The Korean Paekjong Under Japanese Rule

The Quest for Equality and Human Rights

Joong-Seop Kim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135787585
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Korean History
• Index: History

Traditional Korean society was characterized by a rigid hierarchy. The minority Paekjong were the lowest group of the lowest rank of the shinbun class system, and were treated as outcasts throughout the Choson period (1392-1910). This book deals with their historical and social background, and their struggle for human rights and equality in colonial Korea through the activities of the Hyongpyongsa (Association for an Equitable Society), active from c.1923 to 1935. The Hyongpyongsa was the longest-lasting social movement during the colonial period, and its activities provoked confrontations with fellow Koreans as well as with the Japanese colonial powers. Through analysis of the social environment as well as their actions, this study reveals the complexity of early twentieth century Korea's drive towards modernization.

1 Introduction

The twentieth century can be thought of as a ‘century of vortex’ for Korean society. The 500-year history of the Chosǒn dynasty (1392-1910), which was buttressed by the rigid hierarchical sinbun system, was brought to an end through a combination of internal strife and external pressure. In the end, the Korean peninsula was colonised by Japan, a formidable military power at this time. Western culture and ideology, including both socialism and liberalism, were also powerful forces which moulded ‘modern’ Korea. The Korean War and the subsequent rapid industrialisation in the south of the peninsula were other major factors in bringing about contemporary Korean society.

We may consider one particular historical episode to show the complex and dynamic process experienced by Korean society during this period. That episode is the riisrory of the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement. The history of the movement shows that certain dynamics existed within Korean society which were powerful enough to bring about change. Thus, the social trend towards the creation of a more egalitarian society would prove to be effective through collective action. Moreover, it is clear that the desire for human rights and social equality was widespread and could be found within people of varying backgrounds.

Aims and background of the study

The Hyǒngp'yǒngsa [Equity Society], launched in April 1923, was the organisation of the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement until 1935. The general aim of the association was to liberate the paekjǒng from their traditional status as a despised stratum of society. It is not surprising that the processes of the movement were not only intertwined with Korean traditional customs, but also with Japanese colonialism. This may provide crucial evidence that reveals the process of transition from traditional to ‘modern’ societies and attempts to introduce egalitarian societies are not only to be found in the contemporary era, nor only in the Western world.

The aim of this book is to set out, reconstruct and analyse the birth, growth and activities of the association. However, as an exercise in this

Figure 1.1 Map of provinces and major towns of special relevance to the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement.

field, it was inevitably constrained by the poor state of hitherto existing knowledge on the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement and its associations. As far as I am aware, there has thus far been no authoritative academic English history of the events which the book sets out to analyse. The first goal of this study is therefore to provide such a history, based partly on some 2000 newspaper reports stretching over the whole period, partly on such documentary evidence as has survived from the Japanese colonial period, and partly on other supplementary information gained from a few slight accounts on the paekjǒng and from field interviews conducted for this study with a small number of elderly paekjǒng or descendants of paekjǒng who were involved in the movement. What this means, in effect, is that the first aim of the study is to provide a social history of the movement and its associations, and attempt to write an initial historical/sociological interpretation. In this sense, the study is far more basic and exploratory than are many studies in historical sociology based on social histories that have previously been constructed by others.

A second point to be made at the outset is that, in Korea during the 1920s, there was a veritable burgeoning of associations and social move-ment groups with diverse aims and purposes. The birth, the development and the activities of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa were thus much affected by their wider social and political contexts, in what throughout this book I have referred to as the ‘social movement sector’ and the ‘social movement era’. The Hyǒngp'yǒngsa was, however, scarcely ‘typical’ of other social movement groups, especially in its early days. It was, in two principal respects, unique. First, in contrast to other groups, the beneficiaries of its activities were specifically defined as a community or stratum which was not com-parable to any other in Korean society. The paekjǒng have sometimes been referred to as ‘Korea's untouchables’, a despised and stigmatised group who were treated as inferior for thousands of years during the Chosǒn dynasty and earlier. Second, the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa lasted longer under Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) than any other association, even if the period of the Taedongsa [Fusion Society], its successor group with more specific economic interests which did not focus on human rights, is excluded from this count. Both these distinctions are of considerable importance in attempting to evaluate the significance of the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement in the period of history during which the Confucian-based Chosǒn dynasty was relinquishing some of its past. It can therefore be claimed that the study of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa and its activities could and should make a significant contribution to the analysis of the wider social and political dynamics of the times.

Since there is no comprehensive authoritative account of the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement, this study had perforce to address itself to several basic questions. To begin with, how and why did the paekjǒng and their leaders perceive or feel a need to establish an association with the goal of liberating and emancipating themselves? The answer to this question is clearly related to the exceedingly long history of their unequal treatment, of the prejudice and discrimination against them, and of the institutionalised stigmatisation from which they suffered. A brief historical sketch of the paekjǒng community is therefore necessary before attempting to record and analyse the activities of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa.

The paekjǒng background was inextricably intertwined with the rigid hierarchical structure of Chosǒn society as a whole, which consisted of a series of distinctive social status groups. This hierarchical structure had begun to ‘break down’ long before the birth of the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement. Thus, over the previous two centuries, slaves had been emancipated; peasants, who constituted the vast majority of the population, had con-ducted large-scale, nationwide rebellions against the ruling class; and various liberal reformers had from time to time organised action groups to mobilise people and to demand the reform of their society and its government (cf. Lee Ki-baik 1984; Kang Man'gil 1994).

These developments over the preceding century or two have generally been perceived and interpreted as ‘new’ trends of social reform in a pro-longed struggle for, or towards, equality in society. The Hyǒngp'yǒng movement clearly has to be seen in the context of this broad and pro-tracted trend. As the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa's title implies, the primary goal of the association was to realise the equality of people, specifically the paekjong. Though it had many distinctive aspects, it can in a wider sense be regarded as a representative example of collective attempts in Korea's recent historical past to realise an egalitarian society. The point to stress is that the emancipatory struggle of the paekjnng took place in the conrext, and as a part, of complex processes of transition towards equality. It is therefore essential to explore the history of the paekjǒng and the ultimate birth of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa with an appreciation of the underlying context: that of a society in the throes of far-reaching transition.

But, to take a historical view, the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa was only established in the early 1920s, whereas the social constraints on other despised and stigmatised status groups — slaves in particular — had largely disappeared in the nineteenth century without comparably organised collective actions. Thus the second initial question to be asked is: why did the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa movement and its organisational manifestations not develop earlier in the course of the paekjǒng's history of treatment as inferiors — not even in the late nineteenth century, as was the case with some other groups? Any attempt to answer this obviously calls for a close review of the historical and social conditions surrounding the ultimate launch of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa in the 1920s. In particular, compared with earlier periods, what was the social and economic situation of the paekjǒng in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

While it is not possible to answer such questions briefly, we can at this point simply say that, during this late period of the Chosǒn dynasty, there were continuing collective demands for reform at the same time as Japan's ambition to occupy Korea was becoming more intense. And the changing internal and external situations made a deep impact on the paekjǒng community, including their traditional industries. It was a combination of changing social, political and economic factors which eventually enabled the paekjǒng to establish their own association and for this to maintain a certain fluctuating momentum as a social movement until the Second World War. Any study of the emergence of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa thus requires a proper understanding of the overall historical and social backgrounds of the paekjǒng.

Basic questions which naturally arise following the initial establishment of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa include the following: what were the social conditions conducive to the movement? In what form were the movement's aims and purposes first stated? How were these defined and re-defined over time? Who organised and led the movement? How did the association maintain its action as a social movement? Which other social movement groups supported it? What kind of action programmes did it develop? What reception did the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa and other groups receive from the public and from the colonial authorities? In particular, how did ‘ordinary people’ (non-paekjǒng) respond to the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa's activities? What factors affected its growth, its subsequent decline and its change in nature and in title to the Taedongsa? And so on.

These and numerous other closely related questions obviously demand that the history of the association and the movement be traced in the overall social context of the period. In other words, we need a comprehen-sive record of the association as the longest lasting social movement group in this period of marked transition in Korean society, as well as of the place of the group in the entire social movement sector and of the diverse relations which it had with other groups and movements.

The Hyǒngp'yǒngsa and its activities were closely associated with and affected by the social and political processes of Korean society under Japanese colonial rule. Numerous diverse associations sprang to life, especially after the massive ‘March 1 Movement’ of 1919, when there was a quite unprecedented blossoming of peasant and labour groups, youth groups, children's and women's associations, all establishing and developing programmes of social action. In addition, radical ideologies were introduced to the society from neighbouring countries through diverse channels (Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee 1972; Kim Chunyǒp and Kim Ch'angsun 1973). Thus a mixture of radical ideology and collective action came to bear on a wide range of demands for social reform.

The general tendencies of social ferment were partly an emancipatory reaction to the rigidities of centuries of life in the hierarchical Confucian-based Chosǒn society, but partly also a response to subordination of the harshest kind under Japanese colonialism. There were, in the collective actions of the period, differing ideologies affected in varying degrees by both nationalism and socialism. In certain respects, however, the struggle for emancipation may be seen as having had pragmatic rather than ideological motivations, as was to a considerable extent the case with the Hyǒngp'yǒng movement in some of its stages and manifestations. Whatever the mix in relation to particular developments, the 1920s and the 1930s in Korea may be characterised as ‘the era of social movements’ under Japanese rule (Yun Pyǒngsǒk, Sin Yongha, and An Pyǒngjik 1977; An Pyǒngjik and Pak Sǒngsu 1980; Yǒksa Munjeyǒn'guso 1993). The social and political processes of this era were extremely complex, and the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa was inevitably involved in, and constantly affected by, the activities of other associations, groups and movements.

As a result, any descriptive analysis of the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa and its activities requires not only an appreciation of change and breakdown in the traditional status structures of Chosǒn society, but also of the social and political dynamics of change under the Japanese. The subject of the analysis attempted in this book consists of ‘historical facts’; but we know, of course, that ‘facts’ — historical and social — are in themselves seldom neutral or unproblematic. In the case of the historical facts on the Hyǒngp'yǒngsa and the social movement sector in Korea in the 1920s and 1930s, there are additional problems stemming from the turbulent history of the country during and since that period. It is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Historical and social contexts
• PART II The Hyongp'yong movement: 1923-1935
• Appendix I: Content analysis of newspaper materials
• Appendix II: Illustrative extracts from the chronicle of the Hyongp'yong movement established on the basis of newspaper reports and articles
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index