Modern China as perceived from the periphery: a century of historiography in Korea.

This paper examines how Korea has studied and perceived modern China in the last 100 years, to address the need to identify and understand both the ways in which China and Korea have perceived each other and the transformations of their perceptions throughout history. The paper aims to analyze not only the production and dissemination of knowledge within institutionalized academia, but also from outside its confines, tracing the locus of the field of modern Chinese history in Korea to its colonial period. In particular, it examines the output of the field after the year 2000, focusing on the following: (1) political history in relation to formation of the modern nation-state; (2) traditional and modern dichotomy; (3) is China one?; (4) East Asian perspective and relativization of China; and (5) return of interest in Korea. In so doing, this paper asserts the necessity for a co-employment of the 'dual peripheral perspective,' namely that of the East Asia oppressed by the West in the Western-centric world order, as well as the peripheral perspective born of those oppressed by the hierarchy within East Asia, to reach a universal understanding of one another in China and Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]