Historical Evolution of the Welfare Mix in Colonial Korea

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-416
Author(s):  
Yeonsik Choi ◽  
Yoojin Lim

Abstract This paper aims to understand the welfare mix in Korea by examining its historical origins and tracing its evolution during Japanese colonial rule. After locating the origins of the welfare mix in the early Chosŏn Dynasty, this study examines the evolution of the welfare mix in Korea under Japanese colonial rule. By focusing on repressiveness and recognition, the dual aspects of Japanese colonial rule, we reveal a traditional aspect of the Korean welfare mix that remained strong and was, paradoxically, reinforced under Japanese colonial rule. Following the establishment of a colonial centralised state, Japanese attempts to impose modern dispensational welfare systems proved inadequate. The Japanese were forced to return to traditional, informal welfare providers, such as kyes, to satisfy Chosŏn’s need for welfare. The paper concludes by arguing that this welfare mix can help to explain the welfare regime in modern Korea.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-323
Author(s):  
Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang

Abstract Well-known songs of colonial Korea such as “Kagop’a” and “Pongsŏnhwa” appear to be secular songs, but their origins lie in the complex intersection of North American Christian missions, Korean cultural life, and Japanese colonial rule. This article explores the historical significance of secular sentimental songs in colonial Korea (1910–45), which originated in mission schools and churches. At these sites North American missionaries and Christian Koreans converged around songwriting, song publishing, and vocal performance. Missionary music editors such as Annie Baird, Louise Becker, and their Korean associates relied on secular sentimental songs to cultivate a new kind of psychological interior associated with a modern subjectivity. An examination of representative vernacular song collections alongside accounts of social connections formed through musical activities gives a glimpse into an intimate space of a new religion in which social relations and subjective interiors were both mediated and represented by songs. The author argues that this space was partly formed by Christianity’s fugitive status in the 1910s under the uncertainty of an emergent colonial rule and traces the genealogy of Korean vernacular modernity to the activities of singing in this space, which she calls a fugitive Christian public.


1988 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis L. McNamara

Kim Yôn-su (pen name Sudang 1896–1979) was among the few widely successful Korean entrepreneurs during the years of Japanese colonial rule on the peninsula.1 He served as managing director and later as president (1935–1945) of the Kyôngsông Spinning Company (Kyôngsông Pangjik Chusik Hoesa), the largest of the Korean-owned industrial enterprises. He also founded, managed and owned the Samyang company, the largest indigenous agricultural company of the period.2 What distinguished Kim was not merely the extent of his investments and administrative responsibilities, but the continuity of indigenous ownership and management in his ventures despite strong Japanese dominance of the colonial Korean economy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suyoung Kim

AbstractAlthough the voluntary sector is internationally valued as an integral component of the welfare mix, studies on East Asian welfare regimes have primarily focused on state-market-family interactions, paying scant attention to the long-standing and pivotal role of voluntary agencies in their construction. This case study illuminates this less-known aspect of modern welfare history in the context of South Korea, with a particular focus on the activities of voluntary organizations. The study categorizes South Korean voluntary associations into four types and examines their different contributions in shaping South Korea’s welfare regime, by applying Young’s framework on government–voluntary organizations relations. This historical exploration on the South Korean voluntary sector aims to deepen understanding of an East Asian welfare state regime. It further suggests that current welfare mix debates, focusing on the service delivery role of voluntary organizations within Western European welfare states, should be broadened.


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serk-Bae Suh

This essay focuses on Ch'oe Chaesŏ, a leading Korean intellectual, active translator of English literary criticism, and editor in chief of Kokumin Bungaku (National Literature), a prominent Japanese-language journal published in colonial Korea. Ch'oe asserted that the unfolding of history in the twentieth century demanded a paradigmatic transition from liberalism to state-centered nationalism in culture. He also privileged everyday life as allowing people to live as members of communities that ultimately are integrated into the state. By positioning Koreans firmly as subjects of the Japanese state, his argument implied that the colonized should be treated on a par with the colonizers. Further, Ch'oe advocated Koreans' cultural autonomy as an ethnic group within the Japanese empire. Tracing Ch'oe's early life and examining his critical essays on nation, culture, and state, the author discusses how his endeavors to establish an autonomous space for Korean culture simultaneously legitimized Japanese colonial control.


1995 ◽  
Vol 10 (0) ◽  
pp. 49-79
Author(s):  
Joon-Hyung Hong

As a theater of historical experimentation, Korean society merits special attention. Economic and social transformations that unfolded over two centuries or more in Western societies and over more than a century in Japan have exploded in a far shorter time in Korea. Various features of Korean society are radically heterogeneous in origin: some echo feudal structures of the pre-modem Chosun Dynasty, which lasted through the 1890s. Others stem from institutions of Japanese colonial rule(1905-1945), from the American military occupation of 1945-1948, from the corrupt autocracy of Syngman Rhee(1948-1960) or from the "developmental dictatorships" that ruled Korea by military decree from 1961 until only a few years ago. In the quasi-pluralistic Korean society of today, a commerce-centered network of relations interacts with oligarchical structures deeply rooted in recent as well as remote history. Confronted with unprecedented challenges, internal and external, Korea presently is in a period of transition, groping its way toward democratization while trying to maintain momentum for sustained economic development.


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