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The present study aims to compare the cinematic propaganda of colonial Korea and Nazi Germany, revealing how the two countries used film to construct narratives of nationalism. Furthermore, this study will aid our recognition and understanding of the similarities and differences between victims and aggressors in spreading nationalist propaganda. Despite the similarities between the colonial Korean and Nazi German film industries in spreading nationalist propaganda, there are significant differences between these two countries' ways of promoting national values: the colonial Koreans adopted transcolonial nationhood (i.e. the strategy of integrating nations), whereas the Nazis excluded minorities, such as Jews. Therefore, dichotomous evaluations of the victim and the aggressor are inconsistent with existing standard interpretations. Colonial Korea, generally known as having experienced the trauma of colonization, also engaged in cinematic fabrication and the weaponization of history, as Nazi Germany did. Propaganda films in both colonial Korea and Nazi Germany played a significant role in reconstructing their national identities. Regarding the cinematic reinvention of these national identities, we should eschew the artificial dichotomy between victims and aggressors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The moon jar is a large-size spherical porcelain vessel, first manufactured in eighteenth-century Korea. Originally used as a storage jar, the moon jar is now a frequently used symbol of Korean history and culture, appearing in various contexts within and outside Korea. I explore how it became a primary icon of Korean identity and analyze the converging factors that have shaped its significance and meanings. The continuous fascination with moon jars mirrors the ongoing search for a definition of Korean national identity, which began when Korea was occupied by Japan in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study approaches postcolonial cultural representation in South Korea and Japan, using the psychoanalytic concepts of mourning and melancholia. By exploring the cases of two famous comic series, one South Korean and the other Japanese – Nambul and Zipang – this essay delves into the triadic structure of non-western colonialism, which has affected popular memory, interpretation, and the representation of colonial history in Korean and Japanese societies. Both the series are alike in that they deal with imaginary war stories, (re)construct alternative history, and present nationalist revisions of historical experiences. Moreover, their view of colonial history involves mourning and melancholia, specific response and reaction toward loss. Their melancholic despair and the mourning practices of the imaginary revision of history in both Nambul and Zipang lead us to focus on the triadic structure of non-western colonialism in Northeast Asia. By introducing the idea of a triadic colonial structure forged between Japan, Korea, and the West, this essay highlights and explain the differences in the sentiments of postcolonial representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This excerpt, written in 1920 by a then seventeen-year-old girl, Yu Kwansun, while imprisoned at Seodaemun Prison, is a powerful expression of Korean national resistance against Japanese colonialism. As a student at Ehwa Haktang in Seoul, Korea, she joined other protesters on March 1, 1919, shouting "Mansei!" ("Long live Korean independence!"), which became the first nationwide protest movement against Japanese rule. After being convicted of sedition, Yu was sent to Seodaemun Prison in Seoul, where she demanded the release of other prisoners and continued to express her support for Korean independence, even organizing a large-scale protest on the first anniversary of the movement. She was transferred to an underground cell, where she was repeatedly beaten and tortured for speaking out. She reportedly wrote the excerpt above before dying of her injuries on September 28, 1920, at the age of seventeen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Japanese colonial period, Korea's reading public paid close attention to Chinese revolutions against Japanese and Western empires. Korean nationalists viewed China's revolutionary struggles as important for liberating Korea from Japan, a stance that reveals a transnational basis of Korean nationalism in the colonial era. One such nationalist was Sin Ŏnjun (1904–38), Tong'a Ilbo 's Shanghai-based correspondent, who played a critical role in conveying the momentous events in contemporary China to colonized Koreans. Drawing on Sin's example, this article shows how Sino-Korean transnationalism constituted Korea's left-wing, progressive nationalism in the 1930s. Although Sin Ŏnjun was a nationalist rather than a communist, he highlighted the communist struggles in China in his dispatches. He saw communism as the only viable way of solving China's internal and external problems, although he, at the same time, disapproved of Chinese communists' "terrorist methods." This article argues that this position also reflected his stance in favor of a broad communist-nationalist alliance in the Korean independence movement. He saw Korea's liberation agenda as closely related to the revolutionary events in China, thus accomplishing a synthesis between Korean nationalistic and social aspirations and an East Asia–wide transnational paradigm of a universal emancipatory struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Christianity was a new and small religion in Korea at the time, in 1945-48 Christian politicians and church leaders were prominent in establishing an independent South Korea as the Cold War began. Kang In-cheol and others argue that this was because Christians were prejudiced against communists and acted out of self-interest, and they hold them complicit in the subsequent Korean War. We shall argue that many Christian leaders were willing to work with communists to preserve the unity of the nation but their experience convinced them that communist aims were incompatible with religious freedom and with their own vision of a democratic nation founded on Christian principles. Our argument contributes not only to an understanding of Korean nationalism, but also to the broader literature on the roles of Christianity in democratisation. It reveals the significant influence of Christian actors at this critical juncture in Korean and world history, the impact of which is still being felt today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there were various antecedents, the academic discipline of folklore did not begin in Korea until the third decade of the twentieth century. The leading figure in the country’s development of the discipline is Son Chint’ae, who brought rigour to the methods of research and the collection of material; used a comparative method drawing on research from anthropology, ethnography, folklore, archaeology, and history; and saw ‘Korea’ in the broader context of North-east Asia. A nationalist during the Japanese colonial period, Son used the concept ofminchok(the people) both to analyse his material and to serve as a means to revitalize the Korean nation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thousands of overseas Korean adoptees return to Korea temporarily each year in search of their true origin, but few choose to stay permanently. A prominent member of this small community is Jane Jeong Trenka, author of two memoirs: The Language of Blood (2003) and Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea (2009). This article analyses Trenka's literary struggle for permanence in Fugitive Visions through theories on Korean ethnic national identity. Using Marshall McLuhan's idea of media as the 'extension of man', it explores the symbiotic relationship between literary media and identity, connecting colonial-era writings on Korean ethnic nationalism to Trenka's portrayal of transnational return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism plays a critical role in creating and reformulating collective identity and membership in a political community, notably the nation-state. Yet precisely how it does so and with what consequences for the colonial society remains unclear. Tracing the change of nationalist discourses during the Japanese colonial period in Korea, this essay examines the mechanism through which various forms of anticolonial nationalism provoked ideological schism among indigenous people. It directs particular attention to how Korean nationalist groups integrated notions of the ‘nation’ and ‘people’ into their anticolonial narratives in different ways and why they engaged in political and ideological conflicts among themselves through their interactions with the colonial state. Highlighting the fragmentation of the ‘nation’, ‘state’ and ‘people’ through the dynamics of nationalist groups and colonial power, the essay advances the argument that Japanese colonialism led to internal boundaries in Korea, thus rearticulating the meaning and people's perception of the nation and a sense of belonging. Based on this historical analysis, the essay illuminates the effect of a colonial context as a particular political field upon the formulation of nationalist frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to refute the 'incompatibility thesis' that nationalism is incompatible with transnational feminist solidarity, as it fosters exclusionary practices, xenophobia, and racism among feminists with conflicting nationalist aspirations. I examine the plausibility of the incompatibility thesis by focusing on the controversy regarding just reparation for Second World War 'comfort women,' which is still unresolved. The Korean Council at the center of this controversy, which advocates for the rights of Korean former comfort women, has been criticized for its strident nationalism and held responsible for the stalemate. Consequently, the case of comfort women has been thought to exemplify the incompatibility thesis. I argue against this common feminist perception in three ways: first, those who subscribe to the incompatibility thesis have misinterpreted facts surrounding the issue; second, the Korean Council's nationalism is a version of 'polycentric nationalism,' which avoids the problems of essentialist nationalism at the center of feminist concerns; and, third, transnational feminist solidarity is predicated on the idea of oppressed/marginalized women's epistemic privilege and enjoins that feminists respect oppressed/marginalized women's epistemic privilege. To the extent that oppressed/marginalized women's voices are expressed in nationalist terms, I argue that feminists committed to transnational feminist solidarity must accommodate their nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foundation myths by definition are politically focused tales, describing the origin of nations, states, ruling dynasties, clans, and other consanguineal groups. The myths of Tan’gun and Chumong are the oldest extant foundation myths of Korea, but only the Myth of Tan’gun has had a continuous influence on the affirmation of Korean polities and nationalism for over a thousand years. This article explores why that has been the case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines how the Yeonam group, led by Bak Ji-won (1737-1805), collected and compiled Korean literature written in classical Chinese during the mid-18th and early 19th centuries. The Yeonam group attempted to prove how well Korean intellectuals had adopted and developed Chinese culture. Korean history, culture, and literature rapidly garnered the attention of Silhak (Practical Learning) intellectuals during this era. Previous studies, which tend to reflect the perspective of modern nationalism, have understood this academic trend as an early form of Korean nationalism. However, the Yeonam group held the opinion that Korean literature written in classical Chinese served as an indicator of the writer's degree of embodying Chinese culture, which was understood by the Yeonam group as the epitome of cultural advancement. For this reason, the Yeonam group explored and compiled a series of Korean literary works written in classical Chinese, the ideal language according to the group. This paper demonstrates that the Yeonam group's interest in Korean literature written in classical Chinese stemmed from the idea that Joseon was a sophisticated dynasty endowed with Chinese civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing internet exposure of Korean media and popular culture has highlighted a phenomenon common to Korea for more than 30 years: media celebrities ‘acting black’ for public consumption, while denying accusations of racism. This paper analyses the link between media representations of Korean nationalism and celebrity blackfacing by analysing recent blog and website debates on the phenomenon and argues a direct correlation to a form of Korean nouveau-riche nationalism. It looks at public commentary – both Korean and international – produced over blackfacing acts by ‘K-Pop’ groups such asGirls' Generation,BeastandBubble Sisters, which debate reasons for the media idols' expressions of racism, ethnocentrism and attitudes towards the others, and whether these attitudes are expressed (un)knowingly, and with/without malice. Historically, Korean media has included such negative depictions of African-Americans for more than 30 years, with the depictions generally taken at face-value and as ‘normal’ comedy by Korean audiences. During the pre-internet 1980s, Korean comedians regularly performed skits with Rasta wigs and darkened faces without attracting criticism. However, increasing internet viewerships have focused critical attention on K-Pop celebrity blackfacing, particularly on its active manifestation of Korean nationalism and African-American mimicry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On the basis of my long-term ethnographic research, I discuss the social formation of race and class by delineating some characteristics of the Korean experiences of labor migration within the system of global economy Since the early 1990s, there has been an increasing tendency in many small Korean factories to use migrant laborers who can be paid lower wages than the native Korean labor force. I examine the experiences of both migrants and Koreans from three different perspectives: policy, reality, and ideology. There are three points of significance. First, I discuss how under globalized capitalism a new social structure has formed within Korea. Second, I attempt to explain why the explosion of public discourse on multiculturalism does not reduce the racism suffered by migrant laborers in everyday life. Many Koreans still hold racist attitudes toward migrant laborers and perceive them as racially inferior to themselves. Third, I examine migrant laborers' limited agency as a way of reconsidering transnational characteristics which migrant laborers employ in Korea and their motherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because South Korea's national sovereignty is a matter of cultural production, Seoul boasts an energetic programme of world-class performances that educate both foreigners and Koreans about the nation's struggle to assert its subjectivity throughout centuries of invasion, colonization and displacement. Three musicals re-present episodes from Korea's mythical past in ways that demonstrate a ‘primordial’ uniqueness of Korean global presence. The Celestial Clock addresses a Korean audience, unfolding outdoors against the backdrop of Gyeonghuigung Palace. Miso: The Original Korean Musical – Love Songs from Chunhyang, a showcase for traditional performing arts, uses pantomime and subtitles to guide an international audience through a popular legend; and Miso II: Land of the Gods stages Korean mythical history in breathtaking spectacle. The musicals, by arguing for the ‘always already’ global viability of Korean national sovereignty, also work to destabilize current ‘mythologies’ of what it means for a state to achieve ‘global’ status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of the kingdom of Parhae (Ch. Bohai, J. Bokkai, 698-926) has been studied and debated in East Asia since the early twentieth century. Despite the scarcity of textual sources, over the past few decades, sophisticated analyses of a range of aspects of Parhae politics, society, and culture have been produced by scholars writing in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian. Only very recently, however, have significant efforts- led by Korean scholars-been made to expand the history of Parhae into English language scholarship. This article serves to place these more widely accessible contributions into the context of the international and multilingual negotiation over how the history of Parhae should be understood. Readers from other disciplines who encounter this scholarship are in effect hearing only a single speaker who in practice is engaged in a lively conversation with many participants. The present study is intended to address specifically the needs of such readers, and suggests that the emphasis on "multiculturalism" in contemporary Korean society may aid Korean scholars' engagement with international audiences on the Parhae issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Korea's independence from Japan in 1945, collective memories of Japanese colonialism continue to shape South Korean national identity today. This article extends Charland's theory of constitutive rhetoric and reconsiders Billig's theory of banal nationalism to analyse key discourses of national memory in South Korea, including presidential speeches delivered on the Liberation Day of Korea (Gwangbokjeol) and exhibits at the Independence Hall (Dongnip Ginyeomgwan). This article examines how South Korean nationalistic discourses today, by fostering a sustained antagonism towards the Japanese, constitute a national identity in an inextricable relationship to the Japanese Other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 2006 to 2010, I was an activist who organised grassroots campaigns about the so-called “comfort women” in Australia. During the course of these campaigns, this issue was framed in different ways by the Asian diaspora and feminist communities who supported the cause. Beginning with the premise that the human rights activist community is not harmonious or homogenous, nor is it organically formed, I ask the question: what is the task of an activist when faced with diverse and disconnected sources of support for our shared cause? I draw on adaptations of the concept of “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983, p. 7) by Ien Ang and Chandra Talpade Mohanty to discuss this question. I conclude that an activist must not be guided by an emotive and broad sense of “justice” alone. Rather, his or her key task is to seek localised and interdisciplinary knowledge and identity from the particular location of activism in order to mediate between the different “frames of meaning” in diverse communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Baseball was introduced to Korea by American missionaries in 1905 but the sport was popularized in Korea during the Japanese Occupation (1910–1945). Baseball in Korea thus took root in relation to two colonizers: Japan and the US. To date, the popularity of baseball among Koreans can still be explained in terms of their relationships with their past colonizers. For example, given the historically constructed status of America as the ‘modern’ Other, the success of a Korean player in American Major League Baseball (MLB) may provoke euphoria, nostalgia and nationalism. Nationalism is most pronounced whenever the Korean national team meets the Japanese at an international baseball tournament; the victory is, for fans, akin to having ‘avenged’ the oppressive Japanese occupation of Korea. This paper argues that recent developments of Korean MLB fans show that the globalizing processes of baseball have fed their nationalism vis-à-vis their past colonial administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the trends of fascist and fascist-like right-wing social and political thought in colonial Korea in the early 1930s. It shows that in the 1920s, Korea's right wing, its ability to reach out to the masses being severely limited, preferred mostly conciliatory tactics in its relationship with leftist radicals, often making efforts towards inventing ‘hybrid’ ideologies which would integrate the leftist social concerns into the mainstream religious or nationalist constructions (an example of such a hybrid were various Korean versions of Christian socialism). After the Great Depression, however, Korea's nascent bourgeoisie felt more threatened and became more interested in keeping abreast with right-wing extremist trends in the mother country (Japan) and elsewhere. Such representative ideologists of the Korean propertied class as Yun Ch'iho and Yi Kwangsu were praising Mussolini and employing strong Social Darwinist language in their exhortations to the Korean people to ‘regain their vitality and develop [a] spirit of collectivism, obedience and self-sacrifice’. However, until the very end of the 1930s many of Korea's right-wing ideologues remained pronouncedly religious (Yun as Christian, Yi as Buddhist). While highlighting the religious essentials of their worldviews they often abstained from imitating the most extremist traits of European fascist ideologies (for example, anti-Semitism). In many ways, Korea's fascism continued until the end of the 1930s to be an intellectual discourse rather than a mass movement, and retained a strong aura of belonging to more mainstream religious or nationalist traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2003, the dispute over the history of the ancient kingdom of Koguryŏ (37 bce, trad.-668 ce), located in Manchuria and northern Korea, has been one of the hottest issues between China and Korea. The debate seems to have fueled a new nationalistic or Sinocentric historiography of the ancient Chinese northeast. A ninth century BCE poem called “Hanyi” in the Classic of Poetry [Shijing] has been the cause of a far older history dispute. Whereas Chinese scholars have generally understood Han as a Zhou feudal state ruled by a Ji-surnamed scion of the Zhou Dynasty (1045–256 bce), most Korean scholars have linked the polity with Old Chosŏn (n.d.-108 bce), the earliest known state in Korean history. However, by comparing the “Hanyi” with several bronze inscriptions with similar contents, this study seeks to re-read the “Hanyi” from a perspective that transcends the dichotomy of Chinese history versus Korean history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ancient history of Korea has been one of the most controversial and difficult phases to incorporate into an East Asian history survey class, not only because there are indeed quite a number of contested issues, but also because very few updated materials are available in English. This essay aims to provide a comprehensive and critical overview of research on the topic of Korean ancient history in the past six decades (mainly in South Korea), so that the ancient history of Korea can be understood first within the broader frame of East Asian history, and then in relation to the intellectual and ideological evolution which has significantly impacted historical interpretations in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article analyzes how individual and local attempts to address low fertility rates in Korea and Japan have prompted unprecedented reforms in monocultural nationality laws. Korea and Japan confront rapidly declining working-age population projections; yet, they have prohibited the immigration of unskilled workers, until recently in Korea's case, on the claim that their admission would threaten social cohesion. Over the past two decades, both countries have made only incremental reforms to their immigration policies that fall short of alleviating labor shortages and the fiscal burdens of maintaining a large elderly population. Instead, prompted by the growth of so-called multicultural families in each country, the most significant reforms have appeared in nationality laws: Korea's introduction of dual nationality in 2010 and Japan's 2008 reform to grant Japanese nationality to children born out of wedlock to a Japanese father and a foreign mother. While neither country has introduced birthright citizenship to their nationality laws, both sets of reforms target ethnically heterogeneous immigrant women, their bicultural children, or both. This Article seeks to understand how recent reforms to nationality laws in Korea and Japan have challenged long-held conceptions of blood-based belonging and membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the interdisciplinan moves made by the soda! sciences and historical studies regarding modern and contemporary Korean history. These moves began in earnest from the to analyze the dynamic development process of Korean studies. The periods analyzed as part of this study were marked by two dramatic transitions in academic trends. The first was that of the I 980s to the mid-I 990s, a period in whidi a huge epistemological transition took place in the nationalism and internal development-based paradigm of his- torical studies, as well as in the developmentalism arid modernization paradigm of social sciences. The second transition took place in the late 1 990s, in which cultural approaches to history challenged traditional methods, and new para digfns based on postmoderity postriationalism, and posteolonialism emerged. This study analyzes the academic activities and journals of two organizations tha have continuously played a major min informing the direction of modem and contemporary Korean history since the 980s, namely the Korean Social History Association and the Institute R w Korean Historical Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at how education policies in colonial Korea changed over time in order to accommodate the needs of the colonial authorities during the period of Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1910-1945). The colonial experience can be divided into four different periods according to the four Educational Ordinances issued in 1911, 1922, 1938, and 1943 by the colonial government with each period corresponding to a historic event or context. The constitutive relevance of colonial discourse for an understanding of education can be found in the gradual transformation of the education sector in Korea under colonial rule. It is evident that Japanese colonial policy was inherently contradictory in principle and in practice. On the one hand it sought the assimilation of the Koreans, while on the other it maintained its discriminatory and exploitative practices. Such contradiction was obvious within the colonial education system. As the principal instrument of assimilation, education was regarded as the primary means to subordinate the ethnic identity of the colonised and to transform them into loyal imperial subjects. An overview of the four different periods relevant to the changing circumstances to which the education sector responded reveals the social-historical implications of the instrumentality of colonial education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's and feminist film practices in South Korea are normally considered to have emerged in the mid-1990s, when class issues and nationalism no longer drew serious attention from the country's dominant intellectual discourse. This view tends to imply that women's filmmaking practices were virtually nonexistent before the 1990s. In opposition to the conventional view, this work shows that women's filmmaking with feminist intent arose in the 1970s in South Korea, contemporaneous with Western cine-feminism. It also argues that South Korean women's films have developed a unique narrative discourse in which patriarchal male-centrism sustaining class politics and nationalism is challenged and deconstructed. To illustrate these points, this study calls attention to the fact that women's filmmaking has taken place in the noncommercial independent cinema sector since the 1970s in South Korea. By examining four independent women filmmakers—Han Ok-Hee, Kim Soyoung, Byeon Yeong-Ju, and Ryu Mi-Rye—and their films, it maintains that independent women's films have made continuous efforts to subvert male-centered ideologies, seeking new positions for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heritage settings potentially play a significant role as a specific social space within which individuals are able to conceive, define, and reconstruct elements of national consciousness. This study involves an ethnographicbased examination of ways in which elements of the past are utilized to redefine and reaffirm national (cultural) identity within the context of contemporary South Korean society, where traditional norms and values are arguably influenced by globalized processes, norms, and values. It theoretically addresses and empirically substantiates the need for comprehensive and analytical insights concerning heritage and articulations of national identity, focusing on the intermediating roles of heritage tourism in establishing and facilitating the individual and contextual processes of identity reconstruction. Critical focus is placed on contextualizing ways in which South Korean nationals, particularly younger generations, encounter emotional attachments to the nation during heritage tourism experiences in Changdeokgung palace in Seoul. This study employs a range of ethnographic strategies including in-depth interviews and friendly conversations as an efficient tool to gain intimate and insightful knowledge of the specific social setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2007 South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the inter-Korean border for a summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Although adhering to the primordialist view of nationhood, this state-led border-crossing also indicates the effects of globalization. As the heavily militarized inter-Korean border is permeated by interaction between ethnic nationalism, the nation's anti-colonialist history, and the transnational forces, the image of border-crossing becomes a metaphor for a contested space of national unification. This article examines a selection of works by three contemporary South Korean playwrights who, from a post-nationalist perspective, have emerged to contest the contradictory aspects and trajectories of the past ten years of populist nationalism. Yoo Kim focuses on the ways these post-nationalist plays employ the motifs of border-crossing and borderland encounter to challenge the romantic and exclusionary narratives of the conventional nationalist theatre. Yoo Kim is an Associate Professor in English at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. His recent article, 'Mapping Utopia in the Post-Ideological Era: Lee Yun-taek's The Dummy Bride ', was published in Theatre Research International in 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the discourse of the migrant worker advocacy movement in South Korea to examine how activists' strategic framing can expedite the mobilisation of international norms despite significant cultural barriers. Korean activists argue on behalf of migrant workers that adopting international norms will help the Korean nation gain more respect from other nation-states and that international norms are not antithetical to the true nature of the Korean nation. These framing strategies have enabled Korean activists to mobilise international norms despite cultural barriers. However, such a framing strategy does not cultivate a truly inclusive nationhood; Korean activists have circumvented cultural barriers, but have not overcome or transformed them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though nationhood is typically understood to be an equalizing or horizontal concept, the phenomenon of ethnic return migration has shown that states as well as societies can draw hierarchical distinctions between persons of the same ancestry. We demonstrate two dimensions -- legal and social -- of this 'hierarchical nationhood' by analysing the South Korean policy and citizen attitudes regarding Joseonjok, or ethnic Korean Chinese citizens moving to South Korea. On the legal dimension, the Korean state defines Joseonjok as foreigners, allowing them entry mainly for low-wage jobs and excluding them from social benefits, while preferring them over other foreigners. The legal dimension of hierarchy is also institutionalized in a more favourable visa for Korean Americans that excludes Joseonjok. The social dimension of hierarchical nationhood is shown by public opinion data of Korean citizens towards Joseonjok foreign workers and data on reported experiences of discrimination. Finally, the authors show how Korea's hierarchical nationhood is shaped by economic and geopolitical goals, and describe analogous cases in Asia and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Northeast Project (NEP), also known as the "Research Project of Northeastern China," has unleashed national sentiment among many Korean people. Even if it originated in purely academic research, the NEP poses a grave political challenge to contemporary Korea. The Korean response to the NEP can be broadly categorized in two ways: The first is that while negative perceptions of these moves by the Chinese have prevailed in Korean society, the Korean government has been very cautious in expressing criticism of the NEP due to national interests with the Chinese government. The other point is that as time has progressed, a series of Korean self-reflections on the complex nature of nationalism in response to the NEP has emerged. With the analysis of these self-reflections, this paper attempts to address an inter-subjective nationalist perspective of history as a solution that recognizes "mutual recognition of national identity" in considering the prevailing reality of Northeastern Asian nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although alien rule is widely assumed to be illegitimate, nationalist resistance to it varies across time and space. This article explores why there was greater nationalist resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Korea than Taiwan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II. Resistance to alien rulers requires both a supply of participants in nationalist collective action and a demand for national self-determination. The article assesses two principal propositions: (1) that the supply of participants increases to the degree that native elites are stripped of their traditional authority and offered few incentives to collaborate; and (2) that the demand for national self-determination decreases to the degree that alien rule is fair and effective. A comparative analysis of the effects of Japanese alien rule in Taiwan and Korea suggests that nationalist resistance is greater in the earliest phases of occupation, that the greater native elites' opportunities, the weaker the resistance to alien rule; and that the fairer the governance, the weaker the resistance to alien rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Professor Gi-Wook Shin about his book "Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy" is presented. He describes the civic/ethnic dichotomy in nationalism studies. According to Shin, the use of nationalist concepts should be qualified when using them out of the Western context. He explains the competing identities in Korea.

The article offers information on the gay rights movement in democratizing South Korea. It states that the transition to democracy and the process of globalization have metamorphosed the ways in which South Korea defines its national identity. It also underscores that rising public attention and acceptance of human rights concerns have resulted in perceptible political changes in the fields of human rights, but sexual minorities are still left behind such positive developments. It also examines the problems of sexual minorities and their crusade against the military, mass media, the courts, and the educational system in this country.

This paper intends to excavate and examine the long-forgotten naturalization practices and policies of traditional Korea that existed before the advent of a single-raced nationalism, based on the transformation of Dangun from the first king into the biological ancestor of Koreans. The following three points will be made: first, the so-called ethnic nationalism that underlines the purity of Korean blood is not an integral part of Korean tradition. Traditional Korea did not consider itself to be ethnically homogeneous. In addition, it is erroneous to say that Koreans lack a historical experience of living together with foreigners. Second, ethnic homogeneity in Korean nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. Korean nationalism was based on a profound sense of cultural distinctiveness and superiority. The idea of Koreans as being the descendants of Dangun was originally introduced to emphasize the Korean political and cultural life as being old as that of China. Third, those who identify ethnic homogeneity as the main cause for prejudice and discrimination against foreigners are actually engaging the wrong enemy, because the real cause is this very sense of being civilized and culturally superior. This is why multiculturalism is so easily embraced by nationalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean Modern Art History began to be produced in the 1970s, when Western Modernist Art History, based on Formalism, was introduced as a matrix to map the 'evolution' of 20th century Korean Art. Korean modern art history is based in the same paradigm as the West, beginning with Impressionism and 'ending' with Abstract Expressionism. First introduced to the country from the West immediately after the Korean War, Korean Abstract Expressionism is now deemed as South Korea's ultimate 'progressive' and 'modern' art form, a 'Korean' painting style combining the Western art form with traditional artistic concepts of 'Scholarly Painting' (muninhwa). Japanese-influenced painting styles originating in the colonial period (1910-45) are rejected as 'non-authentic.' The problem is that Scholarly Painting was a gender and class specific art born from the rigid Confucian culture of pre-modern Korea, and thus its revival as an 'ultimate modern' and 'Korean' form has the consequence of locating traditionally-gendered notions of art and artist at the core of the South's modern art. This essay uses a Semiotic approach to deconstruct this gendered modernist rhetoric by tracing the emergence of the sign 'Koreaness' in South Korean modern art, showing how it is defined within Korean Abstract Painting as an 'ultimate Korean sign' and how its use of anti-Japanese rhetoric covers up the traumatic history of the Korean War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transnational appeal of the Korean folk song "Arirang" in the cultural and political strains of the colonial encounter between Korea and Japan. The author believes the status of the song as an emblem of Korean national identity depended on Japanese imperialism and mass culture. Koreans believe the song expressed sorrow, indignation and resistance in the face of subjugation. However, for the Japanese, the song revealed truths about the abandonment of traditional lifeways in Japan.

The article focuses on the foreign concept of the Korean culture. The Japanese concept of culture has affected those of the Koreans because they were once a colony of Japan. Intellectuals attempted to form their own cultural identity and representation by trying to oppose the idea of Japan. They also tried to reconstruct the national character so that they will realize their own values and philosophies.

The article discusses the development of Korean diasporic nationalism on following Japan's violent suppression of the 1919 March First movement in Korea. It offers information on how Korean nationalists developed a close working relationship with American missionary groups integral to nationalist appeals for Korean independence at the Korean Congress in Philadelphia. It explores how the globalization of American power following World War I heightened the significance of the Korean independence movement.

The article examines the novel titled "Ewa: A Tale of Korea," by William Arthur Noble. The novel was analyzed as an example of missionary discourse that reflects the dynamics of a contact zone where American and Korean missionaries met each other with different cultural assumptions. The investigation focused on Noble's narrative and motives in engaging to a complex discourse on civilization.

This paper points out the limitations of culturalist approaches to the PRC and the ROK and deals with factors that contribute to the legal definition of citizenship in those two counties. The understanding of political and economic interests, rather than cultural aspects, is important in explaining the changes of the definition of citizenship there. China institutionalized a state-centered national identity, while Korea constructed an ethnic-centered national identity as they became integrated into the international order as nation-states. However, both the PRC and ROK made important changes in their legal definitions of citizenship regardless of their distinct national identities in China and Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative study that examines the different responses and social affects of Protestantism in Korea and Japan between the late nineteenth century and mid-1940s. One factor is the difference in socio-political contexts concerning political instability. Another is the contrast in the efforts of the missionaries. Lastly, the dissimilarity in the religio-cultural milieu regarding religious opposition of traditional religions and Shinto-centered unity.

International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this study. The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more than 150,000 adopted Koreans dispersed among 15 main host countries on the continents of Europe, North America and Oceania. Both the demographic scope, the time span and the geographic spread are absolutely unique in a comparative historical child migratory perspective, and still over 2,000 children leave Korea annually. This massive intercontinental displacement and dispersal of Korean children was, for many years, silently taking place in the shadow of Korea's transformation from a war-torn and poverty-stricken country to a formidable economic success story in the postcolonial world. Even if the subject of international adoption and adopted Koreans turned up now and then in the political debate throughout the years, it was not until the end of the 1980s that a comprehensive discussion started. Ever since, the adoption issue (ibyang munjê) has been haunting Korea as a recurrent subject in Korean media and popular culture. This paper is a reading of the pop group Clon's song Abandoned Child from 1999 and the world-famous Korean director Park Kwang-su's film Berlin Report from 1991 where adopted Koreans are seen as symbols of a divided and dispersed nation. With the background of Korean nationalism with its notion of the nation as family and its strong emphasis on homogeneity and continuity, the point of departure is the very existence of the adopted Koreans as a delicate threat to nationalist ideology, causing anxieties of disrupting a supposedly fixed and unified national identity, and calling into question what it means to be Korean and who belongs to the Korean nation. The reading is grounded on the fact that the subject of separated families is considered to be one of the most important aspects of the Korean reunification discourse, and has become a powerful metaphor of the Korean nation itself. Abandoned Child is the most typical of Korean adoption songs in representing the fate of Korea's 150,000 lost children, and the adoptee of the song is easily transformed into a powerful symbol of one of Korea's numerous separated families. In Berlin Report, the divided and dispersed Korean nation is represented by two separated adopted Koreans longing and searching for each other as the adoption issue is set upon the reunification issue, and their individual traumas become the national trauma of all Koreans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the continuing presence of Cheondogyo, a religious movement in Korea, in contemporary nationalist and tourist publications is related to its connection with the Donghak Revolution of 1894. Acceptance of the religious movement in both South and North Korea in the post-colonial era in order to legitimize political goals; Effect of the connection to the Donghak Revolution on Cheondogyo's legitimacy as a religious movement.