A Pawn in the Great Game: Chosŏn’s Rapprochement with the Russian Empire Amidst the British Seizure of Kŏmundo, 1884–1886

The paper examines the Chosŏn government’s rapprochement with the Russian Empire performed against the backdrop of the British seizure of Kŏmundo (1885– 1887). Two attempts of Russo-Chosŏn rapprochement, carried out in the summer of 1885 and summer of 1886, are analyzed separately and against the wider geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia and on the Korean peninsula of the time. To do so, the author relies on the analysis of Russian, Korean, and English primary sources to reveal the Russian and Chosŏn government’s standing at that time, and the geopolitical reasons behind the failure of Russo-Chosŏn rapprochement.

Soviet Koreans in Uzbekistan in the First Year after Deportation in 1937

Koreans had lived on the southern territory of the modern Russian Far East before the arrival of Russian pathfinders in these lands. Therefore, they are an indigenous population of the modern Primorye region in the Russia, although, in the nineteenth century the number of Koreans was relatively small in the south of the Russian Far East. Russian Koreans supported the October Revolution and the fight of the Red Army against the old regime for several reasons. Bolsheviks put forward two principles of the new government—land for peasants and equality of peoples. These principles found a response in the broad mass of the Korean and Chinese populations in the Far East. After their victory, the Bolsheviks kept their promises. An area for ethnic Koreans, called Posiet, in the territory of the Primorye region was created, and Koreans resided in 28 districts in three areas of the modern Primorye region. A Korean Education College was created in Nikolsk Ussuriysk-city (modern Ussuriysk-city), as well as Korean language schools, a national theater, Korean-Chinese printers and so on. Korean families usually have many children, so the Korean population in Russia grew at a fast pace. This Korean population fell victim to the policies of deportation, which were applied to many of the non-Russian peoples of the Far East under Stalin. For many decades such deportations were denied, and then when admitted, the documentary materials surrounding them were unavailable. However, in the 1980s with the development of greater accessibility to archives held by the Russian Federation, the stories of such difficult historical moments are once again visible and reachable. This Research Note, in particular, explores the archival material that exists in the Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF, Государственный архив Российской Федерации, State Archive of the Russian Federation) relating to the deportation of Koreans of Primorye to Uzbekistan.

US Hegemony in Korean Studies and the Soviet Role in Early Postwar Korea

This paper examines some of the ways the US-centric framework of Anglophone Korean studies has distorted scholarship on post-colonial Korean history. First, an over-emphasis on the American role in the division of Korea has exaggerated the possibility that the US and USSR could have compromised to create a unified government for the peninsula. The Soviet documentary record reveals that Moscow was determined to obstruct such an outcome if it endangered Soviet security. Second, by focusing on the serious damage the American occupation inflicted on the South, scholars have understated the control Soviet occupation authorities exercised in the North.

Adaptation of Western Modern Concepts in Modern Korean Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century: Through the Perspective of Science, Efficiency, and Hygiene

This research explores the characteristics of Korean early modern architecture in the early twentieth century. Modern Korean architecture experienced conflicts and continuities between tradition and modernity from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. To evaluate these various influences, this article considers Korean early modern architecture through the perspective of such modern concepts as “science,” “efficiency,” and “hygiene.” These modern concepts emerged first in the West before the nineteenth century, and they played significant roles in constructing a modern society in the West and the East. By investigating how these modern concepts were adopted in Korea in the early twentieth century, this research scrutinizes not only individual architects such as Park Gilryong and Park Dongjin but also newly constructed buildings such as kwansa (official residences of Japanese ministries) and sat’aek (company housing), especially during the Japanese colonial period. Furthermore, this research goes beyond Korean architecture to encompass regional and cultural differences. This research enables early modern Korean architecture to find its identity through the approach of social and cultural contexts, and by comparison with Western architectural culture.

Rethinking Hegemony and Neutralization in Korea: Multinational Diplomatic Engagements in the Run-Up to the Russo-Japanese War (1903–1904)

This article demonstrates that the Russo-Japanese rivalry, far from being just another example of imperialist competition during the Age of Imperialism, can also serve as a useful case study of a diplomatic contest over a periphery between hegemonic powers. During this diplomatic tug-of-war, the Korean peninsula became the focal point of a contest between Japan and Russia. The present study illuminates the interactive processes of major diplomatic engagements between multiple actors through careful use of multi-lingual archives, as well as locates the significant implications of these exchanges for contemporary geopolitical landscapes in the Far East. Ultimately, this research provides an analytical framework for a more in-depth understanding of diplomatic interactions and the impacts of hegemonic struggles in modern Korean history.

Challenging the “Hierarchy of Nationhood”: Diasporic Entitlement and the Case of Korean Chinese (Chosŏnjok) in South Korea

With about 7.5 million people, the Korean diaspora is concentrated in China, Japan, North America, and the former Soviet Union. Since the 1990s, many ethnic Koreans have been “returning” to South Korea, their putative ethnic homeland. Significantly, their treatment by the state has been unequal: On issues of residency and employment rights, ethnic Koreans from China (Chosŏnjok) and the former Soviet Union were relegated to second-class status compared to those from North America. This inequality is encapsulated in the phrase, used by a number of scholars, the “hierarchy of nationhood.” Surprisingly, perhaps, the Chosŏnjok community challenged this unequal treatment by asserting rights based on colonial victimhood, ethnic sameness, and cultural authenticity. While such expressions of entitlement are not unusual among marginalized diasporic groups, the Chosŏnjok achieved something remarkable, namely, they succeeded in gaining political and economic rights initially denied by the Korean state. Simply put, they successfully challenged the hierarchy of nationhood. Using a discursive institutional framework, we endeavor to explain how and why entitlement claims by the Chosŏnjok were effective. More specifically, we argue that the struggle by Chosŏnjok to overturn the hierarchy of nationhood had little to nothing to do with a coercive, dyadic power struggle against the Korean state, but was instead a fundamentally discursive struggle, which itself is a product or reflection of discursive agency, both on the part of Chosŏnjok but also, crucially, on the part of their key allies—religious leaders and civic organizations—in South Korea.

The Drama in the Sentence: Sequence as a Crucial Challenge for Literary Translation from and to Korean

In translation, carefully-crafted sentences are exposed to myriad dangers. This is because translators tend to prioritize syntactical fidelity at the expense of sequence, that is, the order of elements insofar as this relates to calculated progression, gradual disclosure of information, and cumulative development of meaning. But if sequence is turned around for the sake of fluency (conforming to the target language’s ostensibly “natural” word order), the reader’s experience changes as well. Through a set of examples drawn from English translations of Korean fiction, this article demonstrates that the common disregard for sequence is tantamount to a neglect of drama and suspense, of narrative perspectivation, of rhetorical sophistication and cognitive effect. But we also see that by favoring functional equivalence over imitation of grammatical dependencies, it is perfectly possible to allow the reader to process all information at a pace that is analogous to that of the original. Our findings provide insights that are of significance for other language pairings as well.

Stereotyping Halal Food and Eating Halal Food in a South Korean Context

The paper seeks to consider the confusion around what “Halal Food” is and what “Eating Halal Food” means in South Korea; and how it causes stereotyping of halal food and Muslim foodways in a South Korean context. The findings of this paper are obtained from ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with South Koreans and Muslim minorities living in South Korea. Findings from the ethnographic research show that halal food and foodways are stereotyped not only when it comes to misidentifying halal food concepts, but also halal food consumed by Muslims is linked to existing notions about Islam and Muslims in South Korean society.

Incongruity of Nationalisms? Interactions between Korean National History and American Historians of Korea, the 1910s to 1980s

The heuristic starting point for this paper is a critical approach to the enterprise of modern historiography per se, based on the understanding of it as inherently bound by teleological epistemology. While “Korean nationalism” is the usual vantage point for the critique of modern Korean historiography, the current article attempts to reverse this analytical perspective and re-assess a number of attempts to write on Korean history by US-based historians of Korea in the 1910s–1980s as reflections of inherently self-centric picture of the world. In this Eurocentric picture, traditional Korea was locked into a historical trajectory via which “modernity” was unachievable.

Contemporary Re-Interpretations of the Colonial Past Through the Biopics of Two Koreans: Park Kyŏng-Wŏn and Kim Sin-Rak

In the past few years, the South Korean film industry has released a growing number of Korean movies set in the colonial period. This essay focuses on how these films deal with the painful memory of occupation. More specifically, the analysis will be centered on two biopics with narratives that differ from what could be argued to be the mainstream portrayals of the colonial period, which tend to depict the struggle of Korean freedom-fighters under Japanese rule. Moreover, this essay reflects on the meaning of reinterpreting the past through cinema.