradley K. Martin argues that in the speech, “Kim gave full voice to his arguments for juche”
See Andrei Lankov, Crisis in Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956 (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 2004), p. 40, and Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North
Korea and the Kim Dynasty (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004), p. 174.

6 Brian R. Myers argues that discussion of the creative application of Marxism-Leninism was in fact very
common throughout the Soviet bloc, and interprets Kim’s speech as an expression of this effort to
indigenize. He argues that it was, therefore, not an expression of Korean nationalism. See Brian R. Myers,
“The Watershed that Wasn’t: Re-Evaluating Kim Il Sung’s ‘Juche Speech’ of 1955,” Acta Koreana, Vol. 9,
No. 1, January 2006: pp. 89–115.

7 Record of a conversation with the Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK, Comrade V.P. Moskovsky, about the
negotiations between the Soviet delegation, led by the USSR Council of Ministers, Chairman Kosygin,
and the governing body of the Korean Workers’ Party, which took place at the USSR Embassy in the
DPRK on 16 February 1965, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Fond 02/1,
 folder 96/101, pp. 1–26.

8 Kim Il Sung, “On Socialist Construction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the South
Korean Revolution” in On Juche in our Revolution, Vol. 1 (New York: Weekly Guardian Associates, 1977)
pp. 427–437.

9 Kim Il Sung, “On improving party work and implementing the decisions of the party conference,” in Kim
Il Sung Works (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1985), p. 21.

10 Ibid., pp. 116–119.

11 See “Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, No. 76.279,” 3 August 1967, History and Public Policy
Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116713.

12 Charles K. Armstrong, “Juche and North Korea’s Global Aspirations,” NKIDP Working Paper No. 1
(Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2009), p. 18.

13 “The Songun idea, the Songun politics viewed by the South Korean press,” National Democratic Front
South Korea Website, accessed 17 July 2015, http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/pym/Nr0311/s-2.htm.

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Record of a conversation with the Soviet Ambassador in the DPRK, Comrade V.P.
Moskovsky, about the negotiations between the Soviet delegation, led by the
USSR Council of Ministers, Chairman Kosygin, and the governing body of the
Korean Workers Party, which took place at the USSR Embassy in the DPRK
on 16 February 1965, Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia. Fond 02/1, folder 96/101, pp. 1–26.
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114980. Accessed 15 June
2015.
“Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, No. 76.279,” (1967) 3 August, History
and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Archive of the Romanian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116713. Accessed 15 June
2015.
“The Songun idea, the Songun Politics Viewed By the South Korean Press” (n.d.)
National Democratic Front South Korea Website.
http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/pym/Nr0311/s-2.htm. Accessed 17 July 2015.
Yukichi, F. (2008) An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (New York: Columbia
University Press).
16
A dynastic polity in economic stagnation
and decline

Andrei Lankov

In 1965, having visited East Asia, Joan Robinson, a Cambridge professor and
world-renowned economist, relayed her recent experiences in an article under
the telling title “Korean miracle.” Reflecting on what she had just seen, Joan
Robinson stated: “All the economic miracles of the post-war world are put in the
shade by these achievements” (Robinson, 1965: 542).
It does not sound particularly surprising nowadays, since it has long since
become a cliché to describe the recent economic history of South Korea as a
‘miracle.’ However, in 1965, Joan Robinson was talking a different Korea—the
Leninist state of the north. Her eulogy might reflect her own ideological tastes,
which were very peculiar indeed, but it did not look completely unfounded to
many contemporaries. It has been almost forgotten, but from the mid-1950s until
the mid-1960s, people who spoke of the ‘Korean miracle’ usually meant not ‘the
miracle on the Han River’ of later fame, but rather the ‘miracle on the Taedong
River.’ Indeed, North Korea’s start was impressive, but this cannot be said about
the subsequent economic performance of the country.
It is difficult to study and describe North Korean economic history. It is widely
assumed nowadays that any meaningful discourse on economics has to be based
on the large quantities of the statistical data, but such data is sadly absent when
we discuss North Korea of the 1953– 1990 period. In the beginning of this period,
the published data was incomplete and poorly collected, but then things moved
from bad to worse: the North Korean government essentially ceased to publish
any meaningful economic data in the early 1960s and soon became an
exceptionally elusive and secretive place, even if measured by the standards of
the communist bloc. The situation is made more complicated by the very nature
of a centrally planned economy, which in many regards makes the application of
standard economic indicators difficult or misleading. So, one should not be
surprised that there are significant differences between available estimates of
North Korea’s economic performance in 1960–1990. Nonetheless, these figures
still present a similar picture: a short period of quick recovery, followed by
stagnation and, perhaps, decline towards the late 1980s. Table 1 presents the
reader with some estimates, even though it is important to keep in mind that
these estimates are not particularly reliable and are useful only for reference
purposes.
In spite of some differences, most scholars agree that until a certain point,
either in the late 1960s or perhaps even in the very early 1970s, North Korea was
ahead of the South in terms of per capita GDP, even though by the mid-1970s, the
South was pulling away fast (Eberstadt, 2010).

Table 16.1 Alternative estimates of the North Korean per capita GNP

A caveat is necessary: higher per capita GDP and other economic indicators
did not necessarily mean that the average North Koreans had a more comfortable
existence than their South Korean contemporaries did. At least some diplomats
from North Korea’s allies, including the Soviet Union, presumed that North
Korean living standards were lagging behind those of the South—obviously, this
is what they believed strongly since they were ready to present such politically
dangerous conclusions to their respective governments in highly confidential
communications.
To a large extent, North Korea’s initial economic superiority was the result of a
massive colonial endowment it inherited at the time of division. The 1930s
industrialization progressed largely in areas that eventually would come under
the control of the government in Pyongyang. It has been estimated that in the
early 1940s, the northern part of Korea, in spite of being home to merely one-
third of the total population, had produced 86 percent of the entire heavy
industry output (McCune, 1950: 57). Apart from the state-of-art steel mills and
railways, North Korea inherited a significant amount of social capital and skills,
being home to a vast majority of Korea’s skilled and semi-skilled industrial
workers. While the massive US bombardment of North Korea during the Korean
War destroyed a significant part of North Korea’s industries, much of North
Korea’s human capital did survive. When this was all combined with generous
developmental aid from the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern bloc
countries, a speedy economic recovery ensued. Soviet aid was largely aimed at
promoting the industrial revival of North Korea—in line with the then orthodox
Leninist view that machine tools and steel should come first, and food and
consumer goods as a distant second.
The actual scale of Soviet, Chinese and Eastern European aid to North Korea
cannot be estimated with much precision due to manifold problem. To start with,
the aid was provided in roubles and other non-convertible currencies that cannot
to be translated into the US dollars with any precision (due to the artificial nature
of the official exchange rate and great difference in price structure). Things were
made further complicated by the existence of indirect aid. It was the governments
in communist countries that decided which goods should be exported, and in the
case of intra-bloc trade, prices were often set at artificially lower levels, thus
North Korea often received goods at prices far below the then current
international market level, while being allowed to overcharge for its products.
Nonetheless, a rough estimate of the combined Soviet and Chinese aid in 1945–
1970 put the figure at the vicinity of $1.7 billion current dollars— a very
significant amount for such a small and relatively underdeveloped country
(Bazhanova, 1993: 460).
It is possible that by the early 1960s, the spectacular post-war recovery of the
economy made North Korea’s leaders remarkably confident (read: complacent)
about the country’s economic prospects. It is important, however, to emphasize
that their expectations and promises were quite moderate by our present
standards. In an oft-cited 1962 speech, Kim Il Sung outlined the coming
prosperity of North Koreans. He promised that North Koreans would soon be
eating meat and rice, not corn gruel, and living in tile-roofed houses, not in the
thatched huts that still ‘blighted’ the North Korean landscape at that time.
This was a rather modest view of affluence—Kim Il Sung promised his subjects
a lifestyle that had been the embodiment of affordable luxury by the average
Korean peasant for centuries, no more, no less. However, much later, in 2010, the
major North Korean newspaper, Rodong sinmun, admitted that the
aforementioned moderate promise of then long-dead Generalissimo Kim Il Sung
had yet to be realized (9 January 2010).
Indeed, from the 1960s onward, things went wrong with the North Korean
economy. Within a couple of decades, it went from being a miracle to being a
basket case. To the great chagrin of the North Korean elite, this happened at the
very same time as the economy in its southern arch-rival began to surge toward
prosperity with truly unprecedented speed.
To a large extent, the sorry fate of the North Korean economy resulted from its
very nature. It was a highly centralized command economy, and the history of
the twentieth century has demonstrated well that such economic systems are
incapable of competing with market capitalist economies. The general reasons for
their failures have been studied by some of the leading lights of twentieth
century economics, such great names as Janos Kornai and Fredrick von Hayek—
and their earlier insights were eventually proven right by the disintegration and
collapse of the centrally planned economies. However, in the case of North Korea,
this failure was more spectacular than the decline of centrally planned economies
in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. To a large extent, this was a result of
peculiarities of North Korea’s particular situation, as well as by some of the
decisions of the North Korean leadership. The Soviet-style command economy
includes a combination of staterun industry and collectivized (read: staterun)
agriculture. In the case of North Korea, nationalization of industry began in 1946.
While the 1946 law technically envisioned that only the property of Japanese
collaborators would be confiscated, in real life nearly all Korean entrepreneurs of
earlier era could be plausibly described as collaborators with the colonial
authorities. Thus, for all practical purposes, almost all North Korean industry
became state property by the end of 1946. Small workshops, retail markets, and
individual handicraftsmen were allowed to continue their trade until 1957,
whereupon, their property was also nationalized as well.1
 At the same time, from 1955, the North Korean government stepped up its
agriculture collectivization campaign, which ended in late 1957. Farmers were
herded into agricultural collectives. Technically, these collectives were considered
to be the joint property of their employees, but this was merely a legal fiction: for
all practical purposes, these huge farms were state-owned and state-managed
from the outset. While the official media reported inflated harvest figures, the
collectivization’s immediate impact was a decrease in productivity and output.2
While forced collectivization of agriculture was an almost universal feature of
socialist state building, done by nearly all Leninist regimes, North Korea was
rather unique in its intensely negative attitude toward small, individual kitchen
plots, which played such a significant role in the agricultural output of the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe. Since the mid-1970s, the maximum size of plots was
limited to 30 p’yǒng, or roughly 100 square meters—and even such size was by no
means guaranteed. This was well below the private plot size which was allowed
in nearly all other Leninist economies (Yim, 2000).
In order to attain self-sufficiency in grain production, the North Korean
government was prepared to make significant investments in agriculture. As a
result, they created a system that indeed provided enough grain to meet the basic
physiological needs of every North Korean, even though this system heavily
relied on direct and indirect subsidies from the Soviet Union and other
communist countries (this fact was not widely understood at the time). In order
to produce the amount of grain required, the North Korean agricultural system
had to be unusually capital intensive for such a poor country. It heavily relied on
chemical fertilizer and also on irrigation systems, which were themselves
dependent on electricity-driven pumps—hence the system required a substantial
amount of electricity. Since spare parts for the power plants and raw materials
for fertilizer production came from overseas at subsidized ‘friendship prices,’ this
system was vulnerable to external shocks.
Amid this charge to collectivize the countryside, North Korea’s industrial
policy continued to follow Stalinist prototypes: emphasizing heavy industry at
the expense of everything else. In the Soviet Union of the time, this model came
under sustained attack and was partially revised soon after Stalin’s death in 1953.
Around the same time, certain factions in the North Korean leadership also
attempted to change their country’s course and make its economy more
consumer-oriented. Pak Ch’ang-ok, a head of the State Planning Committee (a
former Soviet Korean) advocated in 1954 and 1955 that the government should
take a new course and focus on consumer goods and agriculture. However,
though Pak was supported by some elements in the leadership, Kim Il Sung and
his ex-guerrilla comrades managed to win the ensuing factional struggle.3 Thus,
Kim and his comrades came to dominate economic policy making until the last of
them—Kim himself—died in 1994.
Being indoctrinated in the Soviet-style Leninism, the ex-guerrillas obviously
believed that heavy industry was the foundation of all economic success. They
also saw significant industrial inheritance from the colonial era as the major asset
the country had and they wanted to make the most of it. Their intense
nationalism, as well as their deep (if hidden) mistrust of the Soviet Union and
China, may have played a role as well. They hoped that speedy development of
heavy industry would make them more independent from Moscow and Beijing
when it came to making political decisions—including the possible decision to
intervene by force into a future South Korean internal crisis and thus finally
unify the country. This is why their policy implied that heavy industry should be
as independent from the outside influences as possible. This approach was
expressed by Kim Il Sung himself, who in 1965 said: “Our Party’s line in regard to
the building of heavy industry was to create our own base of heavy industry
which would be equipped with new technology and would develop relying
mainly on domestic natural resources and sources of raw material” (Kim Il Sung,
1976: 219).
Indeed, the possibility of another war was a major concern of the North
Korean elite at this time. It is arguable as to whether their military preparations
were primarily defensive or offensive in nature. However, it is clear that Kim Il
Sung and his advisers were prepared to dedicate an unusually large share of their
economic resources to military. As Noland and Haggard noticed, “By standard
statistical measures, […] North Korea is the world’s most militarized society”
(Haggard and Noland, 2007: 5).
The militarization became especially apparent after 1966, when the Second
Party Conference officially declared a line of “simultaneous development” of the
military power and civilian economy. This policy change, which actually became
obvious few years earlier in 1962 and 1963, probably reflected Kim Il Sung’s
revitalized hopes for a communist revolution erupting in South Korea—an
opportunity not to be missed. The growing influence and popularity of the
communist movement in Asia, as well as the success of Vietnamese guerrillas
influenced Pyongyang strategic thinking as well.4 Their hopes proved to be
unrealistic, and excessive militarization became a great and ever-increasing
burden for the country’s economy.5 According to official North Korean budget
reports, the share of military spending in the state budget increased from 7.5
percent in 1964 to an astonishing 32.4 percent in 1968 (Eberstadt, 2007: 139). These
figures, like all North Korean official statistics, have to be taken with a generous
measure of scepticism, but the visibly dramatic build-up of military forces clearly
confirms the same trend. By the mid-1980s, some 6 percent of all North Koreans
were in the military—a share roughly equal to that of the USA in 1943.6
Apart from the intense military spending, the government also pursued a
number of expensive prestige projects that created additional pressure on the
economy. One should mention large-scale (and hugely expensive) construction
projects in Pyongyang that were undertaken almost exclusively for propaganda
purposes—the aim was to make the capital into a showcase of “Juche socialism.”
These construction projects culminated around 1980 and produced the
Pyongyang we know today: a city of broad streets, which are almost devoid of
car traffic, a city of high-rise buildings where the inhabitants of higher floors can
get water a few hours a day at most, a city of mammoth, sometimes impressive,
but usually kitschy political monuments.
Of course, the prestige projects were not limited to Pyongyang alone. In the
early 1980s, simultaneously with the large facelift of Pyongyang, the North
Korean government undertook a massive project on the Yellow Sea, where a
massive barrage was built to reclaim land and control the floods of the Taedong
River. As officially claimed by the North Korean media, the barrage costs
approximated $400 million. As usual, the figure should be taken with some
caution: it seems to be based on the grossly unrealistic official exchange rate.
However, the size of the mobilized workforce leaves little doubt about the scale of
this grandiose project: some 30,000 people were sent to Nampo to complete the
barrage.7
Another example of expensive prestige-boosting activities was the support
given to the overseas Juche study movement in the 1970s, when for a brief while
North Korean diplomats and ideologues hoped to make this peculiar North
Korean mix of nationalism and Leninism into one of the Third World’s leading
ideologies. The large sums that were spent on such activities clearly did the North
Korean economy no good, while also producing little in the way of actual
diplomatic results.
The Sino-Soviet split was another factor that aggravated North Korea’s
economic decline. The split surfaced around 1960, and soon afterwards, North
Korea made a fateful decision to distance itself from the Soviet Union, which for
some 15 years had been its major sponsor. On the one hand, the dramatic
deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations provided Kim Il Sung and his government
with a great opportunity: he was able to assert his country’s autonomy vis-à-vis
the two great communist powers—the overbearing control of which Kim Il Sung
and his deeply nationalist entourage had only ever accepted reluctantly. For a
few years in the early 1960s, North Korea chose to side with China and was
suspicious about the USSR. In 1963 a lengthy editorial in the Rodong sinmun
openly criticized the “socialist division of labour,” Khrushchev’s favourite idea, as
a grave threat to the economic independence of the ‘fraternal countries.’
Predictably, North Korea did not participate in the assorted joint economic
projects, which had become common in the communist bloc since the mid-1960s,
and never joined COMECON, an intra-government body which was created to
coordinate such projects (Armstrong 2013: 128).
However, the period of pro-Chinese orientation was short. Pyongyang was
soon disappointed with pitiful amount of economic aid the Chinese were
prepared to provide—it was well below of what the Soviet had provided hitherto.
As a result, from 1965–1966, North Korea began its switch to a policy of
equidistance between Moscow and Beijing, which continued with only minor
variation until the collapse of the Soviet Union.8
From a purely state-centred and nationalist point of view, the North Korea
made the most of the ‘complex’ international situation (a standard euphemism
the North Korean media used to hint at the quarrel between Moscow and
Beijing). North Korea was to become one of the most autonomous countries
within the socialist bloc. Compared to the other autonomous communist regimes
of the era—Yugoslavia and Albania, and then Romania—it was able to squeeze
developmental assistance from the great power patrons at a smaller political cost.
However, compared to the avalanche of aid that North Korea received in the
1950s, the post-1960 aid remained modest.
Thus, the North Korea’s economy began to slow down in the 1960s. Curiously,
the first reaction of the North Korean government was to cease publishing
potentially damaging statistics.
The North Korean government attempted to replace material incentives with
appeals to the ideological better nature of its subjects. To an extent, this might
have stemmed from changes simultaneously occurring in China—Kim Il Sung
was fluent in Chinese and by all accounts was an lifelong avid reader of the
Chinese press, so he might have been influenced by the Maoists’ firebrand
rhetoric as well as by Chairman Mao’s unwavering belief in the power of
persuasion and ideology. However, we should discount the importance of the
worldview of those in charge in Pyongyang. The guerrilla past of the top North
Korean decision-makers was one of hardships, danger and extreme sacrifice in
cause of national liberation, and this made them firm believers in the power of
mobilization and ideological purity premised upon ceaseless indoctrination.
The first massive ideology-driven labour mobilization campaign was the
Ch’ǒllima movement launched in 1958.9 This was to be followed by an endless
number of similar campaigns including the notorious ‘speed battles’ (‘70-day
battle,’ ‘100-day battle for’ and so on). The first of these shock-labour campaigns,
which have few if any analogues elsewhere, was launched in 1974, that is, at the
time when slowdown of North Korean economy began to be felt.10 During the
said ‘battles,’ workers were treated like soldiers on the frontline and were
expected to stay at their workplaces as long as possible, frequently even sleeping
on the premise, with days off being cancelled. The intense propaganda
campaigns, with content often being delivered straight to the workers through
specially designed vans with loudspeakers, were designed to push workers to ever
higher feats of productive labour.
Even in normal times, though, the amount of ideological indoctrination was all
but unprecedented even by the remarkably high standards of the socialist bloc.
Kim Il Sung once said that the North Korean worker should spend eight hours
working, eight hours studying and eight hours resting (Kim Il Sung, 1988: 452).
This might sound rather edifying, but we should not forget that Marshal Kim in
this case was not talking about the study of classical philosophy, art or even
foreign languages. Rather the word ‘study’ in this context was supposed to mean
that the average North Korean worker should spend eight hours of her/his day
attending ideological indoctrination sessions or reading official propaganda.
Probably, the stated ideal was never met, but the average North Korean still
had to spend an astonishing amount of time attending various indoctrination and
political studies sessions. In the 1980s, after the government had decided to
reduce the time allocated to the political studies, every North Korean employee
was still expected to attend three such sessions a week, each session lasting some
two hours (of course, it was done after the end of the official work day). On top
of that, every morning he or she was exposed to short indoctrination sessions
where the attendees were required to listen to the articles from the official media
being read aloud for some 15 minutes. While these efforts were largely aimed at
ensuring the docility of the populace, the authorities also believed that heavy
indoctrination would produce economic benefits, since it should make the masses
work harder and better, while demanding little material rewards for themselves
(Lankov et al., 2012).
Since the late 1950s, endless labour mobilizations have been a recurrent feature
of North Korean economic management. For example, in autumn during
harvesting and in spring during rice planting, the state mobilized and sent to the
fields pretty much all urban workers who were engaged in what the state deemed
to be ‘non-essential’ industrial activities (like the production of consumer goods)
as well as middle and high school students. Even housewives were not excepted
from such duties: every ward was told how many women it was to dispatch to
the countryside for unpaid agricultural work. It was difficult or even impossible
to avoid such mobilizations, and they remained an important part of North
Korean daily life until recently. Mobilized workforce received their regular
salaries and rations issued by their permanent employees, but got no additional
payments for physically demanding and sometimes dangerous work.
In some cases, large-scale construction projects were also done with large-scale
mobilization of ‘non-essential’ workers. In the late 1950s, and again in the late
1970s, extensive construction campaigns in Pyongyang led the authorities to close
the city’s universities so that students could be mobilized in the renovation of the
city—as a former students of Kim Il Sung University recalled while talking to me,
“in 1958 we studied, perhaps, for merely two months, and spent the rest at the
constructions site.”
While this system was adept at increasing ideological cohesion, economy wise
it did not work so well. Indeed, these efforts largely failed to revive North Korea’s
slowly worsening economic fortunes.
Partially driven by their own ideological inclinations and partially reacting to
the economic slowdown, from the late 1950s the North Korean government came
to increasingly rely on rationing and distribution when it came to meeting the
demands of the country’s population. All command economies gravitated
towards rationing to some extent, but in North Korea, this trend was taken to the
extremes, and by the early 1970s, North Korea arguably had the most
comprehensive and elaborate rationing system in the entire Soviet bloc (with the
probable exception of Albania).
Rationing was first introduced by the North Korean authorities in 1946.
Initially it was only the employees of the country’s state-owned enterprises who
were eligible for subsidized food rations. At this early stage, access to such
rations was actually a privilege, allowing the lucky minority the right to cheaper
food and other consumer goods. However, in 1957, grain and cereal products
were subject to universal and mandatory rationing. Thus, the private sale of grain
was criminalized: cereals could not be sold and bought. All cereal output of
staterun farms was first harvested by workers of the staterun ‘collective farms,’
who were then allotted their own rations. The remainder was dispatched to
staterun granaries for the eventual distribution in towns and cities, as well as
among the military.
Grain-rationing norms were universal nationwide: 800-or 900-gram rations
were issued to the workers who were doing hard manual labour, 700 grams was a
standard ration for other employees, while high school students received 500
grams, and so on. The lowest allowance, merely 100 grams, was reserved for the
infants. The rice rations were paid every fifteenth day. On a designated day, a
family representative, usually a housewife, went to the assigned grain-
distribution centre. She produced the ID and the coupons for her entire family,
then paid the token price and took home the cereals for the next two weeks. The
farmers, being employed in the state-managed cooperative farms, were also
subjected to rationing, the only difference being that their rations were issued
only once a year, soon after harvesting was complete (obviously, on assumption
that they should take responsibility for storing the grain).
Rations consisted of a mix of different grains. In the 1970s, in Pyongyang, rice
represented as much as 60 percent of the allowance; but even in those relatively
prosperous times, in more remote areas, rations consisted entirely of corn and
barley, which have fewer calories than rice and was generally seen as an inferior
subsistence food. The proportions between rice and other less valuable kinds of
grains depended largely on one’s place of residence, with Pyongyang and other
major cities being most privileged.
As time went by, both the quantity and quality of the rations decreased. In
1972 the first nationwide cuts of the ration size were introduced, being presented
as necessitated by the mounting threat of the imperialist aggression against North
Korea. In the late 1980s, more cuts were introduced, and soon, in the early 1990s,
the entire elaborate system collapsed.11
In terms of nutrition, almost all calories in the North Korean diet came from
rice and other cereals, with other foodstuff seen as secondary. Such ‘additional’
items like soy sauce, cabbage, and fish, as well as consumption goods like soap,
socks were also rationed. Such items were distributed by the local authorities,
with distribution quotas set locally, largely depending on how economically
fortunate and politically powerful the given local authority was. The shops were
superseded by a variety of direct distribution systems, each targeting different
segments of the population. Officials had their distribution systems, which
provided them with luxury items normally beyond the reach of the common
population as well as delicacies. The size and quality of these special rations
depended on the official’s position within the state and party hierarchy.12
One of more curious forms this distribution would take was the so-called
‘presents from the Great Leader’ (later, with the rise of Kim Jong Il, ‘presents
from the Dear Leader’ appeared too). Such presents were usually given to select
individuals as a sign of their special contribution to the realization of the state’s
lofty aims. In most cases, the presents were rather expensive: televisions, radio
sets, wristwatches, cooking utensils and the like. In other cases, presents were
distributed far more widely—for example, nearly all children were normally
given fresh fruits and assorted sweets as presents from the Leaders Great and
Dear on days of especial national significance.
It is noteworthy that distributed items were sold at generously subsidized
prices, essentially for free. For decades, North Koreans would pay 0.08 won per
kilo of rice, and less for a kilo of corn—while the average monthly salary in the
1970s was about 50–60 won.
Indeed, the relative marginality of money became another important feature of
the North Korean economy as it emerged in the 1960s. Nicholas Eberstadt once
noted: “[T]he medium of domestic currency was almost marginal to the operation
of the DPRK economy by that point. In this respect, the DPRK is an extreme
outlier from the modern economic experience. The only other economy to come
close would be Cambodia’s in the late 1970s, under the dark days of the Khmer
Rouge, when the Pol Pot leadership simply abolished money for a time”
(Eberstadt 2002). One cannot help but agree: indeed, money would not buy much
in Kim Il Sung’s era North Korea. Food and basic goods were strictly rationed,
while moderate luxuries were issued as a reward for labour and loyalty by the
state, free of charge—and it was almost impossible to get around the regulations
and bans.
Markets never ceased to exist in North Korea, and in 1969, Kim Il Sung himself
admitted that, for the time being at any rate, the existence of markets were a
necessary evil. But in most cases, markets only opened three days a month. There
were also long lists of items, the sale of which was prohibited in these markets—
though these lists were increasingly disregarded as time went by.13 Be that as it
may, market prices were prohibitively expensive because farmers were only able
to sell what they had grown themselves in their very small private plots. For
example, in the mid-1980s, in Pyongyang’s main market, a single chicken would
cost thirty-five won (this was equivalent to roughly half the average monthly
salary), while one apple would cost five won (roughly equivalent to two days
wages).14 Theoretically, garments, footwear and other non-food items were
banned from sale at the markets, but the ban came to be neglected by 1980—the
author remembers that in the mid-1980s at least half of the merchants in the
major Pyongyang market were trading in the non-food items.
Another notable feature of Kim Il Sung’s economic policy, as it emerged in the
1960s, was a strong emphasis on self-reliance (otherwise known as economic
autarky), both in the international economic relations and domestically. The
North Korean government made the principle of charyk kaengsaeng—which can
roughly be translated as self-reliance—into the major slogan describing its
economic policy. As a matter of fact, this slogan, Sino-Korean in origin, was
borrowed from Mao’s China verbatim (the Mandarin pronunciation of these four
characters is zili gengsheng), though few North Koreans were aware of this.15
Indeed, Mao’s experiments of the period resonated remarkably well with what
the North Korean leaders saw as an ideal model of economy.
The emphasis on autarky was not merely inspired by Chinese experiments of
the era, but also reflected the deep-rooted beliefs of the North Korean political
elite. Their ideal economic model implied that every industrial enterprise and
administrative unit would normally produce most of what it needs without
having to ask for funds and assistance from the central government. Until the late
1980s, the North Korean official media extolled the achievements of those
enterprises and regions where the self-reliance had been actualized. For example,
when workers in Pyongyang’s main granary needed a small railway locomotive
to move grain, instead of asking the central government for this piece of
transportation machinery, they allegedly produced for themselves. This is but one
of a litany of examples to be found in the North Korean media of the 1960s and
1970s.
Obviously, North Korea’s economic planners hoped that an emphasis on
regional self-sufficiency would decrease the pressure on the central government
to provide scarce industrial equipment and raw materials. It was also expected
that a conglomeration of self-sufficient regions would ultimately help to reduce
economic and hence political dependence on other countries (above all, the Soviet
Union and China). Such emphasis on self-reliance was quite popular in the
developing world of the period, and incidentally, in South Korea in the late 1960s
some opposition politicians and public intellectuals promoted similar schemes as
an alternative to Park Chung Hee’s export-oriented industrialization policy.
At the end of the day, though, North Korea’s approach proved to be
unsuccessful, and probably led to greater inefficiency and wastage, since modern
economies are necessarily premised upon division of labour and specialization.
Paradoxically, in spite of the much trumpeted self-reliance, North Korea
remained one of the most economically dependent countries of the socialist bloc.
As events of the late 1990s painfully demonstrated, it was kept afloat largely by
direct and indirect subsidies from the Soviet Union, China and other relatively
affluent socialist states. As the socialist bloc disintegrated around 1990, aid to
North Korea dried up and the North Korean economy imploded in a matter of
years.
In the early 1970s, though, there was a short period when the North Korean
government seemingly discarded the emphasis on the autarky and attempted to
use the favourable international climate at the time in order to acquire foreign
loans. It was assumed that these loans would be used to buy modern factories,
thus reviving their country’s increasingly stagnant economy. The world’s
banking institutions were prepared to loan North Korea significant sums,
partially because at the time, the communist countries were believed to be
trustworthy and reliable borrowers, but also because in the early 1970s, after the
first oil crisis, the world’s financial system was flush with petro-dollars
(Armstrong, 2013: 178).
These loans were indeed used by the North Korean government to purchase
industrial equipment and sometimes even entire factories, like, say, a watch
factory from Switzerland or large batches of mining and metal-working
equipment from Sweden. At the same time, the North Korean authorities showed
remarkably little interest in the acquisition of technical knowhow. They
obviously assumed that money should not be wasted in such way, since the
requisite technology would be independently mastered by North Korea’s own
engineers and technicians. It is debatable how North Koreans expected to be able
to pay these loans and even whether actually planned to repay this money at all.
At any rate, this investment boom proved to be short-lived. In the late 1970s,
North Korea became the first state in the socialist bloc to default on its loans. By
the late 1980s the accumulated debt to the Western private creditors was
estimated to be at some $900 million (Noland, 2000: 95).
In the mid-1970s, obviously under the pressure of default and feeling the
increasing need to acquire foreign currency, the North Korean authorities began
to engage in a number of illicit money-making activities. These included the
production and sale of drugs, the manufacture and use of counterfeit US dollars,
as well as engagement in a number of insurance fraud schemes and the abuse of
diplomatic immunity to smuggle alcohol, tobacco, and other contraband goods
like ivory and wristwatches. Contrary to what is often assumed, such illicit
activities seemingly never yielded significant income, but rather led to a large
number of high-profile diplomatic scandals that seriously damaged the country’s
image on the world stage (Noland, 2000: 95).
Apart from such illicit activities, the North Korean economic planners,
increasingly hungry for dollars, yens and francs, began to utilize a number of less
controversial schemes to earn income overseas. From the late 1970s, North Korea
de facto abandoned the state’s hitherto monopoly on foreign trade (this was a
typical feature of all planned economies of the Soviet type). Larger industrial
embassies, but also party and government agencies (like the central committee)
and even larger military units were allowed (and, indeed, encouraged) to
establish their own, autonomous foreign-currency earning enterprises. These
enterprises were given rights to export some types of resources—like coal,
medical herbs, ginseng and seafood. As just stated, these organizations enjoyed
what was at that time an unprecedented level of autonomy and managerial
freedom. They were allowed to pay commercial wages to workers engaged in the
extraction/ harvesting of resources for export, they were permitted to seek out
their own commercial partners overseas and sell their produce at the
international going rate—as long as they made required hard-currency
contribution to their agencies’ budget. As time passed, the managers of such
enterprises increasingly came to behave as if they were private entrepreneurs.
They began to pocket a significant amount of their foreign-currency earnings
(Greitens, 2014).
Another source of income was a large ethnic-Korean community in Japan. In
the mid-1950s, pro-Pyongyang activists created Ch’ongryǒn (known as Chosen
Soren in Japanese), a powerful Korean émigré organization to which most of the
émigré community initially belonged to. Facing serious discrimination in
Japanese society, ethnic Koreans were inclined to create a closely knit
organization that came to look upon Pyongyang as its political benefactor and
protector. Some 95,000 ethnic Koreans moved from Japan to North Korea in the
1960s. For the subsequent few decades, most of these people relied on monetary
remittances from their relatives in Japan (Morris-Suzuki, 2007).
Additionally, from the 1960s, more successful ethnic Koreans in Japan were
encouraged to make donations to the North Korean government’s budget. Often,
the most important donors were rewarded for their generosity by the regime: for
example, their relatives could be granted the right to reside in Pyongyang or
study in a prestigious college. Also, from the late 1970s, the government opened a
number of the hard-currency shops, where the receivers of the remittances could
shop for high-quality goods that were unavailable to the vast majority of the
North Koreans.
Since the money was usually sent illegally, it is impossible to estimate the scale
of transfers with any precision, but there is little doubt that from the early 1960s
and until the late 1980s these remittances constituted a major source of revenue
for the North Korean state. For example, in 1994 the director-general of the
Japanese Agency for Public Security and Investigation stated that Ch’ongryŏn, its
affiliated groups and individuals annually sent to North Korea between $650
million and $850 million a year. However, in 1996, Nicholas Eberstadt, having
studied the available sources, concluded that by the mid-1990s the figure was
lower, in the region of $100 million a year—even though in the 1960s and 1970s,
the amount of remittances had been significantly higher (Eberstadt, 1996). Given
that the total foreign trade volume of North Korea in the 1980s oscillated between
one and two billion dollars, a few hundred million dollars a year made very
important a contribution indeed.

In general, the history of North Korean economy in 1945–1990 can be seen as a

short period of success followed by long stagnation and then accelerating decline.
The success was, to a large extent, made possible by the large endowment the
northern part of Korea inherited from imperial Japan: prior to 1945, it was the
area which attracted a remarkable amount of investment. Nonetheless, a
significant role was also played by the new government’s ability to mobilize the
labour and resources while also attracting large-scale foreign aid.
However, the inner inefficiency of the Leninist centrally planned economy was
exacerbated by the excessive militarization (perhaps, partially unavoidable, given
the international environment and political priorities of the regime), as well as by
the ideological peculiarities of the decision-makers’ worldview. Thus, the
economy soon slowed down and slowly moved to stagnation. While the foreign
assistance allowed North Korea to stay afloat and provide the population with a
basic food supply, the country began to lag behind its major rival. The growing
gap between two Korean states was to have significant impact on the strategic
thinking in Pyongyang, essentially determining the fate of the North Korean state
in the long run. The fateful decisions of the 1950s and 1960s made the 1990s
disasters nearly unavoidable—but nobody, including the decision-makers
themselves, could foresee such an outcome.

Notes
1 The relevant North Korean laws and regulations have been studied well. For a short description, see: Kim
Hak-chun, Pukhan 50 nyŏn sa [Fifty Years of North Korean History] (Seoul: Tonga, 1995), pp. 108–110,
179–182.

2 이 주 철 , “1950년 대 북 한 농 업 협 동 화 의 곡 물 생 산 성 과 연 구 ” // 고 려 사 학 회 31, 2008.5, pp. 205–240.

3 For a review of the discussion and subsequent events, see: Andrei Lankov, Crisis in North Korea: Failure
of de-Stalinization, 1956 (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 2004). James F. Person, “We Need Help from
Outside”: The North Korean Opposition Movement of 1956 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center,
2006).

4 On the tension-building policy of the late 1960s, see: Mitchell Lerner, “Mostly Propaganda in Nature”:
Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and the Second Korean War (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson
International Center, 2010).

5 For a review of the “simultaneous development” policy, see: 한 모 니 까 , “년 대 북 한 의 경 제 · 국 방 병 진 노 선

의 채 택 과 대 남 정 책 .” 역 사 와 현 실 50, 2003.12, pp. 133–164.

6 Ibid., p. 146.

7 A typically uncritical reiteration of the Pyongyang official narrative can be found in: 정 태 웅 , “남 포 : 인
천 -남 포 뱃 길 통 해 물 자 오 가 는 서 해 갑 문 의 항 구 도 시 ” // 민 족 21 86, 2008.5, pp. 52–55.

8 On the details of this remarkable diplomatic balancing act, see: Charles Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak:
North Korea and the World, 1950–1992 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

9 See: 이 문 청 , 서 정 민 , 북 한 과 중 국 의 사 회 주 의 대 중 동 원 운 동 비 교 연 구 : 천 리 마 운 동 과 대 약 진 운 동 // 한 국
정 치 학 회 보 47(4), 2013.9, pp. 157–183.

10 A review of the ‘battles’, see: 차 문 석 , 북 한 150일 전 투 개 시 – 새 건 설 은 흙 살 림 집 뿐 ? // 통 일 한 국 27(6),

2009.6, pp. 81–83.

11 For a comprehensive overview of the PDS since its inception and until its collapse in the 1990s, see: No
 Yong-hwan and Yŏn Ha-ch’ŏng, Pukhan-ŭi chumin saenghwal pochang chŏngch’aek p’yŏngka
[Evaluation of the Welfare Policies in North Korea] (Seoul: Hankuk pokŏnsahoeyŏnkuwŏn, 1997), pp. 47–
62.

12 For the description of the special rationing system for officials, see: 서 동 익 . 인 민 이 사 는 모 습 (서 울 : 자 료
원 , Seoul: Saryowŏn1995), vol. 2, p. 212.

13 For a review of the North Korean government’s policy on markets, see: 정 형 곤 [김 병 연 , 이 석 , “북 한 의 시

장 화 현 황 과 경 제 체 제 의 변 화 전 망 ”서 울 : 대 외 경 제 정 책 연 구 원 2012, pp. 54–61.

14 Author’s own notes from his stay in Pyongyang.

15 For a brief review of the Chinese origin and Mao-era usage of the slogan, see: Lawrence R. Sullivan,
Historical dictionary of the People’s Republic of China, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), pp.
444–445.

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17
The North Korean famine

Marcus Noland

During the 1990s, North Korea experienced one of the worst famines of the
twentieth century. The disaster represented the culmination of decades of
economic mismanagement and was abetted by the country’s authoritarian
political system which allowed the government to act in a callous and
unaccountable fashion. Indeed the actions of the North Korean authorities before,
during, and after the famine, were cited by the United Nations Commission of
Inquiry on North Korean Human Rights investigation as egregious human rights
violations constituting crimes against humanity (UN 2014).
Although the worst of the famine has passed, food shortages and malnutrition
remain a chronic problem for some segments of the population. Apart from the
enormous human costs measured in deaths, splintered families, and permanently
blighted lives, the famine accelerated the breakdown of the country’s centrally
planned economy.
The failure of the state to fulfil its obligations under the existing socialist
compact necessitated entrepreneurial coping responses, often technically illegal,
by small-scale social organizations— household, enterprises, local party organs,
military units—to secure food. The associated transactions, which began as barter,
eventually were monetized and spread to a wider range of goods and services,
contributing to a grassroots marketization of the economy. North Korea’s
economic transition over the past two decades can best be understood not as a
top-down attempt by the governing authorities to marketize or improve
efficiency, but rather as bottom-up coping in the face of state failure.
 The world community responded to this tragedy with considerable generosity,
committing more than two billion dollars in food aid. The United States alone
contributed more than $600 million, equivalent to two million metric tons of
grain, and at times North Korea was the largest recipient of US aid in Asia,
despite the manifest political differences between the countries. Yet the famine
also tested public and private sector relief agencies, which were frustrated by the
North Korean government’s refusal to accept international norms and which still
struggle to implement high-quality humanitarian operations to ameliorate North
Korea’s chronic food insecurity. Today the United Nations World Food Program
effort in North Korea is woefully underfunded, reflecting donor fatigue.
These changes that the famine provoked—greater openness to the outside
world, less direct state control over the economy, and a sustained presence by
more savvy humanitarian organizations means that a trauma like the famine of
the 1990s is less likely to occur today. The North Korean populace is more
genuinely self-reliant and less prone to passively follow the government’s lead
than it was twenty years ago; the spread of information continues, the economy
is more flexible, and the outside world is more aware.
In this essay, I assess the North Korean famine, examining its context, its basic
characteristics, the competing estimates of famine deaths, the international
community’s response to this calamity, and conclude with some observations
about how the outside world should address the ongoing issue of food insecurity
in North Korea.

Historical context

Under Soviet tutelage, North Korea established a thoroughly orthodox centrally

planned economy, notable only for the rigour with which markets were
suppressed. Under the ideology of juche (or chuch’e), normally translated as “self-
reliance,” North Korea never joined the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance,
the Soviet-led grouping of planned socialist economies, and the authorities went
so far as to time their economic plans to frustrate linkages with other socialist
states. Under relatively autarkic conditions, agriculture was collectivized,
quantitative planning in production was introduced, state marketing and
distribution of grain was established, and private production and trade were
prohibited. North Korea made a fateful decision to pursue the understandable
goal of national food security through a misguided strategy of national self-
sufficiency. Natural conditions, including a high ratio of population to arable
land, short growing seasons and limited opportunities for double cropping, were
inauspicious. To compensate, a highly industrial input-intensive system of
agricultural production was developed to maximize yields, involving, for
example, the heavy application of chemical fertilizers and the extensive use of
electrically driven irrigation—both of which were dependent on imported oil
(Noland 2000).
The crisis had its origins in a multifaceted set of developments in the late-
1980s, though the precise causal relationships are unclear. In 1987, frustrated by
North Korean unwillingness to repay accumulated debts, the Soviets withdrew
support. (Despite its juche-inspired declarations of self-reliance, North Korea has
been dependent on outside assistance throughout its entire history, with first the
Soviet Union, later China, then South Korea, and most recently China again in
the role of chief benefactor.) That same year, the North Koreans initiated policy
changes in the agricultural sector, including the expansion of grain-sown areas,
transformation of crop composition in favour of high-yield items, maximization
of industrial inputs subject to availability, and the intensification of double-
cropping and dense planting. Continuous cropping led to soil depletion, and the
overuse of chemical fertilizers contributed to acidification of the soil and
eventually a reduction in yields.
Testimonies by refugees and diplomats, the emergence of a “let’s eat two meals
a day campaign,” as well as implicit evidence derived from the stature of
defecting North Korean troops, and the delayed onset of menarche uncovered in
a survey of North Korean refugees in South Korea, all indicate the emergence of
significant food insecurity by the late 1980s, at least among some socioeconomic
groups (Haggard and Noland 2007; Shin and Lee 2013).
The economy was hit by massive trade shocks beginning in 1990, as the
Eastern Bloc disintegrated. Trade with the Soviet Union had accounted for more
than half of North Korean two-way trade, including most of its fuel imports. For
reasons that remain a mystery, the North Korean leadership appears not to have
grasped the epochal nature of the changes occurring around them. Unlike
Vietnam, which suffered a similar pattern of shocks, North Korea proved
incapable of reorienting its commercial relations, and its industrial economy
imploded. Deprived of industrial inputs—most importantly imported oil, used not
only to power irrigation systems and agricultural machinery, but as the feedstock
for the production of chemical fertilizers— agricultural yields and output fell
dramatically.
As yields declined, hillsides were denuded to bring more and more marginal
land into production. This contributed to soil erosion and the silting of rivers,
canals, and most importantly, reservoirs. The result was the exacerbation of the
usual pattern of flooding associated with monsoon-type rain during the summer,
as the land simply could not carry as much water as it once had.
China initially stepped into the breach, offsetting some of the fall in trade with
the Soviet Union and emerging as North Korea’s primary supplier of imported
food, most of it reportedly on concessional terms. But in 1994 and 1995,
responding to growing internal discontent over rising grain prices caused by tight
global market conditions, China reduced its exports to North Korea in an effort to
dampen internal price increases. If there was a single proximate trigger to the
North Korean famine, this was it.1

Famine response
At this juncture the government of North Korea could have relieved emerging
shortages by relaxing the supply constraint, either by increasing exports to
finance imports or appealing for aid. (Borrowing was not an option: sovereign
defaults in the 1970s—the only communist country to do so—left it effectively
excluded from international capital markets.) Instead, it chose to further suppress
consumption, cutting rations delivered by the public distribution system (PDS),
the quantity rationing system from which urban residents, roughly two-thirds of
the country, obtained their food.
It was not until the spring of 1995, with a famine underway, that North Korea
appealed for external assistance, initially approaching Japan, its former colonial
master, whose contributions could be portrayed as a kind of reparation, then later
requesting assistance from rival South Korea, and ultimately, the United Nations
system. Floods that summer (and the following summer as well) played an
important political role insofar as they facilitated the depiction of the famine as
the product of natural disasters. The North Korean government even went so far
as to rename the unit charged with managing the aid relationships as the Flood
Damage Rehabilitation Committee. The onset of the famine preceded the floods;
the floods did not cause the famine, and indeed appear to have been a relatively
minor contributing factor (Noland, Robinson and Wang 2001).
Aid was forthcoming, but the government impeded the normal assessment,
monitoring, and evaluation functions of the relief organizations—for example,
prohibiting the use of Korean speakers and banning access and relief to certain
geographic areas, including ones suspected to be the worst affected. Critically,
with assistance ramping up, the government cut commercial grain imports, in
essence using humanitarian aid as a form of balance of payments support, and
freeing up resources for other expenditure priorities, most notably the
importation of advanced weaponry (Figure 17.1). While it is true that aid often
crowds out commercial grain imports in famines, it is important to underscore
that in the North Korean context, the outcomes depicted in Figure 1 are the
product of policy, not decentralized decision-makers responding to price signals.
Indeed, even after the economy began recovering in 1999 and overall imports
began rising, commercial food imports remained minimal (Figure 17.2). If North
Korea had simply maintained its imports, normal human demand could have
been met throughout this period (Figure 17.3). But from 1995 on, the public
distribution system did not deliver the minimum needs, even on paper, averaging
around 300 grams daily (Figure 17.4). Even at the famine’s peak, the resources
Figure 17.1 Food imports and aid, 1990–2010

Figure 17.2 Total imports and commercial food imports, 1993–2010

Figure 17.3 Scenarios of food supply and minimum human need, 1990–2004

Figure 17.4 Estimates of daily per capita PDS rations

needed to close the gap were relatively modest, only on the order of $100–$200
million dollars, or about five to twenty percent of revenues from exported goods
and services or one to two percent of contemporaneous national income (Noland
2013).2
That gap could have been closed with modest expenditure switching. Instead,
the government of North Korea did not act expeditiously: it waited years between
the emergence of a food crisis and making appeals for aid, and once the famine
was underway, it did not use the maximum of its available resources to ensure
access to adequate food.

Famine deaths controversy

The result was a famine with pronounced geographic, socioeconomic, and

demographic components (Haggard and Noland 2007: Chapter 7). The worst
affected being the young and old, those in the four provinces of the northeast,
and those deemed politically unreliable. Given the secrecy of the North Korean
regime, it is unsurprising that the timing and impact of the resulting famine are
still not well understood.
The onset of the famine is conventionally dated 1994, though there is some
argument that mortality rates were already significantly elevated in 1993. Either
date would mean that the famine was already underway when the country
experienced floods in 1995. This chronology is critical insofar as it undermines
the politically convenient depiction of the famine as a product of natural
disasters. The famine is generally acknowledged to have ended in 1998.
There have been essentially three waves of estimates of famine deaths.
Contemporaneous estimates were sometimes quite high—3.5 million or more
were provided by a variety of observers and NGOs, often with detailed
knowledge of the situation on the ground, but lacking professional training in
demography or related disciplines. One important exception was the testimony of
Hwang Jang-yop (Hwang Chang-yŏp), former member of the Standing
Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, who defected to the South in 1997.
Hwang testified repeatedly and in public3 up until his death in 2010 on the basis
of internal Party discussions and documents that “According to the Organization
Guidance Bureau official, more than 500 thousand people, including fifty
thousand party members, had starved to death in 1995. And as of mid-November
1996, almost 1 million people had already starved to death… That more than 1.5
million people died of hunger from 1995 to 1996 is an irrefutable fact. We do not
have accurate data about the situation from 1997 to 1998, but since the food
supply did not improved [sic] much, it can be deduced that at least a million
people have met their deaths every year. According to reports that Chinese press
company Xinhua claims it received from officials of the Agricultural Committee
in North Korea, a total of 2.8 million people have starved to death at last count at
the end of 1997. From this and the irrefutable fact that 1.5 million had died by the
end of 1996, we can deduce that another 1.3 million people died in 1997 to add up
to a total of 2.8 million deaths by starvation. We have consistently said that more
than 1.5 million died between 1995 and 1996 and that 1 million more probably
died every year from 1997 to 1998. We never resorted to exaggerating the
situation” (Hwang 2002). Of course, there is no way of verifying Hwang’s claims
and one can speculate on his motives. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to
dismiss his allegations out of hand.
The next generation of estimates was done by analysts with greater formal
training and more rigorous methodologies. Prominent was work done by
Courtland Robinson and colleagues, who analysed retrospective refugee
testimony collected between September 1998 and June 2000 on deaths from
selected villages in North Hamgyong (Hamgyŏng) province (Robinson et al. 1999;
Robinson et al. 2001). They concluded that between 1995 and 1997, twelve percent
of the province’s population, or 245,000 people, had died. Projected onto the
whole country (something that Robinson et al. were careful not to do), that
baseline would yield an estimate of 2.64 million excess deaths. This simple
extrapolation would be inappropriate for a variety of reasons, and as a
consequence, two million excess deaths would seem to be an absolute ceiling, and
the actual number was probably much lower (Haggard and Noland 2007).
Demographers Daniel Goodkind and Loraine West, working off the Robinson
et al. surveys, produced estimates on the range of 605,000 to 1 million deaths
(Goodkind and West 2001). In his dissertation, Lee Suk (2003), unaware of the
Goodkind-West work and using a different methodology, came up with estimates
also in the 600,000 to 1 million range. J. Stanton (2007) argued that this estimate
may have been excessively conservative insofar as death rates may have been
higher in South Hamgyong than North Hamgyong. (This argument is not
implausible: according to the latest UNICEF nutritional survey, South Hamgyong
generally scores worse than North Hamgyong—it appears that it is better to be
closer to China than to Pyongyang [UNICEF 2013]).
“Up to a million deaths” seems to have remained the academic consensus until
a series of contributions appeared in the last several years, a paper by Goodkind,
West, and Johnson (2011), one produced by South Korean government
demographers4, another by Spoorenberg and Schwekendiek (2012), and a paper
by Lee Suk (2011), all using variants on the same methodology. They take the
controversial 1993 census as a starting point, posit a model of population growth,
and then compare the projections from that exercise to data from the 2008 census.
The shortfall in the actual population numbers from the projections is then
allocated over the period 1993–2008, and from that process, one obtains estimates
of excess deaths during the famine period. A key point that comes out most
clearly in the paper by Spoorenberg and Schwekendiek, is that if one allocates
few deaths to the famine period, then by implication, one is allocating more
deaths to the post-famine period. On the basis of various assumptions, they
generate estimates ranging from 237,000 to 420,000 excess deaths. But if these
estimates are accepted, then they imply a greater human toll during the twelve
years following the famine than during the famine itself! This result comes from
some combination of the aftermath of the famine—the long-lived results of
chronic malnutrition—and the fact that the economy failed to grow over this
period, resulting in a stagnation of life expectancy. This particular result may not
be persuasive, but the paper does provide a useful service in reminding us that
while the famine may have ended in 1998, its effects continue to reverberate.
Lee (2011) is the paper that appears to be most informed by actual knowledge
of North Korea. Somewhat like Spoorenberg and Schwekendiek, Lee treats the
entire period as a “slow motion” famine occurring over the whole fifteen-year
sample period, so that his estimates of excess deaths are not directly comparable
to the earlier work (including his own) that examined to a more limited period in
the 1990s.
Unlike the other papers, Lee takes the problematic nature of the North Korean
data seriously, observing that problems of counting males (first identified by
Eberstadt and Banister [1992] as the “missing male” problem associated with
military service) creates anomalies in the apparent cohort-specific survival rates
in the two censuses. Lee’s response is to focus on females, where this distortion is
likely to be less severe. He calculates excess deaths in 1993–2008 among the
female population who were over thirty years old in 1993, and finds that deaths
were 196,307 higher than expected, or 3.8 percent. If one extrapolates this
percentage to the entire population, one generates a baseline estimate of 815,000
excess deaths. Lee produces other variants on this calculation which produce
estimates ranging from 506,000 to 1,125,000.
So where does this leave us? Well, much where we started. Excess deaths
during the famine were probably on the order of 600,000 to 1 million people, or
three to five percent of the pre-crisis population, making the North Korean
famine one of the worst of the twentieth century.

Humanitarian dilemmas
In trying to ameliorate this disaster, the humanitarian community faced a
fundamentally hostile environment (Haggard and Noland 2007). The North
Korean government would not permit normal assessment and monitoring
activities, so aid agencies were forced into adopting a second-best solution of
targeting institutions such as orphanages, schools, and hospitals, where
particularly vulnerable populations were thought to be present. But food was not
delivered directly to these institutions—it went through the PDS system where it
was comingled with other sources of supply intended for different recipients.
Initially the World Food Program (WFP) was not permitted to use Korean
speakers or employ ethnic Koreans; it was not until 2004 that the government
allowed WFP resident staff to take Korean lessons; today the use of Korean
speakers remains restricted, though not entirely prohibited. Pre-notification,
generally one week, was required for site visits; not until 2002 were two teams
allowed to visit a single province at the same time. Pre-notification is still
required, but the pre-notification period is now down to twenty-four hours. The
WFP and other relief groups have consistently been denied access to markets
where, for almost twenty years, most non-elite households have actually obtained
their food.
 In short, during the famine period and its immediate aftermath, the WFP was
restricted to using fifty non-Korean speakers to monitor 40,000 end-user
institutions of which the North Korean government never furnished a complete
list. Such conditions were imposed despite the fact that at its peak, the aid
program was targeting roughly one-third of the population.
Weak monitoring meant ample opportunity for diversion of aid away from its
intended recipients, as well as enabling discrimination in the provision of aid.
The extent of diversion depends in part on how rigorously diversion is defined,
either as aid not reaching its intended recipients, or as aid not reaching its
intended recipients on the gratis terms on which it was donated. Haggard and
Noland (2007) use several methodologies to examine the first question and
conclude that perhaps thirty percent of aid was diverted. If a more rigorous
definition of diversion is applied—the intended recipients did not receive the aid
without paying—then the figure would be vastly higher.
Concerns over the effectiveness of the aid operation were subsequently
reinforced by results obtained from refugee surveys. Haggard and Noland (2011)
report results from two surveys of refugees, one conducted in China and the
other in South Korea. In both the China-based and South Korea–based surveys,
an astonishing share of respondents, roughly half of those surveyed, revealed that
they were unaware of the longstanding, large-scale program (Haggard and
Noland 2011: Table 3.1). Moreover, among respondents who indicated knowledge
of the effort, thirty-three percent of the South Korea survey respondents and only
four percent of the China survey respondents believed that they had been
recipients. Looking only at urban residents (those on the agricultural cooperatives
would have been less likely to receive aid), only three percent in the China
survey and fourteen percent of the later South Korea survey reported being
recipients.
The refugees overwhelmingly believed that the aid went primarily to the
military (Haggard and Noland 2011: Table 3.2). The question and possible
responses were posed slightly differently in the two surveys, but the results are
consistent. When asked who received food aid, and allowing multiple responses,
eighty-nine percent of the refugees in China who were aware of the program
believed that it went to the military and twenty-seven percent said that it went to
government officials; less than three percent said it went to common citizens or
others. When asked in the South Korea survey who the primary recipient of aid
was—not allowing multiple responses— sixty-seven percent said the military,
twenty-seven percent said high-level government or party officials, two percent
said local government or party officials, and two percent said the general public.
Similar results were obtained in a subsequent survey of 500 refugees in South
Korea conducted by the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human
Rights. Seventy-eight percent of the respondents reported not receiving
international food aid while in North Korea. However, the more survey reports
something even more astonishing: “Of 106 respondents who did receive such aid,
29 said they returned whole or part of the aid,” apparently after international
monitors had departed.5
When asked where the aid went, few of the respondents in any of these
surveys thought that the common people had benefitted; large majorities thought
that the aid went to the military or other connected groups. According to the
Chosun Ilbo, “some 73.6 percent believed that food aid went to the military,
followed by party leaders (69 percent), government agencies (48.8 percent) and
the privileged (38.8 percent). Only 2 percent believed it went to vulnerable
children. Multiple answers were allowed.”
The issue of diversion is a complex one: if aid is diverted, it does not disappear
into the ether. Obviously, it would be best if the aid reached its targeted
beneficiaries. Yet in the North Korean case, the diversion of aid had an oddly
positive side-effect, encouraging the development of markets. During a famine,
aid is extremely valuable, and there is an enormous incentive to sell it in the
market—if such markets exist. In North Korea, however, markets were
thoroughly suppressed under the communist system. Ironically, the inflow of aid
acted as a lubricant, encouraging the development of markets, a desirable
development in the long run.
The lack of monitoring and apparent lack of understanding of the North
Korean system by the aid agencies may have also enabled the authorities to
discriminate in the provision of aid. North Korea maintains a classification
system called the sŏngbun system of fifty-two categories based on family
background and perceived political loyalty (Collins 2012). There are three broad
categories: the core, wavering, and hostile classes. The sŏngbun system strongly
influences educational opportunities, job assignments, and location of residence.
It appears to have also played a role in relief activities.
Between 1998 and 2000 a number of private NGOs (nongovernmental
organization) terminated operations in North Korea due to the inability to
operate effectively as a result of North Korean government interference (Noland
2000; Schloms 2003). In explaining their withdrawal Medicins Sans Frontieres
(MSF) (1998), then the largest private relief operation in the DPRK, made specific
allegations with regard to North Korean practices:

That they were denied access to the so-called 9/27 camps that they had
learned of via children’s medical records and discreet comments by local
staff, and where they believed patients—particularly starving, orphaned
children needing assistance were being held, and
MSF specifically claimed that the North Korean government had denied
access to sick and malnourished children and channelled relief supplies to
the children of the politically well-connected.

Other NGOs made similar claims.

More broadly, aid supplies flow through the PDS system, which is used as a
mechanism of social control. Clearly some of the worst-affected areas—mainly in
the northeast of the country—were not prioritized in terms of PDS shipments, and
these areas also happened to be locations where the share of people classified as
wavering and hostile is believed to be particularly high due to a history of forced
internal deportations.
And then, of course, there is the extensive penal system for which I know of no
aid shipments ever being delivered.

Conclusion

The famine and its aftermath are inseparable from the nature of the political
regime. Only a regime that systematically restricts all human, civil, and political
rights, preventing the spread of information, debate over policy, and criticism of
public officials—and hence is completely insulated from the demands of the
populace—could have acted with such culpable slowness and maintained such
disastrous policies in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe. Yet reoccurrence of
a famine on the scale of the one that occurred during the 1990s is unlikely: North
Korea’s economy is more flexible than it was two decades ago, and the North
Korean public is unlikely to react to adverse development with the same degree
of passivity that some exhibited in the 1990s.
Nevertheless, parts of the North Korean population remain chronically food
insecure. The ultimate solution to North Korea’s food problems is to be found not
in humanitarian aid or even in development assistance, but in economic reform
and opening and the revitalization of the industrial economy that would allow
North Korea to earn foreign exchange and finance food imports—just as its
neighbours China, South Korea, and Japan do. That development, in turn, hinges
on North Korea’s willingness to embrace economic reform, something that it has
until now eschewed.
Until that occurs, the outside world has little ethical choice other than to
engage. But that engagement can be done more effectively than it is now. One of
the positive things done by the United States government has been to insist that a
large share of its contribution should be routed through ports in the extreme
northeast of the country where problems are the worst: even if the aid is stolen
and sold in the markets, it will still be circulating in the region where
malnutrition is most severe. Under such tenuous conditions, providing aid in the
form of poor people’s food— such as barley or millet rather than rice, the
preferred staple of the elite—is another way of trying to maintain the
humanitarian effectiveness of the program. Similarly, providing aid in cooked
form would make it less susceptible to hoarding and diversion. However, a policy
of providing aid in the form of barley or millet rather than rice or corn would
encounter resistance in both Washington and Seoul, where the local political
economy of aid reflects the parochial interests of domestic political lobbies,
encouraging the inefficient provision of inappropriate products (i.e. shipping
American-grown grain on United States-flagged ships). In short, the problems are
not located solely in Pyongyang.
The UN agencies should be encouraged to adopt a less supine posture with
respect to the issues of discrimination in the provision of relief. To my
knowledge, the UN specialized agencies have never even mentioned the songbun
system in their reports, much less proactively addressed how their practices may
interact with this system.
Donors should insist on improved monitoring and assessment. Specifically
follow-up evaluations of targeted populations should be mandatory: if we cannot
observe measurable improvements, then clearly there are problems with the
implementation of the relief policy.
In short, we should provide assistance. But we should be clear-eyed about the
terms of that engagement and seek to provide aid in ways consistent with our
values and our obligations under international law.

Glossary
Juche: ideology of national self-reliance
Public Distribution System (PDS): system of monthly quantity rationing
through which urban residents traditionally obtained their consumer goods,
including food.
Excess deaths: premature deaths, or ones that occur before the average life
expectancy for a person of a particular demographic group.
Songbun system: socio-political classification system in which all citizens are
placed into one of fifty-two categories based largely on family origin.

Notes
1 This would not be the last time that China would respond to rising internal discontent over food prices by
embargoing grain exports. It did the same thing in 2009 (Haggard and Noland 2009).

2 For these calculations, famine peak years are considered 1996–1998. Annual commodity prices (in
constant 2005 USD) for rice and maize between 1996–1998 taken from World Bank Global Economic
Monitor (GEM) figures. North Korea grain deficit estimates taken from FAO/WFP. GDP figures 1996–
1998 taken from UN National Accounts Main Aggregates Database. Licit merchandise export figures
taken from author estimates.
 3 See, for example, audio clip from point 1:12 of Center for Strategic and International Studies (2010) ‘Korea
Platform Special Session with Mr. Hwang Jang-yop’ 31 March. Available from
http://csis.org/event/korea-platform-special-session-mr-hwang-jang-yop. Accessed 22 July 2014.

4 For an overview, see Noland, M. (2011) ‘Yet Another Estimate of Famine Deaths’. North Korea: Witness to
Transformation. 19 October. Available from http://blogs.piie.com/nk/?p=3202. Accessed 22 July 2014.

5 For survey result summary, see ‘78% of N. Korean Defectors Never Saw Foreign Food Aid’ (2011), Chosun
Ilbo. 6 April. Available from
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/04/06/2011040600985.html. Accessed 22 July 2014.

References

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Accessed 22 July 2014.
Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2010). ‘Korea Platform Special
Session with Mr. Hwang Jang-yop.’ 31 March. [Audio File]. Available from
http://csis.org/event/korea-platform-special-session-mr-hwang-jang-yop.
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Collins, R. (2012). Marked for Life: Songbun North Korea’s Social Classification
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Eberstadt, N. and Banister, J. (1992). The Population of North Korea. Berkeley,
CA: Institute of East Asian Studies.
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http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111030. Accessed 22 July 2014.
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into North Korea. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute of International
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Lee, S. (2003). Food Shortages and Economic Institutions in the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea. [Ph.D diss.]. Department of Economics, University
of Warwick. Coventry, UK.
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Development Institute. Available from
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18
North Korea under Kim Jong II

Adrian Buzo

Introduction
Kim Jong Il became the supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK) upon the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, in July 1994, and ruled
for seventeen years until he died on 17 December 2011 at the age of seventy.
While the influence of Kim Il Sung in shaping the DPRK is self-evident, the role
played by the younger Kim remains more obscure. In what ways, then, was the
DPRK in 2011 different from the DPRK in 1994, how might we usefully assess
these differences, and what role did Kim Jong Il play in bringing them about?
Current assessments of Kim Jong Il are deeply coloured by a number of factors,
ranging from the trivialities of media imagery to the profoundly serious
dimensions of both the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program and its human rights
record. The non-Korean media has been especially influential in shaping
perceptions, such that upon his death, the outside world wasted little time in
passing harsh judgement on Kim, generally acknowledging his skilful
manoeuvring toward despised ends, but mainly highlighting his admittedly
singular private life and habits, liberally bestowing upon him the epithets of
‘tyrant’ and ‘despot’, and also highlighting what were presented as the
consequence of all this folly – an impoverished, starving, isolated, brutalised,
failing state. And yet, now we are well into the reign of his son and chosen
successor, Kim Jong Un, and the DPRK’s nuclear weapons and payload delivery
programs are continuing to make steady progress, seemingly impervious to
outside pressure, while the long-predicted collapse of the economy has not
occurred. Nor has the recurrence of famine-like conditions, although the food
situation remains serious.
Given Pyongyang’s basic goals of survival and control of its destiny, such
achievements present as indices of success – paradoxical though this may seem to
many. The regime that Kim Jong Il has bequeathed to his son still believes it is
able to pursue its quixotic chosen destiny, albeit with what looks like
substantially reduced effectiveness in some areas, and while this state of affairs is
of course subject to abrupt and unforeseen change, most commentators continue
to base predictions of such change – if not the outright demise of the DPRK state
– on extrapolations which often seem little removed from hunches. This present
outcome clearly warrants a much more careful assessment of Kim Jong Il than
many currently seem prepared to offer.
What were Kim Jong Il’s goals? Given the opaque nature of formal
government rhetoric, and the clearly self-serving, subtly dissembling content of
Kim’s recorded conversations with outsiders, we are very much reliant on both
historical perspective and on the accumulated pattern of state behaviour over
time. We are certainly safe, though, in accepting the dominant regime slogan
‘Let’s live in our own way’ as a core goal, to be defended on the level of, say,
‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. For those in the DPRK who still either
count themselves as true believers, or else feel they have no other option, this
remains the polestar. The definition of ‘our own way’, means, of course, the ‘own
way’ determined by the Kimist elite with next to no input from outside. It used to
mean active mobilisation of the entire resources of the state to achieve Korean
reunification on the North’s terms, but it has increasingly come to mean survival
of the way of life they have ended up with, and control of their own destiny in
order to keep it that way. Rhetoric on the theme of creating a strong, modern
state abounds, but the goal of building a modern socialist Korean state has faded
into the past.
To what issues, then, should we look in order to assess Kim Jong Il’s
leadership? Under Kim the country made substantial progress toward the
acquisition of nuclear weapons, it suffered serious and endemic food shortages,
including the catastrophic 1994–96 Arduous March famine, and it accepted
significant private market activities as part of its consumer economy. These
constituted what we might term Kim’s ‘three crises’, and an assessment of his
handling of them, based on current outcomes, will obviously tell us much about
his effectiveness as a leader.1

Background

At the outset, it is important to remind ourselves of some key aspects of Kim Jong
Il’s background, route to power and personality. His formative influences were
not nearly as dramatic as his father’s, who moulded the DPRK in accordance
with a diverse array of early experiences, including exposure to Japanese
militarism, a decade of guerrilla warfare, and training as part of the Soviet Red
Army during World War Two. By contrast, the younger Kim, who was born in
the Soviet Union in 1941 and was eight years old at the outbreak of the Korean
War in 1950, grew to maturity during what were tumultuous years for the
Workers’ Party of Korea, but as a princeling he was cocooned from such events.
After graduating from Kim Il Sung University in 1964, at age 22 he entered the
Party organisation – by now thoroughly dominated by his father – where for the
next thirty years, his major field of activity was agitprop, with a focus on the
subordination of art and culture to Kimist ideology.2 In this capacity he secured
his position as his father’s successor, further strengthening the foundations of
Kimist rule through Maoist-like mass mobilization campaigns during the 1970s,
most notably the Three Revolutions Team Movement, an insurgency movement
whose activities further hobbled a faltering economy and effectively completed
the destruction of the Workers’ Party of Korea as a functioning collective. Kim
then began assuming public positions commensurate with his behind-the-scenes
power, first emerging at the apex of the Workers’ Party of Korea at the Sixth
Party Conference in 1980. Election to the Supreme People’s Assembly followed in
1982, and he became Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army in 1992.
Kim Jong Il came to power as a genius-leader surrounded by the cult of
personality established by his father and, of course, derived from Josef Stalin, the
great avatar of this form of leadership. Observers have speculated to what extent
Kim Jong Il ruled by terror, stealth, consultation or committee, but no convincing
evidence exists to contradict the widely prevailing belief that he chose to rule
with few internal political constraints in determining policy. From time to time,
people take issue with what they perceive to be a misleading, monolithic
perception of government in the DPRK, and posit the existence of factions and
sectional interest groups, ranging from ‘hard line’ to ‘moderate’, with Kim
somehow required to balance interests and ‘tilt’ between these entities. However,
this is just a posit, and a dubious one at that, because we lack hard evidence for
the belief that policy formulation and execution is accompanied by any
significant degree of internal policy debate, and even the high-level defector
Hwang Jang Yop did not provide persuasive evidence to the contrary. High-
ranking officials have occasionally been purged, but their transgressions appear
to have been individual, taking place in the context of court politics, rather than
as the result of substantive views they may have expressed on ideological or
policy issues. Meanwhile when it came to making basic strategic decisions,
whatever problems and constraints Kim Jong Il suffered in their aftermath, the
evidence drawn from protracted observation of the DPRK’s political culture is
that he faced few constraints; if he chose to consult, or even defer, then well and
good, but he was under no pressure to do so, as his was a personal autocracy. As
such, it was Kim’s leadership which shaped his country’s response to the various
challenges it faced, not those challenges which shaped Kim’s leadership.
And what of Kim Jong Il the man? The international media dined out for years
on lurid accounts of his lifestyle – debauchery, sadism, prodigious alcohol
consumption, gourmandism, jaw-dropping extravagance. These images were
usually attached to political behaviour which favoured descriptions such as
‘brutal’, ‘ruthless’, ‘erratic’ or ‘capricious’, producing a total effect that prompted
strings of seasoned foreign politicians, envoys and negotiators to feel obliged to
register surprise when they encountered Kim’s evenness, his strong grasp of state
affairs, detailed knowledge of the outside world and adroit negotiating skills. In
her memoirs, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright noted that during
her missile negotiations with Kim in 2000 he was ‘an intelligent man who knew
what he wanted. He was isolated, not uniformed’ (2003: 467). The comment was
amplified by one of her staff members, who found him ‘smart and a quick
problem-solver … very different from the way he was known to the outside
world … he knew a lot more than most leaders would – and he was a conceptual
thinker’.3 Chris Patten, EU Commissioner for External Relations, remarked
several months later, ‘He was very articulate, spoke without notes. The talks were
surprisingly open and free-flowing.’4 ROK, Russian and Japanese officials have
been quoted in a similar vein. This suggests, then, that Kim’s lifestyle is largely
irrelevant in the broader scheme of things, since no credible observer has ever
advanced the case that his private pursuits impacted on either his decision-
making ability or the coherence of state policy.
A further revelation to Kim’s interlocutors was his often detailed knowledge of
the world outside North Korea, albeit acquired second-hand and captive to an
unusual world view. Somehow, people assumed that the quality of this
knowledge implied a potential for engagement, but Kim’s record shows that he
did not see anything in the international order that North Korea might wish to
attach itself to. Like all leaders, in his home environment he naturally acquired
his share of distortions and lacunae, his probably being severer than most, and
these, combined with Kimist political tradition and inheritance caused him to
draw rather different conclusions to those that many somehow expected of him,
with the result that the DPRK remained in self-imposed isolation. Nevertheless,
within the Kimist world view these conclusions were far from invalid: for Kim
the greater the knowledge, the greater the threat perception, and the more he felt
he had to fear as he pursued the basic set of policies he had inherited for the
preservation of the Kimist state.
A further significant side to Kim Jong Il was his deep absorption in the
performing arts North Korean style, especially cinema, and this is often cited by
those assembling a comic or disparaging portrait of Kim. We could speculate that
his obvious intelligence, his enclosed world, and his status as a princeling might
have influenced him to build up a rich, extensive alternative universe in which he
was in charge of more than what his father decided he would be in charge of, and
that the resources available to him allowed him to indulge himself to a rather
spectacular degree. Given the stifling pressures of life, first as a princeling and
then as designated heir and successor, perhaps these pursuits were a judicious
choice. And given the hallmarks and conventions of this genre, it is no wonder
that he seems to have masterminded the production of an oeuvre of appalling,
disturbing spectacles. But again, there are no grounds for assuming that these
pursuits in some way indicated an unbalanced, eccentric or frivolous disposition.
 In sum, then, as we turn from what Kim Jong Il was to what he did, we find
that he was rigorously trained and initiated into a well-defined career path
within a well-defined system, which, furthermore, he was profoundly accepting
of. He appears to have approached business in a well-informed, self-disciplined,
consistent manner, seeking to preserve as much as he could of the system he had
played such a key role in shaping. Even the liberal resort to state terror and the
scale of human rights abuse under his watch did not appear to issue from any
streak of psychopathy, as was the case with Stalin. Rather, such callousness was
part – sadly, an accepted, integral part – of the broader Kimist system.

The DPRK’s nuclear weapons program

The first issue in any examination of Kim Jong Il’s performance must, of course,
be the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program. This is because it was not only the
DPRK’s primary chosen means of state survival, but also the matter of greatest
concern to the international community. The DPRK’s nuclear weapons program
began in earnest toward the end of the 1970s as hopes of waging successful
conventional warfare against the South faded. By the late 1980s it faced concerted
international pressure to ratify its 1985 accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), sign a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy
Agreement (IAEA) and submit to inspections. In the early 1990s, suspicions about
DPRK intentions grew, culminating in a major standoff with the United States in
July 1994, brought about by the DPRK’s unsanctioned removal of plutonium rods
from its (Yŏngbyŏn) reactor.
By the early 1990s, the DPRK of course faced a heavily degraded strategic and
economic situation. The end of the Cold War had deprived Pyongyang of the
protection of its mutual defence treaty with the Soviet Union, and had greatly
expanded the global possibilities of US military power and deployment. The
demands of basic reunification strategy, domestic political mobilisation, and the
singular Kimist world view had historically constituted powerful drivers for the
direction of extraordinary levels of hostility and abuse toward the US, and we
have no reason to doubt the DPRK’s sincerity in this. Thus, the DPRK’s US-
centred threat perception, elevated at the best of times, became further
pronounced in this, the worst of times. The equation was simple: poor and
rapidly losing further economic ground, almost friendless with the partial
exception of China, and with nothing but the anathematised option of systemic
reform on the table, the achievement of a credible nuclear threat presented the
best, and some would have argued the only, option for preserving the Kimist
system.
Debate on the nature of this threat tends to begin at this point and focuses on
whether the DPRK can or cannot be persuaded by the US and other adversaries
to abandon its weapons program and embrace any alternative means of
guaranteeing state survival. This can be a rather complex debate at times, beset in
the first place by almost total ignorance of the true dimensions of the DPRK
weapons program, and extremely limited perceptions of DPRK mindset, goals
and strategy. This in turn fuels a rich debate on the tactics, strategies and goals of
all parties, which is largely beyond our present scope. However, what may be
said with confidence after observing the record of the past twenty years is that
Pyongyang has not lurched from crisis to crisis, tactic to tactic, but has followed a
consistent strategy that links nuclear weapons capability to the very identity of
the Kimist state.
In the process, the DPRK has carefully laid the groundwork for the successful
pursuit of its chosen path by thinking through likely consequences. The first
consequence was obviously the economic impact of pursuing a series of major,
expensive, technologically advanced projects as rapidly as possible, and with
minimal outside interference. Personnel needed to be trained, facilities created,
sufficient amounts of plutonium needed to be produced and weaponized, and a
means of delivery developed, and all of this would have to rest on a very fragile
economic base. The result was the continuing absolute priority accorded to the
country’s proportionally huge military economy, which meant that no serious
attempt could be made to resurrect the collapsed nonmilitary economy;
somehow, figures convinced the leadership that the country could do this.5 A
collateral consequence was that the DPRK quickly proceeded to utilize the threat
potential of its program in order to extract economic resources from an anxious
international community, but it makes no sense to regard this as a major
objective of the program per se. One does not make commitments on this scale
for such returns, nor, for that matter, for the purpose of some nebulous form of
‘leverage’ in negotiations, or indeed for any other merely tactical objective.
The second strategic consequence was that the DPRK would have to live in an
almost permanent state of conflict with a wide range of international actors over
this matter, and this would involve withstanding an array of pressures.
Diplomatically, only minimal achievement towards weaponisation could be
achieved before precipitating confrontation with the IAEA. Moreover, as soon as
anything like the true dimensions of the progress the DPRK had achieved in its
nuclear weapons program became open knowledge, the DPRK would invite a
broad range of international sanctions and forfeit a great deal of leverage in other
areas of negotiation, especially with the Republic of Korea (ROK). In short, the
dividend for the Kimists of such doomsday weaponry was survival on their own
terms, while the price was that they could go no further than limited, tactical
engagement with the international community and had to accept forms of
pressure such as sanctions along the way. Since the DPRK was already alienated
from the international order, almost as an article of faith, this did not present as a
major challenge, but it helps us to account for the DPRK’s unflinching set against
reform, since it assessed any meaningful reform process as compromising their
nuclear program and thus conceding leverage to outside forces.
The DPRK received an early dividend in November 1994 when the Yongbyon
crisis was resolved through the Geneva Framework Agreement (GFA) with the
US, and essentially it got to keep the unknown amount of plutonium it had
already extracted and agreed to a dual track, whereby it would come back under
the IAEA inspection regime in return for receiving major quantities of heavy fuel
oil and two light-water nuclear reactors, ostensibly to compensate for lost power
generation capacity. It is idle to spend time apportioning precise measures of
blame for the rather predictable demise a decade later of a complex, flawed
agreement, but the GFA did at least meet the short-term needs of the US, which
had overreached itself, and the DPRK, which had bought time to carry forward
its program. Disdainful of the economic advantages it had garnered as ends in
themselves, Pyongyang no doubt valued the fact that the fuel assistance freed up
resources elsewhere in the economy, while the reactors never proceeded beyond
the initial construction phase.
By 1998, despite the surrounding economic chaos and human distress, the
DPRK had also advanced its missile development program to the point where in
August that year, it test-fired its first substantial missile. This prompted a flurry
of diplomacy in the last months of the Clinton Administration which aimed at
curtailing the DPRK’s missile exports, but which ultimately failed to produce
tangible results. Relations with the US then quickly deteriorated under the Bush
Administration as deep and genuine concern over the DPRK’s nuclear program,
abiding scepticism of the efficacy of any form of conciliatory negotiation such as
the ROK’s Sunshine Policy6, and belief that the North was in fact a failing state.
This, plus the bedrock of neo-conservative ideology, led the US into increasingly
rigid stances, characterised by the use of extreme – and to the North Koreans
insulting – public language, especially in referring to Kim Jong Il, and
culminating in the inclusion of the DPRK along with Iran and Iraq in the
administration’s self-defined ‘axis of evil’ in Bush’s State of the Union address in
January 2002.
In any case, by now the DPRK’s policy matrix was firmly set. They had
avoided outright economic collapse and, despite international pressure, had
secured adequate resources to continue the pursuit of its nuclear and missile
programs. How far they had actually come was revealed in October 2002 when
the DPRK effectively acknowledged to US negotiators that they had been
pursuing a parallel, secret highly enriched uranium production program for some
time. This finally terminated the life of the already-moribund GFA, and
unleashed a further round of nuclear diplomacy, characterised by the fruitless
cat-and-mouse Six Party Talks format, involving the US, the ROK, China, Japan,
Russia and the DPRK. These talks tried to project a semblance of management of
the situation during six rounds between 2003 and 2009 before being suspended.
Only Pyongyang knows if indeed it suffered any inhibition by agreeing to
these talks, but meanwhile, the milestones passed swiftly by. In December 2002 it
expelled the last IAEA inspectors, and in April 2003 it withdrew from the NPT. In
February 2005 it officially announced that it had developed nuclear weapons; in
July 2006 it test-fired a number of missiles into the Eastern Sea and then in
October conducted its first low-yield underground nuclear test. Significant
negotiations took place in the last months of the Bush Administration without
result, and since then more bomb and missile tests have occurred.
The extent to which this pursuit has been determined by the behaviour of the
DPRK’s adversaries and the extent to which it has been dictated by Kimist
ideology constitute rather enduring polarities of interpretation, and is likely to
continue to be the case. However, one does not need to reach any resolution of
this debate in order to note the combination of tactical acumen and strategic
focus and consistency demonstrated by the DPRK in pursuing this goal over a
long period of time under enormous pressure. This should be taken into account
in any assessment of Kim Jong Il’s leadership, especially as he himself displayed a
close command of the issues during the brief periods in which he was personally
present during negotiations.

The famine
Progress in the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program was achieved against the
background of a catastrophic famine, known in the DPRK as the period of the
Arduous March, which claimed upwards of one million lives during 1994–96,
roughly 5% of the population. Clear food supply distress signals had already
emerged in 1993 while Kim Il Sung was still in charge. The older Kim’s mistrust
of the agricultural sector and his ideologically rigid policy of subjecting it to
industrial norms of production had entrenched inefficiency and under-
performance for many years, but now as inputs collapsed in the broader economy
– ranging from maintenance and spare parts to fuel and fertilizer supply – flood
conditions in August 1994 – which were serious, but not biblical – caused
tragedy.
The enormous loss of life had as much to do with the DPRK’s policies as with
the availability or non-availability of food. The problems began with a highly
centralised, inefficient decision-making structure and with lines of
communication which were rigorously ordered on top-down principles, with the
reverse flow almost totally reserved for conveying military-security information
or else concealing unfavourable developments from the leadership. In a manner
that recalls the crisis management performance of the Soviet leadership in the
face of the Chernobyl disaster, having operated for decades without the need to
seriously consider the claims of a civil society, and essentially viewing the entire
population as a military asset, the DPRK authorities were simply not tooled,
conceptually as much as systemically, to gather, process, and react to data on
disasters or emergencies. This meant in turn that international donors were
themselves unable to respond quickly, and this further compounded the disaster.
In addition, a major bottleneck existed in the form of the Public Distribution
System (PDS). Modelled on the delivery of rations to a field army, this long-
standing food rationing mechanism was the means by which government
controlled who got what and how much. This was a cornerstone state policy and
practice, not to mention an arbiter of life or death for the general population, and
the government could not countenance people going outside it. Food was to come
to the people, and due to rigid internal controls on human movement, the people
could not go to the food. Thus when nothing came to them, people died in huge
numbers where they lived – especially in the major industrial cities of the
northeast such as Hamhung and Chongjin (Demick 2009). All the while, in fact,
there was a considerable amount of food in the country, and the expansion of
commercial imports, which as recently as 1993 had exceeded one million tonnes,
was also an option. However, domestic stocks were chiefly in the form of
stockpiles reserved in case of military action, or else earmarked for the
Pyongyang-based elite, and hence were sacrosanct, while only a modest increase
in the level of foreign purchases took place during 1994–95.
As the famine took hold, and as foreign humanitarian workers were allowed
into the country, many were surprised, if not confounded, by the behaviour of
the DPRK authorities. They encountered a pattern of obstructive behaviour,
involving rigorous efforts to isolate aid workers from the populace, denial of
access to many of the most-affected areas, and the diversion of food aid away
from the most needy, all of which spoke of reactions governed by self-interest
and heightened threat perception, but certainly not humanitarian impulse
(Haggard & Noland 2005). Essentially, amid the understandable confusion, what
they were encountering was an emerging policy comprising three major
elements. First, Party-Army demands would consistently be given priority over
the most at-risk groups who were the primary targets of the food aid. Second, the
DPRK would not attempt any meaningful reform of now-dysfunctional Kimist
agricultural policies. To do so might, of course, invite questioning of the content
the widely circulated ‘infallible’ pronouncements of Kim Il Sung on this topic,
with the danger that this might spread to other policy areas. This option therefore
remained anathema – a typical example of the way in which the Eternal
President of the Republic continued to rule the country from his mausoleum.
However this was not an entirely illogical stance, because the option of both
more or less meeting food requirements from international donors and
maintaining ideological sanctity – that is, conditions of minimum disturbance to
the existing system – was available, and this constituted the third element in the
DPRK’s food strategy: international food aid would be allowed to become a
fixture in the DPRK economy, though of course it would be tightly controlled to
prevent the concession of any leverage. Once the food aid began to flow,
commercial food imports were minimised as the government, long schooled in
external predatory behaviour, essentially identified the economic dividend in
using international aid to subsidise other priorities. Food aid sources also
fluctuated with a pronounced linkage to the political calculations of both donor
and recipient. In general, the DPRK benefited from this process, and as levels of
food aid from initial large-scale donors such the US and the EU levelled off, and
even fell post-2000, this slack was taken up by China and, during 2001–2008, the
ROK. With their non-intrusive, undemanding ways, these two were in fact more
desirable partners, and had the effect of increasing DPRK leverage against the
monitoring requirements of the World Food Program and others (Haggard &
Noland 2007:7).
What, then, is the present outcome of all this? The DPRK’s actions, strategies
and their outcomes should leave no one in any doubt as to its determination and
effectiveness, nor should it surprise that in applying triage measures, Kim chose
to sacrifice the lives of so many people in order to defend the pursuit of broader
objectives, for this is consistent with the core values of the regime. Meaningful
agricultural reform has not occurred, and food production levels still approximate
the levels of the early 1990s. Famine conditions have not yet recurred, though
further significant deaths occurred in 2008 after a bad harvest in 2007, and
vulnerability levels remain high. However, with some twenty years of experience
in food aid politics now behind it, the DPRK has good reason to believe that it
will be able to get by without significant compromise to its system. Thus, while
Kim Jong Il did not direct a timely response to the famine, nor did he preside over
any real amelioration of the food supply situation, these were not objectives in
themselves. In the desperate calculus of the time, and within the constraints of
the Kimist system, he achieved the more important objective of containing the
threat potential of this situation.

Market economics

If there is one area where the DPRK of today looks and feels different from the
DPRK of 1994, it is in the growth of an officially-tolerated private consumer
market sector. Government-administered marketplaces now operate in many
localities, and a broad range of legal, semilegal and illegal economic activity
proceeds, frequently involving official resources, and accompanied by escalating
levels of bribery and corruption. This is mostly a Pyongyang phenom enon, of
course, and from the changing, neon-sign-dotted skyline of the capital come rich
anecdotes of the scale and variety of small (and some not-so-small) businesses,
the ubiquity of mobile phones, growing volumes of vehicular traffic and the like.
Such anecdotes will have to speak for themselves amid the on-going statistical
blackout, but while they testify to the scale of Chinese involvement in the DPRK
consumer economy, more importantly they reflect nearly twenty years of private
enterprise activity.
This phenomenon has its origins in the Arduous March famine, where the
clear message of the leadership to both state-owned enterprises and ordinary
citizens became ‘Fend for yourselves – we’ll be back’. In this process it permitted
the previously impermissible – namely, a role for autonomous economic activity
by state-owned enterprises, and a role for citizens in informal, grey and black
market activities. This development marked the beginning of a significant shift in
the structure of some sectors in the DPRK economy, beginning at the tactical
level, but gradually expanding as the inability of the government to organize any
alternative inputs became clear. In fact, the cart began to lead the horse as the
authorities discovered they could extract new dividends from these new forms of
economic activity, for they greatly expanded the opportunities for rent-seeking,
such as the extracting of bribes and pay-offs in connection with a wide range of
technically illegal activities, not to mention outright confiscatory behaviour.
 After deaths peaked and began to subside in 1997, the leadership became
convinced that the worst of the famine was over and the process of reasserting
control began, first through propaganda campaigns and then through policy
measures. The government had been forced to live with a situation in which most
of the population had slipped outside the PDS net, with defector surveys
suggesting many people earned upwards of 80% of their income from private
sources during the period 1998–2003 (Lankov 2009: 53), and this posed a potential
threat to their authority. The genie was out of the bottle, and henceforth, success
in meeting this ideological and political challenge would be measured in terms of
how far the regime could go in restoring the status quo ante.
As with the handling of negotiations with the US and the ROK during this
period, the DPRK authorities met this initial challenge with tactical flexibility,
but with no hint of strategic uncertainty. The first major step toward
management and control of market activities was taken with the self-described
7.1 Measures for the Improvement of Economic Management announced on 1
July 2002. Since a total reversion to the system that existed before the famine,
however ideologically attractive, appeared to be beyond the government’s means
at this point, after seven years of monitoring the practices that had sprung up, the
government now sought to define what it could live with for the moment. In the
first place, it could definitely live with the greater autonomy now exercised by
state-owned enterprises, for those which had survived had demonstrated some
flair in raising foreign currency through a variety of means, some of them legal,
and their remittances were useful. Secondly, it could extend some measure of
acceptance and recognition to private markets as this enabled greater control.
These markets now became more substantial, regulated and permanent (Lankov
& Kim 2008; Everard 2011). Thirdly, with the demise of the PDS system, cash
transactions for daily necessities had expanded, and since the government still
lacked the means of re-introducing this system, it brought official currency and
prices – which historically had been set at highly artificial levels – more into line
with actual traded values, which meant a steep devaluation of the won, a steep
rise in commodity prices, and differentiated increases in wages and rations. This
had the collateral advantage of drastically reducing the acquired wealth of
market operators, which was denominated in won.
Some observations flow from this. First and foremost, the 2002 measures were
seven years or so in contemplation and formulation, and so while they proved
problematic, they were in no way half-hearted, hasty or ill-conceived. Rather,
they should be treated as a carefully considered response to the government’s
underlying agenda of restoring as far as possible its traditional control of the
economy. Secondly, while the label ‘reform measures’ has been widely and
frequently attached to these measures by outside observers and analysts, the
DPRK government itself did not use this label (Lankov 2009). As an aside, we
should observe that the DPRK detests the word ‘reform’ because it carries the
implication that its canonic, revelatory system has shortcomings and is in need of
some kind of overhaul.7 Thus it is not surprising that the measures were directed
toward curbing and channelling what was still seen as – almost quite literally – a
necessary evil. Thirdly, changes of any significance cannot simply come from
pronouncements, but need to be backed up by, and mirrored in, follow-up
measures such as on-going policy oversight and fine-tuning, as well as changes to
the themes and the tone of public commentary, to institutions and to personnel.
None of these was in evidence here, nor have defector interviews revealed much
awareness of the 7.1 measures – where indeed people had actually heard of them
(Lankov 2009: 57). And so again we are faced with the age-old paradox of
observers expecting change to come from within the parameters that had so
resolutely kept these changes at bay at tremendous material cost in the past.
The economic results of these measures were as broad as intended. The state-
owned enterprises derived little or no benefit since they merely continued to do
what they had already been doing for a considerable period of time, the measures
did not extend to intra-enterprise transactions, and the government maintained
tight control over the commanding heights of the economy. The same applied to
the private markets, where on the one hand, traders continued to operate and
probably benefitted from the more substantial, settled markets they began to
inhabit, but where the confiscatory monetization measures deeply affected many.
Overnight, market traders saw the value of their won holdings tumble, and with
their private capital vastly diminished they were once more rendered more
dependent on the state. Moreover, these moves unleashed a strong, sustained
surge of inflation, the only real defence against which was access to foreign
currency. The message for the marketeers on both scores was that if they hoped
to stay in business then they needed partnerships with those who had access to
foreign currency, a privilege mainly confined to the elite. In this way, the elite
began to seize control of the newly marketised areas of the economy from the
new entrants.
The state was back, and it continued to assert increasing control over the
economic lives of its citizens in the years that followed. This was not always a
one-way procession, and some decisions showed a tactical preparedness to accept
and abet private economic activity, but the essence lay in pull-back. The China-
North Korea border became more tightly patrolled, in 2004 the use of mobile
phones was drastically restricted, campaigns against ‘anti-socialist activities’
were again emphasised, and in late 2005 this process led to the reinstatement of a
country-wide ban on the private sale of grains and the partial reinstitution of a
PDS. These, plus an ensuing raft of regulations limiting private market vendor
activities, were only partially effective because of the extent to which the markets
had grown, but they left no doubt as to what the leadership regarded as a
desirable economic direction.
Any doubt on this score was removed with the announcement on 30
November 2009 of a further series of market-controlling measures in the form of
the overnight replacement of the currency by a newly denominated won,
accompanied by a number of wages and price adjustments. By this stage, Kim
Jong Il had been debilitated to an unknown degree by a stroke in August 2008,
but there is no particular reason to blame this for a singularly maladroit policy
measure which caused widespread confusion and was speedily countermanded,
because in any case, the root cause of what even the Kimists conceded was bad
policy in this instance was clear: the government was unsure how far was too far
to go in reasserting its prerogatives.
In terms of the regime’s long-established policies and goals, Kim Jong Il cannot
be counted as successful in this area, though given the dilemmas involved, it is
hard to say what success would have looked like. The government has continued
to apply a raft of controlling measures to market activities, but appears to have
tacitly acknowledged that since it cannot itself generate the inputs needed to
replace those generated by private economic activity, it will have to continue to
tolerate them. Haggard and Noland see the 2009 measures as part of a longer-
term trend towards the criminalization of market activity and the stripping it of
protection from predatory officialdom (Haggard & Noland 2010c), but such
discouragement is probably not enough to maintain Kimist economic control in
the longer term. The major problem which continues to this day is that, as is so
often the case in such circumstances, the ‘wrong sort of people’ are conducting
market activities, and they are living substantially outside the parameters of
government control, whether in the form of workplace or neighbourhood
mobilisation, or else through enforcement of the social classification (sŏngbun)
system. In Lankov and Kim’s terse description, ‘They present a vital and
attractive alternative to the officially promoted life strategy which, as many
Koreans came to understand, leads nowhere’ (Lankov & Kim 2008: 71). And here
again, since ideologically the government cannot truly debate, or perhaps even
properly comprehend, this phenomenon except in terms of the threat it poses, it
has remained tooled only for suppression, and apart from allowing more
‘suitable’ people – that is, people with the appropriate social and political status –
to gain measures of control over the market, seems otherwise uncertain in its
thinking on co-optive strategies.

Discussion

In theory, at least, in 1994 Kim Jong Il had three broad policy options in front of
him: abandon the proudly self-avowed monolithic system he himself had devoted
his life to building up, significantly modify this system or else defend it. He may
also have opted for a course intermediate of these three. But even if we somehow
reprogram him as a closet pragmatist, there were powerful arguments against
opting for either of the first two, or any intermediate position between them, for
if somehow he were attracted to tinkering with the loosening of Party hegemony,
then still-recent events in the former Soviet Bloc, Romania and Albania, were
powerful disincentives: there was no future for him or for the Party if he chose
that path. Historical timing was crucial here, for without delving too far into
counterfactuals, the DPRK would clearly have faced a much less threatening path
to modifying its system had it decided to do so in, say, the early 1980s, when the
economic tide was clearly turning and differentials with its neighbours were
more favourable. But now those differentials had blown out to the extent that
this option was far more daunting. Thus we find that Kim chose the option that
in any case his whole life’s experience would have pressed him to choose: he
opted to seek survival by defending by any means necessary the essentials of the
Kim Il Sung system. Despite its obvious weaknesses, this system still had in place
an effective police state apparatus which had always been equal to the task of
isolating and controlling the population, while it also had extensive military
assets, developed with offensive intent, but also of course serviceable in the
survivalist cause. Moreover, the option of playing for time, while not always
distinguishable from attempting to delay the inevitable, should not automatically
be dismissed as a poor option – it is a time-honoured practice in statecraft.
Thus it is not surprising that we seem unable to identify distinctive Kim Jong Il
strategies and policies which depart from those pursued while Kim Il Sung was
alive. Like his father, he energetically pursued and sustained the country’s drive
to secure a nuclear weapons arsenal and payload delivery system, and essentially
organised the state economy around the pursuit of this objective. Likewise, the
tenor and tempo of inter-Korean talks in 2000 and 2007 conformed to the pattern
followed by his father in 1972–73, 1984–86 and 1990–93 of tactical engagement,
quick assessment of prospects for even trivial gains at the South’s expense, the
signing of wideranging agreements, and then a staged retreat amid accusations of
bad faith to avoid unwanted implementation measures. Moreover, Kim Jong Il’s
military-first reorganization of government simply carried forward a trend that
had already become marked in the last years of his father’s rule (Buzo 1999:
211ff). The single area of arguable discontinuity was in permitting space for
private market activities – arguable because we do not know what Kim Il Sung
might have done if he had faced a comparable disastrous famine, though we are
safe in surmising from his record that the elder Kim would have demonstrated a
similar brand of threat analysis and ruthless response.
The Kim Jong Il era is also noteworthy for what did not occur. No meaningful
systemic reform measures were put in place, but nor did the much-predicted
economic collapse of the DPRK occur. And despite the enormous pressures that
the system was operating under, no significant purges took place, nor did other
signs of disarray appear in leadership circles, in itself a somewhat remarkable
reflection on the resilience of the Kimist system, but also one toward which we
must assume Kim Jong Il made a significant contribution. One cannot just walk
in and assume power in Pyongyang. The rules of the game are complicated and
obscure, institutional rules and procedures are seriously degraded to facilitate
leadership intervention, and this leadership is in turn exercised in a ruthless,
personalised fashion in the setting of lip-service to an exacting, anachronistic
ideology. It is not a game for dilettantes. Amid all this, beyond the odd public
execution, not only do we have little credible evidence of major purges or
internal disputes, but in government too, cabinet ministers, essentially
bureaucrats whose task it was to find ways and means of implementing the
instructions of the leadership, came and went, occasionally suffering demotion,
dismissal or worse, and the rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly continued
to meet. New institutions, such as the National Defence Committee, nominally
under the SPA but in fact the supreme decision-making body, flourished, while
other institutions with their roots in the regime’s receding Marxist-Leninist past,
such as the Workers’ Party of Korea, atrophied. Allowing for ideological
distortions, and with the partial exception of the November 2009 measures, the
overall impression remains of steady, orderly strategic assertion and, where
necessary, tactical retreat in policy. By this we are also saying that state-directed
violence, principally through the extensive gulag system, proceeded in an
organised, controlled and effective manner. Significant pockets of
dysfunctionality and incoherence obviously exist throughout the DPRK
government and bureaucracy, but observations over time suggest that a lot of
what the leadership believes it has to do well it tends to do well, while chaos,
inefficiency and counter-productivity often seem to indicate lower priorities.
Similarly, Kim’s handling of his cult of personality is rarely analysed, but it
also suggests careful calculation. Cult of personality serves a number of needs
and ends. To Stalin, its originator, it was foremost an effective political weapon
for subverting the Party and consolidating his authority, and the personal
gratification he may have derived from it appears to have been secondary. As an
avid Stalinist, Kim Il Sung also adopted this weapon, but the element of ego
gratification seemed far more pronounced, as anyone who got to witness
firsthand the manner in which Kim received such adulation probably observed.
But with Kim Jong Il one appears to return to the purer Stalinist cult-as-political-
asset model. He accepted the adulation – indeed, he could do no less as son of the
Great Leader, but he did not appear to relish it, and remained a remote leader.
More important, he astutely identified wherein his chief asset lay, and so the cult
remained essentially the cult of Kim Il Sung, which continued to be energetically
propagated on many fronts, ranging from statuary (a form of tribute his son
deliberately and pointedly avoided) and portraiture to apotheosis as Eternal
President, and the inception of the new Juche Calendar in 1997, which designated
the year of the older Kim’s birth (1912) as Juche 1.
Assessing how much of Kim Jong Il’s achievement is likely to endure also
sheds light on his effectiveness. Comparing the DPRK of 1994 with the DPRK of
today, the external perception is of the same isolated, pariah status, the same
reprehensible commitment to nuclear weapons, the same appalling human rights
record, and, with the partial exception of China, the same set of shadowy
economic relations with shadowy states on the fringes of the international
system, based primarily on the arms trade. Within North Korea, we see a
malnourished, terrorized general population which, outside the privileged enclave
of Pyongyang and its environs, mainly conducts a daily struggle for survival. The
government applies the same dogmatic, dysfunctional ideology, informed by
Stalinist methods, if no longer by strict Stalinist practice, and modifies these only
in the name of tactical expediency. Most tellingly, there is no end in sight. Some
may therefore suggest that in stripping away the false and misleading images of
Kim that abound, all we are doing is revealing the real tyranny underneath. How,
then, can we call such leadership effective?
And yet, from a Kimist perspective, ‘positives’ are present, even if they
sometimes look like the mere dividends of persistence. The political, social and
economic challenges posed by free market activities continue to be contained,
even though the scale and variety of these challenges must make this seem like a
daunting task, for it is true to say that since the 1990s, people have increasingly
departed from the previous collectivist model, and through economic necessity
have had to make individual and family-focused judgements on how to survive
and even make a living. For the many who now engage in some form of market
activity, this involves a change from passive acceptance of the status quo to
proactive planning and execution, aided by the authorities’ retreat from active
oversight in many areas of its citizen’s lives, a consequence of its own lack of
economic means, and the dependence of mainly lower level officials on bribery
and corruption for their livelihood.
 However, so far these trends have not led to any great flowering of civil
society above the level of mainly petty economic activity and the sampling of
forbidden fruits of consumerism for those who can afford them. The porous
border with China is regularly breeched by contraband such as South Korean
videos, and this has of course exacerbated cognitive dissonance as more and more
people see the gap between the daily realities they experience and the official
version of that reality. On some abstract plane this may well shorten the life of
the regime but, for the moment, while people may know far more about their
predicament and may be more aware of the true dimensions of their rulers’
mendacity, they are none the wiser about possible ways out of it, and so as yet,
we cannot yet detect any signs of a dissident movement; the state control
apparatus still clearly remains too strong, too motivated, and too ruthless. Thus
one can still only speculate on the role this nascent civil society will play in
future political events.
International trends are not uniformly negative, especially if one sees them
through ideology glasses. China has remained a consistent, if at times reluctant,
supporter in some crucial areas, less hindered by moral scruple, responsive to
growing economic involvement, seeking to contain the situation, probably hoping
for the best but certainly fearful the worst. In the area of food aid, its intervention
was crucial in helping the DPRK to withstand international pressure and
maintain control over the aid donation process. Moreover, broader trends such as
the overall fraying of the international order, the increasing propensity of states
such as China, Russia and Iran to challenge elements of that order, the continuing
fallout from the Arab Spring, the growth of the Shiite-Sunni divide, and the
increase in the number of states suffering from varying degrees of serious
dysfunctionality are all trends which are opening up economic opportunities for
the DPRK and its chief cash crop – serious weaponry – and this trend may well
expand, rather than diminish in coming years.
In addition, whether from fatigue, impatience or frustration, a curious
tolerance of the DPRK seems to have grown as outside observers become more
and more inured to its behaviour. One finds a case being put for DPRK
exceptionalism – that is, negotiating with the DPRK, which of course usually
means granting concessions, on the grounds (well appreciated by DPRK
strategists) that some form of dialogue is better than no dialogue. This is despite
DPRK policies and practices that pose a fundamental challenge to key elements of
the international order, ranging from the NPT to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, and it keeps avenues open for a whole range of consequence-free
behavior. One facet of this is the tendency of influential people, and even leaders,
in adversarial nations, whether for reasons laudable, less than laudable or just
plain obscure, to go to considerable lengths in order to secure what they seem to
believe to be an important place in history by achieving some sort of
breakthrough in Korea. This has been especially true in the ROK in the past, but
it has also influenced the thinking of other main actors. Again, the DPRK is well
attuned to this phenomenon and has adroitly harvested the significant tactical
and material advantages this tendency has brought.
How effective, then, was Kim Jong Il in pursuing the goals of the DPRK
leadership and elite? As we consider the crises of the last twenty years, space
limitations prevent us from discussing the DPRK in the full range of its
complexities, and in the full range of the evidentiary and methodological
challenges it presents, but it is probably obvious where all this is headed: unless
we dismiss much of the accumulated historical record, unless we attach minimal
importance to the role of leadership in the Kimist system, and unless we insert
our own a priori judgements based on what we believe the leader should have
done, could have done, or might have done, we find that Kim Jong Il was a
convinced, effective Kimist who achieved considerable success in pursuing a
difficult and demanding set of goals. The fact these goals are almost entirely
despised by the international community, just as he himself appears to be
despised by many North Koreans, should not distract us from absorbing the
implications of this achievement. It is now twenty years since he first assumed
full power, and the same policies are essentially still in place with little sign of
strategic confusion or doubt. They have therefore stood a reasonable test of time,
even though some might question how much more success of this type the DPRK
can stand. While Kim Jong-un was less prepared for leadership, and may possibly
be less able than Kim Jong Il, his father left an important legacy by enforcing
Kimist parameters in a disciplined manner over an extended period of time. Kim
Jong Il may not conform to many people’s concept of a Dear Leader, but he
certainly performed as a significant consolidator.
Notes
1 Kim also conducted significant negotiations, including two leadership summits, with the ROK in response
to Seoul’s Sunshine Policy, and effected major changes to the structure of government, institutionalising
the central role of the military and further marginalising the Workers’ Party of Korea. They are
important issues, but space does not permit their discussion here.

2 Kimism must be defined not from theory, but from the body of practice we see in the DPRK. It draws on
the essentials of Stalinism, such as a mass (as opposed to an elite) communist party; an intensive coercion
and control apparatus; a high degree of political mobilisation; cult of personality; reliance on canonical
pronouncements of a genius-leader; adherence to the doctrine of the intensification of class struggle;
economic autarky; the collectivisation and industrialization of agriculture; rapid heavy industrialisation
through mass economic mobilisation; Stakhanovite work practices (‘speed battles’ in a DPRK context);
and a heavy reliance on ideological motivation. To this mix Kim Il Sung brought little in the way of
innovation, but emphasised elements drawn more directly from his own experience, most notably
pervasive militarism; a rigid, hereditary class system based on assessments of political reliability
(songbun); a pronounced hostile, predatory attitude toward external transactions; strong intervention in
the traditionally self-regulatory areas of Korean family and clan affairs – perhaps the most salient of the
many reasons why applying the term ‘Confucianist’ to this system is grossly misleading; indifference to
the norms of civil society; and moral puritanism. For more on this see Buzo (1999).

3 Wendy Sherman, quoted in Rogin (2011).

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/19/wendy_sherman_on_kim_jong_il_smart_witty_and_humorous
accessed 25 July 2014.

4 ‘N. Korea to extend missile test moratorium, EU says’, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2001–

05–02-nkorea-eu.htm, accessed 25 July 2014.

5 The complexities of the DPRK economy are a topic in themselves. A useful perspective here is Habib
(2011), who argues that the disasters of the 1990s caused ‘the splintering of the old command system into
parallel economies – the official, military, illicit, court and entrepreneurial economies – separated from
the central planning matrix.’ This describes the curious amalgam of DPRK-style pragmatism and
expediency, and helps us to understand the phenomenon of DPRK economic resilience.

6 The inauguration of Kim Dae Jung as President of the Republic of Korea in February 1998 inaugurated the
ten-year period of Seoul’s Sunshine Policy toward the North. This policy placed engagement at the centre
of ROK policymaking, featuring disavowal of any moves to absorb the North and the active promotion of
 economic cooperation and exchange, while still emphasising that the ROK would not tolerate armed
provocation.

7 Hence Moon Chung In’s comment “You have to be careful about not using the word ‘reform’; they are
sensitive about that and prefer ‘modernize.’” Quoted in Norimitsu (2008).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/world/asia/28nuke.html?pagewanted=print, accessed 27 July 2014.

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19
Marriage, family, and sexuality in North
Korea

Suzy Kim

On a visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hereafter, North Korea)

in 1977, two overseas visitors were told that sex before marriage ‘does not exist in
our country’ (Halliday 1985: 50). This was in a meeting with the representatives
of the Korean Democratic Women’s Union – the official women’s organization in
North Korea – about the status of women and relations between the sexes. Other
responses seemed just as implausible. The visitors were told that ‘[a]ll women in
our country want children’ (Halliday 1985: 50) and ‘[t]here is nobody in the
family who refuses to do something that should be done’ (Halliday 1985: 53).
When asked about the availability of contraceptives and abortion, the
representatives denied the existence of policies on birth control, rejecting that
there could be instances of rape that might require an abortion. Such answers are
difficult to take at face value, but they are significant, nonetheless, for what they
reveal about North Korea’s official conceptualization of sexuality. Family is
regarded as the building block of a deeply collective society, and marriage and
sexuality are understood strictly within the confines of the heterosexual nuclear
family. How can we make sense of such conservative policies and attitudes,
especially in a country claiming to be one of the last bastions of existing
socialism, a philosophy which traditionally attacked the family as an oppressive
institution? The answer goes back to the years immediately after Korea’s
liberation from colonial rule (1910–1945), when North Korea instituted the major
reforms that were to shape its modern history.
 Japan was defeated at the end of the Pacific War on 15 August 1945,
terminating its 35-year rule over Korea. Despite the jubilance of liberation, Korea
was compelled to take two divergent paths. The United States proposed (and the
Soviet Union conceded) to divide the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel into
two separate occupation zones – the United States in the south and the Soviet
Union in the north – to disarm the Japanese troops while preparing a provisional
government in Korea. However, negotiations between Moscow and Washington
toward a unified Korean government failed as the Cold War loomed. The
American occupiers saw most Korean political movements as too radical and
suppressed them in the south, while unprecedented social reforms were carried
out swiftly in the north, aided by the Soviets (Cumings 1981). The two separate
states were not officially founded until 1948, but both sides competed for
legitimacy from the beginning, claiming to represent the entire country. Toward
that end, a thorough land reform was instituted in the north in March 1946,
confiscating the land from landlords without compensation and distributing it to
the peasants who actually tilled the fields. Major industries, which in many cases
had been owned by the Japanese, were nationalized in August 1946. Amidst these
reforms, North Korea passed the Law of Equal Rights for Men and Women
(Namnyŏ p’yŏngdŭnggwŏn pŏmnyŏng; hereafter, the Gender Equality Law) on 30
July 1946. It was a sweeping measure for its time, raising the ire of conservative
patriarchs in both the North and the South, and became the basis for gender
relations and the role of sexuality in post-liberation North Korea.

Marriage

Throughout the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910), Confucian ideology had defined

marriage as a relationship forged between two families. In other words, a
commitment of marriage signified an alliance between two families, whether as a
strategy to expand influence in the region or to smooth relations between rival
factions. Individuals were defined by their position in the family as fathers, sons,
mothers, and daughters within the wider network of extended kinship relations.
Individual preferences or romance had little relevance in this patriarchal system
whether for women or men. The impact on women, however, was more severe
because of patrilocal practices, which required a woman to move into her
husband’s household after marriage in order to serve his extended family. As a
new member of the household, she was placed at the bottom of the family
hierarchy to spend ‘three years as if blind, three years as if deaf, and three years
as if dumb’ (Ch’oe et al. 2001: 50). Only with the birth of a son who would
continue the patrilineal line could she secure a solid position within the family.
While the colonial period had introduced modern concepts of ‘love marriage’
based on freedom of choice in marriage and divorce, unwritten customary rules
often trumped what was already a selective application of the civil code imposed
by Japan (Yang 1998: 41).
It was not until the systematic introduction and enforcement of new legislation
after liberation in North Korea that there was a large-scale transformation in
marriage practices. The Gender Equality Law of 1946 declared equal rights
between men and women, including the freedom of marriage and divorce (Kim
Y.-D. 1947). The full text of the law reads:
Article 1: Women have equal rights to men economically, culturally, socially, and politically in all areas
of life of the nation.
Article 2: Women have the same rights as men to vote and be elected in the regional as well as the
highest national organs.
Article 3: Women have the same rights as men to worker rights, equal wages, social insurance, and
education.
Article 4: Women, like men, have the right to free marriage. Unfree and forced marriage without the
consent of those marrying is prohibited.
Article 5: When it becomes difficult to continue the married relationship, women have the same rights
as men to free divorce. The right to litigation to demand child support payments from the ex-husband is
acknowledged, and such cases shall be processed at the People’s Court.
Article 6: The legal marriageable age shall begin at seventeen for women and eighteen for men.
Article 7: Polygamy is a feudal practice from the Middle Ages and sales of women as wives or
concubines are hereby prohibited as evil practices that violate women’s rights. Licensed prostitution,
private prostitution, and the kisaeng [female entertainer] system— kisaeng licenses and schools—are
prohibited.
Article 8: Women have the same rights as men to inherit property and land, and women have the right
to be given their share of property and land in case of divorce.
Article 9: All Japanese imperial laws and regulations pertaining to Korean women’s rights are null and
void as of the promulgation of this law. This law takes effect as of the day of promulgation.

Almost half of the entire legislation dealt with marriage and divorce in articles 4
to 8. It was the first indication that the family would continue to play a central
role in North Korean society.
More telling than the Gender Equality Law were the Regulations on the
Implementation of the Gender Equality Law issued six weeks later, on 14
September 1946, stipulating that all marriages and divorces be registered with
local authorities. Despite the principle of free marriage and divorce embodied in
the Gender Equality Law, marriages had to be registered, and non-registered
marriages, including common law marriages, were not recognized. This was in
stark contrast to other socialist revolutions in Russia and China, which initially
liberalized marriage by doing away with the distinction between registered and
non-registered marriages, while making divorce as simple as a unilateral
declaration by the one seeking divorce without the consent of the spouse. By
contrast, in North Korea, articles 10 to 22 of the Regulations contained detailed
procedures for divorce (Pak 1989: 422). In cases of consent by both parties, divorce
papers could be filed with the local people’s committee, but if either party
disagreed the couple had to file for legal divorce proceedings with the appropriate
People’s Court. Divorce would only be granted if the court concluded that
continued married life was impossible due to adultery, health or political reasons.
In addition, there was a hefty fine for those filing for divorce more than twice,
acting as a disincentive to repeat divorces, although this could be waived at the
court’s discretion. By March 1956, divorce required legal proceedings even in
cases of mutual consent (Yun 1991: 75). Due to such legislative obstacles, as well
as societal pressure, divorce had been relatively rare. Recent anecdotal evidence,
however, indicates that divorce regulations have been liberalized since the late
1980s, allowing couples to divorce without court proceedings (Pak 2003: 305). As a
result, the rate of divorce has reportedly been on the rise since the late 1990s. In
2002, the average number of divorces per year stood at 2,000, still a minuscule
number for a population of 24 million (CEDAW 2002: 35).
North Korea has held the family to be the basic unit of society and people were
mobilized specifically around the idea of the nation as an extension of the family.
Instead of regarding the family as something to be overthrown, certain ‘feudal’
marriage practices were targeted as ‘backward’ and in need of reform. On 24
January 1947, the Law to Eradicate Remnants of Feudal Practices was announced,
consisting of four articles which all dealt with so-called ‘feudal’ marriage
practices (Pak 1989: 425). Article 1 outlawed practices of dowry exchange,
stipulating up to a year of forced labour or a substantial fine for exchanging
money, animals, labour, or other valuables. Article 2 guaranteed freedom in
marriage by providing up to two years in prison for those who forced a woman
into marriage or into maintaining a marriage, as well as anyone who deceived a
woman into marriage. Article 3 banned child marriage by imposing forced labour
on anyone who married a person not yet of legal marriageable age: 17 for women
and 18 for men. Finally, Article 4 prohibited polygamy by stipulating a fine or
forced labour for up to a year for anyone who practiced polygamy. As a result,
these practices were quickly eradicated within the first years of North Korea’s
founding, and marriage customs were drastically simplified.
While matchmaking through relatives, friends, and co-workers continued to be
popular among the older generation with the added step of verifying individual
consent, the younger generation has increasingly veered toward romantic
relationships, finding their marriage partners on their own by dating since at
least the 1980s (Pak 2003: 293). Recent reports estimate that about 70 per cent of
marriages are ‘love’ marriages as opposed to arranged marriages (Jung 2006: 754).
Instead of dowry exchange, the groom is responsible for providing housing while
the bride prepares household items. Since housing is generally provided through
the workplace under the socialist system, the bride’s family may have a greater
financial burden in this regard (Pak 2003: 297). Traditional practices of elaborate
wedding rituals involving gift exchange and multiple days of festivities have been
replaced by simplified ceremonies. Twenty to fifty guests may gather at one of
the families’ homes or a public hall to participate in a simple ceremony. The
groom wears a suit or military uniform and the bride dresses in the traditional
chosŏnot (or hanbok in South Korean terminology) – a long skirt and a high-
waisted top (M.W. Lee 1976: 76; Halliday 1985: 54). With the simplified ceremony,
weddings are no longer occasions to show off family wealth, a moot point in a
supposedly classless society.
While the legal minimum age of marriage was set at 18 for males and 17 for
females, official policy has encouraged people to marry after they have finished
their studies and military service, fulfilling their responsibilities to society. This
was codified into law in article 9 of the Family Law promulgated in 1990 (Ch’oe
2010: 227). As a result, the majority of men reportedly marry in their late twenties
to early thirties while women marry in their mid-to late twenties (Pak 2003: 301).
The difference in the minimum marriage age has been noted by the UN
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as a
possible breach of gender equality. North Korea – a state party to the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrim ination against Women (CEDAW)
since 2001 – does not, however, consider the age difference to be a form of
discrimination, citing the trend of late marriages, women’s earlier ‘physiological
maturity’, and most women ‘choosing’ to marry older men (CEDAW 2005a: 3;
2005b: 4). During the examination of its first report to the Committee in 2005,
North Korea was reportedly reviewing the possibility of amending its laws to
bring it in line with the Committee’s recommendations to equalize the marriage
age. North Korea has not, however, engaged with the Committee since then.
Although North Korea’s social revolution was meant to establish a classless
society, family background continues to be one of the most important factors in
selecting a spouse, as there is one class that is discriminated against: the
descendants of former landlords, pro-Japanese collaborators during colonial rule,
pro-American collaborators during the Korean War (1950–1953), and people with
relatives who have fled to South Korea (M.W. Lee 1976: 73). Marriage with
anyone associated with this ‘impure’ class is avoided, and most people marry
those from similar family backgrounds (Pak 2003: 326). More recently, there are
indications that economic capability has overtaken family background as the
most important quality in a partner since the devastating famine of the mid-
1990s, which killed an estimated one to two million people (Pak 2003: 295).
Otherwise, the selection of marriage partners is much like elsewhere, involving a
combination of factors including physical attraction, social standing, education,
and compatibility – with an added emphasis on public service. Couples seek their
parents’ blessing, although this is not required by law, and approval by the local
party official is a must if they hope to climb the social ladder. Love and marriage
continue to be communal affairs rather than private ones.
While hierarchical relations between husband and wife seem to be particularly
acute in the relatively conservative countryside, as often reflected in the
testimony of refugees and defectors, working women with professional careers
(who tend to be under-represented among these populations) seem to have
relationships of equality and camaraderie with their spouses. Indeed, an
ethnographic study of North Korea in the 1970s went so far as to conclude that
the ‘relationship between husband and wife appears to be so greatly changed that
it is no longer a relationship of clear cut authority and submission. Love and
mutual understanding were now greatly emphasized as desirable between
husband and wife’ (M.W. Lee 1976: 82). Lee went on to state that ‘cooperation
and solidarity between husband and wife are stronger than ever, and marital life
based upon genuine “comradeship” is highly valued’ (1976: 83).
Under the law, freedom of marriage and divorce were instituted early on in
North Korea, but there are social pressures to marry and stay married, especially
when there are children in the family. Consequently, there are few options for
those who wish to be free from marriage by choosing not to marry at all.
Likewise, there are no options for non-heterosexual unions as article 8 of the
Family Law stipulates that ‘marriage shall be undertaken between a single male
and a single female’ (CEDAW 2002: 34). As I discuss below, the heterosexual
family has been the basic unit of North Korean society and those that reject this
family are regarded as antisocial and abnormal.

Family
In addition to the legislation pertaining to marriage, divorce, and gender equality,
the Labour Law, promulgated on 24 June 1946, was also premised on the
importance of protecting the integrity of the family. This law includes special
stipulations for the protection of children and mothers, prohibiting them from
‘toilsome or harmful labour’, in addition to the basic clauses for an eight-hour
workday, paid vacations, and equal pay for equal work. The clauses specific to
women provide paid maternity leave for 35 days before and 42 days after
delivery, extended to 60 days before and 90 days after delivery in 1986 (Jung 2006:
750); lighter work for expectant mothers beginning in the sixth month of
pregnancy; and nursing breaks for thirty minutes twice a day for women with
children under a year old (Pak 1989: 416–418). The law also prohibits pregnant
and nursing women from working overtime at night. Maternity was carefully
protected and indeed fostered since women were expected to work while also
embracing motherhood. For instance, the government grants ‘special favours’ to
families with twins, triplets, and quadruplets, supplying them with free clothes,
blankets, milk goods, and other necessities until the children reach school age
(CEDAW 2002: 26).
While a number of studies have conflated North Korea’s authoritarian politics
with patriarchy, a closer look at family dynamics in contemporary North Korean
society challenges any easy equation between familism (that is, family-centrism)
and patriarchy, no matter how hierarchical relations are between family
members. Patriarchy can be defined as men’s domination over women and the
older generations’ domination over the younger generations in a hierarchy of age
and gender for the purposes of maintaining family lineage through the male line
of descent. North Korea, however, does not entirely fit this model, despite its
hierarchical organization of society. Extended family and kinship networks do
not play a significant social role; the head of household need not be male; and
gender roles are not as rigid since women have come to occupy positions that
were traditionally reserved for men, even in the military. In fact, a high
proportion of households were headed by women in the aftermath of the Korean
War, as many of them were widowed (M.W. Lee 1976: 79).
Much of the changes in North Korean family structure and marriage practices
can be attributed to the incorporation of socialist principles, which in many
instances directly challenged the core principles of patriarchy as shown in the
following table.
Certainly, reality on the ground is far from the ideal principles embodied by
socialism. Multi-generational households still make up 20 per cent of North
Korean society (Pak 2003: 62). In the predominant conceptualization of the family,
the male head of household is still seen as the ‘master’ of the family, whom wives
obey as they perform fixed gender roles – taking on most, if not all, childcare and
household chores (Pak 2003: 122). Despite the principle of freedom of divorce, it is
prohibitively difficult. Moreover, the expectation that the eldest son will take care
of his parents in old age reportedly continues to some degree since men generally
earn more than women. The practice of performing ancestral rites also seems to
have been maintained, although in simpler fashion.

Table 19.1 Comparison of features in patriarchal family and socialist family

Patriarchal family Socialist family

Patriarchal family Socialist family

Hierarchy Equality
Extended family Nuclear family
Familism Collectivism
Marriage as union of two families; thus, Individual freedom of marriage and
no divorce divorce
Family as unit of production Family as unit of consumption
Male domination over women Gender equality
Father-son relations Spousal relations
Source: Adapted from Pak, Hyo˘n-so˘n (2003)

Despite the continuities in some aspects of the patriarchal family, the turn
toward nuclear families freed women from serving multiple generations in one
family as they were encouraged to work outside the home in service of the nation
rather than the extended family. Acute labour shortages after the devastation of
the Korean War prompted the government to decree greater female participation
in the workforce. The unemployed were given only 300 grams of food a day
through the public distribution system as opposed to the 700 grams for the fully
employed, and large investments went into public childcare facilities to
incentivize women to work (Yun 1991: 104–105). The hojŏk (household registry
system), which required a male head of household, was eliminated with the
introduction of the citizen registration card on 9 August 1946, thereby breaking
down patriarchal kinship ties (Yun 1991: 76). South Korea did not abolish the
household-head system until 2005.
While the roles of mother and wife were still considered important, these roles
were not meant to be limited to individual domestic concerns but expanded to
take care of society in the spirit of collectivism (S. Kim 2010). Although filial piety
was still lauded as a ‘beautiful custom’ to be preserved as part of a distinctly
Korean cultural heritage, socialist youths were urged to stop blindly obeying their
elders. The generational hierarchies that once existed in traditional patriarchal
households, especially manifested in the conflict between the mother-in-law and
daughter-in-law, were replaced by an emphasis on the importance of a
harmonious collective life, fostered through pressure exerted by groups such as
the Women’s Union. Mothers-in-law in multi-generational families were often
reported to be helpful with household chores and childcare while their daughters-
in-law worked outside the home (M.W. Lee 1976: 83). Furthermore, families
tended to have closer relationships with the maternal side than the paternal side
of the family (Pak 2003: 259). While relations with the paternal side often
involved material and practical support when they were in close proximity,
relations with the maternal side of the family involved both material and
emotional support, regardless of geographical distance, thus challenging the
patriarchal emphasis on father-son relations (Pak 2003: 259).
Most importantly, the national collective took precedence over the family, and
familism was frowned upon as selfish. The kind of familism that was pervasive in
traditional patriarchal families was made obsolete with the elimination of
property inheritance, which had formed the economic basis for maintaining large
extended families. The strong kinship networks sustained by members of the
landholding yangban (scholar-official) élite were dispersed early on since such
families were tainted as former landlords. Many of them fled to the South shortly
after the land reform in 1946 or were relocated to other villages to sever them
from their power base. The peasants who took up leadership positions, replacing
the former landlords and local élites, lacked the yangban custom of maintaining
detailed genealogical records or holding elaborate ancestor-worship rituals. As a
result, immediate family relations may be close and simple ancestral rites for
parents or grandparents may be performed, but traditional patriarchy involving
extended family clans has been superseded in North Korea.
Nonetheless, no legislation or political campaign in North Korea ever
denounced tradition or Confucianism per se, as in other socialist revolutions
where the traditional family was branded as the source of women’s oppression
and condemned as counter-revolutionary (as in China’s Cultural Revolution).
Rather than the family being held responsible for women’s subjugation, the
family came to symbolize the Korean nation. As postcolonial studies have shown
in other contexts, women in colonial societies were often seen to embody the
nation, with special weight placed on family and gender roles in the construction
of a national identity (Chatterjee 1993). North Korea’s Marxist-influenced official
discourse targeted ‘feudal and colonial remnants’, and ‘feudal relations’ between
men and women, but not tradition. The Gender Equality Law, for example,
outlawed concubinage, early marriage, and prostitution as feudal and colonial
practices, but nowhere was there any reference to Confucian tradition or the
family as a source of social ills.
The state maintained and built on the importance of the family as the building
block of North Korean communism (Armstrong 2003: 94–98). Article 23 of the
first North Korean Constitution of 1948 stipulated that ‘marriage and the family
are under the protection of the state’. Almost a quarter of a century later, the
revised 1972 Socialist Constitution again reiterated the importance of the family
by stating that ‘the state pays great attention to consolidating the family, the cell
(sep’o) of society’ (Yun 1991: 81). In lieu of the patriarchal family, the nuclear
family became the basic ‘cell’ of North Korean society, and the leader’s family
was exalted as the model family. The founding leader of North Korea, Kim Il
Sung (1912–1994), and his nuclear family, consisting of Kim Jong Suk (1917–
1949), his wife and comrade-in-arms during the anticolonial struggle of the 1930s,
and their son Kim Jong Il (1941–2011), are often referred to as the ‘Three Generals
of Mount Paektu’ in reference to the highest mountain on the Korean Peninsula
bordering China. Long considered a sacred mountain by Koreans as the place of
their ancestral origins, North Korea today venerates Mount Paektu as the heroic
site of Kim Il Sung’s anticolonial guerrilla struggle and Kim Jong Il’s birthplace.
The dynastic succession of the leader from Kim Il Sung to his son, Kim Jong Il,
and most recently to the grandson, Kim Jong Un (1983–), presents a markedly
patrilineal model of politics. In this regard, practices which jeopardized the
family unit, including the open expression of sexuality or divorce, were thus
strictly limited as a threat to the nation itself.

Sexuality
Given the significance of marriage and family in North Korean society, it is easy
to see why sexuality has become so austere – at least in official discourse. Not
only are other concerns, such as national security and food insecurity, major
preoccupations for a politically-isolated country with an ailing economy, but the
normative value placed on the nuclear family as the basic unit of society
officially limits the expression of sexuality to the reproduction of future
generations within the confines of heterosexual marriage. Reproduction for the
purposes of population growth has been particularly important because North
Korea’s population has stood at less than half of South Korea’s since 1945, an
imbalance that was further exacerbated by the Korean War, which killed 12 to 15
per cent of North Korea’s population (Halliday 1985: 47). Like other industrialized
societies, however, there has been a steady decline in the fertility rate despite
policies promoting population growth – the average number of children per
woman decreased from 6.5 in 1966 to 2.5 in 1988 (Jung 2006: 754).
The official promotion of reproduction notwithstanding, one must therefore
assume that there is much that goes on behind closed doors whether in non-
reproductive sexual practices or methods of birth control. Officially, family
planning, including contraceptives and abortions, are available with a doctor’s
prescription through the public health system, but the extent to which they are
readily accessible remains unclear. According to one survey, more than 60 per
cent of North Korean women used contraceptives, mainly the intrauterine device
(CEDAW 2005b: 8). However, by North Korea’s own admission, abortion is
restricted, only available in cases of medical complications (‘disease’ or
‘deformity’) or unwed ‘illegal’ pregnancies (CEDAW 2002: 27). There are
reportedly no restrictions to women’s access to family planning services to decide
on the number and spacing of children, but the language presumes the use of
contraceptives within a family for the purposes of family planning (CEDAW
2002: 28). Similarly, a form of sex education is provided in secondary schools, as
students are taught human anatomy, but the burden is on girls to attend
additional lectures between the third and sixth grades on ‘female physiology’ and
‘common knowledge of female menstruation and nursing of children’ (CEDAW
2005a: 16). Family planning and reproductive health policies therefore target
women in order to prevent ‘illegal abortion and premature pregnancy’, limiting
sexual practices to the confines of marriage (CEDAW 2005a: 17).
Although little is known about North Korean sexual practices, some
information can be gleaned from North Korean refugees and defectors with the
caveat that they represent a self-selected group of those who chose to leave North
Korea, overwhelmingly from the border regions of North Hamgyŏng Province.
They are often paid for their interviews, which leads to incentives to embellish
their stories. On the surface, the stories gathered in the twenty-first century are
surprisingly similar to the statements offered in the 1970s, leading one journalist
to conclude, for example, that ‘the country doesn’t have a dating culture. Many
marriages are still arranged … Couples are not supposed to make any public
displays of affection… [and] there is no premarital sex’ (Demick 2009: 80).
However, the reportage betrays hidden realities between the lines. For example,
out of the six main personalities featured in Barbara Demick’s book on North
Korea, three of them either have family members who divorced or had divorced
themselves. One of the more rebellious sons had lived out of wedlock with an
older woman (Demick 2009: 144) and the book itself revolves around the
blossoming love affair between a young couple who manage to find time to date
in the cover of night with the blackouts that became a regular feature of everyday
life during the period of famine and economic collapse referred to as the
‘Arduous March’ (officially 1996–1997, but in reality 1994–1998). The famine and
the subsequent disintegration of the family apparently weakened strict sexual
norms with increases in extramarital relations, unwed pregnancies, abortions,
and divorces (Jung 2006: 756).
Moreover, in a rare survey of North Korean refugees about their sex lives,
husbands on average were shown to be satisfied with their sex life, while wives
generally answered that they had no thoughts on the matter or did not know
(Pak 2003: 332). The only woman to express overt dissatisfaction was a woman in
her mid-thirties with a college degree in a professional occupation. While most
were embarrassed to speak about sex, the fact that an educated, professional
woman was the only one to speak up suggests the extent to which much of the
data coming from refugee testimony is skewed. Predictably, the vast majority of
refugees tend to come from the border regions, having lived their lives in the
periphery as low-level workers. Their views and experiences are coloured by
their lack of access to the relatively more cosmopolitan surroundings of places
like Pyongyang, whose residents might have seen love affairs displayed on the
silver screen or read about them in translated works such as Gone with the Wind
(Demick 2009: 190). While the vast majority of films and literature are didactic in
nature, some incorporate popular genres of entertainment such as science fiction
and romance, including films such as Pulgasari (Shin 1985) about a creature
resembling Godzilla, and Love, Love, My Love (Shin 1984). Based on the popular
folktale of a beautiful courtesan of the Chosŏn Dynasty named Ch’unhyang,
Love, Love, My Love featured heretofore unprecedented themes of romance and
sexuality (H. Lee 2000: 89). Since 1987, the Pyongyang Film Festival has provided
its residents with the opportunity to watch foreign films, and the state-run
television stations also show films from the former Soviet bloc at least once a
week (Schŏnherr 2011).
Without a focused study on North Korean sexual practices and experiences,
however, it is difficult to make any conclusive assessments about sexuality in
North Korea. What is clear is that sexuality is no more difficult to discipline than
other facets of life. Young people are encouraged to marry later in life, while
public displays of affection are restrained. There are no acknowledgments of or
provisions for homosexual relationships or transgendered identities. There seems
to be very little awareness at all of any diversity in sexual orientation or identity,
as one North Korean refugee claimed that he did not understand why he felt no
desire for his wife for the nine years he was married until, after settling in South
Korea, he saw a photograph of two men kissing, which ‘sent thrills throughout
[his] body’ and he finally recognized his homosexuality (Chu 2004). Despite the
limited forms of sexuality, there is little evidence of social issues that arise in
other parts of the world, such as escalating rates of sexually transmitted diseases,
teenage pregnancies, unwed mothers, or illegal abortions. No doubt such
instances do exist (as intimated by more recent problems of prostitution and
trafficking discussed below), but widespread occurrences would be difficult to
hide, especially with the increases in the volume of visitors to the country in the
form of aid workers and tourists. Rather than the ‘repression’ of sexuality, I have
therefore inquired into the origins and mechanisms of the kind of puritan
sexuality that has come to dominate North Korean society.
A lasting factor has been the history of colonisation. Postcolonial societies in
both the North and South have been plagued by the legacies of Japanese
imperialism which simultaneously combined discriminatory policies targeting
colonized women to serve as sexual slaves (so-called comfort women) for the
Japanese Imperial Army while propounding the equality of all imperial subjects
through a form of pan-Asianism in the call for the Greater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere. The result in North Korea has been an obsession with purity
and a homogeneous national identity to expel the traumatic memory of
discrimination and sexualized violence. In so far as Japanese domination of Korea
– whether in the loss of sovereignty or the systematic rape of ‘comfort women’ –
was thought to be the direct result of the lack of a strong state that could protect
its independence and its people’s physical integrity, the state is now presented as
the protector and guardian of sexuality and national identity. As noted above, the
Gender Equality Law voided all Japanese imperial laws and regulations
pertaining to Korean women, proceeding to define how marriage, family, and
sexuality would be construed in a new Korea.
Many communist states have attempted to solve the ‘woman question’ by
enabling women to work outside the home and claim independence from male
breadwinners. Sex would no longer be a commodity to be sold by destitute
women nor would it be a form of servitude by women in wealthy families for the
reproduction of heirs to pass on the inheritance. Guaranteed a basic minimum
standard of living, women (and men) would now be able to choose their partners
according to their true sentiments rather than for survival. North Korea was no
different, as women were encouraged to join the workforce. By 1965,
approximately 55 per cent of the workforce was made up of women (Jung 2006:
750). Social services and maternity benefits for women were accordingly
expanded. Children were provided eleven years of free mandatory education;
there were free childcare centres for infants between thirty days and three years
old, and kindergartens for children of ages four to five; and women were
provided five months of paid maternity leave (Pak 2003: 151–152). Even among
disaffected North Koreans who have chosen to leave the country, free education
and medical care have been regarded favourably as the greatest achievements of
state socialism in North Korea.
Still, the family was maintained as a social unit in which women were the
main caretakers. Despite major strides enabling women to be economically
independent and politically active, it remained largely women’s duty to take care
of children and housework. North Korean women have the double burden of
working outside the home while being in charge of domestic chores. Even with
the socialization of childcare, the sexual division of labour has been difficult to
overturn because gender roles within the family were reproduced in public
institutions. Public canteens, laundries, orphanages and childcare centres were
run by women who were often referred to as ‘mothers’ (S.-Y. Kim 1947: 55).
 Moreover, gender segregation in labour sidestepped the principle of equal pay
for equal work, since women usually worked in occupations with lower pay: the
service sector, light industries, primary school teaching, and nursing. Men
dominated the higher-paid occupations in mining and heavy industries, taking
the jobs with the highest status as managers, university professors, and doctors
(Yun 1991: 203). In the 1970s, 70 per cent of women’s employment was
concentrated in the light industries (Jung 2006: 751), and women continue to
make up 70 per cent of workers in the light industries, 86 per cent of school
teachers, and 100 per cent of nurses (K.A. Park 2011: 163). North Korea claims to
have put in place a quota of over 30 per cent for the proportion of women among
public officials, but women only make up 10 per cent of judges, 10 per cent of top
officials in government ministries, and 20 per cent of representatives to the
people’s assemblies at all levels (CEDAW 2005a: 6, 9). Despite the claim to gender
equality, North Korean discourse emphasizes different ‘constitution and ability’
for different types of jobs (CEDAW 2005a: 12) with some work that deals with
‘poisonous matters’ or ‘harmful rays’ or excessive heat, cold, humidity, noise, or
vibration deemed ‘harmful’ for women (CEDAW 2002: 24).
However, in the aftermath of the crises of the 1990s, which dismantled the
public distribution of food and most social services, women became the main
income earners through private trading activities that ranged from peddling food
and household items to providing services such as hair-cutting and needlework
(K.A. Park 2011: 165). As already noted, strict sexual norms weakened, but gender
roles were also undermined as women earned income through black markets
with their relatively greater free time since housewives were not always expected
to work outside the home. Unlike other socialist countries, an unusually high
percentage of married women have chosen to be housewives. In the mid-1980s, 60
to 70 per cent of married women began quitting their jobs after marriage,
although they often continued to work in neighborhood work units without
remuneration (Jung 2006: 752). In contrast to other mass organizations such as the
Socialist Youth League, open to all youths between the ages of 15 and 26, or the
Occupational League for all workers, the Women’s Union – predominantly made
up of housewives – was reportedly less strict about holding its members
accountable for regularly attending its meetings since the organization was not
tied to career advancement (Pak 2003: 280). As a result, housewives were able to
take advantage of market activities, and some women began to question the
sexual division of labour at home, demanding that their husbands share in
domestic chores, while others opted out of marriage altogether (K.A. Park 2011:
171).
Subsequently, the revised 1998 Constitution deleted the clause that the state
shall ‘liberate women from the heavy family chores’, which had been included in
the 1972 Constitution (K.A. Park 2011: 167). The state’s withdrawal from its
commitment to the protection of women’s rights came at the worst time as sexual
trafficking has arguably become the single most pressing problem facing North
Korean women in the border regions. As women look for opportunities to
provide for their families, they are often kidnapped or lured, and sold as
farmhands, restaurant workers, family servants, brides, or sex workers into China
(Jung 2006: 757). The women’s illegal status exposes them to sexual violence,
rape, and confinement without any recourse (Good Friends 2005: 8).
Officially, North Korea disavows instances of trafficking in women or
prostitution in the country, claiming that ‘there is no informal sector in the
DPRK’ (CEDAW 2005a: 8, 12). However, independent research by humanitarian
organizations confirms the existence of prostitution within the country, which
spiked drastically after the onset of food shortages beginning in the mid-1990s.
Women sold sex as a form of bribe to security personnel or in exchange for food
(Good Friends 2005: 7). While the state has more often been viewed as an obstacle
to sexual freedom, especially in places like North Korea, state intervention may
be the only remedy to address the rising problem of trafficking and sexual
violence against women. It is a sobering reminder of the potentially protective
role of the state, rather than simply its intrusiveness, in the realm of sexuality.

Note
* I have used the McCune-Reischauer system for the transliteration of Korean names and terms. All
translations are my own unless otherwise noted. This chapter is a revised version of a chapter included in
the Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia edited by Vera Mackie and Mark McLelland
(2014).
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Part V
South Korea
20
Trade union movements in South Korea
since 19451

Jooyeon Jeong

In capitalistic nations, the prevailing view regarding the relations between

employers and workers is to assume the inevitable presence of conflicts arising
naturally, not only from their different interests but from the inequality of power
between the two sides. According to the pluralistic perspective, workers’ free and
voluntary choices to organize, bargain, and strike legally could be a realistic
solution to such problems in capitalistic industrial relations (Gospel and Palmer,
1993; Katz, Kochan, and Colvin, 2008). As a result, workers in advanced
capitalistic nations are allowed to freely organize their trade unions, to conduct
collective bargaining through democratic unions and to strike in order to urge
their employers to meet their bargaining demands.
In order to study unions and industrial relations in Asian ‘newly industrialized
countries’ (NICs) (Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) and developing
nations (China and Indonesia) in comparison with their counterparts in advanced
nations, the pressing and primary question to be addressed by researchers could
be whether such a pluralistic prescription is similarly available to workers in
those nations. According to the literature on unions in Asian NICs (Bean, 1994;
Choi, 1989; Deyo, 1989; Martin, 1989; Poole, 1986), Korean workers could not
freely exercise their collective rights through the formation of democratic unions
for most of the economic developmental period from the early 1960s to 1986. This
retarded pattern of union growth, which contrasts with the pattern in advanced
nations during similar periods, is interpreted in the literature as having been
constrained by the repressive state-led, political and economic environments at
the national level—termed the macro politico-economic analytical framework in
this chapter. In the distinct environments, the demands for the collective voices of
unions to be heard was treated as detrimental both to the rapid growth of
manufacturing firms in developing nations and to the required national political
stability. As a result, unions in Korea and advanced nations were treated as
‘oranges and apples’ in terms of their representative capacities as well as their
determinants.
This chapter is critical of the incorrect presumption of a lack of representative
capacity among Korean unions and calls for an analysis of those capacities at the
industry and firm levels in Korea2. Above all, this chapter, based on several pieces
of concrete evidences on union activities in several Korean industries, shows that
Korean unions are not completely useless to workers, even though they are not
completely independent from the state and possess only weak to intermediate
representative capacities in their relations with employers. Even though Korean
employers are in an advantageous position with regards to repressing and
constraining normal union activities, the Korean democratic political and social
system cannot allow its employers to either completely ignore the spontaneous
desires of workers or block their attempts at building autonomous and
independent unions. Thus, this chapter aims to explore the extent of the
representative capacities that Korean unions possess in their relations with
employers and the factors that account for incomplete capacities. The
representative capacities are aggregately judged by (i) union organizational bases,
defined as both the quantitative absolute sizes of unions and their sizes relative to
the total workforce, or union density, (ii) union security, defined as the level of
support offered by the employers in admitting union efforts to recruit and retain
employees as union members, (iii) bargaining capacity, defined as union ability to
achieve the right to represent the workers and its agendas, and (iv) dispute
leverages, defined as the capability of unions to induce employers to agree to
their demands either through the threat or realization of industrial action.
In addition, except for a few traditional and manufacturing industries, unions
in most Korean industries have maintained enterprise unionism as the prevailing
structure (Jeong, 2001, 2007). Here, enterprise unionism is defined as a highly
decentralized union and bargaining structure in which the initial union
organization, and subsequent decisions related to collective bargaining and
disputes, are primarily made by workers at enterprise levels interacting closely
with em ployers who have diverse attitudes and policies toward accepting, or at
least tolerating, unions. Given the decentralized structure, both workers and
employers have tended to possess considerable discretion over the formation and
acceptance of enterprise unions, respectively, which has concomitantly led to
extraordinary diversity in representative capability among enterprise unions in
different industries, as well as among enterprise unions across different firm sizes
within the same industry.
Accordingly, this chapter tries to illuminate different types of representative
capacities of unions in three industries, as judged by (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) above.
The analysis of those types is beyond the coverage of this chapter; other works of
this author (Jeong, 2005, 2007, and 2011) propose an alternative meso- (industry)
and micro- (firm) socioeconomic analytical framework to emphasize that the
phenomenon of enterprise union growth and decline chiefly depends on the
capacity and determination of workers to form and retain unions as juxtaposed to
the employers’ economic capacity and tolerance toward the presence and
operation of unions, which closely interacts with several social and economic
environments at the industry and firm levels. Those environments include the
product market environment (the strategic significance of an industry in the
national economy, the growth stages of an industry, the status of an industry in
the national economy and the types of interventionist policies of the government,
and the industrial structure), the industrial relations domain (historical growth
paths of militant versus feeble union activities in formative periods of industrial
relations at industry and firm levels, prev alent attitudes and strategies of firms
toward unions), labor market environments (demographic features of workers in
terms of education and skill levels, genders, and ages), and a firm’s managerial
domain (corporate ownership and structure, management philosophy,
management style, and pertinent labor and union policies).
The remainder of this chapter is composed of two sections. The first provides a
broad overview of the historical evolution of Korean labor markets and industrial
relations during the last seven decades since 1945. The second section examines
the representative capacities of unions in close interaction with the structural
features of industrial relations in the chemical, city bus, and auto industries.

Historical development of industry-level labor

markets and industrial relations
This section aims to broadly examine the historical evolution of both the number
of employees across sectors and industries in the Korean labor market and the
extent of union memberships in industrial union federations during the
approximately seven decades from 1945 to the early 2010s. Certain industries,
which were experiencing growth stages during specific periods, contributed
greatly to job creation in the Korean labor market and thus sometimes, but not
always, led the national union movement by forming the bulk of the rank-and-
files composing national union membership. In contrast, as industries entered
into stages of decline, their leading statuses in the labor markets and in industrial
relations gradually weakened and they were replaced by other newly growing
industries. What, then, were the predominant industries in the Korean labor
markets and industrial relations in different periods during the seven decades?
Can we find any differences and similarities in a rough comparison between the
Korean case and the British counterpart during the two-and-a-half centuries from
the mid-18th century to the present day, and how can we analyze them?
In Korea, the last seven decades can be divided into five distinct periods during
which the predominant industries leading both the Korean labor markets and
industrial relations have shifted. In 1963, roughly at the end of the first pre-
industrialization period (1945–1961), about two-thirds of the Korean workforce
(63.2 percent) were employed in the agricultural, fishery, and forestry industries
in contrast to 7.9 percent in the manufacturing sector, 9.8 percent in the
wholesale, retail, food, and lodging sectors, and 13.9 percent in other social,
public and individual service sectors (Table 20.1). Looking at the distribution of
the rank-and-files across industries, the transport sector employed the largest
proportion (34.5 percent) in comparison with 29.8 percent in the mining and
manufacturing sector and 23.2 percent in the public sector in 1962 (Table 20.2).
The comparison between the Korean labor markets and unions and their
British counterparts during the first pre-industrialization period helps to
illuminate three crucial features. First of all, the Korean industrialization pattern
can be characterized by (1) the relatively retarded growth of the manufacturing
industry, which generated only a small share of total employment in the labor
market—7.9 percent in 1963 (Table 20.1)—and (2) the low proportion of rank-and-
file workers among all Korean union memberships during the pre-
industrialization period—29.8 percent in the mining and manufacturing sectors
and 21.4 percent if mining is excluded in 1962 (Table 20.2). This contrasts with the
British pattern of early growth in several craft manufacturing industries as
national strongholds of unions such as the metals, engineering, shipbuilding,
textile, clothing, printing and paper, woodworking and furnishing industries,
which altogether employed 53.3 percent of all national union members in 1888
(Clegg, Fox, and Thompson, 1964: 1).
Second, the Korean state in the state-led developmental process during the
1950s and 1960s was aimed at encouraging the rapid growth of public
corporations in the railway, electricity, post office, ginseng and tobacco
industries, and the transport sector, as those industries provided public goods and
maintained the social infrastructures that would be essential for subsequent rapid
industrialization. As a result, both public corporations and the transport sector
formed union strongholds to which the bulk proportion of the rank-and-file
belonged—23.2 percent of all Korean union members were employed in the public
sector and 34.5 percent in the transport sector in 1962 (Table 20.2). In addition, the
Korean state intervened heavily in the mining sector, as coal was the primary
source of power. Accordingly, if we include the members of the Mining Union in
the proportions of rank-and-files in both public and transport sectors—8.4 percent
of all union members belonged to the Mining Union in 1962 in Table 20.2— the
share of total

Table 20.1 Annual shifts in the number and proportions of employees in various sectors in Korea (in
thousands)
union members that were rank-and-file employees of public corporations,
companies in the transport sector, and in the mining industry was 66.1 percent;
thus, about two-thirds of the unionized workforce were employed in the public
and transport sectors and mining industry, which were heavily intervened by the
state at the end of the pre-industrialization period.
Finally, in parallel with the weakness of the unions in the British agriculture
and fishing industry—there were 10,000 rank-and-file union members from that
industry among a total of 750,000 British union members in 1888 (Clegg, Fox, and
Thompson, 1964: 1), the unions in Korea’s agriculture, forestry, and fishery
industry are unpopular despite that industry having the highest proportion (63.2
percent) of the total Korean workforce in 1963 as shown in Table 20.1.
During the second early (1962–1971) and third mature (1972–1992)
industrialization periods, Korea recorded the rapid industrialization resulting
from the growth in employment in the manufacturing sector. As seen in Table
20.1, between 1963 and 1988, while the total number of employees in Korea grew
by 112.3 percent and that in the agriculture, forestry, and fishery sector fell
considerably by 30.6 percent, there was rapid growth of 640 percent in the
manufacturing sector; 603 percent in the transport, warehouse, and
communication sector; 412 percent in the construction sector; and 364.6 percent
in the wholesale, retail, food, and lodgings sector. Accordingly, in 1988, the
highest proportion of all Korean employees was in the manufacturing sector (27.7
percent), followed by the retail, wholesale, food, and lodgings sector (21.6
percent) and the agriculture, forestry, and fishery sector (20.6 percent) (Table
20.1).
However, we should note that the types of manufacturing industries that led to
job creation in the Korean labor market, and thus occupied relatively large
proportions of the national rank-and-file employees, differed between the early
and mature industrialization periods. The national industrialization during the
second early industrialization period (1962–1971) was chiefly led by the growth of
light manufacturing industries such as the female-dominated textile (84.2 percent
of females among all rank-and-file employees in 1971; Textile Union, 2004: 260),
chemical (38.1 percent in 1971; Chemical Union, 1987: 151), and electronics
industries. In contrast, during the third mature industrialization period (1972–
1992), the growth of maledominated heavy manufacturing industries—machinery,
automotive supply and assembly, and ship building—led the Korean
industrialization. Accordingly, the Metal Union’s share of the total
manufacturing union membership, excluding the Mining Union, grew rapidly
from 12.7 percent (= 5,336 / [58,385 – 16,446] × 100) in 1962, to 21.2 percent in
1972, to 26.1 percent in 1986, and to 51.5 percent in 1989 (Table 20.2). In contrast,
the share of rank-and-file union members of the four public corporations in the
public sector—railway, electricity, post office, and ginseng and tobacco—and the
transport sector, respectively, fell from 23.2 percent and 34.5 percent in 1962 to 4.7
percent and 19.4 percent in 1989 (Table 20.2).
During the fourth period of sluggish economic growth and economic crisis
calling for the intervention of IMF (International Monetary Fund) for avoiding
the national bankruptcy in 1997 (1993–1998), the size of the workforce in the
manufacturing sector and its proportion of the overall national workforce shrank
from a maximum of 4,986,000 and 26.2 percent in 1992 to 3,917,000 and 19.6
percent in 1998 (KLI, 2013: 24). As Table 20.1 shows, the proportion of employees
in Korea’s manufacturing sector fell from 27.7 percent in 1988 to 23.6 percent in
1995, while the proportion in the wholesale, retail, food, and lodgings sector
grew. In addition, the size of the manufacturing sector’s union membership and
its proportion of national union membership fell considerably during this period,
as seen in Table 20.2, from 914,114 and 48.2 percent in 1989 to 479,732 and 34.2
percent in 1998. In particular, the disadvantageous economic environment during
the fourth period damaged the organizational bases of union membership in the
light manufacturing industries more seriously than those in the heavy
manufacturing industries as shown by the rapid declines in the textile union
membership from 1989 to 1998

Table 20.2 Numbers of union members of Korean industrial union federations

of 71.1 percent (= (155,331 – 44,751) / 155,331 × 100), of 40.8 percent in the

chemical sector, and 70.1 percent in the rubber sector, in contrast to 34.9 percent
in the metal sector. The case of union decline in the chemical industries is
examined below in the next section.
Total national union membership in Korea fell notably from 1,897,266 in 1989
to 1,401,940 in 1998 (Table 20.2). Table 2 also shows that new unions were formed
in the public sector and in several service industries in the private sector.
However, these new unions do not seem to have compensated for the decline in
other sectors or halted the decline in national union membership. The union
movement in the public sector still faced serious limitations in bargaining and
strikes due to the restrictive union policy of the state. On the other hand, several
of the new small industrial union federations in the private service sector seem to
have lacked the stable bargaining capacities and strike leverages needed for
effective representation of the interests of their rank-and-file members, not to
mention their precarious union organizational bases. To sum up, the poor
organizational bases and representative capacities of Korean unions in the public
sector and private service sector contrast with Britain, where the growth of union
membership in the public sector and white-collar occupations led the growth of
national union membership from the early 20th century to after World War II
(Clegg, Fox, and Thompson, 1964: 466–471; Clegg, 1979: 174–186).
Finally, during the fifth period of low economic growth (1999–present),
national union membership grew, mainly due to the growth of industrial union
associations in the public sector including public (1) and public (2), nonaffiliated
independent unions and several small industrial union associations in the private
service sector, as seen in Table 20.2. However, many new unions in those sectors
do not seem to have possessed satisfactory levels of bargaining capacities and
dispute leverages. In addition, union membership in the textile, chemical, and
metal industries, and in dock transport, seafaring and taxi fell continuously from
1998 to 2012 (Table 20.2).

Three industrial cases of union growth and industrial

relations
This section aims to characterize the structural and functional features of unions
and industrial relations in three industrial cases in Korea, the chemical industry,
the city bus industry in the auto transport sector, and the auto assembly industry
in the metal sector. The choice of the chemical industry is useful for considering
the highly decentralized enterprise unionism typically observed in the Korean
light manufacturing industries3. That industrial case typically shows weak
representative capacity characterized by unstable and low security of enterprise
unionism, which could be attributed to low union densities, weak bargaining
capacity and weak dispute leverage confining to annual wage growth as typically
observed in other female-dominated light manufacturing industries during the
1970s.
The city bus branch of the Auto Transport Union exhibits the stable
representative capacity typically observed in the Korean transport sector4. The
union is comprised of several regional unions that organize enterprise union
branches and are responsible for regionally centralized bargaining, which deals
with broad issues of concern as well as workers’ wage increases at the regional
levels. The union also differs from the Chemical Union through its high union
densities, union shop rules and effective strike leverages. Jeong (2001) showed
that identifying the determinants of the regionally centralized bargaining, as well
as the bargaining outcomes for the city bus union, calls for the referring of
previous literature in the contexts of Britain, Germany, and Japan (Bean, 1994:
Clegg, 1976; Windmuller, 1987).
Finally, unions in the metal industry have been the vanguard of the vigorous
democratic enterprise union movement, and distinguished from their precedents
by showing unprecedented and exemplary levels of militancy and autonomy
during the political and social democratization period that existed in Korea from
1987 to 19925. In particular, the strong representative capacities of enterprise
unions in auto assembly firms are characterized by a stable growth of annual
union memberships, high union densities, aggressive bargaining demands for
wage increases and regulatory power over personnel and work organization
policies in combination with frequent strikes.

Case 1: Weak but dissimilar representative capacities among enterprise

unions in the chemical industry
unions in the chemical industry

Case 1, part (a): Low union security and unstable union organizational
bases

In the chemical industry, enterprise unionism prevails in terms of union

organization, bargaining, and strikes. In other words, union organizations have
been initiated by spontaneous desires and efforts towards organization among
workers within firms, which must be sufficiently powerful to overcome the
resistance and opposition of the employers, while in one firm, bargaining and
strikes have been led by the enterpriser union in order to deal with the
complaints and demands of its organized employees. FKCU (Federation of Korean
Chemical Unions; henceforth, the Chemical Union), which was the loose
industrial union federation of enterprise unions in chemical industry and was
affiliated to the national union confederation, FKTU (Federation of Korean Trade
Unions), was not usually involved in organization, bargaining, and strikes at
enterprise levels. Instead, it publishes annual activity reports that record union
organization, bargaining, and strikes in its affiliated enterprise unions every year.
The Chemical Union was comprised of 16 to 18 industrial union branches from
1973 to 2013. In 2013, these were cement, concrete and remicon; PVC;
petrochemical; petroleum refining; petroleum gas; pharmaceutical and cosmetics;
glass; dish manufacturing; shoe manufacturing; paint; chemical fertilizer; food;
paper; stationery; and general chemicals (Chemical Union, 2013: 105).
The industrial structure in the Chemical Union can roughly be judged as
having a predominance of small-and medium-sized enterprises (henceforth,
SMEs) and a small number of large-sized enterprises (henceforth, LEs), with the
unions usually organized in the LEs. Accordingly, the unorganized chemical
firms are smaller than the unionized ones. In 1978, the average number of rank-
and-file members in any given chemical enterprise union was about 389 (142,000
365) while the average number of employees in chemical firms was approximately
54 (583,000 10,793) (Chemical Union, 1987: 393). The prevalent anti-union
attitudes among employers and managers of chemical firms primarily resulted in
instability and low union security. First of all, the fragile union security in
Korean chemical firms was easily shown by the predominance of strikes resulting
from unfair labor practices, including employers unfairly treating union leaders
and repressing democratic union activities; for example, among 137 strikes
between 1972 and 1979, the cause of 71 strikes (51.8 percent) was unfair labor
practices which aimed to threaten union security (ibid.: 450).
Such repressive behaviors by employers, which attempted to deny and
eliminate unions in chemical firms, had always been the primary cause of strikes.
These behaviors took the forms of the repression and elimination of democratic
enterprise unions, retaliatory personnel policies for union leaders, physical
harassment of union leaders and their followers, the hiring of workers to replace
those on strike, and the denial of unions’ legitimate rights to engage in collective
bargaining between 1984 and 1989 (Chemical Union, 2004: 300, 318–345).
Similar causes of the strikes were cited between 1990 and 1999 (ibid., 490–523).
In particular, such weak union security in chemical firms during economic
recessions, in which the presence and representative roles of the unions were
easily repressed and denied by employers, forced numerous enterprise unions to
disappear. From 1990 to 1999, after the Chemical Union had reached its largest
organizational size in 1990, 535 enterprise unions, of which 45,732 rank-and-file
employees were members, were disaffiliated from the union (Chemical Union,
2004: 429). Such decisions by the enterprise unions primarily resulted either from
formidable pressure from employers or from worsened business conditions for
chemical firms, leading to bankruptcies and mergers.

Table 20.3 Annual sizes of union membership (in thousands) and <numbers> of enterprise unions in
Chemical Union and its major industrial branches

Case 1, part (b): Weak enterprise bargaining capacity and dispute

Case 1, part (b): Weak enterprise bargaining capacity and dispute
leverage, confined to annual wage growths

The proportion of all enterprise unions actually reaching collective bargaining

agreements is one measure of the effectiveness of bargaining as the primary
institutional mechanism for determining the employment conditions of unionized
workers. A rate of 100 percent would mean that all unionized chemical firms
reached bargaining agreements with their enterprise unions. In the Chemical
Union, the rate was 71 percent in 1972; 74 percent in 1979 (Chemical Union, 1987:
440); and 93 percent in 1998 (Chemical Union, 1999: 99). However, rates fell
noticeably in the 2000s to 67 percent in 2000 (Chemical Union, 2004: 168); 58
percent in 2003 (Chemical Union, 2004: 168); 41 percent in 2008 (Chemical Union,
2009: 160); and 47.9 percent in 2013 (Chemical Union, 2013: 137). In other words,
the proportion of enterprise unions reaching bargaining agreements fell to about
two-thirds of all unionized firms in 2000 and again to less than half of such firms
after 2008. The plunge in the union organizational basis in the Chemical Union
from 1990 to 2013 (Table 20.3) is also closely related to the noticeable collapse in
the bargaining capacity of the existing unions.
Another measure of the declining bargaining capacity of the chemical unions
was the types of agendas chiefly dealt with in the bargaining. The agendas in
chemical unions were mainly confined to annual wage growth rather than other
fundamental issues of concern among workers such as unfair wage structure
creating large wage differentials between female blue-collar workers and male
white-collar workers or dirty, dangerous and demanding working conditions. The
annual wage growth rates bargained for in the chemical unions, as shown in
Table 20.4, mainly depended on several industry-specific business cycles and on
the national economic environments. The two digits of growth rates in the 1970s
reflect both the rapid-growth stage of the industry and the high growth in
nominal wages to fit high inflation rates in that period. After the recovery from
economic recession following the second oil shock in the early 1980s, the high
annual wage growth rate in the chemical unions in 1987 reflect the
unprecedented economic boom (favorable economic environment) and the
explosive growth in the unions’ organizational bases and bargaining capacity
(favorable industrial relations environment) that started in that year. However,
the annual wage growth rate in the chemical unions fell in 1995, at the end of the
economic boom, and was frozen in 1998 after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
Finally, after the economic crisis, the wage bargaining capacity of unions in
chemical firms started to recover but remained at one-digit growth during the
2000s.
However, the decentralized wage bargaining of the enterprise unions in the
chemical industry could not fix the large wage differentials between different
chemical industries. Those wage differentials in 1973 (67,176 won in petroleum
refining; 21,773 won in paper; 20,702 won in food; 16,328 won in rubber; and
16,168 won in leather) remained roughly constant in 1979 (244,069 won in
petroleum refining; 104,595 won in paper; 88,029 won in food; 75,517 in rubber;
and 66,610 won in leather) (Jeong, 2007: 46). In addition, the weak enterprise
bargaining confined to annual wage growth could not fix the large wage
differentials between (i) unionized manual and non-unionized clerical and
managerial workers, (ii) male and female workers, and (iii) SMEs and LEs within
the same chemical industry, even though those wage differentials were the
primary complaints among the rank-and-files in chemical firms. Finally,
according to the analysis of collective bargaining agreements from 124 unionized
chemical firms in 1986, the prevailing form of regulatory voices for firms’
personnel policies regarding the rank-and-file was very weak; the large
proportion (58.0 percent) of those agreements specified unilateral decision of
firms, while others had either no agreements (19.3 percent) or weak forms of
regulations like consultation between firms and unions (12.0 percent), notification
to unions (8.0 percent), and consent with unions (2.7 percent) (Chemical Union,
2004: 279).
Among 137 disputes in chemical unions from 1972 to 1979, the top four causes
of the disputes were (i) demands for free union activities and opposition to the
arbitrary dismissal of rank-and-file employees (71 disputes); (ii) annual wage
growth (49); (iii) opposition to temporary closures and permanent shutdowns of
firms (11); and (iv) improvement of working conditions (5) (ibid.: 449). The first
cause shows that employers’ illegal practices aimed at suppressing union
activities frequently lead to weak union security while the second cause shows
that the annual wage growth was the primary bargaining agenda. In addition,
more than two-thirds of the disputes during the 1970s (94 of those 137 disputes
from 1972 to 1979, or 68 percent) took passive forms such as raising petitions or
submitting complaints to the National or Regional Labor Committee and
requesting mediation, rather than the active, threatening form of conducting
strikes (ibid.).

Table 20.4 Annual wage growth rates bargained for in the chemical industries

Case 2. Stable representative capacities of regionally centralized

bargaining in city bus unions

Case 2, part (a): High union security and stable union organizational
bases

The proportion of rank-and-file employees in the transport sector among all

Korean union memberships was 34.5 percent in 1962 and 33.4 percent in 1972 but
fell to 24.7 percent in 1986, as seen in Table 20.2. In that sector, the auto transport
industry became the largest, occupying more than half of the rank-and-file
employees in 1972 and 1986 (Table 20.2). In the Auto Transport Union, the rank-
and-file members of the city bus branch ranged from 52.4 percent in 1990 to 72.5
percent in 2013, as seen in Table 20.5, after the taxi branch was disaffiliated from
the union and built its own Taxi Union in 1988. The city bus branch of the Auto
Transport Union, rather than the enterprise unions in city bus firms, was mainly
responsible for leading collective bargaining and strike activities at the city levels;
such a regionally centralized bargaining structure gave them greater bargaining
capacities than decentralized enterprise bargaining would have done, as
examined below. In addition, the union shop rules— which required all of the
large numbers of male drivers (17,696 drivers in city bus companies in December
1977 [Auto Transport Union, 2003: 132]) and female conductors (19,217 bus
conductors in city bus companies in December 1977 [ibid.: 126]) and a small
number of mechanics to join unions as soon as they were employed—was the
chief institutional condition guaranteeing high union security.
As a result, with the growth in economic development increasing the national
demand for city bus services in newly formed and growing cities, the subsequent
growth in the number of employed drivers and conductors automatically
guaranteed an increase in union rank-and-file membership from 1980 to 2013
(Table 20.5). In the city, intercity, highway, and rental bus branches in the Auto
Transport Union, the number of female conductors started to decline from 1982
as bus companies tried to reduce labor costs by discharging female conductors by
enabling passengers to pay voluntarily when boarding buses. As a result, the
number of female conductors in all bus companies fell from about 17,000 in 1982
to less than 100 by 1992 (ibid.: 261). However, the increase in male drivers
resulting from the growing demand for city bus services in the 1980s offset this
reduction as shown by the only slight reduction in union membership in the city
bus branch of the Auto Transport Union from 1980 to 1990 (Table 20.5).

Case 2, part (b): Strong centralized bargaining capacity and dispute

leverage

High union security and stable union organizational bases in city bus unions
generated strong bargaining capacity and dispute leverage. During the last five
decades, city bus unions have retained the regional collective bargaining
structure in which regional unions and their regional employer associations
bargain and determine wages and other working conditions for all rank-and-file
employees in their affiliated bus companies in the regions. For example,
bargaining agreements over wages and other working conditions were separately
reached in six large cities, namely Seoul, Pusan, Incheon, Daegu, Kwangju, and
Daejeon. These centralized regional wage bargaining agreements achieved by the
regional city bus unions won 11 percent growth rates in Seoul and Pusan, 25.6
percent in Incheon, 12 percent in Daegu, 25 percent in Kwangju, and 20.5 percent
in Daejeon in 1987 (Auto Transport Union, 2003: 289).
Leaders of the city bus branch of the Auto Transport Union were always
involved in loose coordination in the determination of annual wage growth rates
among six cities in the regional wage bargaining.
What, then, were the industrial relations outcomes of the centralized regional
wage bargaining structure in the city bus unions of Auto Transport Union?
Above all, the centralized wage bargaining structure and loose coordination
succeeded in generating similar wage levels in six cities. For example, the average
wage level in city bus companies in Seoul during 1998 was 1,506,842 won, in
comparison with 1,493,016 won (99 percent of the wage level in Seoul) in Daegu
and 1,422,893 won (94.4 percent of the wage level in Seoul) while in 2013 the
similar wage levels remained constant, respectively 1,910,507 won, 1,934,826 won
(101.2 percent of the wage level in Seoul), and 1,724,598 won (90.2 percent of the
wage level in Seoul) (ibid.: 417). In addition, wage levels at city bus companies in
all cities stayed at similar levels under the city-level bargaining structure. In
contrast to dissimilar wage levels between SMEs and LEs within several chemical
industries as shown above, the similar wage levels across city bus companies
within and among cities is a surprising bargaining outcome. Such bargaining
outcomes of similar wage levels helped to enhance solidarity among rank-and-
file employees in city bus companies and thus maintained their high credibility
and commitment to their unions. In addition, the centralized regional bargaining
structure enabled numerous enterprise unions in city bus companies to respond
collectively at the city level to several issues of concerns commonly faced by
those unions, and thus helped to enhance the bargaining power through the
formidable threat of strikes that would paralyze the normal operation of the city
buses, a major public transportation system.

Table 20.5 Union membership in the Auto Transport Union and its city bus branch

On the basis of stable union security and organizational bases in city bus
branch in the Auto Transport Union, the centralized bargaining structure also
allowed them to conduct vigorous policy activities to meet the demands of the
workers; that activity relied on political lobbying to call for the building and
implementing of policies by the relevant government agency, usually, the
Ministry of Construction and Transportation. This shows that the mode of
dealing with broader bargaining issues beyond the enterprise level through a
centralized regional, industrial, and national bargaining structure, as observed in
Germany and Sweden (Bean, 1994), also occurred in the Korean city bus unions.
During the periods from 1987 to 1989, from 1990 to 1996, and from 1997 to 2002,
the demands raised by city bus branches of the Auto Transport Union included
several complaints of bus drivers, such as (i) in 1987 and 1992, suggestions for
relevant policies to deal with unexpected problems of individual wage losses for
city bus drivers resulting from traffic accidents, (ii) in 1996 and 2002, demands for
compulsory purchase of aggregate insurance by bus companies to deal with the
problem of several types of wage losses for bus drivers mentioned in (i), (iii) in
1987, demands calling for lengthening excessively short time intervals between
buses in operation which increased the possibilities of traffic accidents, (iv) in
1992 and 2001, reforms for reducing long working hours of bus drivers, and (v)
calls for prohibiting the employment of nonstandard or irregular bus drivers in
city bus companies in order to guarantee stable jobs for regular rank-and-file
drivers in 1998 (Auto Transport Union, 2003: 274–282, 315–326, 378–398). Even
though all these policy activities of the Auto Transport Union failed to always
generate the desired policy outcomes, some of them did succeed in building and
implementing relevant policies.

Case 3. Strong but various representative capacities of enterprise

unions in the auto industry

Case 3, part (a): High union security and stable union organizational
bases but varying across firms

During the mature industrialization period (1976–1992), the growth of male-

predominant heavy manufacturing industries such as the metal sector
contributed to the rapid growth of their unions in Korea. In contrast to the union
movements of the female-dominated textile, chemical, and electronics industries
during the early industrialization period from 1962 to 1975, the maledominated
metal sector’s unions showed a higher degree of militancy and autonomy in their
relations with employers. Within the metal sector, unions in the auto industry
were in the vanguard of the dramatic growth of the union movement after 1987.
Considering three enterprise unions in the auto assembly industry and two
unions in the auto supply industry is academically useful for showing the strong
but complex and diverse patterns of union growth in those industries.
Table 6 shows annual union memberships in five enterprise unions in two
chaebol-affiliated firms: unions H and D in the auto assembly industry, one
independent large-sized firm (union K in the auto assembly industry) and in two
SMEs (unions S and T in the auto supply industry). A chaebol (chaebŏl) is a
Korean conglomerate owned and managed by one family. Each enterprise union
is comprised of several regional plant branches usually producing different sizes
of cars; for example, the total membership (43,025) of enterprise union H in 2006
(Table 20.6) was comprised of (i) blue-collar manual workers (24,737 or 57.5
percent of all memberships in union H at the Ulsan plant, 2,655 or 6.2 percent at
the Chunju plant, 2,590 or 6.0 percent at the Asan plant), (ii) 2,608 mechanic
workers or 6.1 percent and 3,979 white-collar workers or 9.2 percent at the
Namyang plant, and (iii) 6,456 white-collar sales staff or 15.0 percent in firm H
(Lee, 2011: 37). High union densities in those five plants and a separate
occupation of sales staff stayed about 90 percent ranging from the lowest 90
percent among mechanic workers to the highest 98 percent in Ulsan and 70
percent in sales staff in that year (ibid.). Similarly, the total number of rank-and-
file employees in firm K in 2012 (30,356) (Table 20.6) was comprised of 5,605 at
the Soha plant, 12,945 at the Hwasung plant, 6,594 at the Kwangju plant, 1,691 in
the mechanics department, and 3,521 in the sales department (Hahm, 2013: 50).
High union density in firm K was 83.6 percent in 2006. The total union
membership in firm D was primarily comprised of rank-and-file employees at the
Bupyong plant, which saw a notable decline of union membership from 1998 to
2009, as seen in Table 20.6. Finally, unions S and T in two auto supply SMEs
experienced slight declines in their union membership from 1997 to 2001 as the
table shows. Both high union densities in unions H, K, and D and great
popularities of unions in the auto assembly industry helped their enterprise
unions to possess stable union securities in combination with high bargaining
capacities and dispute leverages.

Table 20.6 Sizes of union membership in five enterprise unions

Successful formation of democratic enterprise unions, which were either newly

created or replaced previous employer-controlled undemocratic company unions,
occurred in LEs in several metal industries in 1987. Given that those industries
were strategically core to the Korean economy at that time, recording high
growth and profits as leading industries of national exports, manual workers
could confidently and boldly express their discontent over their low wages and
poor working conditions from the early 1980s. Successful examples of enterprise
unions’ struggles in some chaebol-affiliated metal LEs, which aimed to defeat
employers’ stubborn resistance to admitting unions and the building of
permanent union organizations, were emulated by those in other chaebol-
affiliated LEs and in enterprise unions in LEs and SMEs in other manufacturing
and white-collar industries5. In the face of unprecedentedly militant and
autonomous demands for democratic unions, employers had no choice but to
accept the presence of unions as legitimate representatives of workers rather than
suppressing them and blocking their formation as they had in the past.
However, the outbreak of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis worsened the
business performance of auto firms and led to massive dismissals. Employer-led
enterprise restructuring led to the massive discharge of around 8,000 unionized
workers from firm H in 1998 and 1999. In contrast, similar employer-led
enterprise restructuring generated greater shocks and damages to unions’
organizational bases in firms D and K as those bankrupt firms were taken over by
a U.S. auto assembly firm and firm H, respectively. The number of employees in
the Bupyong plant of firm D fell from 8,012 in 1998 to 6,100 in 2009 (Table 6),
while the union opposing the employer-led enterprise restructuring clashed with
the police in 1999. Finally, unions in auto supply firms S and T also suffered a
decline of their rank-and-file memberships between 1997 and 1999 after the 1997
Asian Financial Crisis.

Case 3, part (b): Strong decentralized bargaining capacity and dispute

leverage, but defensive shifts varied across firms in periods of union
decline

In the auto industry, all of the enterprise unions in Table 20.6 showed a growth in
bargaining capacity from 1987 to 1993, followed by a noticeable decline from 1998
to 2013. During the first period, enterprise unions were able to call aggressively
for considerable improvements in wage levels and working conditions and
actually achieved considerable progress. For example, the annual bargaining by
union H in 1987, 1988, and 1989 gained significant growth in wages and
improvements in working conditions: the 1989 agreement included 79,260 won in
growth, 600 percent monthly bonuses, increases in family allowances, an increase
in rest time, increases in paid national and family holidays, increases in paid
holidays for female rank-and-file employees, and increases in long-service and
hazard allowances (Union H, 2009: 82). In addition, that union was also involved
in several coalitions with other newly formed enterprise unions in H-chaebol
companies in a struggle against the owning family of H-chaebol, which was
exhibiting authoritarian attitudes towards new unions. It finally formed the
Union Association in H-Group to coordinate the separate bargaining and strike
activities of individual enterprise unions in H-chaebol firms in 1987 because the
major managerial decisions in those firms were all being made by the owning
family (ibid.: 86–91).Given the unprecedented boom in the auto assembly indus
try in the late 1980s, the owning family exhibited a managerial style of
reluctantly recognizing the union presence while maintaining an adversarial
posture.
In comparison with the case of enterprise union H, enterprise union K faced a
different business environment and management style from its managers. Firm K
was not owned by one family but maintained a separation of management and
ownership. As a result, most of the financial fund in that firm was collected in
the security market while a small portion of the firm’s equity— 6.98 percent at the
end of 1996—was owned by its employees (Hahm, 2013: 54). Due to the relatively
loose managerial control of the firm, its top managers showed a relatively
cooperative management style, accommodating the militant union K. However,
firm K experienced bankruptcy due to its deteriorated business performance after
the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and was finally sold to firm H in 1998.

Table 20.7 Annual wage growth rates achieved in firm K during the period of its declining bargaining
capacities

The advent of unfavorable economic and firm business environments after the
1997 Asian Financial Crisis damaged the bargaining capacities of the enterprise
unions in the metal industry but to different extents across firms. For example,
the annual wage growth rates achieved in firm K showed a wage freeze in 1998
but positive rates from 1999 to 2005 (Table 20.7). This can be mainly explained by
(i) firm-specific factors as the bankrupt firm K was merged into firm H in 1998
while the new mother firm H adopted an accommodative labor control policy
until 2005 and (ii) the improved business performance of the Korean auto
assembly industry. However, the opposite business performance and the
adversarial labor control policy of firm H after 2006 led to a decline in annual
wage growths achieved after 2006. After the outbreak of the crisis, enterprise
unions in firms S and T also faced managerial demands for considerable
concessions such as wage freezes and cuts and the removal of some favorable
working conditions that had been agreed to through collective bargaining before
the crisis.
In the face of the unfavorable economic and firm business environment after
the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the main stance of the auto industry’s enterprise
unions in collective bargaining shifted from offensive to defensive as they tried to
defend the job security of rank-and-file employees. However, the enterprise
unions possessed different degrees of regulatory power to interfere in unilateral
managerial decisions regarding such job security. For example, firms’ policies in
hiring irregular and part-time workers, the transfer of jobs from unionized
workers to unorganized workers in subcontracting firms, and massive dismissals
could clearly undermine and threaten the employment security and working
conditions of unionized full-time workers. The bargaining agreement achieved by
union H succeeded in prohibiting the hiring of both irregular workers and
workers in subcontracting firms without union consent. In contrast, the
bargaining agreements made by union D did not impose such binding and
regulatory clauses on the unilateral decisions regarding the hiring of additional
irregular, part-time, and subcontracted workers and thus that union possessed
weaker regulatory bargaining power.
The bargaining agreement reached by union A also successfully prohibited
massive dismissals unilaterally led by employers while requiring its managers to
make sincere efforts to avoid dismissals by shifting workers among workplaces,
not hiring new workers, and providing education and training. In contrast, union
D had a weaker regulatory voice when it came to massive dismissals; if its
managers decided on a curtailment of production leading to massive dismissals,
its bargaining agreement required them only to give prior notice to the union.
Finally, enterprise unions S and T had the weakest regulatory voices, as their
bargaining agreements did not have any regulatory bargaining clauses dealing
with unilateral managerial decisions over the job security of rank-and-file
employees.
Strike leverages in four unions also shifted from an offensive posture to a
defensive one between 1987 and the 2010s. Numerous strikes in the late 1980s and
early 1990s were usually caused by offensive issues involving union demands
over annual wage growth, the improvement of working conditions, and the
elimination of unfair employer-led personnel policies. In contrast, the causes of
strikes after the mid-1990s—and in particular, after the 1997 Asian Financial
Crisis— were typically defensive in nature, such as the aforementioned job
security of rank-and-file employees achieved through the regulation of
employers’ unilateral power to change personnel and work organization policies,
make massive dismissals and transfer jobs. In addition, the frequencies of strikes
and the number of workers participating in them diminished significantly in most
auto LEs during the second period.

Notes
1 This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean
Government (NRF-2010-411-B00028).

2 For detailed expositions of these two critical arguments that appear in this chapter, refer to four recent
works of the author (Jeong 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2011).

3 The author intensively collected various sources of data regarding unions and industrial relations in the
chemical industry between 2002 and 2004, from crucial annual activity reports of the Chemical Union,
historical documents such as Chemical Union 1987 and 2004, and interviews with leaders of the
Chemical Union in preparation for a book (Jeong, 2007: 44). The data and information were updated with
more recent annual activity reports.

4 Data on unions and industrial relations in the Auto Transport Union and its city bus branch were initially
collected in 1998 through annual activity reports and interviews with union leaders in preparation for a
previous paper (Jeong, 2001: 60). The author also led a research team that wrote a historical document
about the union (Auto Transport Union, 2003), which gave him easy access to various data on the union
and enabled him to interview several union leaders in 2000 and 2001. More recent data were gathered
through the collection of a more recent historical document (Auto Transport Union, 2013) and more of
the union’s annual activity reports.

5 The author had several chances to collect data on unions and industrial relations among enterprise unions
in the metal industry in the 2000s through the collection of annual activity reports and historical
documents (Union H, 2009) and interviews with union leaders in preparation of a previous paper (Jeong,
2005) and book (Jeong, 2007). Recent data were collected similarly and through the supervision of
master’s dissertations written by two union leaders in auto assembly firms H and K (Lee, 2011; Hahm,
2013).
 6 Jeong (2007) provides detailed descriptions of this emulation in both blue-collar enterprise union
formation in numerous chaebol metal LEs (pp. 92–96) and SMEs in the manufacturing industry (pp. 96–
98) and white-collar enterprise unions in secondary financial firms (pp. 98–101) from 1987 to 1990.

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21
Economic miracle
From postwar reconstruction to post-crisis
affluence

Ingyu Oh and Hannah Jun

Introduction

Economic miracles are few and far between in modern human history, suggesting
that world economic affairs have persistently upheld a biased division between a
few haves and a majority have-nots. Over the post-World War years, the Cold
War, an era of freer trade, and US hegemony, only eight countries have
successfully ascended to the status of what the IMF calls ‘developed’ (i.e.
countries exhibiting full political independence with a highly developed
infrastructure, health care facilities, education, culture, strong middle class, and
affluence as measured by national and per capita GDP). These countries are Israel
in the Middle East; South Korea (hereafter, Korea), Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
Singapore in East Asia; and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia in the
former Soviet bloc. In this short list of newly developed countries (two of them
being city-states), only four are non-European, adding further bleakness to the
already gloomy picture of north-south inequality.
Among the four so-called East Asian tigers, Korea stands out because it is the
only non-Chinese country without prolonged interaction with European colonial
forces. Hong Kong and Singapore were modernised by the British colonial
administration, whereas Taiwan was first exposed to Portuguese and Dutch
colonial, or long distance, explorers. Furthermore, while Korea has survived a
massive civil war with North Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore have not
fought any major wars during the postwar years. In addition, Korea is not a
territorial part of China, whereas Hong Kong and Taiwan are under the constant
threat of being annexed to the socialist regime. In fact, Korea has maintained that
it plans to unify the peninsula in tandem with the expected collapse of the
North’s communist rule. In contrast to Singapore, Korea is a fully democratised
country that has faithfully conformed to the Lipsetian rule of democratisation
through economic affluence, whereby we see a correlation between
democratisation and economic growth. With regards to economic growth,
Korea’s GDP per capita was just around twice that of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1960,
but almost 24 times as high in 2005 (Pillay 2010). Finally, Korea underwent a long
period of military dictatorship between 1961 and 1987 after Japanese colonial rule
of a similar length (1910–1945). This pattern cannot be found in Hong Kong,
Singapore, or Taiwan, where civilian dictatorship or UK-style colonial
administration had been the norm.

Table 21.1 Korean miracle: GDP growth

 Qualifying the Korean economic miracle is therefore a complicated task, given
its unique presence in East Asia on the one hand and its superficial resemblance
to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore on the other. Koreans share similar
physical features with the Chinese populace, elements of Chinese and Confucian
culture, and use many Chinese expressions and terminologies in their language.
On the surface, the Korean economic miracle seems to be Chinese in origin, as
was much propagated by scholars who touted Confucian work ethic and
Confucian capitalism (Rozman 1990; Lew et al. 2011; Bae and Form 1986). To
others, however, Korea also resembles Japan. Koreans also share similarities with
the Japanese and hold on to the Japanese cultural concept of senpai (senior) and
kōhai (junior) in hierarchical human relations. Like the Japanese, Koreans have
respected and followed the pre-war system of selecting public officials or kōmuin
through national exams. Indeed, many precedent studies of the Korean and
Japanese economic miracles have highlighted bureaucratic efficiency in a
developmental state as a key factor for success (Johnson 1982; Hattori 1987; Lie
2000).
 Despite these cultural proximities between greater China and Korea as well as
between Korea and Japan, the lynchpin of the Korean economic miracle was an
idiosyncratic institutional and cultural framework that cannot be found in its
neighbouring nations. For one thing, neither greater-Chinese (Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Singapore) nor Japanese economic development necessitated the
development of the chaebŏl, or family-owned and -controlled inter-market
conglomerates that competed over a small domestic market during the heyday of
postwar capitalism. The key aspect of the chaebŏls’ birth, development, and
maturity involves monopolistic competition under the behest of military
dictatorship (see inter alia Lie 2000; E.M. Kim 1997; Oh 1999; Cumings 1984). In
East Asia and elsewhere, family conglomerates, which dominate global export
and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) markets in addition to the domestic market,
are rarely sustainable under military dictatorships unless they have blood ties
with the military itself (Khanna and Yafeh 2007; Hattori 1997; Mo and Weingast
2013). For another, these chaebŏls have maintained their strong market position
through both radical (i.e. either profit growth of more than thirty percent in one
fiscal year or cost reduction by the same scale due to the introduction of new
technology) and incremental innovation. While innovation occurs in all advanced
and globally competitive firms in export markets, the kind of innovations that
have occurred and are still occurring in the chaebŏl are considerably different
from those found in the Japanese keiretsu (interlocked business groups) or in the
guanxi firms based on personalized social networks in greater China. Briefly,
Japanese innovations are process-based with institutional complementarity that
emphasise a combination of malleable skills between management and shop-floor
teams (Aoki 1990). In greater China, firms manage to innovate through
collaboration between guanxi groups in the motherland and in North America
through inter-faction competition (Saxenian 1999; Hsu and Saxenian 2000; Oh
1999; Wong 2005). But in the chaebŏl, innovation is more radical and
patent/technology based than in Japan, while no chaebŏl groups maintain guanxi
networks with Korean Americans for technological innovations (L. Kim 1997; Oh
et al. 2005; Ghoshal 1988; Chang 2011). Innovative chaebŏls are, therefore, the
fundamental institutional rubric of the Korean miracle before the 1997 Asian
financial crisis.
Table 21.2 Changes of top five chaebols

For another, no East or Southeast Asian country that underwent an economic

miracle featured Korean-style macroeconomic policies of rapid industrial
restructuring, which required forcible closure of old industrial sectors to bet on
untested new alternatives in the global export market (Song 2003; World Bank
1993; Pirie 2008; Eichengreen et al. 2012). This means that large-scale population
displacement, massive unemployment between stages of restructuring, and
geographical transfiguration involving landscape destruction and environmental
pollution were far more rampant and disparaging in Korea than in Japan,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore. While predominantly agrarian in the 1950s
and the 1960s, the political economy of Korea (or its peculiar state-business
relations) managed a rapid, abrupt, and far-reaching movement of young people
from the rural to urban areas to create the urban working class in the 1970s (Koo
2001; Lie 2000). Farmlands were converted into factory complexes in a matter of
years, if not months, for light industries (e.g. textiles, wigs, toothpaste, soap),
which were then bulldozed and replaced with new factories for heavy and
chemical industries (e.g. oil refineries, automobiles, shipbuilding, electronics). In
the 1980s and 1990s, employees of heavy and chemical industries were laid off in
large numbers due to factory automation and robotics, while tertiary sector jobs
(or what we call ‘McJobs’) were created in vast numbers to jumpstart a new
service-sector economy era. As a consequence, geographical and environmental
metamorphoses were most dramatic in Korea, while labour union movements
were and still are the most militant among East Asian miracle economies (Lie
2000; Hart-Landsberg 1993; Cumings 1984; Pirie 2008).
The net result of this peculiar Korean economic miracle is fourfold: (1) a
mafia/predatory state that espoused GDP growth alongside escalating class
polarisation; (2) chaebŏl groups that could not survive without political protection
extended to them by the mafia/predatory state; (3) a social and institutional
culture that could not maintain or organise human business and social relations
without resorting to credible threats (real, thus credible, threat of using force by
power-holders to someone who does not participate in economic activities or
carry out contractual conditions), given rampant distrust among organisational
members; and (4) semi-world-class process (institutional) and technological
innovation via parodying. We will discuss these in turn before explaining the
Korean economic miracle through the concept of ‘rentsharing’.

Four elements of the miracle

The most peculiar institutional arrangement of the Korean economic miracle was
based on the lack of credible commitment among economic actors and
organisations to deliver a guaranteed quantity of goods and services at agreed-
upon prices. Amid the absence of the most fundamental element of the Anglo-
American concept of the free market and its mechanism of credible commitment,
the latter of which is undertaken in support of alliances and to promote exchange
(see Williamson 1983; North 1993), Korean economic actors and organisations had
to rely on the credible threat, which appeared in the context of conflict and
rivalry. In Korea, credible threats were realised only through what can be called
the mafia/predatory state, which was willing to exercise either legitimate or
illegitimate power to enforce agreements (for credible threats, see Konrad and
Skaperdas 1997; Gambetta 2000; for Korean credible threats, see Oh 1999; Oh and
Varcin 2002).
The mafia state can take many forms, although the most distinctive property is
its peculiar way of collecting revenue. While extortion is a typical mafia means of
collecting revenue from street merchants in exchange for property protection,
extortion by the mafia state can be institutionalised on an on-going basis through
either rentseeking or rentsharing. Unlike rentseeking, where interest groups and
individuals seek bigger rent in exchange for co-opting state actors (Buchanan et
al. 1980; Krueger 1974), rentsharing requires an opposite arrangement of state
actors seeking a larger share of the rent than the one garnered by interest groups
and individuals (Oh and Varcin 2010). In fact, throughout the miracle years,
Korean state actors tried hard to raise the portion of rent they shared with the
business sector. For example, in one year, total rent of 100 may be divided
between the state and firms at a ratio of 20 and 80, respectively. If the state
demands a greater portion of rent that exceeds rent generated for firms, firms
would have to increase total output dramatically to meet state demands while
maintaining an adequate share of the rent for themselves. As such, total rent may
increase to 200 in the next period, with the state receiving 80 and firms receiving
120.
What did the mafia state do to maximise its (legitimate or illegitimate) share of
rent? First and foremost, dictators of the first military regime (1961–1979)
pursued macroeconomic policies to boost economic growth rates via higher real
interest rates. Savings ratios were high (i.e. the K effect) throughout the regime’s
lifecycle, but the state quickly moved into the banking sector to own and control
most Korean financial institutions. Savings went into state-controlled banks that
lent money out to select clients, such as chaebŏl families. Unlike in Japan, where
savings rates were also high, the Korean mafia state maintained high interest
rates to induce savings from the working class. Although savings ratios were
high, the absolute need for capital far exceeded what state banks could provide to
chaebŏl groups. As such, the state had to underwrite most of the foreign loans
and aid money to fund chaebŏl projects, which in turn promised paybacks to the
state. Simultaneously, the state suppressed wages while improving labour
productivity (i.e. the L effect). Firms subsidised night schools for workers while
jailing thousands of union leaders and their supporters, and wholesale relocation
of rural youth to urban factories progressed quickly thanks to government and
factory buses and recruiters. Finally, the state actively subsidised firms that
licensed foreign technologies, especially from Japan (i.e. the T effect). The K, L,
and T effects combined, the Korean mafia state boasted GDP growth rates
between eight and ten per cent during the 1960s and the 1970s (Eichengreen et al.
2012).
On the other side of macroeconomic policies was the chaebŏl that contributed
extorted money to the predatory mafia state. Chaebŏl literally means ‘families
with enormous wealth’. How the families accrued and expanded their wealth
may remain a family secret, although all top ten chaebŏl families were connected
to each other and to key politicians through marriage (Hattori 1987; Chang 2003).
The chaebŏl differs significantly from other East Asian conglomerates on several
accounts. First, chaebŏl groups have a dual-ownership structure. On paper,
owning families do not possess more than two to six per cent of total shares, but
in reality, they own more than sixty per cent of total equity through a pseudo
holding company system (Chang 2003; Campbell and Keys 2002; Kim et al. 2004;
Trautvetter 2010). It is a pseudo holding company system because chaebŏl holding
companies indirectly own shares of chaebŏl member firms without publicly
listing the holding company itself. The reason behind a dual-ownership structure
is the thorny issue of succession. Succession from the chaebŏl founder to his son
was not seriously challenged during the military regime under the mafia-clientele
arrangement. But since rapid democratisation since 1987, the civilian government
began heavily taxing chaebŏl inheritances (e.g. shares) while concomitantly
demanding ownership diffusion according to Anglo-American standards of
corporate governance, particularly after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In order
to safeguard succession without paying massive taxes, chaebŏls have
experimented with different varieties of dual-ownership structures (Chang 2003).
Second, ownership and control are fused instead of separated, unlike in many
guanxi corporations in greater China and in Japanese keiretsu groups. Although
managerial professionalisation has progressed rapidly in Korea, chaebŏl families
have actively educated male heirs in preparation to succeed their fathers as CEOs
and/or chairmen and neutralise external criticism of nepotism, such as Samsung’s
heir-apparent Lee Jaeyong’s education at Harvard University. Unlike in North
American or European family businesses, it is not uncommon to see many
chaebŏl heirs attending or having graduated from Ivy League schools in the
United States, not to mention prestigious Korean and Japanese undergraduate
programs.
Third, chaebŏls have increased the market value of their companies through
massive diversification and tunnelling. Diversification was a bulwark or
insurance against state hostility to chaebŏls in the form of destruction or
confiscation (i.e. no property right protection). In fact, chaebŏls such as Yulsan,
Kukje, and Daewoo disappeared during the first and second military regimes and
even under the civilian government, in addition to seven chaebŏls that were
closed down after the inauguration of the first military regime. The chaebŏl logic
was that the government would not confiscate their property if they were big in
size and highly diversified into industries such as automobiles, textiles, and even
military (E.M. Kim 1997). Tunnelling is an illegal means of manipulating the price
of chaebŏl holding company stocks by actively buying out unrelated firms
through mergers and acquisitions (M&As). If unrelated firms are bought out,
chaebŏl’s stock prices go up artificially with market rumours about potential
revenue growth through new acquisitions (Baek et al. 2006). These practices are
either illegal or uncommon in other East Asian countries.
Fourth, unlike other conglomerate groups in neighbouring countries, chaebŏl
groups relied heavily on labour exploitation for profit, using both workplace
patriarchy and police crackdowns on militant labour unrest. Labour unrest was
an anticipated response to harsh working conditions. Often, these organisations
functioned as sweatshops or prison labour camps, where workers from the
countryside worked in often unhealthy and poorly ventilated workspaces, eating
and sleeping on the same premises. Wages were twenty to forty cents an hour,
far below recommended rates for factory workers in export processing zones of
many developing countries (Hart-Landsberg 1993; Lie 2000; Pirie 2008). Workers
in Korean chaebŏls were denied union rights, minimum wage laws, or lifetime
employment during the military regime, while labour union movements
instigated by the self-cremation of Jeon Taeil in 1970 were quashed by brute
police force. What distinguished the chaebŏl from other family businesses in East
Asia was the suppression of one of the world’s most militant labour movements,
either unionised or unorganised, arguably resembling a massacre of one social
class by another. To this point, labour strikes reached a record high of more than
3,600 incidents in 1987 (E.M. Kim 1997).
Finally, the chaebŏl has maintained a huge network of interlocking ownership,
where the financial firm in the secondary finance market (e.g. insurance, stock
brokerage, leasing, credit cards) and former holding companies (i.e. holding
companies before the 1961 military coup) in general trading, construction, and
electronics (e.g. Samsung Mulsan, Hyundai Construction, Samsung Electronics)
own one another’s stock to protect ownership of the chaebŏl group by one family.
This system of mutual stock ownership is different from that of the keiretsu in
Japan or guanxi firms in greater China; the use of financial and former holding
firms within the chaebŏl is to protect the chaebŏl family, in contrast with the ban
on owning keiretsu-style main banks or guanxi-style holding companies (Chang
2003; Oh and Park 2001).
The birth of the mafia state and the chaebŏl after the 1961 military coup led by
General Park Chung Hee created a new business culture of what we call ‘credible
threats’, contrasting with the Anglo-American or Japanese culture of credible
commitment (see Williamson 1983; North 1993). The culture of credible threats is
the third element of the Korean postwar economic miracle. Credible commitment
works in two ways. First, in the Anglo-American tradition, formal contractual
relations in the market and between firms reduce room for opportunism. But
given that contractual relations in the UK and the US cannot be institutionalised
without administrative fiat or organisational (or sometimes legal) safeguarding,
actual inclination to opportunism looms large. To offset opportunism rampant in
the market, Anglo-American firms use institutions of administrative fiat to
induce credible commitment between contractual parties. Second, in the Japanese
tradition, room for opportunism is always very high given the relative absence of
formal contractual relations in business practice. But given that Japanese business
networks are based on long-term trust rather than short-term contracts, actual
inclination to opportunism is surprisingly rare between business partners and
firms, thus leading to credible commitment between liable business parties. Either
system of inducing credible commitment, whether based on task or job
specialization or structural stochasticity (e.g. shop-floor communication between
blue-and white-collar workers), would be an acceptable institutional solution to
the problem of transaction costs (Aoki 1994; Nooteboom 2001).
But in post-coup Korea, neither system of prompting credible commitment
worked. For one thing, Korean business and economic actors did not possess
functional specificities to lead to high levels of organisational (both technological
and procedural) standardisation. They also failed to build a business network that
was based on a long-term trust. Structural stochasticity, or effective
management-labour communication, did not exist within such networks because
the actors lacked a sufficient level of tacit knowledge to run organisations
constrained by qualitative, if not functional, standardisation. In a nutshell,
Korean business firms were organised and run under the principle of informal
solidarity and group norms, although they tried to quickly learn and apply
American-style technological know-how and work procedures (see Oh and
Varcin 2010). Amid the welter, both military rulers and chaebŏl owners agreed
upon a new rule of using credible threats in the form of brute force to realise
organisational goals. Between the state and the chaebŏl, credible threats worked
to induce the chaebŏl’s commitment to economic growth and payments (both
legal and illegal) to the state, and the punishment if either failed was to close
down the chaebŏl (i.e. withdrawal of state protection of chaebŏl’s property
rights). Between labour/suppliers and the chaebŏl, credible threats worked in a
fashion to induce labour/supplier commitment to economic growth and sacrifice
(e.g. supplier bribery to the chaebŏl, low salaries for workers) for the chaebŏl, and
punishment in the case of failure, such as destroying the supplier firm or laying
off workers in large numbers (Oh 1999). In order to institutionalise credible
threats, both the state and the chaebŏl routinely punished inexorable partners. For
example, 1,653 mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of small firms by the chaebŏl
groups were reported throughout the 1980s. Although all these M&As were
illegitimate under the M&A law, only one case was ruled illegal by the court
(Chung and Yang 1992).
The final element of the Korean economic miracle was technological and
organisational innovation, a key feature of the economic success throughout the
developmental period. In order for real GDP to grow quickly, developing states
need to secure either momentous labour productivity or technological innovation,
whether radical or incremental (see Tsuru 1996; Eichengreen et al. 2012). For
Korea, labour productivity was not always something that the government could
quickly increase due to various structural difficulties and constraints.
Fundamentally, the state faced low levels of skill attainment among young rural
boys and girls who were almost forcibly shifted from rice paddies to urban
factories. Educating the new urban proletariat class required substantial
investment in education and long-term training programs, and the military state
had no intention of doing either. Instead, the state and the chaebŏl spent
enormous effort on technological and organisational innovation (or the T factor
of GDP growth). To many Anglo-American economists and innovation scholars,
this option would have been more difficult for Korea than that of increasing
labour productivity (the L factor of GDP growth). However, Korean firms had the
option of copying to improve their T factor quickly. Copying and piracy had
occurred widely from the 1960s to the 1990s before Korea joined the WTO (World
Trade Organization). Korea was fortunate due to its close proximity to Japan,
where highly sophisticated technologies, ranging from textiles and construction
to shipbuilding, electronics, and automobiles, were available for either licensing
or outright copying (L. Kim 1997).
An anecdote regarding the effect of the T factor on Korean GDP growth
includes that of Samsung Electronics during the 1970s. In the early days of
electronics development at Samsung, the chaebŏl successfully garnered a loan
from the Long Term Credit Bank of Japan. With the borrowed money, the firm
rented a two-story house in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Akihabara, a well-
known shopping district for the most advanced Japanese electronic goods. In the
house, Samsung technicians bought and disassembled Japanese electronic goods
(mostly household appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, range
ovens, and TVs) to uncover secrets behind Japanese electronic technology (i.e.
reverse engineering). Although they were patented in Japan and elsewhere, that
proved to be ineffective in Korea.
In addition to outright piracy, the Korean chaebŏl also actively sought
licensing opportunities with Japanese and American companies with the hopes of
learning both standardised and tacit knowledge from advanced firms. Licensing
is a fast way of learning advanced technologies in a legitimate way, although it is
vulnerable to knowledge theft by licensees (Davis 2008). In return for chaebŏls’
active T-factor improvements, the state provided R&D subsidies in tandem with a
silent negligence over patent infringement. In less than four decades since the
1960s, Korean chaebŏl firms defeated Japanese competitors in steel (POSCO
became the fifth biggest global steel company by the 1980s), shipbuilding (Korean
shipbuilders are the second largest shipbuilding country in the world), household
appliances, electronic hardware and semi conductors (among the top ten global
semiconductor suppliers, two are Korean – Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix –
while just one is Japanese), and mobile phone markets. Electronics constitutes one
of the most fascinating success cases of the chaebŏl, in that Samsung and LG
Electronics alone make more annual revenue and profit than what all Japanese
electronics firms generate combined (Chang 2011). The T-factor growth story is a
secret formula for exportled development strategy and cannot be easily emulated
by other developing nations that do not have neighbouring countries with
advanced technologies for patent pirates. To this extent, China is a case in point.
With Korea, Taiwan, and Japan right next to the mainland proper, it could easily
emulate Korea’s development through its own version of exportled development
schemes. This is also why countries like the Philippines could not develop as
quickly as China or Korea, despite the fact that the island nation was under the
US Cold War protection program: it simply didn’t have any neighbours that were
technologically advanced.
Be that as it may, Samsung now holds the second largest number of patents,
second only to IBM in the US (US Patent and Trademark Office 2014). Despite its
phenomenal track record of R&D and patenting, various rivals in the market,
including Apple and Microsoft, have sued Samsung for patent infringement.
While this indirectly illustrates how the chaebŏl is least innovative with its own
Korean version of ingenuity, it remains an organisational structure that is
extremely efficient in learning others’ technologies in a short period of time. In
this sense, the chaebŏl is probably the most efficient learning organisation in the
world.

Explaining and understanding the miracle: rentsharing

Having explained in detail the four elements of the Korean economic miracle, we
now present our understanding of how the Korean economic institution achieved
this miracle underpinned by the mafia state, the chaebŏl, an organisational
culture of credible threats, and a miraculous record of technological and
institutional innovation. The purpose of this explanation is not only to produce
some generalisations, but also to help readers understand the Korean case for a
broader interpretation of global capitalism since the 1500s.
The central concept we employ is rentsharing, or state-business relations that
produce rent and concomitantly institutionalise the way rent is distributed
between them. In other words, rentsharing will explain why these four elements
surfaced in Korea but not in other developing countries during the postwar years.
The concept is particularly useful for this chapter because other competing
concepts that attempt to explain the Korean miracle, such as the free market,
crony capitalism with rentseeking behaviour, authority structures, institutions
(including transaction cost economics, failure of rationality and rational choice
institutions, legitimacy and organisational isomorphism, endogenous institutional
bases and outcomes of great transformations, and ideational factors of interest-
based politics), and the developmental state, have neglected its dominant
presence in Korean political economy. All these competing concepts can explain
one or two elements of the miracle, but are unable to identify or explain all four,
thus suggesting a lack of understanding rather than of explanations.
All types of capitalist development begin from a state of absence: the absence
of the free market; the absence of freedom of choice; and the absence of private
property protection by the state. Korea’s economic development is no exception.
Throughout the colonial period and the subsequent dictatorship by President
Rhee and the military, private property protection was in the grey. During land
reform during the early 1950s, for example, the state actively destroyed private
ownership of land by a few wealthy cliques, allowing actual land tillers and
peasants to claim ownership. The urban bourgeois class, epitomised by the
chaebŏl families, who owned colon ial properties that Japanese imperialists left
behind after liberation, faced abrupt confiscation by the new state. During the
Rhee regime and military dictatorship, the state’s forced extortion of private
property in exchange for protection was also rampant (Mo and Weingast 2013).
In the absence of institutionalised property protection, despite the fact that
private property has been legitimised, protection still awaits either to be
purchased from the market or institutionalised by the public sector. Throughout
history, private property protection has never been privatised systematically on a
long-term basis. Instead, the birth of the state that officially provides property
protection services for fees (e.g. tax) has been common in most civilised societies
(Weber 2013; North 1993; Konrad and Skaperdas 1997). But before modern politics
was democratised, private property protection by the state has often been carried
out in a predatory manner, reducing the overall welfare of an economic unit.
Some economists argue that predatory means of providing protection to the
private property increases community welfare, although total economic output
will be still lower than capitalist democracies where the state acts as a
representative of voters who are equally divided into property owners and non-
owners (Moselle and Polak 2001). Commitment by threats and fear is always less
productive than commitment by freedom of choice. However, the Korean path to
development overturns this economic view because (a) the Korean predatory or
mafia state not only exceeded growth rates of other developing countries during
the same period, but (b) Korea also continues to use credible threats, such as
incarceration and worker surveillance, in chaebŏl private property protection
despite democratisation and people’s freedom of choice. As we will show in this
chapter, the main thrust of relying on credible threats during and after
development is its unprecedented utility in promoting learning among people and
incremental innovation for sustainable development.
In order to understand the concept of rentsharing, we first propose to compare
it with a more familiar common concept, rentseeking. Unlike creating individual
wealth without adding new wealth to GDP through both legitimate and
illegitimate lobbying (i.e. rentseeking), rentsharing increases both group wealth
(e.g. monopolies) and GDP through extortion (or other illegitimate bribery) to
promote and realise group interests. How this works is rather simple. Typical
predatory states that maximise extortion (i.e. rentseeking) would abandon one
community for another when state revenues run out. If a new community they
can conquer and extort money from has a bigger revenue basis than the previous
one, they would abandon the latter for the former (e.g. migratory predatory
states). They can also expand their territory to a new community (e.g.
imperialistic states). If such options are absent, as in the Korean mafia state, the
only possibility of sustaining the mafia state on a long-term basis without drying
up its revenue basis is through endogenous GDP growth. If this were not possible,
as was the case of the Rhee regime, the predatory state would be supplanted by
another one via military coup (e.g. vicious cycles of coups as in Latin American
and African developing states). The military is the backbone of the predatory
state, which constantly demands more budget than previous fiscal years. If the
system of extortion cannot satisfy this demand, military leaders will organise
coups to overthrow the incumbent government.
The only possibility of raising GDP through rentseeking is increasing both
labour productivity and introducing rapid technological innovation, while also
pursuing monopolies by lobbying the mafia state. In other words, monopolies like
chaebŏls had to create national wealth through both L and T factors and pay off
exponentially growing amounts of extortions to the mafia state. As explained
above, increasing the L factor takes a long time and requires both national and
private-sector education reform. Therefore, the chaebŏl exploited the labour force
while the mafia state banned all forms of company-, industrial-, or national-level
union activities through government labour unions. However, we have also seen
that the chaebŏl could easily ensure T factor growth through Japan and the US,
either under licensing agreements or piracy.
But why did the military junta in 1961 suddenly pursue rentsharing instead of
rentseeking? Where did they spend the money that was extorted from chaebŏls?
Introducing rentsharing, while stopping the vicious cycle of rentseeking and
coups, into the Korean system of development demanded several complicated
processes. First and foremost, endogenous factors loomed large. Both predators
(civilian and military dictators) and property holders (chaebŏl families) had no
trust-based interactions, although they shared experiences and knowledge gained
from Japanese imperialists (i.e. they knew how to operate their organisations
using Japanese institutional norms and complementarities). Due to this lack of
trust between the military and the chaebŏl, the only protection available was to
make chaebŏls too big to collapse, or face punishment by the military.
Diversification using borrowed money from the curb market at an
extraordinarily high interest rate progressed frenetically during the 1970s (E.M.
Kim 1997; Oh 1999). In addition, aligning with foreign (especially Japanese) firms
through technological licensing also made selected chaebŏl firms look legitimate
and strong in the eyes of the military (i.e. mimetic isomorphism). Chaebŏls could
raise productivity rapidly through diversification using Japanese institutional
norms and complementarities, including job rotation, functional versus malleable
skills, and lifetime employment. On a shop-floor level, technological
complementarity was achieved through Japanese-style technological
complementarity (i.e. J equilibrium), whereas on a macro-institutional level,
institutional complementarity was garnered through Japanese-style
complementarity between the state bureaucracy (including banks) and the
chaebŏl. Lack of trust in Korean society, however, made the chaebŏl
fundamentally different from the Japanese keiretsu, as the former intensified
ownership and control concentration despite economic openness through export-
oriented development.
 Second, exogenous factors were also critical. Unlike the previous predatory
state led by Rhee, the 1961 military state had experienced devastating modern
warfare and understood that the communist threat from North Korea, China, and
the Soviet Union was credible and real. This means that the military regime in
the South had to be able to compete with the North in terms of equal or better
economic and military power. The Rhee state wrongfully believed that the US
would always help its predatory state with massive military and economic aid,
when in fact the US withdrew its forces from the South right before the war
broke out. With US commitment to South Korean security questionable
throughout the developmental period, the need for a self-subsistent military was
a paramount priority for mafia-state leaders (Mo and Weingast 2013). Therefore,
rentsharing was a far better strategy than outright rentseeking for the new mafia
state to sustain itself, while it also suppressed other smaller groups of violence
that could be mobilised toward another possible coup (e.g. the military, the
police, guerrilla or terrorist groups, and local mafia). The US also understood the
North Korean threat after losing more than 36,000 American lives and began
applying the most favoured nation (MFN) status to South Korea in a similar
fashion as it did to Western Europe and Japan following the Second World War
(Cumings 1984; Woo 1991). Korea began exportled development only after the
war, a timely plan of expansion for the chaebŏl, which copied much of the
exportled developmental strategy of the Japanese keiretsu.
In order to curb other groups of violence from mobilising into another coup,
the military spent extorted money to either co-opt or extinguish them from the
field of violence. The military regime executed leaders of the local mafia who
were closely connected to the Rhee regime, disbanded the entire organisation,
and later co-opted it into its new violence segment under the military and police
control (Porteux 2013). Some key players in the military coup were also removed
from government positions, jailed, or executed, such as Hyung-Wook Kim, a
former KCIA (Korea Central Intelligence Agency) chief. Simultaneously, the
government began spending huge amounts of money to manage the military. The
total military budget during the first military regime remained close to five
percent of GDP, or thirty-one percent of total government expenditure on
average between 1974 and 1987 (Ministry of National Defense 2013). This may
offer just a glimpse as to how much illicit money the military may have raised
and spent during the same period for their own corporatist benefits and perks.
Miraculously, rentsharing in Korea worked as a combination of Japanese
institutional norms and complementarities, lack of trust (or credible
commitment), chaebŏl’s own pursuit of growth through diversification,
technology/productivity assistance from Japan and the US, and exportled
developmental strategies at the behest corporate buyers, and consumers to
blockade communism from the Korean Peninsula. The winners of Korean style
rentsharing were the military rulers, government bureaucrats, chaebŏl families,
chaebŏl professional managers, chaebŏl subcontractors, exporters, and rich,
government-subsidised farmers; the losers were the peasants, urban workers, pro-
democracy fighters, and labour union organisers who were massacred by state
forces on 19 April 1960 (April Revolution), 16 October 1979, and 18 May 1980
(Gwangju Massacre), to list a few.
Rentsharing can be easily explained in economic terms, but understanding it
requires different levels of cognitive and intellectual strength. Indeed, Korean
rentsharing has not always been negative. We see that it took the same path as
that of European-style development and modernisation, which required
upheavals in order to establish the successful political economic regime of
capitalist democracy (Lie 2004).

Future of the miracle

The second military regime (1979–1987) was unable to last longer than the first.
Continuous economic development mobilised the masses more than ever toward
nation-wide democratisation movements, which included intellectuals, university
students, outlawed labour union organisers, and even white-collar workers at
chaebŏl firms. Democratisation in 1987 and the subsequent election of the first
civilian president in 1992 signified the victory of the capitalist market economy
and its juggernaut, the chaebŏl, in Korea’s history of modernisation and
economic development. The chaebŏl’s strategy of ‘too big to fail’ proved to outwit
the brute force of the mafia state. Coase’s theorem gives us some clues to
understand this seemingly ironic outcome. If there is a dog in the flat next door
that barks early in the morning and wakes up all the residents on the same floor,
complaints from building tenants would not stop the dog owner from disowning
the dog, as no law has yet been institutionalised to penalise causing public
nuisance (or perhaps the dog owner is a beloved daughter of a neighbourhood
mafia boss who would send horse heads to those threatening to report his
daughter to the police). Coase suggested that money would resolve this issue: a
rich building tenant can offer a price for the dog that she cannot refuse. The rich
neighbour can then safely put the dog away after buying it from the owner
(Coase 1937; for the dog anecdote, see Mankiw 2014: 210).
In a similar vein, the chaebŏl has technically put the menacing mafia state in
Korea to death. The monopoly of violence by the capitalist democratic state is not
complete unless its capitalist class buys out competing groups of violence (e.g. the
military, the mafia, the police, bandits, rebels, terrorist groups) from state
apparatuses (Mo and Weingast 2013). The chaebŏl has not only grown too big to
fail, but they can now financially co-opt and manipulate holders of violence and
power for their own benefit as well. It is not a shocking revelation in Korea that
Samsung and other leading chaebŏl groups continuously hire ex-judges and state
attorneys to protect the chaebŏl family from state indictments for any
wrongdoing (Yonhap 2012). The end of the developmental state in Korea
effectively opened up a new era of the instrumental state, whose biggest
beneficiary is the chaebŏl.
The chaebŏl derives its legitimacy from the mafia state itself, a crucial reason
why it failed to garner legitimacy from the Korean people (e.g. workers,
consumers, conscientious elements, intellectuals) despite the economic miracle.
Although it was the chaebŏl that defeated the mafia state in the fight over control
of the private property protection market, its lack of legitimacy within the new
Korean democratic state has forced the chaebŏl to actively buy institutional
raison d’être from civilian bureaucrats, their bosses, elected politicians, and
intellectuals. Today, a new form of state-business collusion under the democratic
government is not over the issue of property protection; it is over the question of
the chaebŏl’s institutional legitimacy. Globalisation, the 1997 financial crisis,
widening class polarisation, and increasing economic concentration by the few
chaebŏl groups have combined to threaten chaebŏl legitimacy in Korea, especially
from the perspective of disgruntled Korean voters over illegal ownership-
succession plots by chaebŏls to turn over property to biological heirs (Ilyo Weekly
2014). Neoliberal policies forced upon the Korean government after the 1997 crisis
also worked against the chaebŏl, the latter of which promotes concentration and
monopoly more than free market competition, accounting transparency, and
managerial professionalism (Kang 2002; Siegel 2007).
Consequently, the Korean political economy still suffers from a lack of trust
among business actors in the market. Rentsharing is now replaced by rentseeking
as we do not have the creation of substantial GDP wealth. In fact, post-miracle
Korean GDP annual growth rate has remained less than six per cent annually
since 2003, and has fallen below the three per cent level in recent years.
Rentseeking is a means of prolonging chaebŏl corporate governance (i.e. family
control) despite the democratic institution of guaranteed private property
protection. Corrupt politicians, state bureaucrats, and chaebŏl owners have
worked closely for this purpose. As such, we can argue that rentseeking has been
responsible for the lacklustre performance of Korean innovation (both
technological and institutional) in the 2010s. Despite their splendid and sustained
track records of radical innovation in the 1970s and 1980s, Korean chaebŏl groups
do not own any world-class technology, although Samsung owns patents that are
second only to IBM in quantity (Hankyung 2013). Although Korean scientists
publish research and are ranked number six in the world in terms of citations, no
Korean universities are ranked in the top thirty in terms of scientific reputation.
Consequently, chaebŏl groups have been buying research results from North
American, European, and Japanese scientists, while Korean scientists are rapidly
forming a fourth group of rent-seekers who embezzle government research
funding for their own personal use (Oh 2013).
Even worse, Korean society has suffered from serial man-made disasters since
the beginning of the rentseeking era in 1987. Starting from the ferry sinking in
1993 that killed 292 passengers on board, democratic and civilian Korea witnessed
annual disasters that have included the Seongsu bridge collapse which killed
thirty-two people in 1994, the downfall of Sampung Department Store in which
502 perished in 1995, the gas explosion of the Daegu subway line that killed 101
people in 1995, and most recently, the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking that killed 213
passengers. All these accidents had roots in systematic corruption within
bureaucratic supervision and regulation. Many bureaucrats and company owners
were found guilty of receiving and offering bribes for bypassing strict safety
inspections to maximise corporate profits (Han 1998; Yee 1998; Yadav 2014). As
such tragedies have become more commonplace, the average Korean citizen has
cast doubts regarding the capability of the civilian government to manage safety
and security.
The future of the Korean economic miracle is not as rosy as some may think.
Although the mafia state has been dismantled either by pro-democracy
movements by citizens and students or by the chaebŏl, which successfully bought
out the mafia from the state, the Korean state is still hampered by rentseeking
behaviours of politicians, bureaucrats, and business leaders. Rentseeking in the
post-miracle era disrupts the process of trust-building necessary to replace the
culture of ‘credible threats’ with that of ‘credible commitment’. Why Korea,
despite its global status as a developed democratic country and member of the
OECD and the DAC (Development Assistance Committee), cannot establish a
capitalist democratic culture of credible commitment is something that demands
further exploration. It is for this very reason that Williamson and North’s new
institutionalism cannot easily explain the Korean experience (cf. Mo and
Weingast 2013). As credible threats no longer exist, moral hazard is rampant in
Korean business organisations and bureaucracies (i.e. both room for and
inclination to opportunism are high). This does not meant that threats no longer
exist in Korea’s political economy. In fact, the state continuously uses the North
Korean threat to crack down on dissidents and radical union leaders. However,
the state can no longer wield formidable power over the chaebŏl, which now
exercises more threats over its workers than ever.
Although GDP growth has stalled at below three per cent, globalisation (i.e.
integration with the world economy) has progressed at a high speed. The effect of
rapid globalisation for the Korean economy is growing inequality and class
polarisation among the populace, while ethnic enclaves and segregation are much
more visible than before. Class polarisation and inequality partly derive from the
failure of indigenous small businesses that could not compete with incoming
foreign direct investment in the service sector (e.g. shopping malls, financial
services, and IT-related services). Ethnic segregation is a result of the decline of
the manufacturing sector in the country, where blue-collar workers in the
manufacturing sector and manual labourers in the service sector have
discontinued economic participation due to the income effect.
The issue of chaebŏl reform will continue to fetter the development of Korea’s
political economy beyond the economic miracle. The chaebŏl no longer seem to
generate national economic wealth through the T factor, while Korean labour
productivity is not increasing as fast as it needs to. Korean corporate workers
work the second-longest number of hours, whereas their income is the lowest
among all OECD countries (OECD 2014). Creativity remains a central question to
the future viability of the Korean economy. With current chaebŏl organisations,
creativity remains sparse, although it was the most efficient form of learning and
catch-up of all industrial organisations during the miracle years. This suggests
that corporate Korea should experiment with varieties of organisational forms
that allow for diversity, multiculturalism, and organisational freedom (i.e.
freedom to pursue individual goals within organisations). As such, chaebŏl
reform must include not only corporate governance reform, but organisational
transformation as well.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we identified four important elements of the Korean economic

miracle that surfaced between 1965 and 1987. During this period, the Korean
economy recorded annual GDP growth rates in excess of eight per cent. But
unlike neoclassical explanations, we argued that the Korean miracle was marked
by: (1) a mafia/predatory state that espoused GDP growth with escalating class
polarisation; (2) chaebŏl groups that could not survive without political protection
extended to them by the mafia/predatory state; (3) a social and institutional
culture that could not maintain or organise human business and social relations
without resorting to credible threats amid rampant distrust among organisational
members; and (4) semi-world-class process (institutional) and technological
innovations through parodying. We also argued that the theoretical principle of
the country’s economic growth was rentsharing, an institutional process of
engendering phenomenal growth based on state-business collusion and credible
threats. We showed that rentsharing was fundamentally different from
rentseeking due to actual economic growth through corruption.
However, we also noticed that credible threats had discouraged creativity and
innovation in the Korean economy despite political democratisation and
economic development, presenting a bleak picture for the future of Korea’s
economic miracle. We also see that the Korean economy suffers from outright
rentseeking behaviour by economic and political actors despite democratisation
and economic development. When the economy is in the hand of the chaebŏl,
which remains too big to fail, economic development is hampered because
credible threats are not replaced with credible commitment. We need to explore
when and why credible commitments are made possible.
The lesson of the Korean economic miracle is twofold: the global capitalist
regime that started from the 1500s was critical in shaping the exogenous basis of
industrial transformation, although the endogenous basis of an economic system
that was founded on the principle of the credible threat was equally pivotal in
bringing about the miracle. At the same time, globalisation in the same world
system has substantially delimited the creative potential of the Korean miracle in
much the same way it has curtailed Japan’s efforts to hammer out creative
solutions to its prolonged recession, following a period of high-powered growth
and mass consumption. Thus going forward, there will be great academic and
practical interest in how to improve the relationship between credible threats and
commitments via theory-building and empirical testing.

Glossary

Chaebŏl: A South Korean business conglomerate that is owned and controlled by

a single family. Chaebŏl literally means a family clique with colossal wealth.
Although it originated from the pre-war Japanese zaibatsu, the postwar
Korean chaebŏl is significantly different from the former, as its ownership
and control structure are fused without a zaibatsu-style holding company.
Nor is the chaebŏl allowed to maintain a main bank system, which was
common within the Japanese zaibatsu and postwar Japanese keiretsu.
Credible commitment: In all business transactions, no verbal commitment is
 credible, until such commitments to a preferred strategic move in business
deals can be discerned as credible with additional safeguarding mechanisms.
Business reputation, written contracts, burning bridges, hostage exchanges,
building credibility through teamwork, and finally the institutionalisation of
the commitment through state legislatures and legal enforcements are such
safeguarding mechanisms. Among these, the institutionalisation of the
commitment is the safest mechanism in the modern capitalist state.
Credible threat: In all business transactions, no verbal commitment is credible,
until such commitments to a preferred strategic move in business deals can be
discerned as credible with additional threat mechanisms, such as the code of
honour that is often employed by the mafia. The threat used in business
transactions becomes credible if it is either informally or formally
institutionalised as in the case of the mafia and the mafia state.
Developmental state: The developmental state became a widely used and
understood concept as a consequence of Chalmers Johnson’s seminal analysis
of Japan’s postwar economic reconstruction. In Johnson’s original
formulation the developmental state had a number of features, including
competent state agencies and carefully calibrated industrial policies. The key
quality that makes a state developmental is its capacity of planning a
development process rather than relying on market forces to determine the
optimal allocation of resources. Unlike “market rational” states, which are
concerned with establishing the rules of the economic game, the “plan
rational” state seeks to formulate and pursue substantive social and economic
goals.
Guanxi: Social networks in China that are established and maintained to nullify
or bypass institutionalised credible threats directed against particular business
transactions. Guanxi networks are created to neutralise such credible threats
and defend private, individual, and group interests in business. Guanxi
networks with the most social capital and financial resources will ultimately
win business contracts despite legal and informal threats and difficulties.
East Asian Tigers: Following the footsteps of the Japanese economic miracle that
heavily relied on the state’s macroeconomic policies with its plan-rational
developmental strategies and goals, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
Singapore succeeded in bringing about rapid economic and social
 developments with their strong states, symbolised as tigers. These economies
share similar cultural background, although they are geographically apart in
Northeast and Southeast Asia.
Economic miracle: If the gross domestic product (GDP) demonstrates a growth
of more than eight per cent for more than ten consecutive years, the
phenomenon becomes dramatic or unexpected. In modern economic history,
the industrial revolution in the UK was the first good example of the miracle,
while the postwar recovery in Germany and Japan was another. In recent
years, the miracles in Asian Tigers and China are additional examples.
However, continued macroeconomic expansions of eight per cent or more for
more than two decades have not been witnessed in economic history.
Institutional complementarity: All economic organizations face two kinds of
uncertainties: localised technological uncertainties and institutional
uncertainties. Technological uncertainties affect organisations within a sector
in a given time period, while institutional uncertainties affect the entire
industry and the economy. In Aoki’s original analysis of the Japanese
keiretsu, the institutional uncertainty had three layers: the pattern of
dependence of a member firm within a keiretsu on other member firms,
member firms’ reliance on keiretsu main banks, and the main banks’
dependence on the state banks. If the method of resolving technological
uncertainty (e.g. bottom-up communication in Japan) is complementary with
keiretsu institutions with their main bank system, institutional
complementarity is achieved within the keiretsu. The keiretsu institutional
complementarity can be achieved with the state institutions to resolve various
types of keiretsu-wide and nation-wide economic problems (e.g. state banking
system with “window guidance”).
Kereitsu: The postwar Japanese conglomerate business organisations that
spearheaded the postwar economic miracle in Japan in tandem with the
developmental state. The keiretsu has no owning family or holding company,
unlike the pre-war Japanese zaibatsu. Instead, it is owned and controlled by
institutions including member firms, main banks, and the presidential council
(shachōkai). The keiretsu may be vertical (intra-market) or horizontal (inter-
market) depending on their market position in the economy. Vertical
keiretsus form a supply chain for one product in one market, whereas
 horizontal keiretsus serve different markets. During the peak of the Japanese
economic development, six inter-market keiretsusexisted, each with several
intra-market hierarchies. Nowadays, the keiretsu is more or less
dysfunctional or dissolved.
Parodying: An economy that is in a catch-up mode of development,
technological innovation through piracy or parodying is the cheapest and
fastest way of increasing GDP growth without excessive investments.
Parodying through outright copying, licensing, or reverse engineering has
been common in the case of Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese
economic development. Product lifecycle theory predicted transfer of
technologies from a declining country to a developmental country, although
the prediction did not explain the process of parodying that is necessary in
technology transfers.
Rentseeking: An economic behaviour taken by individuals, corporations, and
even the state to increase their wealth without affecting any GDP growth. If
business owners lobby bureaucrats and politicians to obtain business permits
or eradicate competitors from the market, GDP actually decreases despite
their wealth accumulation. Rentseeking is a quick way of accumulating
wealth without contributing to the nation’s capital size, labour productivity,
or technological innovation. If policemen collect bribes from traffic violators,
the nation’s GDP does not change, or might even diminish, although the
wealth of corrupt policemen increases.
Rentsharing: If rentseeking is organised with an on-going scheme that requires
future payments to be constantly increasing exponentially, rent-seekers will
have to plan strategic moves to contribute substantially to a nation’s capital
size, labour productivity, and technological innovation. If corrupt politicians
demand bribes from business owners who want business permits, the former
can require the latter to pay annual briberies that would increase
automatically every year in exponential rates. The latter may then have to
formulate growth plans to meet the state’s demand in bribery payments,
causing actual GDP growth. Rentsharing therefore explains why monopolies
and oligopolies sometimes can induce high GDP growth for developing
economies.
Too big to fail: One way of neutralising state hostility against private property is
 to enlarge the sheer size of the property to threaten a “deadweight loss,” or
economic inefficiencies caused by a large-scale capitalist divestment that
would quickly decrease supply in the market, causing price hikes. In the case
of South Korea, the chaebŏl used this option to co-opt the military state that
tried to legitimise its regime by high GDP growth and full employment. The
chaebŏl provided both to the economy, although simultaneously it threatened
a pull-out from the market if the state taxed it too much, either formally or
informally. Most importantly, the chaebŏl also demanded state bailout plans
when it faced financial difficulties deriving from rapid expansion and
diversification through mergers and acquisitions.
Tunnelling: An unethical business behaviour by corporate owners involving
transfers of corporate wealth from one corporation to another. In an attempt
to list a new corporation in the stock market, the owning family uses their
listed company to buy goods and services from the new company in massive
quantities to artificially increase the latter’s revenues. In another example,
owners of a successful corporation transfer its corporate wealth to an
undisclosed offshore corporation in order to avoid taxes. Artificially
increasing owners’ salaries and dividends is also considered tunnelling, as
well as their attempt to increase their stock values by purchasing unrelated
but lucrative firms.

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22
Democratization in South Korea

Gregg Andrew Brazinsky

South Korea was one of the great anomalies of the twentieth century. During the
period after World War II, dozens of new states in Asia and Africa gained their
independence from colonialism. Many of them aspired to achieve rapid economic
development and a workable form of democratic government. But by the end of
the twentieth century, despite expansive American involvement in many cases,
the vast majority of the post-colonial world continued to live in relative poverty,
with less than a handful of states enjoying stable democracy. What made South
Korea different? Why did it ultimately achieve a stable democratic government
when so many other new states faced with similar circumstances failed?
No one factor can answer these questions completely. In fact the process of
democratization in South Korea during the years between 1945, when Korea was
liberated from Japanese colonialism, and 1987, when South Korea’s military
government agreed to step aside and allow free elections, was a complex one
with a wide variety of different contributing factors. Nevertheless, there are
certain features of South Korea’s history during this period that undoubtedly
played a critical role in shaping the process. This essay examines the most
important of these: the role of the United States, rapid economic development,
and South Korean agency. It considers the importance of each of these three
factors while offering a basic narrative of the key historical developments in
South Korea’s democratization.
Most of the existing literature on democratization in South Korea has taken a
somewhat different approach. It has tended to put less emphasis on the role of
outside actors and greater emphasis on the role of domestic forces. In particular,
it has emphasized how different groups such as workers, women or ordinary
people influenced or were influenced by South Korea’s democratic
transformation (Armstrong 2006; Oh 1999; Shin 2014; S. Kim 2003). Much of this
literature has primarily seen democratization as a sort of ground-up process
driven primarily by the people. The United States is often viewed as a
counterproductive force that hindered the emergence of South Korean
democracy. But there are limitations to this approach. Korea did not have any
democratic tradition before it was liberated from Japan in 1945, and Koreans had
limited experience with democratic institutions. While it is argued here that
Koreans struggled valiantly to turn their country into a democracy, the overall
process cannot be understood without looking at a combination of internal and
external factors and understanding the role Americans played in introducing
democratic ideas and concepts.
First, however, it is important to explain what is meant by democracy in this
essay. I have generally used the term as a shorthand, not for simple one-person,
one-vote democracy, but for what might be called liberal democracy. Liberal
democracy does not simply mean one-person, one-vote majority rule. Rather it is
a form of democracy that is based on liberal principles including respect for the
civil liberties of both the majority and the minority and equality before the law.
Elections are free, fair and openly contested by candidates representing genuinely
different positions on key issues (Zakaria 2003: 17). This was the kind of
democracy that South Koreans came to aspire to and this is what they would
ultimately manage to overcome the odds and achieve by the end of the twentieth
century.

In the beginning

Very few observers walking through the newly created Republic of Korea in 1948
would have given the country a very good chance of blossoming into a stable
democracy in little more than a generation. At the time, South Korea was, to
many, little more than a backwards “rump state.” The end of Japanese
colonialism three years earlier had created tremendous economic dislocation
throughout the Korean Peninsula; the division of the country into separate
northern and southern states had served only to exacerbate the situation. To
many Koreans at the time, subsistence and survival were the most important
things (Brazinsky 2007: 32). Although Korean elites had aspirations to build a
democracy similar to the ones that existed in Europe, the majority of Koreans
had never lived under a democracy of any form and had virtually no experience
with the procedural and civic aspects of democratic life.
The years between 1945 and 1948 had been chaotic ones for Korea politically in
which the peninsula was divided—occupied by the Soviet Union and the United
States and, against the will of the vast majority of the Korean people, forced to
accept division into two separate states. The inability of Washington and Moscow
to reach a compromise that would reunify their zones of occupation through
holding elections for the entire Korean Peninsula led to the intervention of the
United Nations and to separate elections in the north and south. Unfortunately,
neither of these elections offered the Koreans who participated in them a very
positive introduction to the virtues of democratic life. The Americans and the
Soviets skewed the political processes in their respective spheres of influence in
such a way that only their own political allies could emerge triumphant (Lee
2013: 29–31).
In the South, it was Syngman Rhee that seized the reins of political power with
no small measure of American assistance. Americans had forged an alliance of
convenience with Rhee for two key reasons: he was a devout anti-communist
and, unlike many other conservatives in Korea whose reputations were tarnished
by past collaboration with Japanese colonialism, Rhee had genuine credentials as
a nationalist and leader of the early Korean independence movement. In an
election that was largely boycotted by the political left, Rhee was elected the first
president of the newly inaugurated Republic of Korea (ROK) in July 1948.
Although the new government formed under Rhee’s leadership was formally
democratic with a constitution and popularly elected National Assembly, the new
president found ways to sharply limit political freedom and strengthen his own
grip on power. He used the power of political patronage to award those who were
most loyal to him. One American report on the new president’s cabinet
appointments noted that there had been a “lack of any attempt to include in the
present Government varying opinions or political groups” (Brazinsky 2007:18).
Although Americans were deeply ambivalent about Rhee, they felt trapped
into supporting him. During the first five years of its existence, South Korea
confronted dire security threats, including domestic insurgency and a devastating
war launched by the competing government in the north. Even after the Korean
War ended, many feared that the armistice would not hold. In this context,
American officials believed that there was little that they could do but tolerate
Rhee’s authoritarianism despite the fact that he frequently made a mockery of US
pretensions to be defending and assisting a “Free World” country. Doing
otherwise, they feared, might bring about dangerous instability and lead to a
communist takeover.
The end result of American tolerance for Rhee’s authoritarian tendencies was
the persistence of what at times seemed little more than a police state in South
Korea until the president was overthrown in April 1960. Rhee took advantage of
the emergency wartime situation to enlarge his own powers and make it possible
for himself to seek multiple terms as president instead of the one term specified
by the constitution. The president kept strict control over the national police and
used it for paramilitary operations and intimidating his opponents. Rhee also
encouraged the formation of notorious right-wing youth groups that sometimes
attacked journalists or political figures who dissented against his regime.
Although the Republic of Korea never developed into the kind of totalitarian state
that existed north of the thirty-eighth parallel, the prospects for democracy
appeared far from promising during its early years (Brazinsky, 2007: 104–106).
But even if South Korea’s government remained authoritarian, democratic forces
slowly began to emerge with American encouragement.

Promoting democracy

America’s role in South Korean politics during the 1950s was in many ways a
paradoxical one. There can be no question that American support for Syngman
Rhee—reluctant as it may have been in some instances—proved critical to the
formation and maintenance of an authoritarian state structure throughout the
1950s. At the same time, however, American officials hoped that South Korea
would not remain permanently saddled with an authoritarian government like
the one Rhee presided over. They looked forward to the time when Rhee would
leave office. More importantly, they attempted to encourage democracy in South
Korea from the bottom up through a variety of educational and cultural
programs. Not all of these programs had the precise effect that was intended, and
South Koreans never envisioned their democracy in the same way that
Americans did. Nevertheless, these programs did help to establish some social
structures and gave rise to new ideas that helped to encourage democracy in the
long term.
Many of these programs were launched as part of a broader US-led
international effort to aid and reconstruct South Korea in the wake of the Korean
War. The country was materially devastated after three years of brutal conflict
with the north. Its industries lay in shambles, orphans numbered in the
thousands, and destruction to homes and other property totaled hundreds of
millions of dollars. During the decade after the Korean War, aiding South Korea
became an important priority for both the United States and the United Nations.
Washington established the United States Operations Mission in South Korea and
gave it an annual budget of several hundred million dollars to carry out aid
programs in different fields. At the same time, the United Nations Korea
Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA) was established under the auspices of the UN,
though Americans played a significant role in shaping the agenda for this
organization as well. The stated goal of these organizations was generally to
provide economic relief from the devastation caused by the war. But in doing so
they inevitably sought to transfer new ways of thinking that could encourage
democratization as well.
An important case in point was in the ROK’s educational system. If Koreans
were to become democratic citizens, Americans believed, then they needed to be
educated and schools needed to guide them in the participatory aspects of
democratic life. Koreans hungered for better education but opportunities were
limited during and after the war. At the most basic level, many of the school
buildings had been destroyed during the war or converted to military barracks. In
many instances, there simply were no physical structures that could be used for
schooling. At the same time, the educational curriculum left much to be desired.
Under Japanese colonialism, the schools had often served the purpose of
assimilating Koreans into the Japanese empire (S. Kim and Caprio 2009: 33–43).
Although the U.S. military occupation had initiated some educational reforms,
the task was far from complete by the time the war started. In the aftermath of
the war, both aiding in the reconstruction of schools and revising the education
curricula became important priorities for many aid agencies. A vast expansion of
educational opportunity occurred in South Korea as a result of these
reconstruction efforts. American and UN agencies supplied materials for
classroom construction, paper for printing textbooks and numerous other basic
items needed to provide basic educational opportunities. The UNKRA assumed a
large share of the responsibility for constructing new schools and classrooms.
Through the organization’s efforts, more than 12,000 new classrooms were built
in 1952–1953 in the ROK. As a result, primary school attendance grew from 2.4
million pupils in 1948 to 3.7 million in 1961. The number of students attending
middle and high schools in South Korea also experienced a dramatic growth
during these years (Brazinsky 2007: 43–47).
American aid agencies did not stop at merely helping to build schools, they
also sought to influence the curriculum. Democratic concepts were incorporated
into textbooks, while new teaching methods designed to create a democratic
citizenry were introduced to teachers (Brazinsky 2007: 46–50). Not all of these
reforms had the intended effect. Many Americans sent to work with Korean
teachers were dismayed that instructional methods did not actually change very
much. Nevertheless, these changes made it possible for South Korean students to
learn about democracy even if they could not experience it directly under
Syngman Rhee’s rule. This was important given the rapidly growing number of
students at all levels in South Korea.
The numerous US official and private agencies active in South Korea during
the post-war period also aimed to contribute to the country’s democratization
through cultivating South Korean journalists. Americans believed that a free
press was a prerequisite to a democratic society in the long run and sought to
assure that one came into being in the ROK. The United States aided many pro-
democracy journals that were openly critical of the Rhee government such as
Sasanggye (World of Thought). The United States Information Agency (USIA)
even initiated special tours of the United States for leading journalists and
publishers. The idea behind such programs was to give media leaders the
opportunity to see how the press functioned in a democratic society. Once they
had the opportunity to witness the workings of the American media first hand,
they would be more eager to help bring a free and democratic press to Korea.
Here too, the United States seems to have had an impact as South Korean
journalists became increasingly critical of their government over the course of
the 1950s, despite Rhee’s efforts to keep them in check (Brazinsky 2007: 52–58).
Finally, Americans recognized that if South Korea was to eventually transition
to democracy, it would be necessary for the country to have civil servants
dedicated to improving the function of the government. The United States
therefore launched numerous programs to help train government officials and
bureaucrats. The idea was to reach out to younger, uncorrupted civil servants and
politicians that might eventually become the core of a more efficient, more
democratic government. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Leaders Program
operated by the USIA brought numerous South Korean assemblymen and local
officials to the United States for tours, including future president Kim Dae Jung.
The Ford Foundation arranged for many talented South Korean bureaucrats to
attend special training programs at the Economic Development Institute in
Washington (Brazinsky 2007: 59–67).
American activities in South Korea could not produce democracy overnight,
however. What they produced instead was greater tension between the
government and elites. As the Rhee government grew even more despotic during
the late 1950s, a rising generation of South Korean elites who had been exposed
to ideas about democracy in schools, in the media and through contacts with the
outside world became more dissatisfied. As a new decade dawned, South Korea
was ripe for revolution.

From 19 April to 16 May

The chain of events that would lead to the demise of Syngman Rhee’s
government began during the spring of 1960. Although he was over eighty years
old and bordering on senile, Rhee refused to let go of political power. During a
presidential election held in March, Rhee’s henchmen launched a widespread
campaign of ballot stuffing and destruction of opposition ballots. When the
“results” of the election were announced and Rhee, despite his growing
unpopularity, had somehow garnered over 80 percent of the votes, elite
discontent began to spread rapidly. On 11 April, the body of a student who had
been tortured by the police was suddenly found in the harbor in the southern city
of Masan. When news reached the capital between 18–19 April, increasingly
widespread student protests against the government began. Over the next few
days, the protests continued to grow in scope and intensity, reaching the point
where they threatened to throw the entire country into chaos. Facing increasing
pressure both domestically and from the United States, Rhee finally stepped
down on 25 April. Free elections, which ultimately turned the government over
to the opposition Democratic Party were held in July (Henderson 1968: 174–181).
For a brief period of time, the possibility of more genuine democracy appeared
to take hold in South Korea. The newly elected prime minister, Chang Myŏn,
presided over the ROK’s first local elections in Korean history in December 1960.
South Koreans went to the polls to choose new provincial governors and a new
mayor of Seoul. Freedom of expression and assembly blossomed. Moreover, the
Chang government implemented some significant economic reforms that
promised to break up the system of cronyism and corruption that had enabled
Syngman Rhee to remain in power (Henderson 1968: 180–181).
The new, democratic South Korean government led by Chang Myŏn survived
less than one year, however. Despite its good intentions, its leadership was
inexperienced and reluctant to use force. Demonstrations by radical student
groups became increasingly common during the months after the revolution, and
Chang’s government seemed unable to keep them under control. Nor did Chang
have much success at alleviating the economic misery that had come to plague
South Korea during the Syngman Rhee years. Both inflation and unemployment
continued to grow under his leadership. Moreover, factionalism swiftly developed
within the ruling Democratic Party due to disagreements between Chang and the
president, Yun Po-sŏn. It did not take long for both American officials and South
Korean citizens to begin to lose faith in the new South Korean government.
According to a poll taken several months after Chang took office, the prime
minister enjoyed the unreserved support of only 3.7 percent of South Korea’s
population. (Henderson, 1968: 180–81). Americans and their conservative allies in
South Korea feared that North Korea might take advantage of the chaos to
reunify the country.
Chang Myŏn’s government survived for less than a year. As Chang struggled
to manage the economy and implement fundamental policies, South Korea’s
formidable military grew increasingly impatient with civilian government.
During the previous decade, the ROK Army had grown enormously both in size
and influence thanks to massive American support during and after the Korean
War. By the late 1950s, thousands of military officers had traveled to the United
States to receive special training. Moreover, the size and complexity of the ROK
Army assured that those serving in it at the highest levels gained the kind of
administrative experience that was lacking among most of South Korea’s civilian
leaders. As Chang Myŏn’s government struggled to maintain order and launch
South Korea on the path to economic development, the army looked on and
became increasingly frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the civilian
government (Brazinsky 2007: 84–100).
On 16 May 1961, Major General Park Chung Hee (Pak Chŏng-hŭi) launched a
bloodless coup d’état that swiftly ended democratic government in South Korea.
Although Chang had heard rumors that such a coup was likely to occur, his
government had few alternatives once Park managed to gain the support of the
military. Once the coup had succeeded, Park temporarily assumed the post of
Chairman of the Supreme Council for National Revolution (SCNR), and he would
use the council to govern the ROK for the next two years. Although American
officials on the ground in South Korea initially wanted to see civilian government
restored, the Kennedy Administration soon came to support Park’s government,
partially because it recognized that the chairman was deeply committed to
restoring stability and promoting economic development. With the military now
in control of South Korean politics, the country would go through a period of
rapid social, economic and political change.

Park Chung Hee: development and democracy

Park Chung Hee dominated South Korean politics for the next two decades. After
ruling the country through the SCNR for two years, Park allowed free
presidential elections in 1963, in part because he was pressured constantly by the
Kennedy Administration to do so. Until 1972, elections continued to be held in
South Korea, although the outcomes, while not completely predetermined, were
heavily influenced by Park and his political allies. Under Park’s rule, a complex
system of favoritism was established in which the government offered
preferential treatment for certain business conglomerates (or chaebŏl) and the
chaebŏl in turn rewarded Park’s political party with donations and other forms of
largesse. The president also established the Korean Central Intelligence Agency
(KCIA) as a powerful weapon that could be used to intimidate and control his
opposition. Thus, on election days, Park’s opponents could receive votes and
members of the opposition party were elected to the National Assembly (though
they were always the minority), but the likelihood of Park or his party suffering a
major loss under these conditions was very low. In 1972, Park suddenly abrogated
the ROK constitution, however, and announced the creation of the new Yusin
(meaning literally “revitalization”) System. Yusin was a harsh new system of
authoritarian repression that placed strict limits on freedom of speech, introduced
new methods of political repression, and essentially made Park the permanent
president.
Park Chung Hee clearly did not make establishing a viable democracy in South
Korea one of his top priorities. Although he allowed free elections and some
measure of dissent for some of the time that he was in power, for the most part
he was mistrustful of democratic institutions and suspicious of American efforts
to foist them upon South Korea. At the same time, however, during his nearly
two decades in power Park did help to create socio-economic conditions that
would eventually make democracy more tenable than it had been when he
gained power. Park’s most notable achievement was, of course, that he managed
to pull his nation out of the economic malaise that it was suffering from and
launch it on a course of rapid economic development. When Park seized power,
the Republic of Korea was still one of the poorest countries in the world and its
per capita income was lower than that of many newly independent African
countries. By the time Park was assassinated in 1979, South Korea’s per capita
income had grown from around $80 to $3,000. The economy had averaged
miraculous double-digit growth rates throughout the 1960s and 1970s. South
Korea’s industrialization and economic growth are covered elsewhere in this
volume, so they will not be covered in detail here. What needs to be mentioned,
however, is the way that this economic development contributed to the country’s
eventual democratization.
The rapid economic development that occurred during the Park Chung Hee
years contributed to South Korea’s democratization in several key ways. First,
throughout human history there has been an established connection between the
expansion of economic opportunity and the development of political liberty. One
does not always lead to the other. Nevertheless, one might say that economic
opportunity is constitutive of political liberty—meaning that it has the power to
bring political liberty into being. When Park Chung Hee seized power in 1961,
South Korea was still primarily an economic society. Most people had little
choice other than to make their living from the land as previous generations had
done. By the end of Park Chung Hee’s rule, this was no longer true. During the
1970s Park had also launched an economic program known as the “big push,”
under which the South Korean economy transitioned from light manufacturing
to heavy industries. The “big push” enabled the ROK to continue its rapid
economic growth and diversify its economy (Woo 1991: 118–147).
Industrialization helped to spur the growth of both labor and the middle class
in South Korea, while creating new economic choices. Moreover, although
students continued to be one of the most radical groups in South Korea, Park had
realized that a strong education system was necessary if he wanted to turn his
nation into an economic success story. Educational opportunities had continued
to expand at all levels.
What did all of this rapid economic growth mean for the typical South
Korean? Of course, not everybody benefited equally. Nevertheless, in 1979,
ambitious young South Koreans had a far greater chance to fulfill their
aspirations for a better education and a middle class job than any previous
generation. This change was a dramatic one that transformed the mentality of
large segments of the population. It did not, in and of itself, lead to democracy.
Nevertheless, it was natural for South Koreans who now had more economic
choices to crave greater political freedoms. The emergence of these new classes
also attenuated the state’s power. The government continued to do everything
that it could to simultaneously foster and control the growth of large industries.
But as industries grew larger, they eventually became loci of power in their own
right. This combination of alternative centers of power and greater expectations
among younger South Koreans unquestionably created some of the preconditions
that would eventually lead to a political transformation.
Park Chung Hee also helped to create the enabling conditions for democracy
by enhancing both the security and stability of South Korea. Democracy is highly
dependent on the ability of the state to protect citizens from both external and
internal threats. During the 1950s and 1960s, perhaps the greatest threat to the
establishment of a durable democracy in South Korea came from Pyongyang. If
North Korea had ever been able to carry out its ambition to reunify the peninsula
under Pyongyang’s leadership, it would have made the emergence of democracy
anywhere on the Korean Peninsula impossible. Although Park did not eliminate
the North Korean threat altogether, he certainly enhanced South Korea’s capacity
to defend itself. Economic power and military power are closely interrelated. As
the South Korean economy developed, so too did its capacity for autonomous
defense.
Park’s government also maintained internal order. It is certainly true that some
of the measures taken by Park Chung Hee on this front—intimidating, arresting
and torturing his opponents— were far too extreme. At the same time, liberal
democracy has never developed in countries where personal property was not
protected and basic political stability could not be guaranteed.
Despite the Yusin government’s atrocious record on human rights, Park did
help to maintain civil order and the rule of law throughout his tenure in power.
South Koreans generally could acquire and be secure in their own personal
property and use it as they saw fit. In the long run, these rights gave South
Koreans greater incentive to participate in the governance of their own society,
even if they could not do so immediately.
Ultimately, the impact of the Park Chung Hee era on South Korea’s later
emergence as a democracy was very complicated and multi-faceted. There can be
no question that Park went further than he needed to in order to maintain social
order and maintain South Korea’s security. Although placing some limits on
popular freedoms and participation may have been necessary in an economically
impoverished country with no history of democracy like South Korea, the gross
violations of human rights and basic civil liberties perpetrated by his regime were
not. At the same time, political development in South Korea during the Park
Chung Hee years followed a fundamentally ironic problem. Park succeeded
magnificently at spurring rapid economic development in South Korea. But his
very success helped to foster disillusionment with the dictatorship he had created.
As South Koreans gained more economic choices as a result of the country’s
rapid development, they became increasingly frustrated with their relative lack of
political choices and this led to growing protests against his authority.

The rise of political dissent in South Korea

The imposition of Yusin in 1972 led to growing protests against the government
in South Korea. Initially, these protests were mainly carried out by elites such as
students, intellectuals, and influential Christian ministers. Over the course of the
1970s, students and Christian churches worked together to mobilize South
Korea’s growing class of industrial laborers against the Park regime’s growing
authoritarianism. Workers endured harsh conditions in the ROK with labor
unions suppressed fiercely by the government. Idealistic students often devoted
their time to going into factories and training workers in the techniques of labor
activism and social protest. The level of confrontation between the state and this
alliance of dissident groups escalated swiftly during the early 1970s. American
policy was mostly passive in the face of this potentially explosive situation. The
Nixon Administration was focused on improving relations with the People’s
Republic of China and limiting America’s overall involvement in Asia. It
generally supported Park and hoped that his government would find a way of
maintaining stability and feared that publicly criticizing the regime would only
make things worse.
Over time, however, events and circumstances made it increasingly difficult
for Park to maintain his grip on political power. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was
elected president in the United States. The Carter Administration made human
rights one of its key foreign policy priorities, and the new president was far more
willing to criticize America’s longstanding allies on their human rights records
than his predecessors had been. Frictions between the Carter Administration and
the Park government grew quickly, but Washington found that its influence over
the government was diminishing rapidly. At the same time, Park found that his
political position was weaker because he was now receiving growing measures of
criticism from Washington, which had mostly looked the other way when it
came to his regime’s authoritarianism in the past.
By the late 1970s, dissident forces in South Korea were becoming increasingly
determined. Park’s refusal to show any flexibility in the face of this rising tide of
dissent would ultimately bring about his downfall. In August 1979, Park’s
decision to suppress a strike at the YH Trading Company led to a series of
escalating clashes between his government and democratic forces. Striking
workers fled to the headquarters of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP),
which was still represented in the National Assembly, though its actual power
was very limited. In response, Park expelled Kim Young Sam (Kim Yŏng-sam),
the party’s leader, from the assembly, a move that in turn caused all remaining
members of the NDP to resign their seats. Popular demonstrations, often led by
students and workers, began in Pusan and soon spread throughout the country
(Oh 1999: 71–72). All of a sudden, the stability of the South Korean government,
long assumed to be unassailable, seemed to be in jeopardy.
Key officials in Park’s government did not completely agree on how to handle
the situation. Some argued for reform but others, including Park, argued that it
was necessary to take a hard line with the protestors and assure the survival of
the ROK government. When Park called a meeting of several of his top advisors
on 26 October, an argument broke out among them. No detailed archival records
about what was discussed and who made what arguments during the meeting
exists. Apparently, however, the KCIA director Kim Chae-gyu became
increasingly frustrated with Park over the course of the meeting. For reasons that
are still not clear, Kim suddenly shot and killed both the South Korean president
and his bodyguard Ch’a Ch’i-ch’ŏl (Brazinsky 2007: 232). The Yushin system died
along with Park, but one key question still remained unanswered: What political
direction would South Korea move in after Park’s death?
Initially, it seemed like South Korea would evolve toward greater democracy.
Prime Minister Ch’oe Kyu Ha (Ch’oe Kyu-ha) assumed the presidency after
Park’s assassination and announced that the Yushin constitution would be
revised and free elections would follow. Ch’oe also moved to restore the civil
liberties of dissident politicians such as Kim Dae Jung (Kim Tae-jung), who had
been kept under surveillance by the Park regime. But this promising new
beginning soon turned into another harrowing ordeal for South Koreans who
craved democracy. On 12 December 1979, Major General Chun Doo Hwan (Chŏn
Tu-hwan), the leader of a clandestine association within the military placed
Chŏng Sŭng-hwa, the army chief of staff, under arrest for allegedly playing a role
in the assassination of Park Chung Hee. These trumped up charges were, in
reality, little more than an excuse for Chun to take control over the South Korean
military. Over the next few months, Chun’s position in South Korean politics
slowly grew stronger while President Ch’oe’s became weaker. Under duress,
Ch’oe appointed Chun director of the KCIA and promoted him to the rank of
lieutenant general (Oh 1999: 72–78). Those desiring greater progress toward
democracy in South Korea could read the writing on the wall; they knew that
Chun intended to restore military rule.
It was the tragic series of events that occurred in Kwangju during the spring of
1980 that would defer truly democratic governance in South Korea for the next
seven years. When Ch’oe announced Chun’s promotion in April, student-led
demonstrations exploded throughout South Korea and were accompanied by
major industrial strikes. With anti-government protests continuing to grow in
size and intensity, Chun declared martial law on 17 May. Military authorities
closed major universities, suspended the National Assembly, and arrested major
opposition leaders (Oh 1999: 80–81). Protests subsided in most parts of the
country as a result of Chun’s show of force but continued unabated in the
southwestern city of Kwangju. On 18 May, special warfare forces entered the city
and were followed by paratroopers on 21 May. When some of the paratroopers
fired on civilians, the protests took on a more violent turn with demonstrators
seizing armaments and taking over government buildings. With chaos engulfing
Kwangju, General John Wickham, the commander of American forces stationed
in Korea, released the ROK Army’s Twentieth Division from its duties along the
Demilitarized Zone. Chun used the Twentieth Division to suppress the uprising
in Kwangju, killing between 200 and 2000 South Korean citizens in the process
(Brazinsky 2007: 236–238). The United States, because of Wickham’s decision to
release a combat division, has long been perceived by South Koreans as being
complicit in these tragic events.
The picture for South Korean democracy looked bleak in 1980. The military
had reasserted itself and brutally suppressed dissent. While Park Chung Hee had
always enjoyed some measure of respect from many South Koreans despite his
authoritarianism, Chun Doo Hwan was never very popular. But Chun did receive
staunch support from the incoming Reagan Administration in the United States.
He was invited to the White House in 1981, where he was warmly embraced by
the new president, Ronald Reagan (Brazinsky 2007: 240–242). With US support
and the powerful ROK military behind him, Chun’s position seemed unassailable.
Despite Chun’s efforts to put a stranglehold on the process of democratization
in South Korea, however, other factors militated against continuing military rule.
There were two key factors that played a particularly important role in
unraveling Chun’s grasp on political power: the growing power of minjung
ideology and South Korea’s economic liberalization. During the 1980s, these two
factors would slowly but surely erode Chun’s grip on power.
Meaning literally “the people,” minjung ideology became a powerful unifying
force for South Korean students, workers, intellectuals, theologians, and others
who protested against the military rule. The concept of minjung was far more
than an ideology of social or political protests. It informed the works of South
Korean economists, historians, and artists who, in different ways, sought to
represent the oppressed masses of Korean people as historical subjects (Lie 1998:
137–139). Minjung called for the restructuring of South Korean politics and
society to favor the masses whose aspirations for democracy, it contended, had
been suppressed by the combination of military rule and American hegemony.
During the 1980s, pro-democracy activists in South Korea became more hostile to
the United States than at any other time in South Korean history. Many
demonstrations combined anti-Americanism with demands for reform by the
ROK’s military dictatorship. Throughout the period between 1981 and 1987, such
anti-government demonstrations became a common sight on the country’s major
college campuses. The government frequently responded by sending in riot police
armed with tear gas and torturing or imprisoning those responsible for the
protests. The government managed to hold onto power through the use of
violence, but the growing influence of minjung ideology was clearly making
military rule untenable in the long term.
 Economic liberalization also contributed significantly to the momentum for
democracy in South Korea. Although Chun Doo Hwan wanted South Korea’s
rapid economic growth to continue, he did not have a clear economic agenda as
Park Chung Hee had. He was strongly influenced by both pressures coming from
the Reagan Administration advocating economic change and his advisors, many
of who had been trained in the United States and subscribed to the free market
ideologies espoused at many American universities. Park Chung Hee had used a
system of state-guided capitalism to achieve rapid economic growth while, at the
same time, making South Korean business conglomerates (or chaebŏl) heavily
dependent on the state for loans and other kinds of support. During the 1980s,
economic liberalization made new sources of capital, including foreign
investment, available to South Korean business. The result was that the chaebŏl
became less dependent on the state and more willing to see political reform occur
(Woo 1991: 190–201). During the late 1980s, South Korea’s businesses and its
growing middle class increasingly threw their weight behind democratization,
making it even more difficult for the military to perpetuate its rule.
By the late 1980s, South Korea looked increasingly unstable politically. On the
one hand, it continued to be governed by a repressive military regime. On the
other hand, anti-government protests were being joined by students, laborers,
and the country’s increasingly influential middle class. The country seemed
poised for a major political explosion and that is exactly what happened in 1987.

The emergence of democracy

Military dictatorship’s final hour in South Korea came during the spring of 1987.
In April of that year, Chun went back on a promise that he had made earlier to
allow a free presidential election and in June announced that Roh Tae Woo (No
T’ae-u), another army general, would be his successor. The announcement set off
a massive wave of anti-government demonstrations involving over one million
people. There was no way for Chun to quiet these protests, short of deploying the
military and running the risk of an all-out civil war. Although Reagan had been a
supporter of Chun, the White House had learned a lesson from Carter’s inept
handling of events in Kwangju. This time, Washington made it clear that it did
not approve of the use of force by Chun’s government. In the face of strong
pressure from both the South Korean public and the United States, Chun finally
agreed to step down. On 29 June, Roh Tae Woo announced that free elections
would be held in December and that significant constitutional reforms would be
made (Brazinsky 2007: 249).
Roh’s announcement was a pivotal moment in South Korea’s transition to a
more democratic government, but the transition did not occur instantaneously.
Free elections took place as promised in December 1987, but Roh managed to pull
off a narrow victory. Roh had taken some of the credit for Chun’s resignation and
anti-communism remained a powerful force in South Korean politics. Moreover,
the two leading opposition candidates, future presidents Kim Dae Jung and Kim
Young Sam, split the opposition vote, enabling Roh to win a small plurality.
Nevertheless, the election had been the freest and fairest in Korean history, and
members of the democratic opposition would soon have their own chances to
serve as president—Kim Young Sam triumphed in the next presidential election
held five years later and Kim Dae Jung was elected president in 1997.
During the years since 1987, South Korea has continued to make political
progress, refining and improving its democracy in ways that are suited for its
own unique national circumstances. During the two and a half decades since
then, the ROK has continued to enjoy free and fair elections, with power being
transferred back and forth peacefully between competing factions on different
ends of the ideological spectrum. The same cannot be said for the vast majority of
nations that were once victims of colonial aggression. Since Chun’s ouster, civil
society groups have become particularly influential in South Korea. Although
military rule had ended, many of the trappings of Korea’s long history of
authoritarian rule remained. Civil society groups played an important role in
encouraging broad, democratizing reforms in nearly every aspect of South
Korean life. Groups such as the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice and the
People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy aimed to promote
democratization from both the top down and the bottom up. On the one hand,
they reached out to newly elected officials to advocate for their causes, while at
the same time, sponsoring research and engaging in campaigns to keep citizens
aware of their responsibilities (Yeo 2013).
 Today, South Korean democracy continues to evolve. It is still imperfect. Some
observers note that Korean political parties remain immature in that they are
partially formed around loyalty to particular leaders rather than abstract
principals and ideas. Corruption also continues to mar South Korean politics,
although the ROK is often no different from the United States and other Western
democracies when it comes to this issue. Nevertheless, South Korea’s halting but
persistent transformation into a democracy during the last six decades demands
the attention of all who wonder about the fate of freedom in the twenty-first
century. In a world where nations continue to struggle to establish stable
democratic institutions, South Korea is one of the few examples where such
institutions could be created despite a history of domestic conflict and civil war.
Though most countries cannot and will not follow the same path to democracy
that South Koreans did, understanding how democracy took hold there can
unquestionably contribute to an appreciation of what might be involved in
promoting it elsewhere. Ultimately, the fact that South Koreans are still
perfecting their democracy by no means detracts from what they have
accomplished. It should simply remind us that democracy is not a destination, but
a process.

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Armstrong, Charles. 2006. Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State.
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Brazinsky, Gregg. 2007. Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans and
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Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and George W. Downs. 2005 “Development and
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Clark, Donald N. 1986. Christianity in Modern Korea, Lanham, MD: University
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23
Women, gender, and social change in
South Korea since 1945

Laura C. Nelson and Cho Haejoang

Introduction

In the decades since the end of the Japanese colonial period, gender1 has been a
central factor in social structure and social change in South Korea. Legacies of
colonial gender formations lingered long into the post-liberation period, but
gendered social role expectations, images, and daily practices for Korean men and
women have also been transformed in dramatic ways. These changes themselves
have generated reactions that have sought to reconstitute imagined traditions or
which have advocated new gender formations. Any attempt to capture this
complexity – and the scholarship of these processes – in a single essay will be no
more than an overview, and a partial one at that. We have taken this dynamism
as our point of reference; the changes to – and because of – gender are taken as
guideposts to the more general issue of transformations in South Korean society
and culture.
Our themes include considerations of household structure and the divisions
between public and private in terms of gendered expectations, roles, and practices
around work and human relationships; feminist activism; and sexuality and
gender2. We will attend to material as well as discursive and expressive domains
in the local production and embodied experience of gender in South Korea. And
while the scholarship of gender in South Korea in the twentieth and early
twenty-first century exhibits some differences in interpretations, much of the
literature points to a consensus regarding the circumstances of and pressures on
women (and men), and of the enduring importance of gender in structuring social
relations throughout this period.

Gender, labor, education, and home

The Japanese colonial experience left a legacy upon which structures and
concepts around gender were formed in the first years of Korean independence.
With the sudden departure of the Japanese in 1945 and the simultaneous division
of the peninsula, Koreans in the southern zone faced instability in governance,
economy, and culture. Displaced Koreans returning from abroad strained the
resources and social fabric of the countryside and swelled city neighborhoods.3
Politics under the American military government in Korea and, from 1948, under
the Republic of Korea, were contentious, and the outbreak of war in June 1950
threw the population into even deeper chaos. Established patterns of housing,
work, family relationships, and care were disrupted. This social instability led to
improvisations that often undermined existing gendered expectations and roles,
and in reaction, gender itself became an explicit discursive domain for the
reinforcement of what were thought of as appropriate and “traditional” Korean
norms against “modern” aspirations of independence and individualism (H.J. Cho
1995; 2002).
In particular, during the active hostilities between 1950 and 1953 and in the
war’s aftermath, when most able-bodied adult men were engaged in the fighting,
captured, or in hiding, many women and children had to work outside the home
to support their families.4 Women’s labor force participation rate doubled during
the war from less than 30 percent to more than 60 percent, and remained elevated
throughout the 1950s (H.S. Kim 2009). Farming was the most common type of
paid work women engaged in outside the home, followed by work in small
factories, and peddling. Although the work activities of war widows were viewed
as a positive adjustment to their unfortunate circumstances, the simultaneous
increase in married women’s participation in the labor force was, in contrast,
portrayed as a sign of their husbands’ inadequacies and as a perversion of social
norms (H.S. Kim 2009). This inconsistency is just one of many discursive
conundrums that structured South Korean women’s choices in the mid-twentieth
century, generating social dilemmas for women regarding which behaviors were
to be considered appropriate in terms of gender as well as other factors such as
class, age, and social position.
From the 1950s on, international development consultants and the ROK
government agreed that low-cost, skilled labor was the key to South Korea’s
economic future. Park Chung-Hee’s industrialization policies in the 1960s
coordinated education, infrastructure, finance, and international relations to
foster export-led economic development characterized by a partnership between
an authoritarian state and powerful conglomerates known as chaebŏl. Central to
this strategy was the recruitment of workers from the countryside to new
industrial sites. Backed by government propaganda soliciting “industrial soldiers,”
both men and women were increasingly drawn into the net of paid employment,
a significant shift from family-based farm work and self-employment (S. Moon
2005; Cho and Koo 1983; Koo 1990). In most cases, the jobs men and women took
reflected existing ideas of gender-appropriate role differentiation, although those
notions and the specific labor positions associated with men or women changed
over time. In the manufacturing sector, women predominated in “light” industry
(for example, textiles, wigs, food, clothing, and electronics) while men
monopolized jobs in construction and the heavy and chemical industry
(particularly after Park’s emphasis on this sector beginning in the 1970s), and
men held nearly all supervisorial positions in all factories (Cho and Koo 1983;
Koo 1990; K.A. Park 1993). The experience of young women in factory work was
shaped by male surveillance of the production floor, and, for rural female
migrants, close monitoring of their comings and goings in factory dormitories or
dilapidated housing complexes adjacent to the factory (Ogle 1990; Spencer 1988).
The conditions in the factories themselves were infamous, including long hours
and grueling shiftwork, extremely low wages (legally stratified by gender and, for
married men, augmented to recognize men’s role in family support), unsafe work
environments, sexual harassment, and abusive management tactics (Chun 2003;
H.M. Kim 1997; Ogle 1990; Spencer 1988). The young women factory workers
were also haunted by money concerns, family demands for support (often to fund
investment in their own brothers’ cultural capital), and the pressure to get
married and leave work. While the work of these young women was lauded as a
contribution to national development, social anxiety around the perceived
independence of these women was reflected in gossip and suspicions regarding
their chastity. Nor was their foothold in employment firm: in the 1970s and early
1980s, global pressures on production costs, combined with a strategic shift to a
greater emphasis on heavy industry (“men’s work”) increased the job insecurity
and tarnished the status of young women factory workers (H.M. Kim 2005; Y.J.
Park 1990). Moreover, not all urban job seekers were able to find work in
manufacturing (and manufacturing work was strongly skewed to a younger labor
force [Chang 1994]). Many women tried to scrape together a living selling things,
serving food, and cleaning houses (along with sexual labor – see below).
Economic fits and starts, combined with an ideological preference for men’s job
security over women’s, shaped women’s frequently-interrupted work histories in
the ROK’s first decades.
Although industry held a privileged place in South Korean economic
development, it depended upon the rural sector not only as a source of labor and
affordable sustenance, but also as a site of imagination against which the
dramatic difference of “modernity” could be contrasted. At its inception, the ROK
was essentially an agricultural nation with a small urban population;5 the
targeted recruitment of young workers from South Korean rural communities in
the 1960s and 1970s inevitably altered the social fabric of the countryside.
Between 1960 and 1985, the portion of South Koreans living outside urban areas
fell from 61 to 35 percent, and the remaining rural population was increasingly
composed of elderly residents (Korea Statistical Yearbook). Historically, women
in the countryside had worked inside the home and alongside men in the fields,
producing textiles for tax payments, making food and clothing for the family, and
assisting in the raising of crops (Chang 1994). During the period of national
industrialization, however, mechanization of some “male” farming tasks and the
associated shifting of more manual farming tasks from men to women, along
with the androcentric social impacts of Park Chung-Hee’s Saemaul Undong (New
Village Movement) affected the gender balance in the countryside, as women
were burdened with more responsibilities that were increasingly viewed as less
modern than those men held (Shin Gills 1999; O. Cho 1998; Abelmann 1996). The
distance (both geographic as well as imaginative) between new urbanites and the
villages of their birth fostered nostalgia for an idealized Korean farm home
tended by an iconic, hard-working, self-sacrificing mother. This became a
standard trope in propaganda, literature, and film from the 1960s through the
present, against which the behaviors of (non-fictional) contemporary urban
women were often judged (McHugh and Abelmann 2005; Abelmann 2003).
Although rural life was materially and socially transformed through this
relationship with South Korea’s urbanization, becoming more intensively
patriarchal and more impoverished, it was simultaneously presented and
cherished as “authentic” Korean culture.
Hidden in this ideal was the fact that farm work was the only sector where
women customarily were understood to be engaged in productive labor
throughout their lives (H.J. Cho 1988; H.J Cho 2000; Kendall 2002b). While by the
mid-1960s, it had become not just accepted but expected that young women
would seek work, married women’s participation in the paid workforce
continued to generate ambivalence in media and in public opinion through the
1980s. Despite the presentation of young women workers as contributing to the
national economy, engaging in paid work after marriage was widely perceived as
a sign of a husband’s failure to provide for his family. Most women themselves
hoped that their stint as paid workers would be a temporary phase in their lives
(S. Moon 2005; S.K. Kim 1997). Indeed, except for those in the agricultural sector,
most women exited the paid labor force as soon as they could after marriage. In
contrast to men, who were expected to earn a living, women’s employment
beyond young adulthood was considered an anomaly. This, however, masked an
important truth: despite the ideal of stay-at-home housewives (an ideal already
widely embraced in the 1960s), many married women re-entered the labor force
(often after their children started school), yielding an employment rate of
between 40 and 50 percent for married women throughout this period.6 The jobs
married women took were often contingent or part-time positions (inferior to
those available to them before marriage), but perhaps more important to the
reinforcement of the ideology of a strict gender dichotomy of work and home
responsibilities was the fact that married women’s work was portrayed as
anomalous at least through the 1980s (H. Cho 2005).
The gendered categorical differences in employment expectations and
opportunities in South Korea affected men as strongly as they affected women:
working (regardless of the type: farm work, manufacturing, intellectual, or
professional labor) was seen as constitutive of manhood. It was constructed as a
social expectation as well as a patriotic duty of all men (S. Moon 2005; J.J.H. Lee
2002). The recruitment of rural men into the urban labor force in the 1960s
paralleled the recruitment of rural women into factories, although men were
steered to heavier production tasks and factory supervision, as well as
construction, hauling, transport, and professional careers. The shape of masculine
work was framed by several factors, including the push factor of widespread
poverty and poor job prospects in the 1950s and 1960s. S. Moon (2005) also
carefully documents the effect of the military as a dominant institution,
particularly during the regime of Park Chung Hee. Conscription was (and
remains) universal for young men (with limited exceptions). This male-only
domain of activity had multiple effects on the gendering of South Korean society.
Young men experienced a harsh environment characterized by hazing, hierarchy,
and hard work that shaped ideas of Korean masculinity. At the same time, men
reaped a lifetime of economic and social rewards for their service through direct
benefits (veteran status accorded hiring preferences or was required of job
candidates for many positions) as well as by the indirect benefits of the social
connections forged in military units and the belief that their military service
demonstrated discipline and patriotism. Military service thus was a key element
in the establishment of gendered social and symbolic hierarchy throughout the
second half of the twentieth century in South Korea.
The chaebŏl-dominated export orientation of much of the South Korean
economy from the 1960s through the mid-1990s also shaped the culture of
employment. While all sectors were highly gender-segregated in hiring and work
roles (Chang 1994), chaebŏl culture reflected military practice in its
androcentrism, discipline and emphasis on hierarchy (Janelli with Yim 1993).
South Koreans averaged among the world’s highest number of hours worked per
week for much of this period (Koo 1990); married men were often away from
their homes for much of the day, interacting with their families briefly on their
one day of rest. The demand that workers arrive early and stay late was
incompatible with two-parent working families, particularly as commercial
childcare was poorly developed and urban households rarely included
grandparents who might help out with childcare, but complaints that men did not
share more domestic responsibilities were blunted by the media’s focus in the
1980s and 1990s on what was deemed an epidemic of stress-related illness among
working men, emphasizing the patriotic self-sacrifice of men to the national call
to work (J.J.H. Lee 2002). The exclusion of increasingly-educated married women
from well-remunerated white-collar employment in the 1970s and 1980s
facilitated the channeling of their human capital into childrearing. In these ways,
the gendered configuration of employment expectations influenced the gendered
dichotomy of domestic roles and vice versa, and together, these fed growing class
differences.
Women’s sexual work contributed in another significant way to the symbolic
marking of the South Korean gender binary (S.H. Lee 2002): The market for
commodified sexual services had expanded in the context of rapid urbanization
in the 1960s and 1970s: as individuals left the oversight of their rural families and
sought work in the cities, sex work evolved as a significant sector both for
women’s employment (particularly in the context of high rates of unemployment
and low pay for women) and for men’s consumption. Throughout the second half
of the twentieth century, South Korean men’s demand escalated for high-end
kisaeng entertainment, street prostitution, “room salons,” and sexualized services
in coffee shops and barber shops (Lie 1995). E.H. Kim (1998) documented how the
normalization of commodified sexual services reinforced male bonding (in
particular, in the context of group visits to room salons) and demarcated class
hierarchies; naturalized the superiority of men over women; and reproduced
divisions among women according to their ability to fulfill rules of chastity (E.H.
Kim 1998). Moreover, men and women accepted married men’s consumption of
sexual services as “normal,” but judged female sex providers as lacking virtue
and, in the context of the backlash against women’s central roles in consumer
culture in the 1980s and 1990s, of excessive materialism. In addition to the
domestic sexual services market, South Korean women also worked as prostitutes
and sexualized entertainers in “camptowns” established through shady
arrangements coordinating ROK government oversight, the US military, and sex
industry professionals (K. Moon 1997), and after the 1965 Normalization Treaty
with Japan, as prostitutes deployed to draw foreign currency by serving Japanese
men visiting South Korea on sex tours facilitated by the ROK (Lie 1995). The
fetishization of young women office workers (particularly in the chaebŏl), while
not directly sexual, occurred in the context of – and reinforced – gender
allocation of work positions and the normalization of married men’s
employment-based sexual entertainment culture (Janelli with Yim 1993; E.H. Kim
1998).
Gendered patterns of employment were closely connected to the course of
educational development during the decades under consideration. Formal public
education had penetrated Korean society slowly and unevenly during the colonial
period7, and in 1945, just 22 percent of Koreans were literate, with illiteracy much
higher among women than men (Seong 2009). Expanding education became a
priority in the first years of independence for political and economic reasons.
ROK educational policies accorded with international values embracing broad
educational access throughout the society, yet the differential uptake of
educational opportunities reveals gender and class differences persisting to the
end of the twentieth century. Primary school attendance was mandated for boys
and girls in 1950 and was made tuition-free in 1960. After this, rates of
educational attainment rose quickly, although gender disparities persisted
(particularly in population measures which included all age groups). In 1960, for
example, the population of South Korean women (including all ages) averaged
only 2.9 years of formal schooling, compared with 4.8 years for men; by 1980 the
respective figures were 6.6 years and 8.7 years8 (Seong 2009). Given the financial
and social costs of sending children to school (even without tuition fees and the
costs of textbook and equipment, “gifts” to teachers, and charges for extra
tutoring added up to serious financial burdens for poor households), family
decisions regarding schooling were influenced by assumptions about not just the
financial but the moral purpose and effects of literacy and education on boys and
girls, as well as persistent gendered differences in the monetary return on
educational investment (Seth 2002). Even after primary school attendance had
become universal, into the 1970s girls were less likely to attend academic or
technical vocational secondary school than were boys. There was also a clear
trend for all but the highest-class families to invest more in boys’ education
relative to girls’, with farming families investing the least in educating their
daughters well into the 1980s (Seong 2009). Over time, as overall education levels
rose, gender differentials in primary and secondary graduation rates diminished –
although boys were steered to more academic or technical courses of study
(Chang 1994).9
In contrast to primary and secondary levels of education, college remained a
gender-differentiated space into the new millennium. In the first decades of the
new republic, South Korean colleges and universities produced a superfluity of
(mostly male) college graduates. The high rates of unemployment among degree-
holders generated unrest in a key demographic group, and the Park Chung Hee
Administration attempted (with only partial success) to reduce college
enrollments and shift educational fervor to vocational subjects in the 1960s. One
legacy of the low demand in the labor market for (male) college graduates was
the relatively low proportion of women in the population of college students (as
late as the 1990s, twice as many men as women were enrolled in higher
education), as well as a presumption that women’s college attendance was for
personal enrichment rather than professional training.10 Labor-market demand
for university-educated women was weak, particularly in the context of
masculinized workplace culture (S. Moon 2005; H.M. Kim 2005). And while many
women trained in professional fields such as education, medicine, and business in
the period between the 1960s and the 1990s, a significant fraction of women
attending universities saw their own education as preparation for marriage and
childrearing (M.H. Kim 1995; Cho 1998; Nelson 2000; Park and Abelmann 2004).
Indeed, childrearing and the educational success of her children remained a
key measure of a woman’s aptitude throughout the second half of the twentieth
century, particularly (although not exclusively) for middle-and-upper-middle-
class women. Shunted from the employment market, educated middle-class
women were structurally and culturally encouraged to dedicate their efforts to
fostering their children’s success (H.J. Cho 1995; H.J. Cho 1998). This goal
required women to cultivate and mobilize a complex network of family members,
friends and acquaintances for information, influence, and, often, financing of
investments in the stock or real estate markets. The work of middle-class class
reproduction was so multifaceted and time-consuming that women with college
and advanced degrees who did pursue professional careers expressed concerns
about their inability to fulfill their responsibilities as wives and mothers because
of time and role conflicts (Nelson 2000; Y.E. Kim 1998; Lett 1998). Married women
were also expected to perform the principle caretaking roles for their husbands’
parents, including frequent telephone contact and visits, preparation of foods, and
arranging for health care (M.H. Kim 1996; H.J. Cho 2002). In fact, much of the
scholarship on urban life in South Korea during this period indicates that while
the specific content of gendered role expectations changed over time, the caring
burden did not diminish for women. By the 1970s, women in their prime years of
adulthood were encumbered with multiple expectations: to care for their in-laws
as well as their own parents; to raise successful children; to support their
husbands’ work outside the home by providing a peaceful and rejuvenating
environment at home; to present the appropriate image to others through
informed and careful consumer choices; and to manage the household budget,
often including bringing in money through outside paid work, self-employment,
or investment income. These activities – time-intensive and demanding multiple
cultural competencies – also drove a wider gulf between wealthier and poorer
families, demarcated by class-specific behaviors and yielding significant financial
and social returns on investments among families that could afford them (Nelson
2006; H.J. Cho 1995; Park and Abelmann 2004).
This intensive work of domestic and social reproduction was facilitated by a
dramatic transformation in fertility and family structure. A post-liberation and
post-war baby boom in the 1950s alarmed ROK planners and international aid
advisors, and led to the 1962 launch of the far-reaching National Family Planning
Program (DiMoia 2008; E.S. Kim 1997). The program quickly exceeded
expectations: the average number of lifetime births per woman fell from around
six in 1960, to just over four by 1975, to three by the later 1970s, and dropped
below replacement levels by the mid-1980s (D.S. Kim 1994). Fewer children at
home increased the maternal focus on each child, and the monetary and financial
costs of childrearing and the competition for mother-facilitated school success
reinforced the expectation for women to invest heavily in their children’s
achievements (H.J. Cho 1995). The falling birthrate had other implications. In
combination with the cultural preference for sons, the reduction in the ideal
number of children led to markedly skewed birth rates in the 1980s and 1990s.
Each birth became a high-stakes lottery, and evidence suggests widespread
selective abortion of female fetuses. By 1990 the overall gender ratio at birth was
the world’s highest, at 117 boys per 100 girls overall, with more skewed ratios for
first-born and later-born children (Park and Cho 1995). In response, in 1991 the
government instituted a crackdown against doctors’ illegal use of ultrasound to
determine fetal sex. Media spread warnings about boys who would grow up
unable to find wives. These factors, combined with strengthened bonds between
adult women and their aging parents (themselves related to the political structure
of eldercare built upon the expectation that adult women would act as primary
caregivers to aging South Korea family members and the proximity of second-
generation urban residents to their own parents), increased the value of daughters
and helped to shift the birthrates back to near normal range by the later 2000s.
Democratization and increasing prosperity ushered in a decade of optimism
about social change in the late 1980s. The passage of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Act in 1988 was a largely symbolic victory, criticized from the
beginning as addressing only the most explicit causes of economic inequality. Yet
a favorable global economy supported expanding employment opportunities,
creating new openings for women to work and to take on higher-profile public
positions. In the context of the elimination of restrictions on international travel
and the cessation of state media censorship, South Korea grew more
cosmopolitan in its outlook. Greater numbers of Seoul-based international
corporations hired college-educated South Korean women, setting an example for
local businesses. These advances made the misogynist backlash following the
Asian Financial Crisis all the harder to bear (Song 2009). In the economic crash,
employment contracted and employment security all but disappeared. Media
focused on the tragedy of out-of-work and homeless men, emphasizing again the
incongruence of masculinity and unemployment; working women were urged to
abandon their jobs to allow men to retake their rightful place in society (Song
2009). As in the past (Nelson 2006), South Korean women were held responsible
in public discourse for the breakdown of social norms. The falling birthrate,
increase in divorce, and rising numbers of unmarried women were once more
attributed to women’s inappropriate or selfish choices.11
Taken as a whole, the literature on the incorporation of South Korean women
into the workforce shows that beginning in the 1950s, most women participated
at some point in their lives in paid employment, and that many of these women
worked in some capacity for most of their adult lives. Yet the effect of women’s
labor has not been seen to have increased women’s autonomy or rights as much
as might be expected; through the twentieth century, South Korean women
remained subject to gendered discrimination in the processes of preparation for
employment, as well as in expectations for their work, employment opportunities,
and in remuneration and security of employment. Moreover, family care work
remained a nearly exclusively feminine domain, demanding time and multiple
skills, with strong implications for the mutual production of both class and
gender. The identification of mothers with their children’s educational,
matrimonial, and career success in the context of competitive, compressed
development undermined the energy for political critique of patriarchy (H.J. Cho
1998, 2000). Given these ongoing practices, women’s educational achievements
and employment success has been seen as having ironically reinforced gendered
stereotypes in South Korea (Won 2005; Han and Ling 1998).

Feminist activism and social change

To a great extent, the political struggles undertaken by activists around gender
inequality in the first decades after liberation were framed as part of the efforts of
national modernization and development, or were subsumed by democratization
movements (Hur 2011; Chun 2003; Jones 2006; Kim and Choi 1998; Lee and Chin
2007). In the months immediately following liberation from Japanese colonial
rule, the United States Army military government in Korea viewed Korean
political activists in their governance zone with suspicion, and quickly squelched
the brief revival of women’s socialist activism, along with other leftist political
organizing (Hur 2011), although the American promotion of gender equality
under the law is reflected in the 1948 ROK Constitution mandating universal
suffrage and equal rights for men and women. Political and cultural suppression
of open criticism of society or government continued through the administrations
of Lee Sung Man (1948–1960), Park Chung Hee (1961–1979), and Chun Doo Hwan
(1980–1988). During these four decades, fundamental criticism of patriarchy in
the South Korean economy or political process was subject to state repression,
but calls for moderate improvements in the circumstances of women were viewed
as both indicators of and tools for the modernization of the nation. Liberal forms
of women’s advocacy were generally construed by government leaders (and
international donors and advisors) as advancing the national political and
economic interests, and as such often were not only tolerated but, in some cases,
were fostered or supported by the ROK government itself. Influenced by
prevailing international development theories (and the international assistance
and resources that came with them), principal reform objectives included opening
greater educational and employment opportunities for women as well as –
particularly in the 1960s and 1970s – providing effective technologies for and
knowledge of family planning (DiMoia 2008).
In the 1950s and 1960s, several institutions, including the Young Women’s
Christian Association (YWCA), the Korean Association of University Women,
and the Korean Center for Family Law (established in 1922, 1950, and 1954,
respectively), provided the dominant framework for women’s reform-oriented
activism. Other significant groups in this period included the Korean National
Mother’s Association (established 1958) and the Korean Federation of
Housewives’ Clubs (established 1963), which focused their efforts on issues of
family planning, children’s education, consumer rights, and domestic labor. The
Korean National Council of Women (KNCW), founded in 1959, served to
coordinate efforts and allocate resources across these women’s interest groups
(Palley 1990). KNCW supported, and was supported by, the Park and Chun
Administrations and their authoritarian policies (Hur 2011; Suh 2012),
contributing to an estrangement of critical social activists from a focus on
women’s concerns.
Alongside these government “women’s” programs and sanctioned institutional
actors, the more radical political efforts of women were largely subsumed by the
broader labor and leftist movements of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. As discussed
above, large numbers of young women were recruited into factory work in the
1960s and 1970s, in part because they were presumed to be temporary workers
whose wages supplemented their family income, and so they were expected to
make fewer demands for better pay or work circumstances than would men. In
fact, however, from the 1960s, women were actively engaged in efforts to form
labor unions, and although organized labor’s chief focus was on universal (non-
gendered) workers’ rights, women workers often attempted to address gender-
specific concerns (such as unequal pay and unequal opportunities, as well as
sexual harassment) through union advocacy (Chun 2003; H.M. Kim 2005; S.K.
Kim 1997; Ogle 1990). Women workers and women labor activists faced direct
repression from male management, however, who aggressively resisted pressures
to negotiate with women. The events following the election of a woman as the
nation’s first female labor union president at the Tongil Textile Company in 1972
are indicative of the intersecting conflicts over economic and gendered control of
workplace politics. Tongil management, uncomfortable with both the gender and
politics of the new union leadership, continually harassed the female union
leaders and attempted unsuccessfully to undermine the next three union election
cycles.12 Management used shop-floor harassment, verbal slurs, and violence in
the six-year-long struggle with the union, which ultimately resulted in the
disbanding of the Tongil union. Just one year later, in 1979, the death of a woman
worker participating in a strike at the YH Trading company further highlighted
the vulnerability of women workers to labor exploitation as well as violent
repression; news of this particular tragedy circulated widely and contributed to
the agitation that led to the coup d’état against President Park (H.M. Kim 2005;
S.K. Kim 1997).
Women’s activism was constrained, however, by the shifting political and
economic circumstances of the period. The anti-communist atmosphere of the
1950s and 1960s, along with President Park’s embrace of a developmentalist state-
business partnership, provided the ideological foundations for the suppression of
worker agitation.13 Moreover, widespread unemployment throughout the 1960s
undermined public sympathy for the complaints of employed workers. The
decade that followed was particularly difficult for women in industry; the 1971
emergency decree suspended basic rights of collective bargaining and collective
action, while overinvestment in heavy and chemical industries in the 1970s
squeezed light industries and smaller businesses where most women were
employed, resulting in intensified exploitation of women workers (H.M. Kim
2005). The increasingly radical tactics of labor activists in the 1980s reflected both
the closer cooperation of student activists and labor activists, as well as a
strategic move toward intensified confrontational politics in the context of the
Chun Doo Hwan regime.14 While students, intellectuals, organizers and workers
held differing opinions about tactics, strategies, and goals, nevertheless, for most
activists, the specific problems workers faced as women were considered
secondary to the goal of ending the era of military dictatorship. Women workers
and students were drawn into activities that reflected universalist notions of
citizens and workers’ issues, without much sustained consideration of gender as a
factor in labor oppression. Moreover, men in union leadership positions often
marginalized women delegates, and disregarded women’s demands to end wage
discrimination and sexual harassment at work (Chun 2003; Ogle 1990).
During this period, women activists’ perspectives were strongly shaped by
their class positions. While working-class women were wrestling with
exploitation on the factory floor, South Korean women intellectuals were
digesting contemporary feminist theories of the operations of an international
patriarchy. The process for the development of the first “women’s studies”
program in South Korea, established at Ewha Womans University in 1977 as the
Korean Women’s Institute (Chang 1996; Yoon 1979), provided a high-status
institutional context for intellectuals to think about the contemporary problems
of women in South Korea. Initially, women’s studies scholars grappled with the
texts of American and European feminists as the intellectual basis for their
analysis of South Korean women’s conditions. Yet quite quickly, South Korean
feminists began to question the applicability of Western feminist analysis,
particularly individualistic psychological theories of women’s dependence on
men, as well as the focus on gender and class to the exclusion of kinship and
generation. They also identified problems with the embrace of women-in-
development economic policies that characterized the state-affiliated women’s
movement, and with the tendency to depend on technological and legal
innovation to indirectly address poverty and inequality. Other universities soon
created their own women’s studies courses, and the Korean Women’s Studies
Association was established in 1984 (Chang 1996). These institutional contexts of
research, argument, and inquiry enabled new feminist topics to come to the fore.
Over time, feminist intellectuals in South Korea developed lines of critique and
analysis that reflected the specific character of local and global gender dynamics,
taking into account the history of Korean Confucian patriarchal social structures
and law while also considering recent historical upheavals, South Korea’s global
position and relations to the US and Japan, the influence of popular culture, and
class variations in women’s circumstances. Acknowledging the urgency of
pressing for an end to authoritarian rule, feminists also drew attention to the fact
that problems of gender and class oppression would not be solved simply through
the establishment of democracy. Students and faculty associated with women’s
studies programs began to advocate changes in law, employment, education, and
culture – particularly the media – to address gender-specific problems.
Many scholars have noted that, following the end of Chun Doo Hwan’s
military regime in 1987, activists who had been centripetally drawn into the
project of democratization were finally free to identify new goals and form new
organizations for social action. This has been portrayed on the one hand as a
positive development, facilitating the pursuit of diverse social and cultural
objectives, but it has also been criticized as a period in which radical activism
was transformed into more tempered, reformist civic engagement (Song 2010; Lee
and Chin 2007). The proliferation of social movement groups provided space for
feminists to take on a variety of issues (e.g. gender-based violence, eco-feminism,
sexual exploitation) that had been deemed of secondary importance to the
overarching goal of achieving an end to military authoritarian rule. The
establishment in 1987 of Korean Women’s Associations United (KWAU), a more
progressive alternative to the state-aligned KNCW, provided an organizational
structure for many feminist organizations to meet, argue, and form collaborations
around emerging and enduring problems and goals.
Legal reform was a central focus in the post-1987 period. Women’s rights
advocates had been engaged in efforts to achieve legal gender equality since the
1950s, with two areas in particular – family law and employment law – receiving
sustained attention. Although the 1948 Constitution guaranteed citizens
protection from unequal treatment based on gender, for decades this was little
more than a paper promise. From the beginning, ROK laws relating to personal
and family property, inheritance, authority over children, divorce, and child
custody reflected deep material as well as conceptual gender inequalities. One
particularly controversial element of the legalized patriarchy was the “family
head” system (hoju), which was established by the Japanese colonial authorities
and maintained in the ROK Civil Code after independence. Over nearly four
decades, the family head system was defended on the one hand by cultural
conservatives as the legal establishment of Korean Confucian family tradition,
and challenged by feminist critics as inequitable, outdated, and patriarchal.
Several scholars have emphasized the role of family law, and its defense as a
reflection of Korean “tradition,” in the establishment and maintenance of
“androcentric society” and patriarchal culture and practice (Shin 2006; Yang
2008). While efforts to achieve reform were ongoing throughout the years of
authoritarian rule, the most significant victories (for example, the 1991 revisions
that removed the presumption of exclusive paternal line rights to children of
divorced parents and established the principle of spousal property division upon
divorce, and the 2005 repeal of the family head system) came in the context of
new democratic politics. Analysts differ in their analysis of the drawn-out
struggle that resulted in the 2005 repeal of the family head system, but scholars of
this legal reform agree that the altered material and political conditions after
1987, as well as the diversification and professionalization of feminist activisms,
were essential to the process. Yang (2008) draws attention to differences between
feminist activists targeting symbolic or material impacts of the law, while Suh
(2012) emphasizes the combined effects of “outsider” groups, as well as
institutionalized feminist organizations utilizing different tactics to bring about
family law revision. This multifaceted approach to legal and political
transformation yielded many other significant achievements during the 1990s and
2000s, including the passage of the Equality in Employment Act of 1999; the
establishment of the Ministry of Gender Equality in 2001; the Anti-Sexual Traffic
Act of 2004; and the rising number of elected women representatives to local and
national office (Kim and Kim 2013).
Sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and commercialized sexuality also
rose to prominence as feminist concerns in the 1980s and 1990s. Until the 1980s,
sexual assault was interpreted as damage to a woman’s chastity, and husbands
had authority over wives’ bodies such that sexual demands and intimate partner
violence – sexual or otherwise – was considered a private matter (Jung 2014). The
newly established women’s studies courses provided intellectual space, beginning
in the 1980s, to confront the existence and extent of sexual violence in South
Korean society, and to expose the material and cultural effects of the construction
of sexual violence as an act that brings shame upon the victim (Shim 1998).
Incidents of sexual assaults of female student activists in that decade (in
particular the well-publicized sexual harassment of students arrested in an anti-
government demonstration in 1984, and the notorious sexual torture case of a
former student factory worker who was arrested in 1987) gave further impetus to
calls for bringing the issue of sexual violence to public awareness (Jung 2014). As
a result, the first hotline for women to report intimate partner violence was
established in 1983, and in 1991, activists opened the first center to support
victims of sexual assault.
The sexual commercialization of women’s bodies also became a focal issue for
feminist analysis and activism in the 1980s. Initially, feminists addressed issues of
patriarchy, neo-colonialism, and the state-sanctioned exploitation of South
Korean women for commercial and political gain in their criticism of the ROK
role in the development of the sex tourism industry (primarily aimed at Japanese
visitors) and of sexual service “camptowns” for US military personnel (K. Moon
1997; Cheng 2002; Kim and Fu 2008; J.K. Lee 2010; Yea 2005). These issues
received further attention in the 1990s, when the moral and practical claims of
the aging “comfort women” survivors became a rallying point for feminist
activists in South Korea (Soh 2008). Yet although several scholars have pointed
out that the critique of sex tourism, sexual service camps around the US bases,
and the colonial era experiences of “comfort women” should be not be viewed as
phenomena disconnected from the context of everyday patriarchy in the (South)
Korean context (Soh 2008; Lie 1995), the closely-related topic of domestic
commercialization of South Korean women’s sexuality has received much less
scrutiny (cf. Chang 2005).
The rights of sexual minorities in South Korea gained increasing attention
beginning in the late 1990s, with the expansion of political activism around
specific communities and interests and the spread of a human-rights based
political discourse. Many scholars have argued that the ROK’s mobilization of
Confucian principles regarding the complementarity of two distinct genders,
male and female, defined same-sex desire and practice as foreign and dangerous
to the nation (e.g. Bong 2008). Homophobia in South Korea became more explicit
and spread during the 1980s in response to the global fear of AIDS, further tying
same-sex sexuality to foreign threats. Until the early 1990s, almost all individuals
whose sexuality did not conform to the ideals of heteronormativity were closeted,
ignored, harassed, or attacked. Global movements in support of sexual diversity
made inroads into South Korean society in the late twentieth century; the first
open associations of gay men and lesbians were established, often with the
collaboration of Korean and expatriate students who had been educated abroad
(Bong 2008; Park-Kim, Lee-Kim, and Kwon-Lee 2007). Celebrity revelations of
their same-sex desires and of transsexual histories, along with films presenting
sexual minorities in a positive light, helped to expand public awareness and
acceptance of non-heteronormative identities in the 1990s (Choo and Ferree
2013). But even into the first decade of the 2000s, the problems and rights of
sexual minorities were not adopted as central to feminist activism. According to
Park-Kim, Lee-Kim, and Kwon-Lee (2007), the specific needs and issues of
lesbians were, to a large extent, ignored or misused by women’s groups and
women’s studies programs. Sexual behavior is not always the overt issue:
conformity to the expectations of two-partner household formation and family
reproduction is built into the social system in South Korea. Song (2014) has
documented the cultural and financial obstacles facing individuals who choose
not to marry; J.S.P. Cho’s ethnographic work (2009) discusses the need for
“contract marriages” between gay men and lesbian women to avoid harassment.
However, since the late 1990s, at the urging of GLBT intellectuals and activists,
feminists have been advocating for taking sexuality and gender diversity into
account in the analysis of social and cultural issues (Park-Kim, Lee-Kim, and
Kwon-Lee 2007).
In sum, “the women’s movement” in South Korea has evolved from its early
bifurcation into, on the one hand, state-complicit programs that took middle-class
women’s concerns as universal and which assumed modernization and economic
development would lead to gender equality, and on the other, labor and pro-
democracy activism in which gender-specific issues were seen as secondary to
the goal of resolving political catastrophe. Feminist activists with widely diverse
goals now engage in tactics ranging from formal politics and legal reform to
disruptive agitation, and feminist scholars critique cultural and structural
arrangements and assumptions with an eye to the intersectionality of class and
gender; global flows of power, people, and ideas; and the mutual influence of
discourses and economic and political circum stances.

Contemporary issues in gender studies

In addition to employment, education, and activism, many other social and
cultural elements partake in, and contribute to, the shaping of gender in
contemporary South Korea. Scholarship of South Korean gender and society in
the new millennium has focused heavily on the impacts of neo-liberal politics
(Song 2014), consumer culture (Joo 2012; Epstein and Joo 2012; Jun 2010), and the
growing visibility of a gay and lesbian community (J.S.P. Cho 2009; Bong 2008;
Choo and Ferree 2013). The influx, beginning in the early 2000s, of large numbers
of foreign women – some as refugees or sex workers, but mostly as brides for
hard-to-marry South Korean men – has been the focus of numerous interesting
studies that shed new light on South Korean gender formation (e.g. Freeman
2011; Cheng 2002; Choo 2013; J.H. Kwon 2015). The inability for farmers, as well
as urban-dwelling men with low incomes, to find South Korean women willing
to marry them – and their success in attracting foreign women to join them – is
the result of a number of factors, including the gender-skewed birthrates of the
1980s and 1990s, South Korea’s high “cultural capital” (and relative prosperity) in
the Asian continent, increasing acceptance of young South Korean women’s
rights to decide whether and whom to marry, and lingering racialized patriarchal
attitudes that at once romanticize and commodify foreign women. Government
policies supporting the immigration of foreign brides will have long-lasting
structural and cultural implications; the mixed-heritage children are triply
burdened with poverty, the presumption of a significant “biological” qualitative
difference from the dominant population, and the lack of a culturally-competent
manager-mother. While public propaganda to support “multicultural” families
focus on appreciation of the exotic domestic practices of the wives/mothers, little
is yet being done to build opportunities for the growing children to escape a life
of poverty. Other topics in the gendering of contemporary society that have
attracted scholarly attention include the ways devotion to evangelical church life
at once liberates women from oppressive domestic responsibilities and at the
same time re-interpellates them into patriarchal structures and practices (Chong
2008) and the role of media and entertainment (in particular, the Korean wave as
well as Korean sports) in generating particular gender-binary ideals of
masculinity and femininity of body and behavior (Y. Kim 2012; I. Kwon 2014; Joo
2012; Epstein and Joo 2012; Lie 2014; Abelmann 2003; McHugh and Abelmann
2005).
Conclusion

While the experiences of South Koreans have clearly been shaped by a strong
gender binary throughout the history of the ROK, scholars have documented
shifts in the specific inflections of that binary over time. Initial expectations of
inside/outside, private/public divisions of women and men have been
transformed over time, adding public/outside responsibilities to the burdens of
women in all social classes. Rules of chastity, marriage, and childrearing have
loosened for women, although wider social opportunities for escaping the
demands of heteronormativity have not been accompanied by financial structures
supportive of alternative lifestyle decisions, nor has the expanding population of
people living outside the normative expectations freed them from the injuries of
prejudice and personal attack. Early scholarship debated whether a focus on
defining and identifying Korean Confucianism and Japanese colonialism as roots
of South Korean patriarchal structures and culture was more important than
examining material economic and political causes of women’s oppression;
middle-period scholarship often embraced a goal of describing the specific effects
of patriarchy in women’s daily lives; and more recently, scholars focus on
integrating analysis of neo-liberalism and globalization into the local experiences
and structures of gender and gender diversity. Throughout this period, however,
there is scholarly consensus about the enduring importance of placing gender in
the center of social and cultural analysis in South Korea.

Notes
1 We take “gender” as a term referencing socially-produced categories that build on a presumed binary
distinction between men and women achieved through repetitive performance of gender identities. In
this essay we do not delve more deeply into the shaky grounding of this binary distinction. We do,
however, wish to recognize the fluidity not only of the content and boundaries of the binary, but of the
binary formation itself, despite its enduring authority in South Korean culture.

2 While we take a thematic approach to this topic, four time periods help to structure our analysis: the
years immediately following the liberation from Japanese colonial rule through the Korean war and its
 aftermath (1945–1960); the push to industrialization under the authoritarian administrations of Park
Chung-hee and Chun Doo Hwan (1961–1988), a period of radical activism as well as increasing middle-
class prosperity during which the “housewife” ideal took hold; the early democratic period and
blossoming of consumer culture as well as civic activism (1988–1997); and the period ushered in by the
IMF crisis and its economic, political, and cultural repercussions (1998–2014). Clearly, these are rough
distinctions, characterized by both foreshadowing and inertia across the temporal lines we have drawn.
Nevertheless, they will help to locate our discussion of themes in a consistent framework and in a
context of wider political and cultural transitions.

3 Between 1945 and 1955, the population of South Korea is estimated to have increased by 2.8 million due
to return migration and migration from the north (D.S. Kim 1994).

4 The war is estimated to have generated approximately 300,000 widows and 100,000 orphans.

5 The urban population of southern Korea was estimated at about 15 percent in 1945.

6 Employment analysts comment on South Korea’s pronounced “M-curve” participation pattern for women
in the labor force. The M-curve refers to the high initial rates of employment, deep dips during the early
motherhood period, and a strong return to employment as children enter school. (Y.J. Park 1990; Palley
1990)

7 While almost 70 percent of Korean school-aged boys and more than 30 percent of school-aged girls were
attending some elementary school by the late colonial period, taking Koreans of all ages into
consideration, in 1944 only 14 percent of the total Korean population – and only 5 percent of Korean
women – had ever attended any formal school (Oh and Kim 2000).

8 The 1980 gap was, ironically, larger than that in 1960, likely reflecting demographic factors, including
gender differentials in mortality and longevity.

9 Alongside this process of educational equalization, however, schools themselves played a role in
gendering the population, inculcating the normative gender-binary of South Korean culture through
textbooks explicitly depicting active roles for men and caring roles for women (Chung 1994: 501).

10 This is reflected in the fact that many fields of study are highly gendered, including the sciences, law,
engineering, and agriculture (all overwhelmingly masculine domains) and home economics, health, and
the arts (considered feminine majors) (Chung 1994).

11 Women’s own understandings of their circumstances often differ from, but also are not isolated from,
such mainstream misogynistic discourse. The pace of transformation of (South) Korean culture from 1945
on was dizzying. In the context of “compressed development” (H.J. Cho 2000), women tried to make
sense of personal and national history, drawing on shamans (Kendall 1985), melodrama (Abelmann
 2003), Confucianism, and evangelical Christianity (Chong 2008).

12 Two incidents in the six-year-long Tongil struggle are particularly notorious. In the first, management
called in riot police to end the occupation of the factory by union members after management, hoping to
replace the union leadership with pro-management workers, had arrested the union president; the
women removed their own clothes in an attempt to shame the men for their aggression against women
and workers, but the police were undeterred. More than a dozen women were sent to the hospital and
more than seventy were arrested, but the women were undaunted. Two years later, a union election was
disrupted when men painted the hall with human excrement and threw it at union members.
Management blamed the union for destruction of company property, and on that excuse they were able
to have the union charter rescinded. For details, see Ogle (1990); S.K. Kim (1997).

13 Although the right to union organization and action is enshrined in 1953 in the Labor Union Act, in
practice worker activism was widely suppressed through kidnappings, beatings, arrests, and discursive
messaging holding worker activists responsible for political instability and poor economic indicators.

14 In the context of Chun’s crackdown on student activists, many radical students dropped their studies and
took jobs in factories in solidarity with workers. S.K. Kim (1997) documents the experience of female
student workers in factories in the 1970s and 1980s, attending to differences between workers and
activists around the identification of political issues specific to women workers (see also Song 2009).

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24
The post-developmental state
Economic and social changes since 1997

Jamie Doucette

Introduction

This chapter discusses some of the broad economic and social changes that have
shaped South Korea’s political economy since the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis.
In short, that crisis led to expanded social inequality and diminished economic
growth: consequences that have challenged policy makers, intellectuals, and
social movements ever since. By extension, these changes have influenced the
very understanding of Korea’s pattern of economic development. Once thought
to be a pristine example of a ‘developmental state,’ the supposed virtues of the
high-debt, stateled model were called into question following the economic crisis.
State-business networks were reconfigured to promote greater transparency. New
debt limits and other restrictions were placed on Korea’s large family-led
conglomerates chaebol (chaebŏl) to improve their corporate governance. Free-
market oriented policies were embraced as an alternative to developmentalism.
However, in light of job insecurity and a less rapid pace of growth following
neoliberal restructuring, the vices and virtues of the so-called ‘Korean model’
remain the subject of considerable public debate across the political spectrum,
with some arguing for a return to the ‘golden days’ of the high-debt model and
others for continued market-oriented reform as potential solutions for restoring
economic growth and addressing social inequality. For many, the global
economic downturn since 2008 has only made the need for solutions to these
problems all the more pressing.
Using the 1997–98 financial crisis as its point of departure, the aim of this
chapter is to survey some of these broad changes that have occurred since 1997
with a focus on the challenges they have raised for the task of addressing
inequality and expanding social welfare. The crisis was a watershed moment that
crystallized a pattern of growing economic inequality, of which there are several
causes: the growth of the irregular and migrant workforce; the expansion of
speculative forms of investment in credit markets, stocks, and real estate; and
diminished rates of economic growth stand out as the most salient. As discussed
below, the source of these changes have much to do with the particular ways in
which the institutions once known as Korea’s ‘developmental state’ –
particularly, its financial and labour market policies, but also policies towards
migration and urban and regional planning, among others – have been
restructured at the behest of both domestic and international actors. Judged on
the aforementioned policy areas alone, the period since 1997 is best considered to
be an era of the post-developmental state, as many, though not all, of the
institutions associated with the high-debt and high-growth model of the Park
Chung-hee (Pak Chŏng-hŭi) period have been restructured.
This transition does not mean, however, that the Korean state suddenly ceased
to play an important role in shaping economic growth. Indeed, it still continues to
regulate the economy – and, in some areas, its capacities to do so have been
considerably enhanced – and even attempts to develop strategic sectors. My point
is simply that the institutions associated with the high-debt model at its peak
have been gradually, and in some cases abruptly, transformed. Furthermore, this
has not in all cases been a negative process either, as this transformation has
intersected with changes brought about through the ongoing process of
democratization: including the expansion of labour and civil rights and the
election of liberal administrations with an oppositional legacy tied to the
democracy movements of the 1970s and 1980s.1
Nonetheless, economic restructuring has raised difficult, strategic challenges
for the actors involved, particularly the liberal administrations of Kim Dae-jung
(Kim Tae-jung) and Roh Moo-hyun (No Mu-hyŏn) that emerged from the
broader constellation of forces that composed Korea’s democracy movements of
the 1970s and 80s. These presidents promised to satisfy longstanding demands for
greater social welfare and distribution but found themselves in the unenviable
situation of having to steer the Korean economy through financial crises while
also pursuing democratic reforms. Unfortunately, the embrace of free-market-
oriented economic policies by these liberal governments exacerbated existing
social inequalities. This led to popular complaints and voter dissatisfaction, and
opened up democratic reformers associated with the liberal administrations to
charges, from the left, of not living up to the legacy of the democracy movement
and, from the right, of letting the economy falter under their watch, creating a
‘lost decade’ of economic growth.
As a consequence of both the financial crisis and the expanding inequality that
followed, the high-growth Park Chung-hee years have become, for many, an
object of nostalgia. By depicting the Park era as a golden age of full employment,
conservative political forces have sought to capitalize not only on their traditional
support base among rural and regionalist voters but also to speak to an
increasingly insecure generation of urban workers. Against his liberal
predecessors, conservative president Lee Myung-bak (Yi Myŏng-bak) – who
earned the nickname ‘the bulldozer’ for his tenure as CEO of Hyundai
Construction – organized his 2007 election campaign on the promise of a return
to the high-growth economic policies of the Park era. However, the global
economic crisis and Lee’s pro-chaebol policies failed to revive the high-growth
model. Instead, Lee’s administration became mired in controversy, much of it
directed at his ecologically destructive and poorly constructed Four Major Rivers
Restoration Project. While Lee’s successor, Park Geun-hye (Pak Kŭn-hye),
daughter of former dictator Park Chung-hee, distanced herself from Lee’s
discredited policies during the 2012 presidential elections. Her advisors depicted
Park as a leader whose lineage positioned her as the appropriate figure to foster
economic revival. Nonetheless, Park’s policies to date have done little to
distinguish her from previous conservative administrations despite earlier
promises to promote ‘economic democratization’ and foster a ‘creative economy’.
Such rose-coloured views of the high-growth Park era, and prescriptions for a
return to it, are not limited to the right, however. Prominent left-liberal
reformers, such as the globally recognized development economist Ha-joon
Chang have also praised the institutions of rapid development created by Park
Chung-hee and advocated that progressives take a lesson from Park’s playbook in
order to foster a Korean-style welfare state: one that would affirm the strategic
economic planning of the Park Chung-hee period, but without endorsing the
repression of labour and civil rights. In advance of the 2012 election, Chang and
his colleagues (H.J. Chang et al. 2012) advocated that a grand compromise be
made between the state and the chaebol, whereby the state would guarantee the
management rights of chaebol families – most of whom control their firms
indirectly through dense, and often illegal, patterns of cross-shareholding among
affiliates – in return for an agreement on increased taxation, investment, and job
creation. However, these calls were drowned out by a growing consensus among
moderate conservatives and liberal-progressives that ‘economic democracy’ based
on principles of a ‘fair market economy’ that limits the power of the chaebol
should be the guiding principle of future economic reform. As mentioned above,
Park Geun-hye used this slogan during the election, but revised her promises to
expand social welfare and quickly reverted to a pro-business platform after the
election. The debate thus continues over how to reform the Korean economy and
along what lines.
This chapter is organized as follows. In the next two sections, I outline some of
the major changes to Korea’s political economy since 1997: the first to the
financial market and the second to the labour market. In the third section, I
discuss some of the more recent proposals that have been made surrounding
solutions to the problem of social inequality and the resilient power of the
chaebol in the Korean economy.

The end of the high-debt model

While scholars dispute the cause of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis – some see
it as the result of ‘crony capitalism’ while others see it as the effect of premature
liberalization, and some both – there is a general consensus among them that the
crisis spelled the end of Korea’s high-debt model of development (Hart-Landsberg
2001). For decades prior to the crisis, the Korean state supported this model by
effectively bank-rolling Korea’s large family-led conglomerates through a variety
of means, including export subsidies, policy-driven loans geared towards
industrial upgrading and expanding the export market, and tight regulation of
import and export licenses. These policies produced the highly diversified, but
also highly indebted, industrial conglomerates known as the chaebol. Scholars
associated with the theory of the developmental state praised these industrial
policies for undergirding the chaebol growth and allowing Korea to rapidly catch
up with industrialized countries. They argued that Korea’s embrace of pro-active,
industrial policy showed that there was an alternative to the laissez-faire
approach to development being promoted under the Washington Consensus and
that countries that eschewed that model may even develop at a more rapid pace.
Despite the high debt levels associated with this strategy, if combined with
appropriate, long-range planning to promote export-led growth, this formula
could lead to rapid growth and industrial upgrading (cf. S.I. Jeong 2004).
While scholars debated the virtues of this model throughout the 1990s and into
the present, the financial and industrial policies that had been identified by
scholars of Korea’s ‘developmental state’ had already been gradually rolled back
in advance of the 1997 financial crisis. The reform process had begun slowly at
the end of the Park Chung-hee period (Y.T. Kim 1999) as state planners became
worried about the power of Korea’s large conglomerates and sought to disperse
their ownership so as to avoid an over-concentration of economic power. These
early efforts at dispersing ownership and, by extension, encouraging markets for
corporate control were largely unsuccessful. After all, as development state
theorists have argued, Korea’s industrial policies were primarily oriented towards
bolstering the monopoly power of the chaebol, provided they conform to a
variety of performance-based targets aimed at expanding their productive
capacity and exports to foreign markets. Whether or not there was a competitive
market for the ownership of these firms (or corporate governance laws
thoroughly enforced) was a second-order concern provided that the chaebol met
their targets and did not seek to compete with the ruling bloc for political power.
These early efforts at financial reform continued slowly throughout 1980s.
However, the restructuring of Korea’s strategic industrial and financial policies
did not pick up the pace until the government of Roh Tae-woo (who revived
efforts to reduce cross-shareholding among the chaebol) before accelerating
considerably with the announcement of Kim Young-sam’s (Kim Yŏng-sam)
globalization (segyehwa) drive in the early 1990s. This drive aimed to foster more
competitive market conditions by continuing to phase out policy loans and by
liberalizing external borrowing on short-term credit markets. While these reforms
were intended to strengthen competition by promoting a more competitive
financial market, at the same time they exposed the Korean economy to new
risks by weakening the ability of the Korean government to regulate the
investments made by the conglomerates. The chaebol used this opportunity to
finance new investments using credit obtained through poorly regulated financial
intermediaries such as nonbank financial institutions (NBFIs) that borrowed
extensively on foreign short-term credit markets.
In summary, while much had changed before 1997, the highly indebted chaebol
remained a constant. When the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997 caused
international lenders to call in the short-term credit they had advanced to Korean
firms and financial institutions, the NBFIs became rapidly insolvent, leading to a
run on the Korean won and exacerbating the effects of the crisis. Due to exposure
to international lenders’ rapidly changing short-term interest rates, many of the
chaebol were exposed to the credit crunch induced by the 1997–98 financial crisis,
and several of the top thirty business groups went bankrupt. The government was
forced to intervene. As a consequence, the high-debt model would not survive the
crisis.
For many democratic reformers, liberal economists and international observers
this was a good thing. They had long been critical of the behaviour of the chaebol
in the Korean economy and the ways in which the government had allowed
economic power to be concentrated in their hands. For instance, the IMF and
other international lenders saw the high debt levels (the debt-equity ratio of the
top thirty chaebol reached over 400 per cent by 1996, the year preceding the
crisis) and low profitability of the chaebol as a moral hazard: a symptom of an
underlying ‘crony capitalism’ (Kang 2002). This attitude was not unique to the
IMF, however, but was shared by many domestic political forces as well.
Prominent liberal economists regarded the crisis as the symptom of an
underlying ‘virus’ whose source was the market-distorting power of the chaebol
(Jang 2001: 73). They argued that the chaebol had used their murky corporate
structure and control over affiliates to distort market competition, exploit
subcontractors, and collude with corrupt politicians.
 This critical view of the chaebol was commensurate with Kim Dae-jung’s long
promoted vision of a ‘mass participatory economy’. Under this vision, Kim
promoted a liberal market economy model supported by an active civil society
that, together with the government, would check the power of the chaebol and
introduce greater transparency and accountability into economic planning (D.J.
Kim 1985). Thus, for both Kim and many liberal activists in civil society
organizations, the promotion of the market economy was seen as a way to
dislodge the nexus between the state and domestic capital that had informed the
old regime and re-embed the economy in more transparent relations.
Chaebol reform was also strongly supported by the minority shareholder
movement. This movement that had grown throughout the mid-to-late 1990s and
sought to challenge the concentration of economic power in the hands of the
chaebol through direct participation in the management of chaebol affiliates
(Kalinowski 2008). The movement targeted the dense, and in most cases illegal,
cross-shareholding (sanghoch’ulcha) practices through which chaebol families
maintained managerial control over their affiliate firms, despite the fact they only
held a fraction of total company stock. This dense cross-shareholding structure
allowed ruling families to exercise managerial discretion over all their affiliates;
hence, critics complained that this structure usurped the opportunities of
minority shareholders and constituted a moral hazard. They were particularly
critical of the illegal transfers of controlling shares and other assets used to pass
down ownership of the firm to the younger generation. Finally, chaebol reformers
saw the high level of diversification within chaebol groups as a vice – an
“octopus-like strategy of engaging in all businesses from A to Z” (Jang 2001: 75) –
one that led to overreach and was reliant on excessive debt financing that eroded
profitability. These reasons combined provided a strong rationale for eliminating
cross-shareholding between affiliates and treating them as independent firms so
that an allegedly more transparent and accountable management culture could be
inculcated. In the words of one key economic reformer who led the shareholder
rights movement, the existing system’s “entrenchment of authority, coupled with
the lack of transparency, means it is impossible to make chaebol management
accountable for failure or inefficiency” (Jang 2001: 82).
For many economic reform activists and liberal politicians, the financial crisis
thus represented a strategic opportunity to restructure the chaebol. As prominent
Seoul National University economist Chung Un-chan put it at the time, “If such a
great opportunity is squandered, we may not see another chance for a long time”
(Chung 1999: 29). While not all were in favour of the IMF’s treatment regime of
high interest rates, privatization, and austerity, many Korean government
officials enthusiastically embraced the IMF treatment a necessary tool for change.
Some of Kim Dae-jung’s core advisors, such as Bank of Korea governor Chon
Chol-hwan (Chŏn Ch’ŏl-hwan) and Chief Economic Advisor Kim Young-kum,
went above and beyond the IMF prescriptions and carried out supplementary
reforms aimed at increasing transparency and expanding foreign ownership of
Korean firms. In the wake of the crisis, strict debt limits were placed on the
chaebol, and new regulations on cross-shareholding, succession, and
diversification introduced (see K.W. Kim 2004 for an account of corporate
governance reforms in particular). Distressed banks and financial institutions
were privatized, and many purchased by foreign investors.
After the initial recovery from the crisis, the state’s financial support of the
chaebol was considerably rolled back. Instead of policy loans and performance
targets for the chaebol, in the years after the crisis, the Kim and Roh governments
sought to attract foreign capital to stimulate new investment. They did so in a
variety of ways that included the negotiation of several bilateral free trade
agreements (the most controversial of which was the Korea-US FTA); the rolling
out of several new special economic zones that offered foreign firms generous
exceptions on local taxes and regulations; and through the construction of an
‘international financial center’ in Youido that aimed to turn Korea into a regional
‘hub’ for financial services. However, none of these policies led to considerable
foreign investment beyond the initial rush to purchase distressed assets in the
wake of the crisis. And despite their impressive architecture and urban planning,
neither the hub nor the zone policies have attracted the levels of foreign firms
and investment they were originally intended to attract.

Labouring in lean times

The punishment for the alleged ‘sins’ of the chaebol leading up to the crisis were
not solely experienced by the ruling families themselves. The five biggest firms
used the crisis to grow even larger. Instead, Korean workers were quickly and
deeply affected as numerous firms faced bankruptcy when they could not service
the rapidly expanding interest payments on their debt. For the most part, labour
was asked to bear the majority of the burden of the transformation of Korean
capitalism towards a more market-oriented model. A famous protest slogan from
that period read: “I.M.F. = I’m fired.” The slogan captured the predicament of
workers as firm after firm went bankrupt or was restructured, leading to layoffs,
dismissals, and retrenchment. For many white-and blue-collar workers, these
feelings of uncertainty and lack of security have continued to be felt since the
crisis due to the proliferation of irregular or ‘non-regular’ forms of work –
contract, temporary, day-shift, or other forms of insecure employment – that
were institutionalized in the aftermath of the crisis. As S.J. Jeong (2007) has
shown, the exploitation of labour through increased working hours and lower
pay helped steer the recovery from the crisis and have, by and large, made
Korean capitalism more profitable for capital since the crisis – leading to a
recovery in the manufacturing rate of profit and even higher rates of profit for
the financial sector. Despite this outcome, however, this increased exploitation
did not lead to major increases in domestic investment, economic growth, or
considerable expansion in welfare.
It is perhaps one of the ironies of Korean democratization that the expansion of
non-regular work that followed the crisis would probably not have been possible
without the existence of a social dialogue between government, business, and
labour. In other words, despite the fact that it was seen as undermining
democratic demands for socio-economic equality, this expansion of non-regular
work was itself facilitated by a gradual democratization of the relations between
labour, business, and the state, including the recognition of umbrella union
federations and an expansion of collective bargaining at multiple scales. This
choice of social dialogue was largely due to the political context surrounding the
election of Kim Dae-jung, whose support base included not only the
southwestern Honam region but also, more importantly, the civil society and
social movement organizations that emerged from the democracy movement.
Moreover, the expansion of labour rights and representation of working class
interests in politics had long been a demand of the democracy movement, a
demand that Kim could not easily betray (Gray 2009).
Kim could not fall back on the earlier, despotic modes of labour control
favoured by his conservative predecessors, who had outlawed the democratic
trade union movement and often moved quickly to repress strikes. Furthermore,
for much of the 1990s, the democratic trade union movement had successfully
contested managerial despotism at the firm level and had developed strong and
independent workplace unions. Thus, instead of falling back on the coercive, and
primarily enterprise-based labour relations of the developmental state era, Kim
pursued national-level social dialogue to pursue a negotiated marketization of
employment relations that expanded precarious work and eased redundancy,
while providing for a minimal expansion of social welfare. In the midst of the
crisis, the Economic and Social Development Commission (Korea’s main
tripartite body) produced an agreement – though one subsequently rejected by
the labour movement’s rank and file – that allowed for greater use of temporary
and non-regular workers in specific sectors in exchange for expansion of social
welfare and expanded coverage of the national pension and social security
systems. However, for many, this nominal expansion of social security did not
make up for the greater insecurity and increasing inequality caused by the crisis.
Despite these results, some scholars considered Kim’s social compromise to
represent the emergence of a unique Korean or East Asian style welfare regime:
an alternative to the “excessive benefits” of universal models of welfare provision
in Western countries (Kim government, cited in Gray 2009: 140). For instance,
Kong (2004) interprets Kim’s social compromise as an effective response to the
1997 crisis as it restored international confidence in South Korea and allowed
employment to rebound by promoting a “productivist conception of welfare” that
can contain social-welfare costs and offer “high labour flexibility and the
employment-led (rather than redistribution-led) alleviation of poverty” (30).
Thus, Korea’s short-term or ‘crisis corporatism’ was seen as an alternative to
shock therapy: a more inclusive neoliberalism pursued without the exclusion of
labour. However, many observers overemphasized the ‘inclusive’ nature of this
agreement by ignoring the greater labour insecurity and poor quality
employment contract it endorsed.
Criticizing the overly optimistic reception of Korean government’s welfare
policies, Gray (2009) argues that Kim’s reforms established not a redistributive
welfare state but a minimalist ‘workfare’ state. A number of Kim’s social
assistance policies, such as his Minimum Living Standard Guarantee Programme
were tied to training and community work as conditions (Kwon 2006: 732).
Furthermore, the further commodification of labour that was bargained as a
condition for this expansion effectively weakened labour’s bargaining power,
which in turn has hampered further longer-term social partnership (cf. Gray 2009:
140–149). As casual workers are less likely to earn significant benefits under the
system, which is compulsory but suffers from poor enforcement, welfare
expansion has thus predominantly benefitted male and regular workers employed
at large enterprises where they enjoy strong bargaining power rather than
casualized, day, and self-employed workers who are known in Korea as non-
regular workers.
Since 1997–98, the flexibilization and marketization of employment relations
have only expanded despite the fact that the Korean Confederation Trade Unions
(KCTU) pulled out of further tripartite participation in protest of the original
post-crisis reforms. Non-regular employment relations soon became further
institutionalized as the government sought to expand the sectors in which
irregular workers could be employed or took a casual approach to labour law
enforcement. In the early 2000s it announced that it would expand the number of
sectors where non-regular contracts could persist, eventually passing legislation
in 2007 that removed limits on the sectors that could employ non-regular
workers. At present, the number of non-regular workers in the Korean economy
is somewhere between 34 per cent to greater than 50 per cent depending on how
one measures it.2 Even by conservative estimates, this figure does not paint a
hopeful image of social mobility. That this expansion occurred and was
institutionalized under the watch of the liberal administrations of Kim Dae-jung
and his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun – who expanded Kim’s labour market
reforms through another ‘grand social compromise’ (one signed without
participation of the KCTU) in 2007 – eventually led to the loss of support for
these administrations and charges that they had not lived up to the aspirations of
the democracy movement (Choi 2012).
Finally, there are significant social dimensions to this expansion of non-regular
work. For one, non-regular work is heavily gendered. The trans-nationalization
of the Korean labour market through the expansion of foreign migrant labour
and marriage migration also means that many migrants have found themselves
in precarious employment relations. Jennifer J.Y. Chun (2010) argues that the
situation represented by many of these workers is one of ‘legal liminality’. She
notes how many of the intense labour struggles over the past 15 years have been
waged around struggles over classification: whether a worker is regular or not, or
even recognized as a ‘worker’ rather than a ‘contractor’; whether the
organization that pays their wages is really their ‘employer’ or client; whether
the workers themselves are to be accorded the same labour rights and human
rights of naturalized citizens, and so on. The site of democratic labour struggle
has thus dramatically shifted since the 1990s, moving from the struggle to
establish independent unions to efforts to stem the expansion of non-regular
work. While the large union confederations were slow to embrace the struggles
of non-regular workers, they have gradually come to see such struggles as
strategically important, given that the marketization of employment relations has
enabled business to regain significant managerial control over workers and
diminished the labour movement’s associational power, especially in smaller
workplaces in which the labour movement has long had difficulty organizing.
Despite the fact that Korean workers enjoy greater collective bargaining due to
democratization, the struggles of non-regular workers have often been very
intense as these labour rights have been more difficult to effectively exercise. For
instance, when the legislation to expand non-regular work was announced in
2003, it was followed by the protest-suicides of several unionists at large firms
such as Hyundai Heavy Industries. In many cases the strikes of these workers had
been ruled illegal, and unionists’ assets were taken under damage claims and
provision seizures that have become a common way of dealing with strikes since
then, and that impose difficult personal costs for the workers involved (Doucette
2013). Since the late 2000s the struggles of irregular workers have continued to be
intense, with workers resorting to a number of often desperate tactics such as
factory occupations, high altitude protests (actions such as climbing construction
cranes, transmission towers, or billboards), sambo ilpae marches (three steps, one
bow) and ‘Hope bus’ campaigns to bring attention to their difficult struggles.
These tactics have led to some success, especially at large firms where much
subcontracting has been disguised (where the parent company owns its own
subcontracting firms) and thus illegal. Overall, these difficult protest strategies
highlight the sense of urgency among many workers and their families that
something more substantive needs to be done about the expansion of precarious
work in South Korea.

From political to economic democratization

The expansion of non-regular work has significantly contributed to the expansion

of inequality since the Asian financial crisis. But it is not the only source of such
inequality. As discussed above, the restructuring of the labour market has been
paralleled by significant financial changes. The government turned to the
financial market rather than the banks as the desired source of capital for
industrial investment. As part of this shift, bank’s financial resources that had
been oriented toward the corporate sector in the past were reoriented to other
investments, including households in the form of mortgage and consumer credit
(Y.C. Park 2006). The shift has helped to fuel speculative bubbles in stock and
credit markets and has contributed to significant asset price rises in urban
property markets. While this shift has contributed to considerable urban
development, it has also helped shape the expanding socio-economic inequality
between those with property and other monetary assets and those without.
Much of this urban development has been facilitated by a historic expansion of
household debt. If the period of rapid industrialization was characterized by high
savings in the sense of the low debt-to-income ratios among Korean wage earners
(whose savings were used to finance industrial development), the boom in urban
real estate development since the early 2000s has seen the reverse. It has been the
product of heavy borrowing. The high amounts of leverage involved have thus
raised concerns among Korean policymakers about how sustainable this
development might be, particularly since it has led to periodic crises due to the
oversupply in apartments and the collapse of some of the poorly regulated
financial instruments (such as the market for project finance) used to finance
much of the boom in residential construction (Son 2014). This phenomenon has
raised concerns that Korea might be facing its own Japanese-style bubble.
Furthermore, the expansion in the underlying prices of financial assets such as
stocks and real estate have not corrected for the deficiencies of the old export-
oriented developmentalist model. This financial expansion has not improved
domestic demand (in the form of higher wages) or led to a fairer distribution of
wealth. As a consequence, the Korean economy has become more rather than less
dependent on its large exporters, which raises concerns about its vulnerability to
competition from emerging economies as well as from downturns in global
demand, as was witnessed during the 2008 financial crisis.
The new financial geography of Korean capitalism and its existent and
emergent axes of inequality between regular and non-regular workers, native and
migrant workers, asset-rich and asset-poor, among others, has led to renewed
debate among politicians and reformers about how to create a fairer and socially
sustainable economy. As discussed above, the solution of the Lee Myung-bak
government was to try to revive the old high-growth model, mainly through
infrastructure spending and deregulation that benefited the chaebol. While Lee
did introduce some strategic industrial policies under his ‘Green Growth’ banner,
much of the energy of his “New New Deal” went towards financing poorly
designed infrastructure investment such as the Four Major Rivers Project and
easing restrictions on laws governing the ability of industrial groups to own
financial institutions. However, these pro-business policies were not successful in
reviving economic growth and alienated a number of Lee’s party’s supporters. By
the time of the 2012 presidential elections, it appeared that a new approach would
be necessary.
It was in this context that the major political parties embraced the slogan of
‘economic democratization’ in the lead up to the election. The moderate-
conservatives who led the ruling Saenuri Party’s campaign, as well as
intellectuals associated with the opposition Democratic United Party (DUP,
renamed as the New Politics Alliance for Democracy after the election), proposed
a range of policies aimed at addressing social polarization and the concentration
of economic power in the hands of the chaebol. While both parties made promises
to expand welfare spending, the predominant focus of their discourse remained
focused on the chaebol and whether it was in the best interests of the Korean
economy for the state to use its constitutional powers to place limits on their
activities.3 Similar to the discussions surrounding the causes of the 1997 crisis, at
the center of this debate was the question of what to do with the elaborate and
often illegal cross-shareholding patterns of the chaebol. Policymakers in both
parties advocated that further cross-shareholding be banned – while DUP
reformers proposed unwinding the existing system altogether – so that a regime
of ‘fair competition’ between the chaebol and non-chaebol firms could be
established. The idea behind this policy being that, by extension, such reforms
would help independent businesses flourish, foster job creation and prevent such
practices as the exploitation of subcontractors by chaebol affiliates, illegal
transfers of resources between firms, and dynastic control by the ruling family.
The emphasis put on chaebol reform as ‘economic democratization’ attracted
the attention of several liberal-left critics, such as the development economist Ha-
joon Chang and his associates, who complained that the market-oriented chaebol
reform policies proposed under the banner of economic democracy would do
little to establish a proper welfare state (their preferred form of ‘economic
democracy’). Instead of restructuring the conglomerates’ cross-shareholding
patterns, Chang and his associates proposed that the government pursue a
different strategy of economic reform. They argued that an agreement should be
made that guarantees the existing management rights of the chaebol over their
affiliate firms in return for increased domestic investment, corporate taxation,
and job creation. The logic behind this proposal was that if management rights
were secure – making it easier for chaebol families to transfer ownership rights to
the next generation and ward off speculative takeovers – the chaebol would agree
to the greater taxation and investment needed to foster a Korean welfare state.
Chang and his colleagues were particularly critical of fellow liberal reformers’
efforts to reform the chaebol towards Anglo-American market norms based on
shareholder value. They argued that these policies promoted speculative capital at
the expense of industrial capital and, by extension, denigrate the institutions of
high-speed growth that were an integral feature of Korea’s developmental state
model, which they tend to see in a positive light (S.E. Lee 2012). Instead of further
market reform, they argued for a return of developmentalist industrial policy,
control over speculative capital, and the emulation of Scandinavian-style welfare
policies.

Conclusion
While Chang’s proposal’s praise of Park Chung-hee’s industrial policies and
depiction of the chaebol as victims of financial capital (rather than as an active
component of it) created controversy among liberal-left reformers, it was not
seriously entertained during the election. Nonetheless, it is worthy of attention
here, as it cast light on a persistent dilemma encountered by reformers and
politicians about the legacy of Park Chung-hee’s developmental state, not to
mention the difficulties involved in addressing longstanding problems associated
with it such as the power of the chaebol and the lack of a more substantive social
welfare system. While Park’s ‘developmental state’ was regarded as an ideal type
by many scholars, it has been rarely regarded as a desirable model by democratic
reformers until recently. For them, the purported meritocratic economic planning
at the heart of that model was difficult to discern when viewed from the
standpoint of labour and civil society that were the target of much regimentation,
repression, and exploitation during the dictatorship era. Nonetheless, when
prescribed as an alternative to an equally idealized free-market vision of
development, it is also easy to understand how a defense of the state’s capacity to
govern the market and promote economic growth appears desirable. This is the
dilemma of the ‘post-developmental state’ represented by the end of the high
debt model: a problem of deciding what role the government, chaebol, and
formerly excluded actors such as labour and civil society should play in the
development of an alternative approach to politics, economy and society.
At the heart of this challenge are legitimate concerns about the concentration
of power in the hands of the chaebol and the difficult question of what
constitutes a socially and economically just restructuring of the conglomerates
and wider economic institutions. Merely enforcing free market norms in a
technical manner risks confining the problem of unequal economic power to
intra-class relations between capital holders such as majority and minority
shareholders and small and large business. It does little to address the situation of
labour, whose interests have remained the most marginal during the course of
democratization (Choi 2012). Likewise, a reprise of industrial policy without the
development of a strong countervailing force that can counter-balance state and
capital also seems likely to prolong existing inequalities of power and influence.
Pro-business proposals that merely protect the management rights of the chaebol
face the familiar criticism that they merely put growth over distribution, the
market over social justice, and capital against workers. An alternative approach
that sought to develop a democratic welfare state would have to find a way to
put taxation, redistribution and labour standards as the first order of concern, and
by extension orient industrial policy towards providing solutions to social and
environmental problems that have accompanied Korean industrialization.
So far, both the conservative and main opposition parties have only stumbled
toward such solutions. While it has a broad following among workers and
supporters of the democracy movement, the NPAD has had great difficulty
proposing substantive alternatives to neoliberalism. Meanwhile, while Park
Geun-hye’s election proposals acknowledged the need for a universal pension
and welfare systems, she quickly watered down such policies. For instance, her
pledge to significantly expand universal old-age pensions was reduced to a more
minimal, means-tested benefit that did not sufficiently address the high levels of
poverty among Korean seniors (see Klassen and Yang 2013 for analyses of Korea’s
policies towards its ageing population). Meanwhile, Park’s policies for addressing
Korea’s rapidly declining fertility rate – while providing some decent funding for
early childhood education – have also lacked effectiveness as they have not been
followed up with sufficient employment protections for female workers. Part of
the problem is that Park, like her liberal predecessors, is hesitant to raise income
or corporate taxes to pay for such welfare expansion. At the end of the day, it
seems that a greater emphasis on distribution over growth, and a more
substantive approach towards the democratic participation of labour and other
diverse political voices in the process of economic restructuring is needed. Until
then, the establishment of a Korean welfare state will remain a minimalist
project, and the predicament of the post-developmental state – insecure work,
expanding inequality, and unequal social power – set to continue.

Glossary

Cross-shareholding (Sanghoch’ulcha): The Korean term for cross-shareholding

is sanghoch’ulcha, but a more direct translation this term might be
‘reciprocal’ or ‘mutual equity investment’. Chaebol families use these cross-
 investments or cross-shareholding to maintain control over their
conglomerate group as a whole, even though they hold a minimal amount of
stock in most of the group’s affiliates: in most cases the family may own less
than 5 per cent of total stock in core affiliates. The usual pattern is that the
ruling family owns a large quantity of shares belonging to a non-listed, de
facto holding company (e.g. Samsung Everland) that owns a high percentage
of shares belonging another affiliate (e.g. Samsung Electronics) which owns
shares belonging to another (e.g. Samsung Techwin), and so on. This creates a
dense, interconnected web through which they maintain managerial control
over the whole group.
The Four Major Rivers Restoration Project: The Four Major Rivers Restoration
Project was an ambitious construction and engineering project launched in
early 2009 by the administration of conservative President Lee Myung-bak.
Viewed as an attempt to mediate the effects of the 2008 global downturn on
the Korean economy through fiscal policy, the project involved the dredging
of Korea’s four largest rivers and the construction of weirs, bikeways, and
recreational facilities along each waterway. While the project purported to
revitalize river ecosystems, facilitate flood management, and secure water
resources, it was viewed by many as a costly project designed to reward
construction firms rather than revitalize ecosystems. The hefty price tag of
the project (which cost close to 20 billion US dollars), its hasty design, and
lack of thorough environmental assessment were criticized by many local
governments, environmental NGOs and social movements. Korea’s Bureau of
Audit and Inspection also criticized the project for its poor construction and
planning. River silting, leaky weirs, and algal blooms created by the project
continue to raise controversy.
Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU): The Korean Confederation of
Trade Unions (KCTU) is a national trade union confederation with roughly
700,000 members. Unlike its rival, the formerly pro-government and relatively
pro-business Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), the KCTU was
formed out of the battle for independent trade unions during the democracy
movements of the 1970s and 1980s. The Great Worker Struggle that quickly
followed the June Democratic Uprising of 1987 led to an increase in
independent workplace organization among Korean trade unionists. In order
 to break away from enterprise-level corporatism that often dominates Korean
labour relations and to advocate for progressive policies that benefit workers
at the industrial and national scale, these unionists chose to form the KCTU
in 1995. The confederation was not officially recognized as a legal worker’s
organization until 1999, under the government of Kim Dae-jung.
Developmentalism: Developmentalism can be described as a political and
economic ideology that prioritizes the goal of national economic development
over and above redistributive policies, democratic participation, as well as
liberal ideas of a free and self-regulating market. Developmentalism
prescribes that the state play a guiding role in promoting development
through industrial and fiscal policies that lead to industrial upgrading and
expanded market share. Critics of developmentalism point out, however, that
developmentalist policies often prioritize economic growth (especially GDP
growth) and the development of the forces of production over social and
human development, not to mention environmental concerns associated with
industrialization in general. Furthermore, the emphasis of developmentalist
economic policies on elite-led planning and strategic government-business
networks, and their frequent justification in terms of national security (e.g. as
under the Park Chung-hee regime), raise additional concerns about the lack
of democratic oversight over economic policies within developmentalist
regimes.

Notes
1 While a deeper engagement with the various theories of the developmental state is beyond the scope of
this chapter, further criteria for a such a transition might be made in terms of changes to the social
composition of the Korean state and to changes in the ideational projects embraced by the economic
bureaucracy (see Y.T. Kim 2008, 1999) for such an argument). Since the late 1990s, the assumptions of
developmental theory increasingly became an object of criticism for its simplified understanding of state
capacity as being autonomous from or external to social and political conflicts and for its under-
theorization of class relations. Nonetheless, the idea of developmental state remains a useful heuristic
description for the high growth policies of the Park Chung-hee era. For excellent conceptual critiques of
 developmental state theory, see D.O. Chang (2009) and H.Y. Song (2013a).

2 While the term ‘non-regular worker’ is not widely used outside of Korea and Japan, its usage resonates
with cognate terms such as irregular work and precarious work, and encompasses forms such as casual
and contingent labour, part-time work, temp or dispatch work, subcontract work, and home-based and
day labourers. We might also add disguised subcontracting, precarious self-employment, ‘special’
employment, and perhaps even migrant labour to the mix (see Grubb et al. 2007, p. 76 for a good
discussion of some, but not all, of the various metrics use to measure the incidence of non-regular work
in South Korea).

3 Item 2 of Article 119 of the Korean constitution grants the state the ability to “regulate and coordinate
economic affairs in order to maintain the balanced growth and stability of the national economy, to
ensure proper distribution of income, to prevent the domination of the market and the abuse of economic
power, and to democratize the economy through harmony among the economic agents.” See the
Constitution of the Republic of Korea. Available online: http://korea.assembly.go.kr/res/low_01_read.jsp?
boardid=1000000035 (accessed 10 January 2013).

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25
Global Korea

John Lie

Until the 1980s the very conjunction of the term “global” with “Korea” would
have been an incongruity or an oxymoron. After all, the master signifier of Korea
was the “Hermit Kingdom”; Korea was antipodal to any commonsense notion of
“global.” Google’s Ngram View reveals that the nouns “Korea,” “Corea,” and their
cognates rarely appeared in print in the post-Gutenberg West. Korea’s rather
shadowy presence on the world’s historical stage should not be surprising given
its tributary status under a series of Chinese empires, which was then superseded
by Japanese colonial rule in the twentieth century. Indeed, imperial Japan
threatened Korea’s expunction from world history and geography in the first half
of the twentieth century. In the shadow of the two neighboring civilizations,
Korea’s cultural achievements remained occluded to the outside world, save for
several signature exports, such as celadon and ginseng. Consequently, the very
mention of Korea routinely puzzled otherwise educated people in much of the
world until the 1950s. For too long, Korea remained the answer to the trivial
question of the polity between China and Japan. Until the 1988 Seoul Olympics,
the only notable modern event associated with Korea was the Korean War. Even
then, its most common moniker remains the “forgotten war” (Blair 1987). In
short, the idea of “global Korea” would have been strange because the world
remained largely oblivious to and about Korea.
In the twenty-first century, we cannot but talk about globalization when we
talk about South Korea. The plausibility of an entry on “global Korea” is readily
apparent in a world where Samsung cell phones and Hyundai automobiles are
ubiquitous and the music video “Gangnam Style” remains the single most
watched YouTube video. One cannot do so as easily for North Korea, one of the
few states to actively resist incorporation into the capitalist world-economy. Yet
when we consider Korea, past and present, North or South, we cannot bypass the
inextricably intertwined relationship of the Korean Peninsula with the rest of the
world. This essay will focus on globalization and South Korea, but the Korean
polity has always been and remains a transnational and globalized entity.

The Korean War, the Cold War, and non-global Korea

The Korean War was an international war (Stueck 1995; Wada 2014). Inasmuch as
it was a civil war, countries far beyond the Korean Peninsula deployed soldiers
and weapons in the war-ravaged peninsula. In spite of its considerable
destruction, its rather marginal status in world history owes to its temporal
proximity to a truly massive international war (World War II) and to a series of
postcolonial wars that convulsed the former colonial powers (Algeria in France,
Vietnam in the United States, etc.). Be that as it may, the Korean War long
remained the most significant event associated with Korea, outside of the Korean
Peninsula.
What the Korean War confirmed was that neither North Korea nor South
Korea could be understood beyond its place in the Cold War and hence in its
international context. Whether we consider economic aid or political support, the
place of the Soviet Union, China, and the Second World for North Korea or that
of the United States, Japan, and the First World for South Korea remained
essential to make sense of the two Koreas. Liberation did not come from within,
after all, and the elevation of Kim Il-Sung in the North and Rhee Syngman in the
South cannot be understood apart from their connections to their patrons in the
Soviet Union and China or the United States, respectively (Armstrong 2013; Lie
1998).
The critical significance of the global or international context in understanding
Korea is the first sense in which we can stress the salience of global Korea. In this
regard, the long political and ideological dependence on successive Chinese
empires marks the traditional history of Korea (Kang 2010). Much the same can
be said about colonial Korea (Japan) and postcolonial Koreas. Any serious
account of Korean polities cannot exclude the preponderant impact of the
contiguous – and faraway – empires (e.g. Schmid 2002). Any balanced
perspective on the Korean Peninsula from its origins – the ancestors of modern
ethnic Koreans came originally from Africa and did not generate spontaneously
in the Korean Peninsula – to the Korean War – an international war that
overlapped a domestic political struggle – can hardly exaggerate the role of the
external and the exogenous: the study of Korea is perforce the study of global
Korea.
Nevertheless, what is striking about the domestic self-understanding in (and
much of scholarly writings on) both post-independence Koreas is the accent on
the national and the endogenous. Precisely when the international context
impinged so profoundly – one is tempted to say definitively – on Korea, the
historiographies in both Koreas became resolutely nationalistic and inward-
looking (cf. Em 2013). In spite of diametrically opposed ideologies, the two Koreas
became something of a mirror image of each other: formally alike in their zealous
devotion to blood-based nationalism that stressed native and indigenous
genealogies over external and exogenous events and influences (Shin 2006; Lie
2014). Nationalist historiography and social sciences were influenced by and in
turn shaped the political primacy of semi-nationalism: “semi” because both the
North and the South largely excluded the other from their egocentric outlook. An
exemplary instantiation of this mindset can be found at the Academy of Korean
Studies in South Korea. In a large map of the Korean Peninsula at its main lecture
hall, the territory of North Korea is left blank: no Pyongyang and not even the
nationally sacred peak Paektusan. Korean Studies in this line of thinking is South
Korean Studies.
For several decades after the Korean War, then, the two Koreas remained
deeply embedded in the global Cold War but ideologically involuted in their
nationalist narratives and self-conceptions. Thus the conjunction of “global” and
“Korea” appears problematic from the regnant Korean worldview(s). Park Chung-
hee’s nationalism, no less than Kim Il-Sung’s juche (self-reliance) philosophy,
stressed nationalism that dovetailed well with the narrative of the Hermit
Kingdom. To speak of Korea, North or South, past or present, was perforce a
particularistic discourse, encased in the territorial terrain of the Korean
Peninsula. To discuss Korea was to analyze it largely as an autonomous entity, as
non-global Korea. Sure enough, contemporary politics focused preponderantly on
domestic matters at a time when few North or South Koreans ventured abroad.
It would be remiss, however, to neglect the appeal of foreign, especially
putatively more advanced, cultures. Even in the realm of ruling political
ideologies, the North appealed to international communism or Marxism, whereas
the South claimed adherence to Western (and especially American) liberalism.
Popular consumption of movies and music – from colonial-era Japanese-
influenced works to the post-liberation bifurcation of Soviet and Chinese culture
in North and of the United States in South – brought the modern – advanced and
sophisticated, and therefore something desirable – to many Koreans. Even
Korean national cuisine came to be shaped by foreign imports and external
influences (Cwiertka 2012). Internal internationalization – in a sense a
continuation of the pre-modern valorization of Chinese culture – proceeded
rapidly even at the height of cultural nationalism. The awareness of the world
outside in turn accentuated the self-conception of Koreanness. Rather than
village, regional, or provincial identities – and even more salient status
distinctions – the self-identification as Korean became paramount.
In the immediate post-Korean War decades, it is North Korea rather than
South Korea that boasted a more international or cosmopolitan outlook and
policy. This is in part because of the internationalist thrust of communism, and
North Korea sought actively to interact with other countries in the socialist bloc
in the 1950s and 1960s (Scalapino and Lee 1972). The increasingly authoritarian
rule by the late 1960s elevated the place of juche ideology and demoted the role of
the international (Cumings 2004). It is safe to say that North Korea remains one
of the most closed countries in the world, whether we think of the penetration of
global economic institutions (such as ATM machines or fast-food chains) or of
the world wide web in the twenty-first century (Lankov 2012). North Korea,
ideologically and practically, approaches the ideal of the hermit polity.
It is the 20/20 hindsight, however, that presumes the superiority of the South
over the North. Just as North Korea has not always been closed off, South Korea
has not always embraced the external and the global. Somewhat surprisingly,
given that Park Chung-hee’s rule has become so closely associated with the
policy of export-oriented industrialization, South Korea under his rule was also
relatively closed off from the rest of the world because of economic and cultural
protectionism (Lie 1998). Economic protectionism – the desire to protect foreign
currency reserves in order to fuel South Korea’s export-oriented industrialization
and to nurture its nascent industries – was mandated. Cultural protectionism was
part and parcel of authoritarian nationalism, seeking to keep foreign and
therefore dangerous elements. In the 1970s, even anodyne articles in Time
Magazine would be censored (literally cut out of the magazine by diligent
censors). Symptomatic was the extensive effort to curb foreign influences – often
resorting to outright censorship – even in the realm of popular music (Lie 2015).
Economic and cultural protectionism did not mean that the two Koreas did not
participate in political struggles for legitimacy on the world stage. To be sure, it
was part and parcel of the grand struggle of the Cold War, but the fratricidal
rivalry – along with those of the two Germanys and the two Vietnams –
enhanced passionate enmity. Given the paucity of business people or students
abroad – and very little to offer in terms of economic or cultural exports – both
North and South Korea engaged in espionage and propaganda. At times these
efforts were innocuous, such as translating the collected writings or speeches of
Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee into non-Korean languages. Culture was
usually the terrain in which these inter-Korean struggles surfaced most visibly,
whether in the South Korean attempt to export the “traditional” Korean dance
troupe Little Angels or the North Korean effort to propagate engaged literature.
Sports, whether soccer or taekwondo, often served as a civil war by other means
(Cha 2008). At other times they amounted to international crimes, such as the
North Korean capture of ordinary Japanese citizens or the South Korean heist of
the losing presidential candidate Kim Dae-jung.
The undercover struggles, emblematic of Cold War political culture, brought
notoriety to both Koreas (such as the quickly forgotten Koreagate in 1976 when
the South Korean Tongsun Park sought to peddle influence among US
politicians). Yet the dominant reality was that the two Koreas struggled to gain
global recognition of even their very existence in the Cold War decades (except,
to repeat, as a place of the “forgotten war”). As consequential as the Korean War
and the continuing war between the two Koreas remained, they were often an
afterthought in the global Cold War (Khong 1992; Masuda 2015).
The Seoul Olympics, political democracy, and
internationalization in South Korea
The Seoul Olympics – similar to other quasi-propagandistic Olympiads, such as
Berlin in 1936, Tokyo in 1964, and Beijing in 2008 – presented South Korea to a
world that had little if any knowledge of the country. On the one hand, it sought
to showcase South Korean development to the world. Rather than the devastation
from the Korean War or the ensuing poverty of the country, South Korea was
presented as a modern, increasingly wealthy country. On the other hand, it was a
terminus of the long legitimation struggles by the military regime to win popular
support inside and outside South Korea. The 1980 Kwangju Uprising was only the
most vociferous expression of widespread disenchantment with the military rule.
Chun Doo-hwan, who succeeded Park after his 1979 assassination, promulgated
what came to be known as “3S” policy – sex, screen, and sport – to generate
popular approbation. Most importantly for the military and political elites in
South Korea, the 1988 Olympics marked South Korea’s triumph over North Korea
on the global stage. However successful North Korea had been in some spheres
before then, its place would spiral downwards in terms of global reputation and
respect, eventually settling as a rogue state, human rights disaster area, or an
economic basket case (poverty, famines, and worse) (e.g. Demick 2009; cf. Ryang
2012).
The 1988 Olympics proved to be a major turning point for South Korea. The
crescendo of social movements against authoritarian rule reinstated formal
political democracy (here one should not neglect that the zealous effort to cleanse
South Korea of negative images abroad, such as authoritarian rule, that facilitated
the democratic transition). It also vouchsafed South Korea’s outward-looking
economic policy and an attempt to brand it as a technologically reliable and even
advanced country. What is crucial is that the twin impulses were united in
propelling South Korea’s stress on internationalization or globalization and even
its very identification as an international or global player. Especially from the
early 1980s, with the loosening of foreign travel and the growing enrichment of
South Koreans, study abroad became a veritable mania among ambitious,
upwardly mobile South Koreans. It would be tempting to see South Korea’s
education mania as an unbroken tradition from pre-modern times, but its
renewed emphasis owes to South Korea’s dynamic, export-oriented
industrialization, which required a large army of engineers and office workers
knowledgeable about producing and selling in export markets. It was the
fundamental consequence of land reform that propelled South Koreans to seek
fortune in capitalist industrialization rather than traditional, land-based agrarian
economy (Lie 1998). The definition of the elite shifted from the social background
of the landowning class to the attainment of educational credentials, especially
from leading foreign, and especially American, universities.
Foreign study and export-oriented industrialization accentuated the salience of
the international among South Korean political, economic, and cultural leaders,
who had already been looking to the United States as a political leader and as a
model of modernity. The nationalist sentiment – expressing itself at times as an
inferiority complex or the proverbial chips on the collective shoulders of South
Koreans – became inextricably, and perhaps paradoxically, intertwined with an
outward orientation. It is difficult for a foreigner even today even to escape a
barrage of questions from South Koreans about how she finds the country. A
more sustained articulation of this impulse is the obsessive effort to rank South
Korea among world powers in everything from GDP to university rankings. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “Global Korea” website is symptomatic, collecting
foreign coverage of South Korean in everything from economic matters to
cultural achievements. To think about South Korea was to think about South
Korea’s place in the world. The trend would accelerate in the 1990s and
thereafter.

Counter-global South Korea?

In the 2010s North Korea, though not as hermetically closed off as some suggest,
remains outside the Washington Consensus. The country is neither capitalist nor
neoliberal, neither democratic nor liberal. The dominant ideology of juche
legitimates a form of involuted nationalism that keeps North Korea as a country
that is relatively immune to global influences and trends. In contrast, South
Korea in the early twenty-first century is a global country. It embraces
globalization, whether economic or cultural, and seeks to be a global player in
everything from electronics to fashion to sports to music.
As I suggested, however, the idea of global South Korea is a relatively recent
phenomenon. The military regime pursued a culturally nationalist policy,
including widespread censorship, but it also relied increasingly on export-
oriented industrialization to legitimate its rule. More relevant, in a predominantly
rural and agrarian country with limited communication and transportation
infrastructure and relatively low educational attainment, South Korea in the
1960s could be characterized as parochial and perhaps even xenophobic. Surely
few foreign visitors in South Korea until the 1970s saw the country as in any way
cosmopolitan or global.
The educated stratum tended to be more cosmopolitan than their less educated
counterparts. Certainly the generalization holds true for the colonial period and
the high tide of US influence on South Korea in the 1950s (when it became
fashionable among elite South Koreans to use American first names). Yet by 1960,
South Korean university students were voicing stridently nationalist concerns. In
part they were criticizing Rhee Syngman’s corrupt rule that was subservient to
the US, but they were also acting as inheritors to the politics of nationalism that
defined the anti-colonial movement (C.-S. Lee 1963). The 1960 April Student
Revolution, which toppled Rhee from power, was nationalist to the core. The
opposition to the 1965 Normalization Treaty with Japan mobilized the students
and enhanced their nationalist passion. As Park’s rule turned increasingly
autocratic, the student movement fused with the anti-government movement that
in turn broadened its social base to constitute the people’s (minjung) movement
(N. Lee 2009). By the 1980s the South Korean people’s movement incorporated
not only students and intellectuals but also farmers, factory workers, and even
office workers. What united them was in fact the opposition to military rule but
also the invocation of “the people” that harbored a deeply nationalist ideology.
By the 1980s, then, both the military regime and the anti-government
movement converged in their nationalism, even hyper-nationalism. Even the
previously sacrosanct US became the target of virulent hatred as an unwelcome
external influence (Moon 2013). What had begun as a government nationalist
policy of lessening dependence on Chinese characters became a leftwing fad to
write even numbers in Korean script in the mid-1980s. Nationalism became
something of a benchmark of everything from historiography and political
discourse to popular culture and commodity consumption (Nelson 2000; Shin
2006). South Korean ethnoracial homogeneity became taken for granted,
mirroring in turn the North Korean racial ideology of racial purity (Myers 2010;
Lie 2014). The ubiquitous invocation of “we” and “us” presented South Koreans as
united and homogeneous, inward-looking and xenophobic, and antiinternational
and counter-global. That is, there was a strong tendency within South Korea to
excoriate foreign influences and to counter globalization.
The hyper-nationalist trend in South Korea would ebb after the 1990s. It would
be remiss, however, to forget the nationalist surge that remained a strong, if not
the strongest, current for both the military rulers and the anti-government
protesters in the 1970s and 1980s. South Korea’s embrace of the global was far
from ordained, and almost all foreign observers in the 1980s would have found
the idea of global South Korea problematic.

From Segyehwa (internationalization) to the 1997 IMF

crisis
Kim Young-sam (1993–98), the first civilian president after the reinstatement of
political democracy, stressed segyehwa (internationalization or globalization) as
the centerpiece of his administration. By the mid-1990s, segyehwa had become a
buzzword in South Korea, inescapable in business talk as in popular discourse.
The dark side of globalization – the 1997 Asian financial crisis that came to be
known in South Korea as the 1997 IMF crisis – cast a long shadow on his goal
and seemed to squelch it. Yet, ironically, it is the 1997 economic shock that firmly
implanted globalization as the commonsense of South Korean life.
As many critics readily pointed out at the time, it remained unclear what
exactly Kim meant by segyehwa. Presumably it was part and parcel of the post-
Cold War discourse of globalization – mooted everywhere from Paris and
London to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Cambridge, England – and the
euphoric, even utopian, pronouncements about world peace and the peace
dividend, the potential for Korean unification, the entrenchment of political
democracy, continuing economic enrichment, and the emergence of South Korea
as a global player. Be that as it may, Kim was not engaged in conceptual
clarification as an analytical philosopher but in sloganeering as a political leader
and a democratically elected one at that. It is also the case that there was nothing
much new substantively in what Kim proposed in contrast to his predecessors.
Whether we turn to South Korean business interest in exports or the desire of
South Koreans to study abroad, the changes were quantitative rather than
qualitative. The most consequential outcome of Kim’s sloganeering was that the
idea of “internationalized” or “globalized” South Korea became widely discussed
and debated. Whoever pronounced on the present and the future of South Korea
in the mid-1990s could not escape talking about segyehwa.
The 1997 IMF crisis was devastating not only in terms of economic contraction
and massive unemployment but also in terms of psychic shock. The myth of
uninterrupted growth and the hubris that some South Koreans were beginning to
express and display were shattered almost overnight. In this regard, it paralleled
the long period of economic gloom that followed the bursting of the property
market bubble in Japan in the early 1990s. In spite of considerable similarities –
most obviously, two export-oriented economies that had enjoyed decades of
uninterrupted growth until the 1990s – the general orientation of the two
countries after their 1990s crisis is striking. In Japan the general trend was to look
within and to cultivate its internal market so much so that observers began to
talk about Japan’s Galapagos Syndrome (a secluded archipelago that spawns
unique flora and fauna). In contrast in South Korea, there was a renewed stress
on looking outward and to seek foreign opportunities. Rather than cultivating
domestic demand, as their Japanese counterparts were engaged in, South Korean
business conglomerates stressed their outward orientation. Whether we look to
Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, or Africa, South Korean
corporations, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, became ubiquitous in the early
twenty-first century, whereas the once–fabled corporations such as Sony, Toyota,
and Hitachi have low visibility in these areas.
It may very well be that South Korea’s outward orientation is part of a larger
stress on innovation and creative destruction (in contrast to Japan’s more
conservative and measured policy). In this regard, technological transformations
sweeping the world in the late twentieth century – most importantly,
information technology – may have given advantage to the latecomer South
Korea. I recall interviewing Sony executives in 1985 about Samsung Electronics,
which had just been launched. The normally taciturn Japanese executives either
smirked or laughed, but merely two decades later Samsung had superseded Sony
(Chang 2008). Part of the success of South Korean businesses is their
thoroughgoing external orientation and stress, including the strategic reliance on
the international market, and hiring engineers and managers educated abroad.
Yet it is also possible to see contemporary South Korea’s stress on relentless
newness and innovation – and the concomitant destruction of tradition – that
made it more competitive in global capitalism.
Facing a massive economic and social crisis, the long-term dissident Kim Dae-
jung ascended to the presidency at seemingly the worst possible moment in 1998.
The recognition of the crisis’s severity, however, facilitated the implementation
of two major reforms. First, the Kim Dae-jung regime promoted information
technology in general and established a nationwide infrastructure for digital
communication (Oh and Larson 2011). By 2005, South Korea emerged as the first
country to shift from dial-up to broadband and boasted not only the largest
penetration of broadband but also the fastest Internet connection in the world. In
part South Korea benefited from the advantage of backwardness. Unlike in the
neighboring Japan, for example, South Korea had not invested heavily in the
R&D of earlier analog information technology and its outward orientation
facilitated the absorption of the latest developments in the United States, Japan,
and elsewhere to create a state-of-the-art information technology infrastructure.
The development of hardware and infrastructure in turn encouraged the rapid
expansion of software and applications in South Korean life. South Koreans were
not only quick to adopt smartphones and other new devices but also became
pioneers in the nascent world of online gaming (Jin 2010).
Second, the Kim Dae-jung regime sought seriously to limit economic
concentration and the monopolistic tendencies of the country’s largest
conglomerates. Although most conglomerates survived the IMF crisis and Kim’s
anti-monopoly policies relatively unscathed, the pervasive influence of big
business declined at least momentarily. The new economic opportunities were
seized especially in creative and “fashionable” industries, such as fashion and
design or music and film, that depended on South Korean studying abroad.
Whether we look at innovative videogame makers, film producers and directors,
or popular music agencies and impresarios, many were launched in the aftermath
of the 1997 IMF crisis (Lie 2015). South Korea emerged as a global powerhouse in
the culture industry in the late 1990s. In other words, the surface crisis occluded
considerable economic dynamism and the transition from an economy that
depended on heavy and chemical industries to one that relied increasingly on
more advanced technologies, be they science-based (electronics) or social-based
(fashion).
Curiously, then, it is not so much the impact of Kim’s internationalization
policy but rather the shock of the 1997 IMF Crisis and the Kim Dae-jung regime’s
policy that entrenched the outward-looking, global orientation for South Korea. It
is possible to delineate a straight line from traditional Korean dependence on
China or Rhee’s obeisance to the United States or Park’s export-oriented
industrialization policy to the contemporary global orientation of South Korea.
Yet it would be more accurate to locate in the 1990s the thoroughgoing global
orientation of South Korea. In this regard, Kim Dae-jung personified the
transformation of South Korea from a provincial country and people to an
increasingly cosmopolitan one. In foreign policy (Nordpolitik, or a rapprochement
with North Korea, that emulated the Ostpolitik of West Germany) or personal
quest (to win the Nobel Peace Prize), Kim worked ferociously to be part of the
larger world and to gain recognition therein. To be South Korean meant to be at
once intensely nationalist but also insistently global (cf. Chang, Seok, and Baker
2009). Never mind that few could define precisely what “global” implied and in
this regard no different from the early desire to emulate the United States – or
Japan or China – and be “modern.” The idea of being “global” encapsulated and
synthesized these earlier desires and impulses. Global Korea was the master
identity of contemporary South Korea in the age of globalization.

Globalization and South Korea

By the early years of the twenty-first century, South Korea became inextricably
intertwined with the global. Contemporary South Korea cannot be understood
from its place in the world and its global ambitions.
The most obvious way in which to speak of South Korea is to speak of global
South Korea is in the realm of business and economy. South Korea’s export-
oriented economy scatters not only products “Made in South Korea” around the
world but also dispatches South Korean business people and their concerns across
the globe. One would have to look far and wide to find a place without the
palpable presence of South Korean corporations. More than their global presence,
the inevitable impulse of South Korean business is to export and its global
orientation defines South Korean capitalism. Hence, not only are foreign
credentials and training valued but South Korean corporations also seek to attract
global talent, either by outsourcing or hiring foreigners.
The profit motive is ubiquitous and South Korean corporations are no
exceptions to the general rule. Yet there is something more to the outward
orientation of South Koreans, whether we turn to young South Koreans studying
abroad or eager South Korean missionaries around the world. Needless to say,
numerous factors are at work but one enduring theme is the South Korean quest
for modernity: to take its place in the global stage, among “advanced” countries,
as a recognized and respected member. At times the quest verges on the
vainglorious, such as the concerted drive to gain a Nobel Prize for South Koreans
or to win gold medals at the Olympics. Some become dismal failures, such as the
disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, whereas others become national celebrities,
such as the feted ice skater Kim You-na, but they constitute the two faces of the
same coin: the South Korean quest for global recognition. As suggested earlier,
global success, especially in “advanced” areas such as fashion, design, and
popular music, is especially valorized (Hong 2014). It would be easy to provide a
social-psychological narrative to the desire for modernity and recognition. An
education in nationalist history – in which Korea played a distant second fiddle
to China before the twentieth century, was colonized by Japan in the first half of
the twentieth century, and suffered from national division in the second half –
should make many South Koreans eager for their country to have their place in
the sun and to gain recognition and respect.
Nevertheless, the quest for the modern and the global is inherent in the
dynamics that convulsed South Korea since its founding. Japanese colonial rule
destroyed not only the traditional Confucian polity but also the regnant
ideologies of traditional Korea. Land reform destroyed the material basis of the
Confucian literati-landlords. The Korean War destroyed the country and the
countryside (and made the political division semi-permanent). Intense
industrialization resulted in probably the most rapid rural exodus in world
history. Put simply, South Korea has become untethered from its past and
something like constant change became its principal constant. In this context, it is
not surprising that both at the individual and the collective level, the quest for
betterment or upward mobility became something of a master desire. The quest
for the modern and the global is in this sense a repudiation of the past and the
embrace of a better future – in this sense not much different from the proverbial
American Dream. It is merely clothed in the language and culture that is the
detritus of the recent Korean past.
The quest for the modern and for betterment underlies the extensive Korean
diaspora. Sizable ethnic Korean populations can be found not only in East Asia
but also in the Americas and Europe (in addition to students and business people
in OECD countries, and missionaries and business people in less affluent
countries). Although Korean diaspora is as old as the history of Korea, South
Korea has been a major sender country, especially to the United States
(Abelmann and Lie 1995). The extensive diasporic populations in turn contribute
to South Korea’s role in the world. Whether we look to the early successes of
export-oriented industrialization in the 1960s – when textile export benefited
from ethnic Koreans in Japan who provided technology and marketing – or the
recent surge of popular music – South Korean students in the United States, as
well as Korean Americans, often provide musical knowhow and even talent – the
Korean diaspora plays an indisputable and indispensable role in South Korea’s
external success (Lie 1998, 2015). The extensive diaspora constitute the imagined
unity of Korea as a global phenomenon.
The valorization of the global has other consequences. As noted earlier, South
Korea, like North Korea, was largely xenophobic and embraced ethnoracial
homogeneity until the 1980s. Yet the idea of global South Korea – and the
examples not only of the multicultural and multiethnic United States but also
other OECD countries – made multiculturalism as a major government policy
initiative in the early years of the new millennium. That is, multiculturalism and
even multiethnicity became desirable not only to attract global talent but also to
make South Korea seem more modern and global (Lie 2014).
To take another example, Christianity rapidly emerged as the most visible
religion in South Korean life by the 1980s. In spite of the variety of historical and
cultural reasons for the rapid dissemination of Christianity in South Korea, one
important factor is the association of Christianity with modernity and “cultural
advancement” (the dominant religion, after all, of the United States). What has
come to characterize South Korean Christianity beyond the stress on this-worldly
success is its outward orientation. South Korean Christian missionaries are now
the second largest group of missionaries after Americans (Han 2009). South
Korean Christianity is thus symptomatic of global South Korea.
In summary, disparate forces have forged South Korea as a globalized country.
Yet, as I have argued, the association was far from ordained, and marks a
concatenation of relatively independent factors. Nevertheless, its export-oriented
economy and the extensive diaspora, among other factors and forces, make South
Korea’s engagement with global affairs all but inevitable. The trend has deepened
since the 1990s and the global orientation – paradoxically with the persistence of
nationalism – characterizes contemporary South Korea.

Global Korea as a mode of scholarship

In the age of globalization, the practice of historical and social-scientific writings
has come to stress transnational and global dimensions of human and social
activities (e.g. Hunt 2014). The proliferation of scholarship written under the signs
of world history, world-systems analysis, global history, transnational history,
and so on point to the pervasive dissatisfaction with received nation-focused and
sometimes nationalist historiography. Given that the modern state functioned as
the dominant institution of the past two centuries, it should not be surprising that
the bulk of historical and social-scientific scholarship takes place within the
crucible of the modern nation-state, which in turn is often projected backwards
to distort our understanding of the past (Lie 2004). It is unfortunate that historical
and social-scientific writings on East Asia, and especially on Korea, still
continues under the aegis of a nationalist straitjacket. Precisely when Western
scholarship on the West has decisively moved to more explicitly transnational,
regional, and global modes of historical writing, Korean history (whether
practiced within or without the Korean peninsula) still remains resolutely
nationalist.
As much as transnational and supranational dimensions of historiography
have received short shrift, we should be mindful that regional and diasporic
dimensions of Korean history, past and present, remain woefully under-
researched. Nationalist historiography accentuates the past as a relatively
stationary entity and presumes a great deal more homogeneity than was probably
the case. Our contemporary globalization has alerted us to the massive
transnational movements of capital, commodities, information, and people, but
the same insight can be applied usefully to evoke the past in its manifold
complexity and diversity. Modern human beings first entered the Korean
peninsula some 30,000 years ago, and we can only presume that population
movements continued since then but we simply don’t have much information or
insight. The seemingly new fact of globalization should alert us to the older
reality of transnational processes.
Finally, the idea of global Korea should alert scholars and non-scholars to the
comparative dimensions of the history of the Korean Peninsula. A particular
foible of nationalist scholarship is to assume one’s national history as distinct and
probably unique but, as Marc Bloch (1949) pointed out, all history is, at bottom,
comparative history (or one can say the same about social-scientific knowledge,
which should be at once comparative and historical). It is of course not the case
that all national histories are alike but comparisons – facilitated in turn by the
globalization of historical knowledge – should alert scholars to the similarities
and differences from other places and other times. The comparative dimension
should make the study of Korea in turn relevant for non-Koreanists and even
non-Asianists. The age of globalization should usher in the possibility of truly
global knowledge.

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26
Inter-Korean relations, 1945–2013

Avram Agov

Relations between the two Koreas since 1945 can be characterized as a permanent
state of war in different forms. Reunification has been an existential national
issue on the Korean Peninsula, while efforts to achieve a unified state have
defined the approach of the two Koreas to one another. The division and inter-
Korean relations are inseparable from the architecture of the Cold War. Even
though the global Cold War has ended, its peninsular version persists and
perpetuates the Korean partition. International relations involve interaction
between different states, but the two Koreas have sought to represent the whole
peninsula as a single state. Hence this is the first major feature of the North-
South relations – competition to represent a single Korean entity either by
unifying the Korean Peninsula or by gaining more international recognition than
its rival. The premise of each Korean state is that the other Korean state is
illegitimate and is not supposed to exist, which is the second characteristic of
inter-Korean relations. The Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK) still do not recognize each other and are technically at
war. The mutually exclusive paradigm has determined very toxic and
unpredictable relations. The northern and southern halves of the Korean
Peninsula were temporarily divided along the 38th parallel, but the post-World
War Two arrangement among the Allies became a long-term separate state
solution, similar to the division of Germany. The paradox of the inter-Korean
relations is that the foreign policy of each Korean state has been largely
determined by the existence of the other, even though the peninsular interactions
are founded on the principle of mutual exclusion.
Solutions to the Korean Question have been dominated by denial, rejection and
conflict. The main forms of direct interaction between the two halves of the
Korean Peninsula were diplomatic isolation, hostility, subversion or war. Since
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) sealed off the two Korean states from each other,
the regional alliance systems became the main outlet for inter-Korean relations.
There were attempts at dialogue and reconciliation, however, and we will also
examine the episodes which marked a shift from confrontation to cooperation on
the Korean Peninsula. Another feature of the inter-Korean rivalry is its longevity
compared to its closest parallel during the Cold War era – inter-German
relations. One of the main reasons for the persistence of the inter-Korean conflict
is that the Koreans fought a fratricidal war which further deepened and cemented
the division of Korea for generations to come.
Studies of the liberation, occupation, division of the Korean War reveal
important aspects of the formative period of the interactions between the two
halves of the Korean Peninsula. Nevertheless, the historiography of inter-Korean
relations from a longer-term perspective is mostly confined within studies of the
history of either South Korea or North Korea and their respective alliance
systems, as the division of the peninsula led to division of its scholarship as well.
This dichotomy seems inevitable, given the gravity of the nation-state as main
point of departure in the investigation of international relations. But there are a
few studies, such as the ones by Barry Gills, Don Oberdorfer, Taik-yong Humm
and Eui-gak Hwang, which focus on the two Koreas and their interaction. This
essay will briefly outline major events and stages in the history of inter-Korean
relations from 1945 until 2013. The narrative will take into account internal and
external factors that have shaped the relations between the two halves of the
Korean Peninsula.

Division and war, 1945–1953

The Korean civil conflict was rooted in the colonial period (1910–1945) and
deepened during decolonization. After Liberation on 15 August 1945, the internal
strife took the form of deeply opposing political entities. Social cleavages
provided the platform for the division of Korea, while the international
framework structured the actual separation. On 10–11 August, 1945, the US State-
War-Navy Committee decided to divide Korea into two occupation zones. The
Soviet Union, which had joined the war against Japan (as agreed at Yalta and
Potsdam in 1945), accepted the American proposal for the partition of Korea
along the 38th parallel. The division of the Korean peninsula was a temporary
solution during a trusteeship period (trusteeship was agreed by the Allies at Cairo
and Teheran in 1943), leading eventually toward the full independence of a
unified Korean state.1
The three years between the Liberation and the creation of separate Korean
states marked not only a process of molding two political entities but also
growing alienation and isolation between them. While the negotiations between
Allies for a unified Korean government were turning destructive, the
administrations in the two zones were growing into proto-governments with
distinct ideologies and political agendas. The peninsular division added to the
economic chaos which ensued after the collapse of the Japanese economic zone.
Still, for some time there were still exchanges between the two halves of the
peninsula – the North supplied the South with electricity, for example.
Movement of people between the two zones was still possible until 1947 despite
the restrictions.2
The division and occupation of the Korean Peninsula was a transition from
intra-Korean to inter-Korean conflict between emerging separate polities. The
divergence between northern Korea and southern Korea started from the
beginning of the occupation by the Soviet and American armies of the two halves
of the peninsula. The Soviet Union and the United States were still allies, but
their irreconcilable political systems and ideologies and differing interests set the
conditions for the diverging paths of their respective occupied zones. By 1947, the
northern and southern halves of the Korean Peninsula were entangled in the
global antagonism between liberal capitalism and communism. The United States
referred the Korean Question to the United Nations after the US-Soviet Joint
Commission failed to agree on a unified Korean government. The United Nations
Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) was established to oversee
democratic elections in Korea. The Soviet Union and northern Korean authorities
boycotted the commission. The commission violated earlier agreements between
the powers on Korea, according to the Soviet delegate to the UN, Andrei
Vyshinsky, while Kim Il Sung called the commission’s delegates “running dogs”
of the United States. The UNTCOK-supervised elections in southern Korea in
May 1948 presaged creation of a separate southern government (Cumings 1997:
211). Separate elections were held in northern Korea in August.
Institution building in the two occupation zones culminated with the
establishment of the Republic of Korea (ROK) on 15 August 1948 with Rhee
Syngman (Yi Sŭng-man) as president, and the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK) a few weeks later on 9 September with Kim Il Sung (Kim Il-sŏng)
as prime minister. The two leaders symbolized the different political paths and
foreign affiliations that the two halves of divided Korea would follow. Kim, a 33-
year-old former anti-Japanese fighter in Manchuria and military officer in the
USSR, returned to northern Korea aboard a Soviet ship from Vladivostok to
Wŏnsan with dozens of his comrades on 18 September 1945. The 70-year-old
Rhee, an exile in the United States and graduate of Princeton University, was
flown to Seoul on General MacArthur’s plane in mid-October 1945.
Foreign powers were instrumental in the territorialization of the civil conflict
in Korea, which evolved to a stand-off between two state structures, thus
amplifying the confrontation. The Korean War, 1950–1953, deepened and
expanded the intra-Korean civil schism into an interstate war with enhanced
military capabilities of the two rival sides which were further reinforced by
international alliances. The Armistice Agreement, signed on 27 July 1953, ended
the military operations on the Korean Peninsula, but not the war. The fault line
between the two world blocs sharpened and deepened on the battleground of
Korea. Even though the Korean War was a global conflict, the major powers tried
to diminish the significance of their involvement or disguise it. For the Koreans,
however, it was total war which resulted in horrific human losses and
destruction. Three million Koreans (two million of them in the North), mostly
civilians, were dead, injured or missing. The legacy of the Korean War is a major
obstacle to reconciliation between the two Koreas. Coping with the war legacy
has determined the history of the Korean Peninsula ever since.

Postwar reconstruction, militarization, and “Second

Postwar reconstruction, militarization, and “Second
Korean War,” 1954–1970

The failure of the Geneva Conference in 1954, designed by the armistice

agreement to reach a peaceful settlement of the Korean Question, reconfirmed
the division of the Korean Peninsula. The two Koreas were too far apart in their
positions on establishing a unified government, while the great powers implicitly
agreed to maintain a divided Korea within their respective spheres (S. Lee 2001:
119). The DPRK and ROK each built fortifications along the DMZ and braced
themselves for a protracted war of political and economic attrition. American
troops remained in South Korea, and the United Nations Command,
encompassing US forces and the ROK Army, continued to function as the
supreme military body in South Korea. The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army
withdrew from North Korea by 1958 and the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has
been solely responsible for the defense of the DPRK. South Korea looked more
dependent on the American security shield, but North Korea too was dependent
on its alliances with the Soviet Union and China for both security and economic
aid.
In the postwar period, the quest for supremacy and legitimacy by the two
Koreas shifted from the battlefield to the areas of economy, diplomacy and
propaganda. North Korea recovered from the rubble of the war and embarked on
an impressive period of economic growth in the 1950s, while South Korea lagged
behind. Socialist countries provided vital aid to the DPRK, but so did the United
States to the South. A major part of the fraternal assistance to North Korea was in
the form of industrial projects including financing, construction and technology
transfer, while the American aid was mostly supplies of food and consumer
goods. Despite political repression accompanying the consolidation of Kim Il
Sung’s power after 1956, the DPRK government was able to mobilize scarce labor
and other resources through the centralized planning of the state-owned
economy. The collectivization of farms expanded the allocation of resources to
industries, although it also caused disruptions in food supply.
Stronger economic results gave confidence to North Korea for a more active
approach toward South Korea, seeking to set forth a peaceful unification process.
The North’s initiatives also stemmed from the Marxist paradigm of the
“inevitable” victory of socialism and communism, which meant that reunification
would be achieved under Northern terms. Between 1954 and 1958, the DPRK
made a flurry of proposals to the ROK, such as a non-aggression pact and mutual
troop reduction, a peace agreement, cultural and economic cooperation, national
elections under a neutral states’ supervision, inter-Korean conferences or joint
sessions of the two legislatures, and for an international conference for
reunification. The Rhee government viewed North Korea’s overtures as
propaganda and rejected the proposals (Gills 1996: 59–60). The ROK was more
vulnerable and the memories of the war, including the KPA invasion, were still
too vivid for bridging the gulf between the two halves of the peninsula. An
example of North Korea’s favorable positon over its southern rival is the
repatriation of Korean residents in Japan, who were mobilized as colonial
laborers during World War Two. North Korea-sponsored repatriation programs
started in 1959 with the support of the General Association of Korean Residents
in Japan (Ch’ongryŏnhaphoe) and the Japanese Red Cross. The repatriation of
Koreans was a big propaganda victory for the DPRK, particularly given that the
majority of the repatriates to North Korea were originally from the South. From
December 1959 to December 1961, 75,000 repatriates arrived in North Korea
(Armstrong 2013: 116). After the postwar reconstruction, North Korea appeared to
offer more opportunities for the Koreans living in Japan, many of whom also
harbored political sympathies to the DPRK.
Major General Park Chung Hee (Pak Chŏng-hŭi) led a relatively bloodless
coup d’état in Seoul on 16 May 1961. This military takeover can be viewed in the
context of political and social instability following the April 1960 revolution,
when student and public protests toppled Rhee Syngman’s administration, and as
a reaction to the corruption in the army and the administration. The inability of
the South Korean government to respond adequately to the economic
competition from the North was detrimental to the South’s security. As director
of army operations before the coup, Park was well aware of North Korea’s
economic superiority at that time. The junta in South Korea was inseparable from
the inter-Korean Cold War matrix. North Korean officials harbored a short-lived
hope that the abrupt change in government in the South could advance inter-
Korean dialogue. It took only two days for the North Korean leadership to shift
its opinion on the forces behind the coup from “progressive” to “reactionary,”
which reflected Park’s actions against the opposition in the South immediately
after he took power.3 Still, there were secret inter-Korean talks initiated by Park
in September which did not make much progress, but for a while the atmosphere
between the two Koreas was not as hostile and acrimonious as before. The North
and South withdrew to their Cold War shells after the prospects for improving
their relations disappeared by the end of 1961.
Both Koreas embarked on militarization in the 1960s with the help of their
allies. The militarization was rooted in the inter-Korean rivalry and had
significant domestic and external implications. Park Chung Hee’s regime cracked
down on dissent and launched an ambitious economic program. The South
Korean government expanded the ROK’s military capability and was involved in
the Vietnam War by committing 320,000 troops to Indochina, which further
strengthened the US-ROK military alliance. Park’s strong anti-communist bent
and the ROK’s participation in the Vietnam War fueled more tensions on the
Korean Peninsula. The Sino-Soviet split evolved into an intra-socialist cold war
which posed a dilemma for the DPRK. At first, North Korea sided with China,
but after 1965 it reinvigorated its relations with the Soviet bloc at the expense of
the PRC. The Cultural Revolution in China created tensions in Sino-DPRK
relations, while the North Korean leadership felt the economic costs of strained
relations with the Soviet bloc countries and was determined to mend fences with
them. The cracks and uncertainty in the socialist world compelled the North
Korean government to rely more on its own resources for defense and economic
development. North Korea evolved into an “impregnable fortress” as the regime
called for simultaneous development of the economy and defense – holding a
“sickle in one hand and a gun in the other.” DPRK’s militarization escalated after
1966 and involved allocation of considerable resources to the military (between 30
and 50 percent of the budget), the creation of a huge militia force, the
mobilization of labor, and the tightening of political and social controls. The
creation of a garrison state in North Korea was parallel to more militant posture
against the South.
The North Korean military infiltrations in the South occurred after 1953, but
they increased in the 1960s, shifting the strategy from intelligence gathering and
building a revolutionary base to attempts at destabilizing South Korea and
instigating insurgency. A new wave of infiltrations in 1966 involved commando
raids and incidents along DMZ, which sometimes escalated into firefights,
including artillery. Thirty South Korean soldiers and ten civilians were killed in
clashes with infiltrators by October 1966, which made the ROK army stage a
retaliatory attack. Firefights along the DMZ intensified between 1966 and 1969,
which is referred as the “Second Korean War.” In 1967, there were around 100
reported infiltrations by the Northern forces in the South, while in 1968, they
doubled. The culmination of North’s subversive campaign was the assassination
attempt against Park Chung Hee on 21 January 1968. Unit 124 of the KPA with 31
commandos reached several hundred meters from the Blue House, the
presidential palace, before they were repelled and eliminated by ROK security
forces. Infuriated, Park planned a retaliatory operation against Kim Il Sung by
establishing a Unit 684 – a commando group composed of former convicts who
were trained more than three years on Silmido Island in ROK waters near
Inch’ŏn. The operation was aborted in 1971 in lieu of improved chances for inter-
Korean dialogue. Kim Il Sung’s plan to fuel a revolutionary movement in the
South suffered a setback after Park’s regime cracked down on the Revolutionary
Party for Reunification in the summer of 1968 and executed its founder, Kim
Chong-t’ae, a South Korean communist. North Korea’s guerrilla activities in the
South, coupled with the seizure of the American intelligence ship Pueblo in
January 1968 and the shooting of an EC-121 spy plane in 1969, escalated tensions
on the Korean Peninsula to a boiling point. Kim Il Sung purged militant generals
in the KPA whose guerilla tactics against the South had backfired. After 1968, the
North Korean infiltrations decreased, as their goal shifted to intelligence
gathering and covert networks.

Vacillations between reconciliation and conflict, 1971–

1991

Despite the intractable ideological and political divide, the DPRK and ROK
shared similarities of developmental dictatorship in their quest for military and
economic supremacy which would solve the reunification problem on their own
terms. The militarization of the two Koreas in the 1960s was interconnected, the
same was true of the political process in the two parts of the Korean peninsula.
The Yushin (revitalization) constitution, adopted in November 1972, turned Park
Chung Hee’s presidency into a legal dictatorship by granting him enormous
powers, such as ruling by decree and an unlimited term in office. The Yushin
regime coincided with the 1972 North Korean constitution. The new DPRK
constitution elevated Kim Il Sung to the new post of President; affirmed
suryŏngje (leader’s system); and enshrined chuch’e (self-reliance) – the creative
application of Marxist-Leninism “to the realities of our country” – as a “guiding
principle” of the party-state (Article 4 of 1972 DPRK Constitution, quoted in C.-S.
Lee 1976: 194).
Meanwhile, South Korea was gaining momentum at the expense of its
Northern rival on the back of an industrialization drive and export promotion.
Park Chung Hee initiated the Heavy and Chemical Industries Promotion Plan in
late 1971, focusing on six industries: iron, steel, nonferrous metals, shipbuilding,
chemicals, and machines. The industrialization program, tailored along the
Japanese model, was very ambitious, particularly given the lack of natural
resources in the South and the skepticism of the American advisors. The plan was
born out of the inter-Korean rivalry and aimed at enhancing the defense
capabilities of the ROK. A similar preoccupation with national defense prompted
the North Korean government to promote its own machine industries in the
1960s.
Park Chung Hee followed keenly the DPRK’s economic performance and
reportedly had comparative charts of economic data of the North in his office. By
the mid-1970s, South Korea had surpassed North Korea in living standards, even
though the DPRK was still ahead of the ROK in terms of GNP per capita based on
official exchange rate (Hwang 1993: 123). Between 1965 and 1976, North Korea’s
GNP doubled, still a respectable performance despite the slowdown caused by
declining exports and rising foreign debt. But the South Korean GNP tripled
during the same period, which laid the foundation for the long-term economic
disparity between the two Koreas.
International recognition and support were key factors for enhancing the
legitimacy of the two Korean states. The Third World became an arena for
North-South competition, as the two Koreas were already integral parts of the
opposing Cold War blocs. The two Korean states were involved in their own
“scramble” for ties in Africa and Asia. The North had an upper hand in engaging
developing nations. Independence, anti-imperialist struggle, solidarity
movements and commercial interests were the foundation for building the
DPRK’s relations with Third World countries, such as Indonesia, India, Egypt,
Iraq, Algeria, and Congo, among others. Even though the DPRK continued to be
denied participation in the UN debate on the Korean Question, while ROK had
the sole right to represent Korea, the Pyongyang government was gaining ground
in the inter-Korean diplomatic competition. The increased presence of
postcolonial countries in the United Nations started to shift the balance in favor
of North Korea after 1958. North Korea’s active policy toward liberation
movements and emerging nations in the 1960s and the 1970s increased its
international support. As a result, by 1975, North Korea reached diplomatic parity
with South Korea (Gills 1996: 261).
New regional dynamics and internal developments in the two Koreas led to a
détente on the peninsula in the early 1970s. The thaw between the United States
and the Soviet Union, the normalization of Sino-American relations in 1971 and
the American policy in Asia – known as the Nixon Doctrine – shaped the
international background for the beginning of inter-Korean dialogue. Both sides
had their own rationale for approaching each other: Kim Il Sung believed that the
time of revolutionary change in the South was close and thus peaceful unification
could be possible. The American decision to withdraw 20,000 troops from South
Korea encouraged Kim’s optimism. A proclamation of the Supreme People’s
Assembly to South Korean people on 13 April 1971, stated that the DPRK was
ready to solve the unification peacefully in the event that after the removal of
Park Chung Hee’s “faction” in South Korea, a people’s rule was established, or a
democratic figure came to power. But on 6 August, Kim Il Sung expressed
readiness to negotiate with various parties in the South, including Park Chung
Hee’s Democratic Republican Party. During a meeting with the visiting Nicolae
Ceausescu in Pyongyang in June 1971, Kim reasoned that in the absence of
American forces, the South Korean people could install a “democratic progressive
government” which would draw the Koreans close to each other so that the
unification could be achieved peacefully.4 For his part, Park Chung Hee was
increasingly concerned with perceived weakened American commitment to
South Korea’s security in line with the Nixon Doctrine. The American position at
the Paris Peace Talks for a settlement in Vietnam must have further undermined
the Park regime’s trust in its American ally. The South Korean government was
concerned about the possibility of US-DPRK relations in the wake of the US-PRC
breakthrough. In addition, President Park grew more confident in South Korea’s
economic performance vis-à-vis its Northern rival and he felt that the Seoul
government could engage in inter-Korean dialogue from an enhanced position.
At a speech on 15 August 1970, which marked Liberation Day, Park proposed
the beginning of humanitarian talks between the two Koreas and “peaceful
competition” with North Korea. In September 1971, the two Korean states held
Red Cross negotiations regarding divided families, following the South Korean
initiative. In turn, Kim Il Sung proposed a peaceful treaty between the DPRK and
ROK in January 1972.5 The dramatic visit of the newly-appointed KCIA director
Yi Hu-rak to Pyongyang on 2–5 May 1972 and his meeting with Kim Il Sung led
to further conciliatory measures. The détente on the Korean Peninsula produced
the historic 4 July 1972 Joint Communiqué, which was the first attempt at
achieving peaceful unification. The Communiqué proclaimed three principles of
unification: 1) the problems must be solved without foreign interference and with
the Korean people’s own forces; 2) unification must be implemented in a peaceful
manner; and 3) a unified nation should be created despite the ideological
differences of the political systems.6 The two sides established a North-South
Coordinating Committee, co-chaired by Kim Yŏng-ju, Kim Il Sung’s brother and
a Politburo member, and Yi Hu-rak. Park Chung Hee and Kim Il Sung announced
separate plans for unification in June 1973. The announcements revealed growing
discord between the two sides as well. The North Korean leader proposed a
confederation-type of unification in which the two Korean states would preserve
their political systems and govern their domestic policy, while foreign policy
could be entrusted to a unified body.
In October 1973, Kim Il Sung explained to his visiting Bulgarian counterpart,
Todor Zhivkov, that such a confederation system would require reduction in
military spending and would lead to the elimination of the “reactionary regime”
in South Korea, because without an army the people would rise. The North
Korean leader admitted that the proposed confederation would be very difficult
to materialize under the current circumstances and that it was a “political slogan”
intended to “draw the workers and the peasants” and demonstrate to “democratic
forces” in the South that North Korea was for peaceful unification, while South
Korea was against it. Kim blatantly stated that if “more democratic government”
was established in the South, the DPRK would not bring up the slogan for
confederation, but simply “call a revolution.”7 The North Korean leadership grew
increasingly suspicious and uneasy about the Yushin constitution, which
strengthened anti-communism in the South and played a significant role in the
DPRK’s decision to withdraw from the inter-Korean dialogue. On 28 August
1973, North Korea suspended meetings within the North-South Coordinating
Committee reportedly in response to Kim Dae Jung’s kidnapping by KCIA agents.
The abduction incident served as pretext for North Korea to withdraw from the
dialogue.
The failed détente on the Korean Peninsula pushed the two Korean states into
a new cycle of confrontation. Kim Il Sung seemed to have abandoned his peaceful
approach toward unification and returned to the more militant posture which
characterized North Korea’s policy in the 1960s. With the North Vietnamese army
poised to capture Saigon and unify the country, Kim Il Sung declared
optimistically in Beijing on 18 April 1975 that Asia was on a “high tide of
revolution.” Kim unsuccessfully prodded the Chinese leadership to support armed
unification of Korea during his visit. China wanted to prevent the Korean
question from derailing its relations with the US and Japan or from getting
involved in a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula. By 1974, an ailing Mao
had modified his revolutionary view, stating that “we may not mention that the
current world tide is a revolution.”8 As a result of the cold Chinese response, Kim
Il Sung gave up military means to achieve unification.
A new assassination attempt against Park Chung Hee on 15 August 1974
marked renewed hostility between the two Koreas. President Park was delivering
a speech for the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Liberation in the National
Theater in Seoul, when Mun Se-kwang, a Japanese-born Korean, fired shots that
missed Park but killed his wife Yuk Yŏng-su instead. It is widely believed that
Mun acted under instructions from Pyongyang, but the DPRK link has not been
categorically proven.9 Military tensions on the Korean Peninsula increased
dramatically following the “axe murder incident” on 18 August 1976, when KPA
soldiers killed two American officers in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of the DMZ.
The American officers were attacked when their team, composed of American
and South Korean soldiers, attempted to trim a tree hindering the view between
posts. The UN Command responded with deployment of disproportionate force to
cut the tree in an attempt to intimidate the North Korean side. The show of force
was considerable, involving US helicopters and bombers circling around the zone.
The DPRK expressed “regret” over the incident in the JSA, which was an
admission of responsibility. The crisis can be seen in the broader context of the
tense atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula following the first Team Spirit
military exercises held by the US-ROK forces several months earlier. North Korea
was involved in the kidnapping of Japanese and South Korean citizens. The most
high-profile South Korean victims were film director Shin Sang-ok and his
former wife and actress Ch’oe Un-hŭi, who were abducted in 1978 to develop the
film industry of North Korea. They managed to escape from their North Korean
minders during a visit to Vienna in 1986.
After the botched inter-Korean dialogue, the DPRK tried to engage the United
States in direct negotiations concerning a peace treaty, starting with Kim Il
Sung’s letter to the US Congress in 1973. In 1976, the North Korean leader even
sent a letter to president-elect Jimmy Carter seeking direct contacts. Kim also
conveyed similar messages to the American president through Ceausescu in 1978
and Tito in 1979. The United States would not start negotiations with North
Korea without South Korean participation. President Carter even briefly
entertained the idea of meeting both Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee in order to
reach a North-South settlement, following the model of the Camp David peace
agreement between Israel and Egypt. The American president in fact proposed a
three-way meeting of diplomats during his visit to Seoul in June 1979, but North
Korea rejected his initiative (Oberdorfer 1997: 104–105).
The anti-government protests and the assassination of Park Chung Hee by the
KCIA director Kim Chae-gyu on 26 October 1979 threw South Korea into turmoil.
Major General Chun Doo Hwan (Chŏn Tu-hwan), Commander of the Defense
Security Command and investigator of his mentor’s assassination, initiated a
bloody coup with fellow generals from hanahoe (literally “group of one”) – a
secret officer circle in the army. On 12 December, Chun diverted army units from
the area close to the DMZ, including part of the Ninth Division under the
command of General Roh Tae Woo (No T’ae-u) – Chun’s classmate from 1955
class of the Korean Military Academy – and launched a daring attack on the
Army headquarters in Seoul as a first step in installing a new military regime.
The Kwangju Uprising in May 1980, which the South Korean propaganda falsely
attributed to North Korean communist agents, further increased the uncertainty
and tension on the Korean Peninsula. Still, the two Koreas engaged in ten
“preliminary” meetings between February and August 1980 – the first encounter
since dialogue ended in 1975. And for the first time, they referred to each other
by their official names – DPRK and ROK (C.-S. Lee, 1985: 122). In 1981, the two
sides held high-level meetings through their Red Cross organizations.
The DPRK resorted to subversive tactics to undermine Chun Doo Hwan’s
military regime, which continued Park Chung Hee’s anti-communist policies.
North Korea’s foreign clandestine operations were put under the control of Kim
Jong Il (Kim Chŏng-il) – an official successor of his father Kim Il Sung from the
Sixth Congress of KWP in 1980. North Korean agents attempted to assassinate
Chun Doo Hwan during his visit of Rangoon (Yangon) on 9 October 1983. A
bomb explosion in a mausoleum of the national cemetery missed the South
Korean president, but killed 17 officials, including three South Korean cabinet
ministers and three Burmese officials. Two of the three conspirators were
captured and one of them, Kang Min-chul, admitted that he was a KPA officer.
The bombing happened before Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting opened in
Seoul. The incident led to the suspension of DPRK-Burmese relations, but it also
strained Sino-North Korean relations, as the Chinese had proposed trilateral talks
between DPRK, ROK and US on behalf of its ally, shortly before the bombing in
Rangoon.
The 1983 crisis was followed by attempts to resume the inter-Korean dialogue.
North Korea reiterated its proposal for a three-way meeting in January 1984, in
order to conclude the peace treaty. DPRK’s initiatives aimed to prevent an
increase of American forces in South Korea and to “expose the United States’
excuses” for its military presence. In September of the same year, the North
Korean Red Cross sent food and other supplies for flood victims in South Korea.
The two Koreas held parliamentary meetings in 1985 and organized the first
family reunions, as 35 South Koreans visited Pyongyang on 20 September. After
1985, the two sides used a secret diplomatic channel, through which they
discussed even a possible summit between Kim Il Sung and Chun Doo Hwan,
among other issues (Oberdorfer 1997: 147–149). The inter-Korean dialogue made
little progress, however, and the relations deteriorated again in 1986. By this time,
the Team Spirit US-ROK military exercises had reached 200,000 combined
personnel. The DPRK viewed the two-month maneuvers south of the DMZ as
threatening and suspended all inter-Korean exchanges in January 1986, after the
ROK declined to call off Team Spirit.
On 29 November 1987, a bomb explosion on Korean Air Flight 858 (from Abu
Dhabi to Bangkok) was another dark episode in inter-Korean relations. Two
North Korean agents planted a time bomb, which exploded midair and destroyed
the plane, killing all 115 people on board, mostly South Koreans. The purpose of
the terrorist attack was reportedly to destabilize the South Korean government
and intimidate countries from participating in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. One of
the bombers, a female agent, Kim Hyŏn-hŭi, survived a suicide attempt (her
partner died in the hospital after taking cyanide) and was arrested in Bahrain.
Kim confessed to the attack and was sentenced to death in South Korea, but
President Roh Tae Woo pardoned her. As a result of the bombing, the US State
Department listed DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in Soviet foreign policy and the
improvement of Soviet-American relations laid the foundation for the final phase
of the Cold War. Gorbachev’s Krasnoyarsk speech in September 1988 also
signaled a readiness to forge economic ties between the Soviet Union and South
Korea. In this new international environment, President Roh Tae Woo tried to
reach out to the DPRK by pursuing Nordpolitik, which resembled Chancellor
Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik toward Eastern Germany. The South Korean president
proposed the promotion of trade between the two Koreas, exchanges of visits,
and further humanitarian contacts between the two Koreas. On August 15 1988,
Roh proposed an inter-Korean summit. Kim Il Sung replied that if the South
accepted his proposal for confederation, the two leaders could hold a summit in
Pyongyang. Kim also declared a non-aggression policy line toward South Korea.
Inter-Korean contacts also involved the South Korean opposition. North Korean
foreign minister Ho Dam met opposition leader Kim Young Sam in Moscow in
June 1989, and unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to visit North Korea.
As Soviet perestroika, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the democratization of
Eastern Europe started to break down the Cold War order, Roh’s “northern
politics” was accompanied by efforts to establish ties with North Korea’s socialist
allies. Hungary announced the exchange of permanent missions with ROK on 13
September 1988. Other Eastern European countries also established diplomatic
relations with the ROK. The Soviet Union followed suit, as economic
considerations played a part in promoting relations with South Korea. On 4 June
1990, Gorbachev and Roh Tae Woo met in San Francisco, and in September,
Moscow decided to establish diplomatic relations with Seoul. Kim Il Sung was so
upset with the Soviet “betrayal” that he declined to meet the Soviet foreign
minister Eduard Shevardnadze, who was visiting Pyongyang in September 1990
to explain the shift in Soviet policy toward the ROK. DPRK foreign minister Kim
Yŏng-nam told Shevardnadze that normalization of relations with South Korea
would increase pressure on the North to open up in order to “overthrow the
socialist regime in our country” and annex DPRK like the German scenario. Kim
threatened his guest, saying that Soviet recognition of the South would nullify
the 1961 Soviet-North Korean Alliance Treaty and that North Korea would be
free to develop nuclear deterrents against American nuclear weapons on the
Korean Peninsula, since the Soviet defensive “umbrella” stipulated in the treaty
would no longer offer protection.10
There was more to come in a series of setbacks for the DPRK’s diplomacy by
the end of Cold War. The Sino-North Korean “blood alliance” also suffered when
China expanded economic ties with South Korea. In May 1987, Kim Il Sung
visited China in an attempt to persuade Deng Xiaoping to terminate contacts
with South Korea. Deng recommended that Kim not rely on military force and to
try to improve relations with Japan and the US in order to seek a “realistic
solution” for the problems on the Korean Peninsula. The PRC and the ROK
established diplomatic relations on 24 August 1992.
The collapse of the Soviet Union further shifted the strategic situation on the
Korean peninsula. The cross-recognition between North Korea’s (former) allies
and South Korea was not reciprocated by establishing diplomatic relations
between North Korea and the West and Japan. The increased uncertainty
prompted Pyongyang to pursue more active inter-Korean dialogue. The
diplomatic exchanges culminated with two prime ministerial talks, held in Seoul
on 4–7 September and in Pyongyang on 16–19 October in 1990. The director of
National Security Planning, Sŏ Sŏng-wŏn, secretly visited Pyongyang in early
October and met Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, while KWP secretary Yun Ki-bŏk
and Roh Tae Woo met in Seoul in November. The meetings failed to reach an
agreement on a joint declaration dealing with unification and the idea of a
Korean summit did not materialize. But the two prime ministers met again in
Pyongyang in October 1991 and also in Seoul in December of the same year,
achieving a breakthrough in relations, similar to the 1972 development. On 12
December, the two sides signed the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-
Aggression and Exchanges and Cooperation, which has been most promising in
their bilateral relations. The accord included mutual recognition of each other’s
systems, but fell short of recognizing the existence of the two states on the
peninsula. The agreement called for transforming the armistice into a “state of
peace” and non-use of force against each other. The document also envisioned
economic, cultural and scientific exchanges.
On the back of the North-South reconciliation agreement and Roh Tae Woo’s
announcement that South Korea was free from nuclear weapons in December
1991, the two Koreas reached another historic nuclear pact on 19 February 1992.
In their Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of Korean Peninsula, the two
sides pledged not to “test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or
use nuclear weapons.” They also agreed “not to possess nuclear reprocessing and
uranium enrichment facilities” and to set up a Joint Nuclear Control Commission
for reciprocal inspection of other’s facilities.

Nuclear Korean Peninsula, 1992–1997

The nuclearization of North Korea was part of its regime’s security efforts in a
perceived hostile environment, which became increasingly unstable after 1991.
But the nuclear problem was rooted in the unfinished Korean War. The arms race
between the two Koreas was an essential element in their battle for supremacy.
The US threat of using nuclear weapons during the Korean War and the
deployment of nuclear warheads in South Korea in 1957 had an impact on North
Korea’s perception of its vulnerability. DPRK started to acquire knowledge and
technologies on nuclear energy as early as 1956, when North Korean scientists
worked at the Nuclear Research Institute in Dubna, USSR. The Soviet
government agreed to assist DPRK in building a nuclear research center in 1959.
In 1965, the Soviet Union delivered a research nuclear reactor (two to four MW)
to North Korea, which started operations in 1967. The North Koreans built an
experimental gas-graphite moderated reactor (five MW) in Yŏngbyŏn, which
used natural uranium fuel. The reactor, designed after an old British prototype,
became operational in 1986, and a processing facility started to separate
plutonium (needed for atomic bombs), approximately in 1989. In 1985, the Soviet
Union also agreed to help DPRK build a nuclear plant (the Soviets had declined
earlier North Korean requests, dating from the 1960s), while the Pyongyang
government signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The project
made little progress, however, in the face of a declining Soviet economy and
deterioration of Soviet-North Korean relations. DPRK’s intention to acquire
atomic bomb dates perhaps from the 1970s and its clandestine nuclear program
underscores the limitations of the Soviet Union and China to contain their ally’s
nuclear ambitions. North Korea’s resolve to become a nuclear power
strengthened after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. When the inter-
Korean denuclearization talks were held in December 1992, a nuclear
reprocessing plant in Yŏngbyŏn was near completion. Possession of nuclear
weapons became a strategic priority of the North Korean regime as a guarantee
for its existence in the uncertain post-Cold War environment.
South Korea became more concerned over its security after the partial
withdrawal of American troops from ROK in 1971. The fall of South Vietnam in
1975 hastened Park Chung Hee’s aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons. The
South Korean government officially abandoned its plans under American
pressure and the ratification of the NPT in 1975. Still, a secret nuclear program
continued until Chun Doo Hwan shut it down in 1980. The United States
withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991, while the ROK
remained under the protection of the American nuclear umbrella.
The beginning of 1992 looked promising for the Korean Peninsula in light of
the inter-Korean denuclearization agreement and DPRK’s efforts to normalize
relations with the United States. Following a meeting between US Under-
Secretary of State Arnold Kanter and KWP Secretary Kim Yŏng-sun in New York
on 22 January 1992, the DPRK signed a safeguards agreement with the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna eight days later. But the
IAEA inspections of Yŏngbyŏn complex raised the suspicions that the DPRK was
running a clandestine nuclear weapons program. At the same time, inter-Korean
relations entered a new crisis by the end of 1992, as the Joint Nuclear Control
Commission reached a deadlock on the short-notice inspections. Also,
presidential elections in South Korea cooled the enthusiasm for the inter-Korean
dialogue, while the US-ROK decision to resume Team Spirit exercises, which had
been suspended in 1992, further deteriorated the atmosphere between the two
Koreas. The DPRK refused IAEA’s demand for “special inspections” in
Yŏngbyŏn.11
The North Korean government announced its withdrawal from the NPT in
March 1993, which was to be implemented three months later. However, in June,
a last-minute joint US-DPRK statement, negotiated and agreed upon by Under
Secretary of State Robert Gallucci and Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sŏk-ju
“suspended” North Korea’s withdrawal from NPT in exchange of American
security assurances to Pyongyang. It was somewhat of a breakthrough for North
Korean diplomacy in dealing directly with the United States, something that
South Korea consented to as long as it involved only the nuclear problem. But the
US-DPRK negotiations in Geneva in July 1993 expanded the scope of issues and
included ideas for a “package deal,” such as the shifting of North Korea’s nuclear
program to less proliferation-prone light-water reactors. The shift from limited
US-DPRK talks, focused on preventing North Korea from withdrawing from NPT,
to wider range negotiations made the South Korean government increasingly
nervous of being sidelined by its ally in shaping the policy toward North Korea
(Oberdorfer 1997: 283, 291). President Kim Young Sam’s policy toward North
Korea vacillated between a compromise and a hardline stance, reflecting the
mood in the public and the media.
The breakdown of international inspections in North Korea prompted the
IAEA’s board to turn the matter over to the UN Security Council in March 1994.
The collapse of South-North working-level talks in Panmunjom – where the
North Korean negotiator threatened his South Korean counterparts that if war
broke out, then Seoul would turn into a “sea of fire” – as well as the Kim Young
Sam administration’s decision to deploy Patriot missiles, dramatically escalated
the tension on the Korean Peninsula in the spring of 1994. The UN Security
Council’s deliberations to impose sanctions on the DPRK, following the IAEA’s
alarm, triggered angry responses in Pyongyang, which likened the punitive
action to a “declaration of war.” The defueling of the nuclear reactor in Yŏngbyŏn
– the unloaded fuel rods were considered a tangible threat of building nuclear
bombs – and IAEA’s declaration that it was unable to verify the reactor’s past
further ignited the confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. The crisis forced the
US military to prepare a war contingency plan. The North-South stand-off
became so unpredictable that the South Korean government organized large civil
defense drills. The US officials were planning an evacuation of American civilians
from Seoul, while citizens in the capital were stockpiling food in case war broke
out.
Former US president Jimmy Carter’s visit to North Korea in mid-June and his
meetings with Kim Il Sung made a breakthrough in both US-DPRK nuclear
negotiations and in North-South relations. Kim agreed to a nuclear freeze (not to
place new fuel rods in the reactor and not to reprocess the removed fuel rods) and
in return North Korea would receive help for building light-water reactors.
(Light-water reactors are less suitable for producing plutonium for nuclear
weapons compared to gas-graphite moderated reactors.) The North Korean leader
also accepted Kim Young Sam’s proposal for an inter-Korean summit, which was
delivered through Carter. As a result, the US dropped their sanctions drive and
plans for military deployments to Korea. The Korean peninsula moved away
from the abyss of brinkmanship to a relaxation of tension and the possibility for
rapprochement.
There were plans for a historical summit between the Korean leaders in
Pyongyang on 25 July, but Kim Il Sung unexpectedly died of a heart attack on 7
July. The Great Leader’s sudden death not only cancelled summit preparations,
but it also led to the rapid deterioration of inter-Korean relations. Kim Yong
Sam’s initial reaction to the unexpected turn of events in the North was to put the
ROK army on maximum alert. The authorities in the South banned any
expression of condolences to the North and, on the day of Kim Il Sung’s funeral
in Pyongyang, made public Russian documents revealing his role in starting the
Korean War. The North Korean response returned to bitter anti-South
propaganda, while South Korean officials envisioned the imminent collapse of the
DPRK. Nevertheless, the U.S.-DPRK nuclear negotiations continued in Geneva.
The US-North Korean Agreed Framework, signed on 21 October, stipulated the
provision of light-water reactors (total 2000 MW) to North Korea in exchange for
freezing all activity on its existing reactors and permitting continued monitoring
by IAEA, including “special inspections.” The two sides also agreed to open
diplomatic liaison offices in the two capitals as a first step to full normalization of
relations. North Korea was to implement the 1991 North-South joint declaration
on denuclearization and re-engage in the inter-Korean dialogue. The ROK
government officially endorsed the deal, even though South Korean objections
persisted. In March 1995, the US, Japan and South Korea set up the Korean
Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) in order to supply two
reactors to North Korea, as South Korea was primary financial contributor to the
project (Oberdorfer 1997: 357, 366).
The implementation of the KEDO project was fraught with difficulties and
obstacles, stemming from domestic politics of the participants and the volatile
situation on the Korean Peninsula. In September 1996, a North Korean submarine
incursion incident led to South Korea’s suspension of all KEDO-related activities,
as well as inter-Korean economic cooperation. North Korea in turn threatened to
abandon the agreed framework and restart its nuclear program in Yŏngbyŏn.
Meanwhile, the ROK army designated twelve targets in North Korea for
retaliation if new provocations arose. The crisis subsided after North Korea issued
a statement of “deep regret” for the submarine incursion in December 1996. The
DPRK also agreed to participate in a joint ROK-US briefing in New York on four-
power peace negotiations – the two Koreas, US and China – a format that had
been proposed by Presidents Clinton and Kim Young Sam.
Economic sanctions against DPRK remained and no steps were taken toward
establishing diplomatic relations with the US, as there was a growing suspicion of
an underground uranium-enrichment facility (a second possible route to nuclear
weapons) in North Korea. In 1998, the North Korean government warned that it
would resume its nuclear research. The KEDO began the construction of the first
light-water reactor in August 2002 (the two reactors were to be ready by 2003),
but indefinitely halted work several months later. In October, during a meeting
with Assistant Secretary of State Kelly in Pyongyang, North Korean officials
stated that DPRK was an independent country and that they had the right to
possess nuclear weapons for defense purposes. When the CIA reported that North
Korea was building a centrifuge facility for uranium enrichment, the US
administration discontinued their shipments of oil (part of the agreed framework)
to North Korea in December 2002.
The two Koreas re-engaged in the humanitarian field in the 1990s. In 1995, the
North Korean economy was on the brink of collapse after several years of
continued decline. The state distribution system disintegrated and the food
supply situation became desperate, forcing the government to appeal for outside
help. South Korea sent 150,000 tons of rice to the North, but refrained from
providing further food relief amidst the submarine incursion crisis. However, as
evidence of starvation in the North mounted, the South Korean Red Cross started
to ship rice in 1997 (as much as 40,000 tons). The ROK was also one of the major
financial contributors to the UN World Food Program which provided 200,000
tons of food to North Korea.

Sunshine era, 1998–2007

The inauguration of President Kim Dae Jung in January 1998 marked the
beginning of a more positive policy of South Korea toward North Korea. The crux
of the “Sunshine Policy” was the acceptance of peaceful coexistence of the two
Koreas, although it fell short of legally recognizing the DPRK. The new approach
moved away from containment and isolation of the North towards a more active
engagement and of cooperation in various areas and on different levels. The
rationale of the new policy was that reconciliation and exchanges could stimulate
change in North Korea and eventually the two Koreas could unify. North Korea’s
initial response to this change of attitude was criticism of the new Seoul policy as
a “political assault” on its system, but as the time passed, the North became more
receptive to the separation of economic cooperation from political issues, and it
recognized benefits from the new environment in inter-Korean relations.
The first significant result of Seoul’s positive approach of engagement was the
summit between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang on 13–15 June
2000. The June 15 Joint Declaration called for: 1) resolving the reunification issue
independently; 2) exchange of visits by separated family members; and 3)
promotion of economic cooperation and exchanges in cultural, sports, health, and
other fields. The two sides decided to use multiple channels for negotiations –
such as the Red Cross, ministerial meetings and military working-level talks – to
facilitate the cooperation. The summit dramatically improved the atmosphere in
the bilateral relations, and President Kim Dae Jung was greeted by thousands of
enthusiastic Seoul citizens upon his return from Pyongyang.
The most tangible outcome in the inter-Korean economic cooperation was the
creation of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), which opened in December
2005. The complex developed with the ups and downs that reflected the pulse in
the inter-Korean dialogue. Even though the KIC did not expand as originally
planned, its scale and implications as a joint undertaking were unprecedented.
Using North Korean labor and South Korean capital, as well as know-how for
manufacturing consumer goods for export, the project became a mini-version of
what a future Korean economic community might look like. (As of 2013, the KIC
employed 53,000 North Korean workers and involved 123 South Korean
companies.) Mount Kŭmgang Tourist Region was another product of the 2000
Korean summit. This resort was established in 2002 to facilitate visits from the
South. By 2008, approximately two million South Koreans had visited the scenic
mountain getaway. Bus tours from South Korea to Kaesong were also arranged to
expand civic exchanges. Following the agreements, the two Koreas restored
railway links between Kaesong and the DMZ in 2003, and freight service started
in 2007.
The collapse of the North Korean economy in the 1990s led to the Great
Famine, which the regime called the Arduous March (konanŭi haenggun). The
humanitarian disaster caused between 600,000 and over one million deaths
(Haggard and Noland 2007: 11). Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il formulated a military-
first policy (sŏn’gun chŏngch’i) after the mid-1990s, although the North Korean
historiography traces it back to the 1960s. The “revolutionary idea of attaching
great importance to the army” was a policy tool to consolidate Kim’s power,
mobilize scarce resources and labor, and tighten controls in society. The North
Korean government tried to address the economic difficulties by introducing
limited liberalization measures in July 2002, which was conducive to the
economic cooperation between the two Koreas. But the policy was reversed in
2005 and old patterns of central planning and controlled markets were reinstated.
The inter-Korean cooperation helped North Korea to stabilize economically and
expand its foreign relations. The ROK not only did not block efforts of other
countries to forge ties with Pyongyang – a pattern from the global Cold War era
– but actually encouraged them to do so. Between 2000 and 2001, the DPRK
established diplomatic relations with the UK, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands,
Spain, Belgium, Luxemburg, Brazil, Canada, and New Zealand, among others.
The South Korean non-governmental sector also nourished linkages between
the two halves of the peninsula in the second half of the 1990s and the early
2000s. South Korea’s NGOs responded to North Korea’s call for international help
in 1995, amidst severe food shortages. Their activities received official sanction by
the Kim Dae Jung administration and expanded after 1998. From 1995 to 2001,
South Korean NGOs donated nearly USD 162 million in form of food, clothes,
and medicine to North Korea (Flake and Snyder 2003: 87). South Korean business
also became active in promoting ties with the North. One notable example is
Chŏng Chu-yŏng, the founder of Hyundai group who was born in Asan, North
Korea. Chŏng became known for his “cattle diplomacy,” when he crossed the
DMZ with a cattle herd loaded on trucks as a donation to North Korea just before
the first inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang. The good spell in inter-Korean
relations revealed how important political thaw was for reinvigorating the
linkages between the two halves of the peninsula.
Inter-Korean relations also suffered setbacks during the “sunshine” era. After
President George W. Bush identified North Korea as part of “Axis of Evil” in
January 2002, the DPRK government temporarily terminated the talks with the
South. In June 2002, a naval skirmish occurred between the two Koreas in a
disputed maritime area in the Yellow Sea. Two North Korean vessels crossed the
Northern Limit Line – which was considered the boundary by South Korea
versus the Military Demarcation Line – and attacked South Korean patrol boats.
In retaliation, South Korean reinforcements pushed back the North Korean
vessels. The clash caused the death of thirteen North Korean and six South
Korean sailors. Revelations surfaced that the South Korean government paid USD
500 million to Pyongyang in order to facilitate the June 2000 summit and this
revelation created a political storm in Seoul, including the conviction of six
businessmen in 2003. The chairman of Hyundai Asan, Chŏng Mong-hŏn, who
was reportedly involved in the back-channel dealings with the DPRK, committed
suicide during the scandal.
 President Roh Moo Hyun (No Mu-hyŏn) followed in the footsteps of his
predecessor Kim Dae Jung by formulating a “peace and prosperity policy” toward
the DPRK in 2003. Roh crossed the DMZ on 2 October 2007 on his way to
Pyongyang, where he met Kim Jong Il for the second inter-Korean summit.
Although the second meeting between the Korean leaders was not as dramatic as
the first summit, it generated positive momentum and capped-off ten years of the
Sunshine Policy. They adopted a peace declaration that called for the
implementation of the 15 June Joint Declaration from 2000; embracing efforts to
overcome differences in ideologies and systems; the replacement of the armistice
with peace treaty; talks for easing military tension and economic cooperation; the
creation of special zone around Haeju in North Korea; humanitarian exchanges
and family reunions; and cooperation in the fields of education, culture and
sports.
Between 2002 and 2009, there were sixteen rounds of family reunions at the
Mt. Kŭmgang resort, involving 10,673 South Koreans and 5,539 North Koreans.
South Korea increased its humanitarian aid to North Korea, which included the
annual delivery of 450,000 tons of food and 300,000 tons of chemical fertilizers
from 2003 to 2007. From 1998 to 2007, the total South Korean aid provided to
North Korea was worth USD 7.18 billion.12 The inter-Korean trade expanded to
USD 1.79 billion in 2007, which constituted almost one-third of the DPRK’s
foreign trade, which matched the volume of Soviet-North Korean trade which
peaked in 1988. The number of North Korean refugees to the South also
increased: from 71 in 1998 to 2,551 in 2007. By 2010, the total number of refugees
from the North reached 20,407. The most high-profile North Korean defector was
Hwang Jang Yop (Hwang Chang-yŏp), a former chairman of Standing Committee
of the Supreme People’s Assembly (position which he held until 1983) and a
leading chuch’e ideologue. Hwang fell out of favor with the new North Korean
leader Kim Jong Il and defected to South Korea via the South Korean embassy in
Beijing and the Philippines in 1997.
The improvement of inter-Korean relations did not solve the nuclear issue on
the Korean Peninsula. Nuclear proliferation problem entered a new dangerous
phase, as the agreed framework was unraveling. The DPRK announced its
withdrawal from NPT on 10 January 2003. The Bush Administration opted for a
multilateral approach to tackle the nuclear problem in contrast to the previous
bilateral one adopted by the Clinton Administration. The Six-Party Talks –
including the two Koreas, US, China, Japan and Russia – commenced in August
in Beijing. It was not until the fourth round of the talks in September 2005,
however, that the parties agreed on a joint statement, which outlined steps
needed for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK agreed to
abandon its nuclear weapons and programs and return to the NPT. The other
parties acknowledged North Korea’s right to develop nuclear energy and were
ready to discuss the delivery of light-water reactors. In addition, the US and ROK
committed not to deploy nuclear weapons in Korea.
Yet, a new cycle of confrontation quickly followed. The US sanctions against
DPRK’s trading entities provoked a strong reaction from Pyongyang. Further,
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on 9 October 2006 and dynamics
quickly deteriorated. The UN Security Council issued Resolution 1718, which
called on DPRK to refrain from further nuclear and missile testing and to rejoin
the talks. The Six-Party negotiations resumed in February 2007, which resulted in
an agreement on the first steps of implementing the Joint Statement in the next
sixty days. North Korea sealed its reactor and declared its nuclear activities in
June, and the US removed DPRK from the Trade with the Enemy Act and from
the list of states that sponsored terrorism, steps that were agreed to in February.
But disagreements on the verification mechanisms for North Korea’s nuclear
program stalled the progress of the Six-Party Talks in December 2007.

Shadows over Korea, 2008–2013

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak (Yi Myŏng-bak) reversed the “Sunshine
Policy” after questioning its character of “appeasement.” Past policies of Lee’s
predecessors toward the North also created friction with ROK’s allies: the United
States and Japan. The conservative South Korean administration aimed at
providing conditional economic assistance to the DPRK over the next ten years,
with the goal of bridging the gap between the two Koreas. Inter-Korean
cooperation was intended to help the North Korean economy reach a USD 3,000
per capita income during that period, hence the “Vision 3000” policy. The main
condition for South Korean aid was the implementation of the 2005 Joint
Statement, which had been issued at the Six-Party Talks for the denuclearization
of North Korea. President Lee also prioritized human rights issues in his policy
toward North Korea, which had an adverse effect on inter-Korean dialogue. The
DPRK labeled the South Korean government a “reactionary clique.” Exchanges
between the two Koreas were either canceled or limited. In 2008, after a South
Korean tourist was shot and killed by a North Korean soldier in the Mt. Kŭmgang
resort area, the Seoul government terminated tours to the North.
Inter-Korean relations continued to deteriorate after North Korea test-fired an
Unha-2 three-stage rocket on 5 April 2009, in which the third stage failed to
separate properly. The UN Security Council issued a presidential statement,
declaring that the test was a violation of the October 2006 Resolution 1718, and
new sanctions were adopted against the DPRK afterwards. North Korea declared
that it would not participate in the Six-Party Talks and that it would also
abrogate previous agreements. On 25 May 2009, The DPRK conducted a second
nuclear test. As a result, on 12 June, the UN Security Council adopted new
sanctions and arms embargoes against North Korea. The following day, the
DPRK admitted for the first time that a uranium enrichment program existed for
the production of fuel for a light-water reactor. This was another blow to inter-
Korean relations.
Military tensions on the Korean peninsula escalated to a dangerous level in
2010 in the wake of two significant incidents. On 26 March, a North Korean
submarine allegedly fired a torpedo at a South Korean corvette Cheonan, which
sank near Paengnyŏng Island. The island lies in a sensitive, disputed area of the
Yellow Sea, 16 kilometers off the North Korean coast and 121 kilometers from an
area where joint US-ROK naval exercises were being conducted at that time as
part of Key Resolve war maneuvers. As a result of the Cheonan sinking, 46 South
Korean seamen lost their lives. The incident can be viewed in the context of
ongoing disputes between the DPRK and ROK over sea borders, which has led to
frequent naval clashes. Only four months earlier, a naval battle between the two
sides in the area left several North Korean sailors dead. In May, South Korea
announced it would stop almost all trade with North Korea, and that it would
conduct joint US-ROK naval exercise in response to the sinking. North Korea
presented its own list of punitive measures, which included cutting off all ties
with the South – except the operation of the Kaesong Industrial Complex – and it
threatened to attack any South Korean vessel crossing the Military Demarcation
Line, which was declared as a sea border by Pyongyang in 1999. Another grave
incident occurred in November in the disputed Yellow Sea zone. Following live-
fire exercise by South Korean forces, North Korean artillery opened fire on
military and civilian targets on Yŏngp’yŏng Island (located 12 km off the North
Korean coast), killing four South Koreans. The ROK army retaliated by firing on
North Korean military positions. In response to the DPRK’s provocation, ROK
and US conducted previously scheduled but expanded joint naval exercises in the
Yellow Sea while the South Korean army reinforced the defense of Yŏngp’yŏng
Island.
Inter-Korean relations hit a new low point after North Korea successfully
launched an Unha-3 rocket into space on 12 December 2012. It was a
breakthrough in the DPRK’s ballistic missile program, as it demonstrated the
capability of sending vehicles roughly 10,000 km, although it had not reached the
capability to build miniature warheads for mounting on a missile. Consequently,
the UN Security Council Resolution 2087 condemned the launch on 22 January
2013. The DPRK escalated the rhetoric and declared that it would continue the
missile tests and the development of its nuclear program; it even threatened the
US with launching long-range missiles. On 12 February, North Korea conducted a
third nuclear test and declared that it would end the Armistice Agreement on 13
March. At that time, the United States and South Korea conducted the joint
military exercise Foal Eagle, which involved B-52 bombers from an American air
base in Guam and B-2A stealth bombers (which flew directly from Missouri to
the Korean Peninsula) as an affirmation of the “nuclear umbrella” over South
Korea. The war of words reached unprecedented levels, as North Korea declared
a “state of war” against the South on 30 March. North Korea’s saber-rattling,
albeit not unusual, can be partially explained by the recent power succession to
Kim Jong Un (Kim Chŏng-ŭn) – the youngest son of Kim Jong Il. There was little
time to prepare for the transition after Kim Jong Il died on 17 December 2011, and
the young Kim had to quickly assert his leadership. According to such
interpretation of North Korea’s militant attitude, Kim Jong Un needed to
demonstrate that he could stand up to the DPRK’s enemies in order to enhance
his credentials as the new Supreme Leader, particularly among the military – a
key for power succession. North Korea announced that it would restart its
nuclear reactor in Yŏngbyŏn and closed entry to the Kaesong Industrial Complex
– the last functional project of the inter-Korean cooperation. In August, the two
sides agreed to reopen the complex, which signaled the end of the crisis.
The crisis was a test for the new South Korean President Park Gun Hye (Pak
Kŭn-hye). The daughter of late President Park Chung Hee, the new president
formulated her own approach to North Korea – “trustpolitik,” which aimed to
resume dialogue with North Korea. South Korea made a commitment to restore
aid and cultural exchanges with the North in return for a better rapport with
Pyongyang – a compromise between the “sunshine” approach and a hardline
policy. The fact that Park visited Pyongyang and met Kim Jong Il in May 2002 as
chairwoman of the Korea-Europe Foundation helped to facilitate her
communication with the North Korean leadership. For his part, Kim Jong Un – a
third -generation leader from the Kim family – sent a positive signal to the South
during his 2014 New Year address in which he called for establishing a “favorable
climate” for improving relations between the North and the South and for unity
the of all Koreans, who “should open a new phase for independent reunification,
peace and prosperity this year.”13 It seemed that the DPRK was ready to start a
more positive phase in inter-Korean relations. Only time will tell how far the two
Korean leaders might go in promoting linkages and cooperation across the DMZ.
After almost seven decades of separation and extremely divergent historical
trajectories, the two Koreas continue to polarize and distance themselves from
each other, making the possibility of reunification increasingly daunting.
Notwithstanding, there are some key factors that make for achieving
reconciliation possible. The first condition is to end the Korean War, which
means the replacement of the armistice agreement with a peace treaty. The
peninsular Cold War architecture is the root cause for a continued division, so
until it is dismantled, the inter-Korean antagonism will continue to persist. The
peace process entails steps toward denuclearization of North Korea and military
de-escalation, as well as the recognition of the DPRK by the United States and
Japan. Some argue that a “grand bargain” – including denuclearization,
recognition and economic aid to North Korea – was perhaps the most effective
formula for achieving permanent peace, but at the current moment the prospects
of such an equation are still dim. DPRK’s determination not to give up its nuclear
arsenal – which is perceived by the regime as its last stand against the hostile
world surrounding the country – is an obstacle for reaching such an agreement
and, more importantly, for implementing it. In recent years, North Korea has
more vigorously expanded its nuclear program and has conducted a space launch,
which has enhanced its bargaining position and has also increased the security
risks on the peninsula. One possible way to deal with the nuclear problem has
been offered by Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University professor and the former
director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Hecker put forth a formula of
“three No’s”: no more bombs (meaning no plutonium and highly enriched
uranium); no better bombs (including testing and missile launches); and no
exports.14 Even if North Korea agreed to this, it would still be a difficult
proposition for domestic political reasons, as Washington and Seoul would hardly
accept a solution which would fall short of complete denuclearization. Clearly, no
solution can be found without some flexibility and compromise from all sides.
Major players in the East Asian region are interested in peace, but they are
even more concerned with preserving stability, which is associated with the
status quo or a divided Korean Peninsula. Reunification of Korea is not exactly
against the interests of China, Japan, and the United States, but it is not their
priority either. Without a Helsinki-type process of collective regional security and
cooperation, permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula will continue to remain
out of reach. The participants in the Six-Party Talks, for example, could
constitute such a regional security mechanism. On several occasions, the two
Koreas have reached different degrees of rapprochement and a common
understanding that they should pursue reunification independently, but the
historical context of division is also inseparable from external factors. Similarly,
peace and reconciliation are closely connected to foreign powers, starting from
the conclusion of peace treaty.
The two Koreas have premised reunification on the concept that it should be
achieved on each state’s terms. This means that one of the two should prevail and
the other would have to disappear, hence the irreconcilable inter-Korean
antagonism. The race for superiority has defined inter-Korean relations since the
inception of the two Korean polities. Despite the huge economic gap (North
Korea is three percent of the South Korean economy), South Korea has not been
able to “win” the peninsular Cold War. For all practical purposes, the two Koreas
have developed mutual deterrents as insurance policies and the zero-sum game
cannot achieve significant progress toward reunification in the foreseeable future.
Thus, mutual recognition of the two Koreas is another important condition for
reconciliation and the reunification process. DPRK’s Marxist vision of revolution
in the South further deepened the conflict between the two Koreas in the global
Cold War era. Expectations of North Korea’s collapse by ROK and its allies have
also led to missed chances for reaching a comprehensive peace regime and a
durable reconciliation between the North and the South. Isolation and
impoverishment have pushed North Korea further toward militarization and
bellicose rhetoric and provocative behavior. Recognizing the fact of the division is
important step toward overcoming it.
Another key factor for the reunification process is its prioritization by the two
Korean states. Their pledged commitment to unity has been backed by
statements, unmatched by consistent and comprehensive policies. On the
contrary, there are interests and forces in both the DPRK and the ROK, which are
either afraid or directly opposed to unification. One example is the North Korean
political and military elite, who are doomed if unification is achieved through
absorption by the South. Further, concerns of prohibitively high unification costs
(some estimates reach one trillion USD) and insecurity on the Korean peninsula
discourage South Korean policy makers and the public to support reunification, at
least in the short-run.
The two Koreas have followed diverging paths, so the historical trend is to
make the division permanent. Shifting the centrifugal dynamics on the Korean
peninsula will require profound changes, both internally and externally. Bridging
economic and social gaps between the two sides is an extremely difficult task,
although the economy seems the most promising sphere for promoting inter-
Korean exchanges and cooperation. An even bigger challenge to reunification is
the emergence of separate Korean nations with distinct identities and values.
Korea has been moving from “two states – one minjok (nation)” towards a “two
states – two nations” reality.
The history of Korean division and prospects of unification would be further
illuminated by studying the issue of nation formation in the long-term partition
of Korea. Inter-Korean relations could be examined from anthropological,
cultural, social and psychological perspectives, outlining the connecting and
disconnecting points between the two Koreas. Study of North Korean migration
to the South, for example, can provide revealing intersecting points between the
two Koreas on the humanitarian level. The scholarship of inter-Korean relations
needs more research in various fields, such as economics, politics, security,
diplomacy and culture, which includes also the link between domestic policies
and the approach of the two Korean states toward each other.

Notes
1 Interestingly, this was not the first time Korea had been divided by foreign powers in modern history. A
secret clause of the Yamagata-Lobanov agreement in 1896 stipulated the division of Russian and Japanese
spheres of influence in Korea along the 39th parallel, even though the agreement was related only to the
movement of limited number of troops from both sides and did not lead to the actual partition of the
country.

2 Interview with former North Korean resident Sofia, May 2013.

3 Archive of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (CFMA) 106–00581–03, Report from the Chinese embassy
in the DPRK, Minutes of Conversation between Kim Il Sung and Qiao Xiaoguang, Re: the Military
Rebellion in South Korea, 16 May 1961: 19–20; 106–00581–06, Memorandum from the Chinese embassy
in the DPRK, Meeting of Central Standing Committee of Korean Worker’s Party on 18 May 1961, 21
May, 1961:32–33.

4 Romanian Central Historical Archive (ANIC), File no. 43/1971, Report from the Romanian embassy in the
DPRK, Minutes of Conversation on the Occasion of Party and Government Delegation on behalf of the
Romanian Socialist Republic to the DPRK, Pyongyang, 10 June 1971. North Korea International
Documentation Project (NKIDP), Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars.

5 Kim Il Sung articulated his five-point peace treaty proposal at the 2nd session of the Fifth SPA in April
1972: 1) suspension of the increase of armed forces and arms race; 2) withdrawal of all foreign troops,
including those of the US; 3) reduction of the armed forces of the North and the South to under 100,000
troops and under, and sharp arms reduction; 4) termination of import of all kinds of weapon, tactical
equipment and materials; 5) signing a peace treaty which will solve the aforementioned issues and
guarantee that the North and the South will not use force against each other. Archive of the Bulgarian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AMVRB), opis 31, delo 116, 1882, Report from the Bulgarian embassy in the
 DPRK, Second Session of the Fifth Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK and the issues addressed by
Kim Il Sung, ambassador Yanko Georgiev, Pyongyang, 10 July 1973, 50.

6 Political Archive of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (PA AA MfAA), C 951/76, Report from the
embassy of the GDR in the DPRK, Information provided by DPRK Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yŏng-
taek to ambassadors of East European countries on 3 July 1972, Pyongyang, 4 July 1972, NKIDP.

7 AMVRB, opis 29, Delo 69, 1609, Minutes of Conversation between Kim Il Sung and Todor Zhivkov, held
on 25 October 1973: 133–135.

8 Yafeng Xia and Zhihua Shen, “China’s Last Ally: Beijing’s Policy Toward North Korea during the U.S.-
China Rapprochement, 1970–1975,” Diplomatic History (2013): 26.

9 Recent reports dispute the North Korean involvement in the assassination plot, as the Japanese
investigations failed to confirm Mun’s alleged links to the DPRK or the Ch’ongryŏnhaphoe in Japan.

10 Sergei Radchenko, “North Korea and the End of the Cold War,” paper at international conference “China-
DPRK Relations during the Cold War,” Shanghai, October 14–15, 2011.

11 The IAEA introduced special inspections to assess suspicious undeclared facilities, after it was established
in 1991 that Iraq had a clandestine nuclear program in secret sites close to those inspected by the
international agency of undeclared nuclear waste sites.

12 Leonid Petrov, “The Politics of Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation, 1998–2009,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal: Japan Focus, http://www.japanfocus.org/site/make_pdf/3190, accessed August 5, 2014.

13 Nodong sinmun, New Years’ Address, January 1, 2014.

14 Siegfried Hecker, “North Korea Reactor Restart Sets Back the Denuclearization,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, October 17, 2013, http://thebulletin.org/north-korea-reactor-restart-sets-back-denuclearization,
accessed August 3, 2014.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold type refer to figures. Page numbers in italic type
refer to tables.

1884 (Kapsin) Coup 36, 130

7.1 Measures 254
Acheson, Dean 186, 189, 190
Agricultural-Industrial Bank 91
Agriculture: in Chosŏn 20, 21, 22, 84, 88; colonial period 131–133; North Korea 222–223, 235, 252, 253see also
famine; South Korea 328
An Ch’ang-ho 72
An Chung-gŭn 36, 158
An Kil 205
Andong Kim 17, 44
April Revolution 305, 318, 361
Appenzeller, Henry 70
Arduous March 206, 251, 381
Asian Financial Crisis 291, 292, 293, 343, 345–347, 350, 363
Asian NICs 277, 296, 309
Assimilation, Japanese policies of 112–121
August Plenum 215
Auto Transport Union 284, 288

Bonesteel, Charles 173, 184

Britain 30, 32, 34, 172, 284
Buddhism 64, 65, 66, 74, 96, 98, 148, 159

Capitalism: Colonial period 126, 128, 162; Confucian capitalism 296; in early modern Korea 53, 54; emergence
 in modern Korea 71, 81, 87
Cairo Declaration 172, 177
Catholicism, see Christianity
Ch’a Ch’i-ch’ŏl 322
chaebŏls 291, 296, 298–307 passim, 323, 329, 343–352 passim
Chang In-hwan 158
Chemical Unions 285–287
Cheju Rebellion 185
Chiang Kai-shek 184
Chang Myŏn 318–319
Ch’anggŭk 133
children in North Korea
China: aid to North Korea 222, 229; colonial period 163; relations with Chosŏn 1, 4, 18–19, 27–37, 46, 82, 83,
92, 100, 154–156 ; relations with North Korea 208, 214–216, 224, 235, 241, 251, 377; role in Korean War 177,
183, 186–191
Chinese Communist Party 184, 207, 215
Chinese People’s Volunteers 188
Chinju Rebellion 20, 45
Chipkangso 100–101
Cho Man-sik 165, 174, 202
Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik 200
Ch’oe Che-u 48, 68, 74, 76, 95–98, 104, 105
Ch’oe Kwang 208
Ch’oe Kyu-ha 322
Ch’oe Rin 118, 119
Ch’oe Si-hyŏng 68, 74, 76, 96–98, 100–102
Ch’oe Ik-hyŏn 29
Ch’oe Nam-sŏn 2, 118, 119, 162, 164
Ch’oe Yong-gŏn 204, 205
Ch’ŏlchong, 17, 44
Ch’ŏlla 95, 97, 99
Ch’ŏllima movement 215, 226
Chŏn Myŏng-un 158
Chŏn Pong-jun 68, 98–121
Ch’ŏndogyo 58, 74, 76, 105, 159, 162
Chŏng Yag-yong 17, 18
Chŏngjo 16, 17, 18, 19
Chŏnju 97
Ch’ongryŏn 230, 231
Chosin Reservoir 189
Chosŏn: Economy 21–22, 81–93; Reform movements 43, 46–58; state and politics 15–21, 27–37, 44–46;
historiography of 3–4, 52–59
Christianity: Chosŏn period 63, 66, 70, 71–73, 131; colonial period 131, 148, 159, 160, 162; persecution of
17–18, 28, 66; in South Korea 365, 366
Chu Yong-ha 200, 203
Chun Doo Hwan (Chŏn Tu-hwan) 55, 322, 323, 324, 375, 376
Ch’ungch’ŏng 95, 97, 102
chungin 3
Chŭngsang-gyo 76
Cinema: colonial period 133; in North Korea 375
Cold War 183, 262, 358–360
colonial modernity 124–138, 158
comfort women 116, 165, 178, 270, 336
COMECON 154, 225
communism 161, 163, 184, 268, 305
concubinage 143, 268
Confucian ethics 18, 19, 21
Confucianism 20, 22, 48, 51, 64–68, 96, 98, 154
Crony capitalism 346
Cuban Missile Crisis 215
Culture policy (bunka seiji) 113–115, 141, 161
Cultural Revolution 191, 216, 218, 268
culture nationalism 161, 162, 359

Daegu (Taegu) 288, 306

Daewoo 299
Dai-ichi Bank 91
Daoism (Taaosim) 64, 66, 96, 98
Darwinism 51, 56, 124, 155
Deliberative Council 48
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 192, 368, 370, 372, 375
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 186see also North Korea
de-Stalinzation 214
developmental state 309, 343, 353
division of Korea 171–178, 185, 262, 369–370
divorce in North Korea 264
domestic sphere 136, 142

East Asian Tigers see Asian NICs

“eastern ways, western means” 88
“economic miracle” 295–309
education: colonial period 113, 114, 115, 143–144; women’s education 143–144, 330–331; in South Korea 360,
361
Education Act of 1911 113
Enlightenment (Kaehwa) Movement 53–54, 124, 130, 142, 155
Enlightenment party see Enlightenment Movement
equal emphasis policy 216
Equal Opportunity Act 332

factory girl 147

familism 266, 267
family: in North Korea 266–268; in South Korea 331–332
“family head” (hoju) system 335
Family law: colonial period 148, 149; in South Korea 333, 335
Family planning 331–332
famine in North Korea 234–243, 251–252; famine deaths controversy 239–240; origins 235–236
farmers 131–133, 199, 203, 223, 227, 305, 337, 361
Five-Year Plans in North Korea 215
France 29, 30, 34
Fourteen Article Oath 73
Fukuzawa Yukichi 47, 130, 155
Gangnam-style 357
gender see women
Gender Equality Law (North Korea) 263, 264
General Sherman 29, 30, 45
Germany 33, 34, 364, 368
“global Korea” 357–366
Great Han (Taehan) Empire 35, 51, 57, 130
“guerilla state” 7

Hangyŏng 202
Han’gŭl 50, 125, 154, 157
Hara Takashi 120
Hideyoshi see Imjin War
Hong Chae-hak 29
homogeneity 4, 127, 361, 365, 366
Hong Kyŏngnae (see also Kyŏngnae Rebellion) 20, 44
Hong Yŏng-sik 130
Hong Zhunxian 30, 46
Hŏnjong 17
Hulbert, Homer 73
human rights 246, 321, 336
Hwang Jang Yop (Hwang Chang-yŏp) 218, 239, 382
Hwang Woo-suk (Hwang U-sŏk) 364
Hwanghae 102
hyangyak 133
Hyegyŏng, Lady 16
Hyŏn Yŏng-sŏp 118, 119
Hyundai 362

Ilchinhoe 58, 157, 165

Im Kwan-t’aek 185
Imjin War (Waeran) 154
Imo Soliders’ Mutiny 83
imperialism 15, 27–37 passim
Inch’ŏn 30, 32, 35, 85, 87
independence, loss of 36–37
Independence Club 35, 49–50, 56, 57, 104, 157
International Monetary Fund (IMF) see Asian Financial Crisis
Itō, Hirobumi 36, 158

Japan: Annexation of Korea 83, 84, 91; Assimilation policy 111–121, 158; Japanese colonialism; colonial rule
111–121, 125–138, 158–165; Korean relations with Chosŏn 27–28, 30, 33–37, 45, 50–51, 86–93, 100, 173;
Relations with South Korea 361
Jeon Taeil (Chŏn T’ae-il) 300
Juche (chuch’e) 211–219, 225, 235, 359, 372

Kabo Reforms 34, 48–49, 55, 56, 73, 81, 86–89, 92, 130
Kaechu 87
Kaesŏng Industrial Complex 381
Kaesŏng merchants 22
Kang Man-gil 3, 55, 56
Kang Yang-uk 203
Kanghwa, Treaty of 15, 29, 45, 63, 67, 83, 154
Kangwŏn 102
Kapsin Coup (Coup of 1884) 28, 55, 86, 156
Kennan, George 183, 189
Khrushchev 212, 225
Kim Chae 203
Kim Chae-gyu 322
Kim Ch’aek 205
Kim Chong’t’ae 372
Kim Dae Jung (Kim Tae-jung) 317, 324, 344, 346–349, 359, 363, 364
Kim Hong-jip 46, 55
Kim Hwal-lan 118
Kim Jong Il: 246–259 passim, 268, 370, 382; early career 247–248; leader of North Korea 222–226, 228–229;
personality 248–249; successor to Kim Il Sung 209, 218, 228
Kim Jong Suk (Kim Chŏng-suk) 268
Kim Jong Un 209, 246, 285
Kim Il Sung: early career 163, 174, 177, 198; foreign policy 370–379 passim; political thought 211–219, 268;
role in establishing North Korean state, 177, 98, 197–201; role in Korean War 183, 185, 188, 189
Kim Kae-nam 101
Kim Ku 163, 165, 171–172, 174, 177, 211
Kim Kyu-sik 174
Kim Ok-kyun 47, 130
Kim Song-hwan 187
Kim Sŏng-su 174, 185
Kim Tu-bong 200, 201, 203
Kim Ung 205
Kim Wŏn-ju 141
Kim Yŏng-ju 34
Kim Yŏn-su 185
Kim Yong-bŏm 199
Kim Young Sam (Kim Yŏng-sam) 322, 324, 379
Kim You-na (Kim Yu-na) 364
Kim Yun-sik 47, 55
Kimilsungism see juche
kisaeng 133, 134, 135, 145, 329
Kojong 17, 27, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 45, 57, 67, 73, 99, 142, 154, 156, 159
Kŏmun-do 32, 33
Korea, historians of 2–9
Korean Democratic Women’s Union 262
Korean Federation of Trade Unions (KFTU) 285
Korean (North) People’s Army: establishment of 205–206; role in Korean War 186, 187, 188
Korean Provisional Government (Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea) 160, 171, 172, 184
Korean War: conflict 186–191; destruction in North Korea 222, 267; historiography of 6–7, 180–183; impact of
265, 357–359, 370; origins 183–186; outcome 175, 191–192
“Korean Wave” 1, 337
Korean Workers’ Party: founding 14, 198–202, 212
Koryŏ 16, 64, 153
Kwangmu Emperor 37, 57, 156
Kwangmu Reforms 81
Kwangju (Gwangju) Massacre 54, 305, 322
Kwŏn Kŭn 18
Kŭnuhoe 148
Kyŏngnae Rebellion 66
Kyŏngsang 99

Labour: Colonial period 116, 146–148; North Korea 226, 227, 267; South Korea 277–293, 300, 305, 307, 348–349;
Women in labour force 146–148, 267, 329–330, 333, 352
Lady Hyegyŏng 16
land reform 203, 262
Law to Eradicate Remnants of Feudal Practice 264
Leaders Program 317
Lee Myung-bak (Yi Myŏng-bak) 344, 351
LG 302, 362
Li Hongzhang 30
liberation (from Japan)
Literature: colonial period 125, 128–129, 133, 134, 136, 161;
Low-Rodgers Expedition 29

Maitreya 66
March First Movement 103, 105, 113, 14, 115, 141, 159–160, 172, 184
Manchuria 91, 119, 158, 163, 186
Manchurian Incident 164
Mao Zedong 186, 188, 218, 229
Marriage: Chosŏn period 263; colonial period 115, 144; in North Korea 263–266; in South Korea 328, 331, 337
markets, in North Korea 228, 271
Marxism see communism
McArthur, Douglas 188, 189
Meiji Reforms 46, 47, 49, 89
Meiji Restoration 30, 93, 101, 113
Merchants: Chosŏn 22, 32, 82, 91; Merchant guilds 85
Methodist Church see Christianity
“military first” policy 218, 381
“military rule” (budan seiji) under Japanese 113
minjok (folk, nation) 137
minjung 52, 104, 105, 128, 131, 323, 361
missionaries 33, 70–73, 75, 98, 129, 131, 159, 160, 365
Miura Gorō 34, 49
Mizuno Rentarō 114
Modern boy 136, 137, 149
Modern girl 136, 144, 149
modernization 3, 155, 157, 158, 161, 333, 337see also colonial modernity
Moffet, Samuel 75
Mokp’o 35, 93, 131
Mongol Invasions 154
monolithic ideological system 217
Moscow Conference 175
Mu Chŏng 205
Muccio, John 186
music 133, 135
Musillan Rebellion 20

Na Hye-sŏk 149
Name Order of 1940 116–117
Namin 49, 74
Nampo 225
Nationalism: Chosŏn 154–158; Colonial period 158–166; premodern Korea 153–154; in North Korea 361–362;
in South Korea 358–359, 361
nationalist history 364
Neo-Confucianism see Confucianism
neoliberalism 9, 349, 352
Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights 242
New Woman (sinyōja) 125, 128, 141, 144–145, 149
newspapers 50, 51, 88, 117, 156
NGOs 239, 242, 381–382
Nine-27 camps 242
nobi 22
Nordpolitik 364, 376
North Korea: constitution 218; economy 215, 216, 217, 221–223, 234–243 passim; 253–255; economic
 stagnation 223–231, 253, 246; ideology 246, 247, 257–258; image of 1; foreign policy 212–216, 249–250, 257,
258; historiography of 7–8; human rights 234, 242, 257, 258; military 224, 242, 252, 256, 259; origins of
197–209; relations with South Korea 216, 368–386 passim; role in Korean War 186–191; society 262–272
North Korea Branch Bureau 199, 201
North Korean People’s Committee 202–204, 2009
Northeast Anti-Japanese Army 184
Northern Assembly 100, 102
Northern Learning 47, 54
nuclear weapons 246, 249–251, 378–379
Nuclear No-Proliferation Treaty 378, 379

O Ki-sŏp 199
Ŏ Yun-jung 47
OECD (Organization of Cooperation and Development) 307, 366
Open Port Period 82, 84, 87, 93
Oppert, Ernst 29, 45
Oriental Development Company 91
Orientalism 5

Pacific War 145

Paek Nam-un 2, 211
Pak Ch’ang-ok 224
Pak Che-ga (Chega) 17, 54
Pak Chi-wŏn (Chiwŏn) 17
Pak Hŏn-yŏng 201, 207
Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl 217
Pak Kyu-su 29, 30, 46
Pak Ŭn-sik 2, 51, 159
Pan-Asianism 119, 155
P’anmunjŏm 189, 190
p’ansori 133, 134, 135
Park Chung Hee (Pak Chŏng-hŭi) 229, 300, 319–321, 329, 344, 352, 359, 361, 371–375 passim
Park Geun-hye (Pak Kŭn-hye) 344, 352
ParK, Tongsun (Pak Tong-sŏn) 360
Patriotic Enlightenment Movement 49–51, 53, 56
patriarchy 266, 268, 300, 332–336
partrilineality 148
peasants 3, 44, 45, 86, 87, 95, 132–133,
peddlars’ guild
POW issue 187, 189–191
Presbyterian Church see Christianity
Privy Council 50
Program to Increase Rice Production 132
Protectorate 36, 51, 71, 157
Public distribution system (PDS) 227–228, 242, 253
Pueblo Incident 372
Pusan 35, 83, 87, 89, 91, 132, 188, 288, 322
Pusan Perimeter 188
P’ungyang Cho 17, 44
P’yŏngan 202, 205
Pyongyang (P’yŏngyang) 35, 86, 88, 225
P’yŏngyang Revival 71, 74, 76

Queen Min 34, 156

Qing see China

railroads 90, 91, 131

Rangoon Incident 376
rationing see public distribution system
reform movements in late Chosŏn 46–58
refugees from North Korea 235, 382
religion: Chosŏn 62–76, 97, 98; colonial period 116; see also Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Tonghak
Republic of South Korea see South Korea
Residency-General 36, 51
Rhee, Syngman (Yi Sŭng-man) 160, 163, 174, 183, 184, 187, 189, 303, 315–316, 361, 370
rice exports 86, 87, 92, 131
Roh Moo-hyun (No Mu-hyŏn) 344, 375, 382
Roh Tae Woo (N T’ae-u) 376, 377
Romenenko, Andrey 207
Roosevelt, Franklin 177, 184
Rural Revitalization Program 133
Rusk, Dean 173, 177, 185
Russia: relations with Chosŏn Korea 30, 33–36, 50–51, 173
Russo-Japanese War 36, 51, 84, 90, 157

sadae (serve the great) 214

Saemaŭl Undong (New Village Movement) 328
Saitō, Makoto 113
Samguk Yusa 154
Samsung 299, 302, 306, 362, 363
Sangje 68
Scranton, Mary Mary
sedo chŏngch’I (dominance of consort clan)
Seikanron 30
Sejong, King 16
“self-reliance” 212see also juche
Self-strengthening 46, 48, 88, 90, 92, 105, 130
Seoul 1, 6, 32, 87, 136, 145, 187, 318
Seoul Olympics 360
Seven-Year Plan 217
sexuality in North Korea 268–271
Shamanism 64, 65, 66
Shanghai Incident 163
Shinto 116, 118, 164
Shirak (Silhak, Sirhak) (Practical Learning) 29, 54
Shufeldt, Robert 30, 33
Silla 153
Sin Chae-ho 2, 51, 159, 211
Sin Kyu-sik 159
Sin’ganhoe 161
Sino-Japanese War 35, 84, 95, 100, 142, 156
Sino-Soviet split 216, 225
slavery 49
sexual slavery 147, 178see also comfort women
Sŏ Chae-p’il 49, 72, 130
Sŏ Chang-ok 101
social Darwinism 56, 112, 149, 155
Socialism 162see also communism
Son Ki-jŏng 118
Son Pyŏng-hŭi 74, 102
Song Chin-u 174, 185
sŏngbun 242, 243, 255
sŏwŏn (academy) 19
South Korea: Democratization 314–325; economy 277–298 passim, 295–308, 343–353, 373; foreign policy
361–363370–383 passim see also United States; historiography of 8–9; image of politics 324–325, 357–266
passim, 370–385 passim; relations with North Korea 250, 370–384 passim
South Korean Workers’ Party 201
Southern Assembly 100, 101, 102
Soviet Union: colonial period 161, 163; aid to North Korea 212, 215, 216, 229, 235, 246; occupation of Korea
176, 197–199, 207–208; relations with North Korea 212–216, 249–251; role in division of Korea 172–177;
role in Korean War 186–191
“speed battles” 226
Stalin 176, 183, 188, 192, 207, 212
Stevens, Durham 158
suffrage movement in Colonial Korea 115
Sunjo 17
Sunjong 36, 158
Sunshine Policy 380–382
Supreme People’s Assembly 175, 217, 239, 247, 357
Suryŏng (leader) 217

Taegu see Daegu

Taewŏn’gun 17, 29, 30, 45, 47, 82, 99
Takaki, Kudō 146
Takashi, Hara 113, 120
Tan’gun 162
Temple Ordinance 74, 76
theater 133–134
Three Revolutions Team Movement 247
Tianjin, Connvention 30
Third World 177, 373
Thirty-eight parallel 173, 175, 177, 183, 189
Tongbaekchŏn 82
Tonghak 48, 58, 68–70, 76, 95–98, 130, 156
Tonghak Rebellion 36, 48, 55, 56, 69, 76, 86, 95–106, 130, 156
Tongnae 22
T’ongni Kimu Amun 46
trade unions see labour
Treaty of Amity 31
tributary system 4
Truman, President 181, 187, 188

ŭibyōng (righteous armies) 158

Ǔiju 91
Underwood, Horace 70, 78
United Nations 165, 174, 181–182, 186, 187, 234, 236, 315, 370
UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korean Human Rights 234
UN Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTOCK) 174, 369
UN Trusteeship 174, 176
United States: aid to South Korea 316–318; Influence on South Korea 314–323 passim; occupation of Korea
185, 234; relations with Chosŏn Korea 29–32, 36, 45, 83; relations with North Korea 375–378–380, 382; role
in division of Korea 171–178; role in Korean War 186–191
U.S.-USSR Joint Commission 174, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207
Ǔnsan 35

Western imperialism 28
“Western Learning” 29
Wilson, President 159, 184
“wise mother, good wife” 129, 142, 143, 145, 149
Women: colonial period 116, 128, 136, 141–149; in North Korea 262–272; in South Korea 326–338; in South
 Korean labour force 327–329; women and modernity 128
Wŏnsan 87
World Food Program 234, 241
World War II 111, 120, 171, 176

Yalu River 189

yangban 19, 27, 44, 67, 99, 129, 130, 183
Yŏngjo 16
Yi dynasty see Chosŏn
Yi Chae-myŏng 158
Yi Chong-song 205
Yi Hang-no 29
Yi Hu-rak 374
Yi Hyŏn-san 65
Yi Ki-baek 3, 52
Yi Kwang-su 125, 136, 161, 164
Yi Man-sŏn 29
Yi Pong-chong 163
Yi Pyŏng-do 2
Yi Seung-hun 76
Yi Sŭng-hun 66, 72, 76
Yi Sŭng-man see Rhee, Syngman
Yi Wan-yong 158
Yi Yong-gu 74
Yi Yōng-su 118
Yi Yŏng-sun 118, 119
YMCA 71, 72
Yŏ Un-hyŏng 174, 211
Yŏhŭng Min 44
Yŏngbyŏn 249, 250, 378
Yŏngjo 16, 17
Yŏsu Rebellion 185
Yu Kil-chun 55, 130
Yu Kwan-sun 160
Yu Tŭk-kong 17
Yuan Shikai, 32, 48
Yun Ch’i-ho 49, 72, 118
Yun Pong-gil 163
Yusin (Yushin) 319, 322, 372

Zainichi 120, 121