Korean Studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

Michael Robinson

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780295805146
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Corée

By studying the early splits within Korean nationalism, Michael Robinson shows that the issues faced by Korean nationalists during the Japanese colonial period were complex and enduring. In doing so, Robinson, in this classic text, provides a new context with which to analyze the difficult issues of political identity and national unity that remain central to contemporary Korean politics.

CHAPTER 1

Modern Korean Nationalism

Korean nationalism was born in the fifty years that preceded the fall of the Yi dynasty and the advent of Japanese rule after 1910. Initially, nationalism in Korea was a response to an international threat to the traditional political and social order of the Yi dynasty. At one level, the Yi dynasty elite sought to preserve Korean political autonomy and cultural integrity by revitalizing the traditional system. By the 1880s, however, a new progressive elite had emerged opposing this approach. The progressives also wished to preserve Korean political autonomy, but their vision as to what constituted the nation and what means were necessary to accomplish this goal was profoundly different. It was from this beginning that the modern nationalist intellectual elite emerged.

By the late nineteenth century, a second strain of Korean nationalism emerged on the level of the common man. The opening of Korea in 1876 brought foreign economic and political penetration. Ultimately, the increased presence of foreign traders, missionaries, and even military troops provided a target for growing peasant discontent. The antiforeign slogans and program of the 1894 Tonghak Rebellion signaled the nascence of mass nationalism in Korea, directed both at the corruption and incompetence of the Yi political system and the growing foreign cancer that threatened Korean society.

Modern Korean nationalism was formed by a joining of these two impulses over a period of several decades. Moreover, as the strength of the nationalist impulse on both levels increased, the conception of what was being defended changed. The idea of the nation-state drawn from the Western model came to dominate the statements of nationalist reformers after the 1880s. According to such men, the preservation of Korean independence hinged on fundamentally altering the political and social system, and in this endeavor they were pitted as much against their own conservative Korean brethren as against the threat from the outside. At the level of the masses, antiforeign, patriotic sentiment continued to increase at the end of the Yi dynasty. Ultimately, Japanese colonial rule and the dramatic economic and social changes accruing by the first decades of the twentieth century combined to produce a pervasive consciousness of anti-Japanese sentiment ripe for mobilization by nationalist elites.

After 1910, Korean nationalism was dedicated to regaining independence. The fall of the Yi dynasty discredited the traditional system and its political elite. The new nationalist intelligentsia that emerged to claim leadership of the independence struggle needed to redefine the nation, provide new symbols to galvanize nationalist consciousness among the masses, and devise a political program with broad support that would solve the problem of Korean independence. From the beginning, nationalist intellectuals were divided as to what should be done, and by the second decade of Japanese rule, the nationalist movement had reached a turning point. Anti-Japanese sentiment was running high, but no single program nor any single group of leaders had emerged that seemed able to channel nationalist energies into a drive to unseat the Japanese.

The debate over this dilemma is the subject at hand. However, a general survey of the rise of Korean nationalism is first necessary to provide the general context of the issues that united as well as those that divided the nationalist leadership in the 1920s.

The Yi Dynasty and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis

By the middle of the nineteenth century the Yi dynasty had marked over four and a half centuries of rule on the Korean peninsula. The dynasty ruled a well-defined territory that encompassed the entire Korean peninsula; three-quarters of this territory had been under continuous Korean control since the Silla unification in the later eighth century. The population of Korea (between eight and ten million in the 1870s) was linguistically and culturally homogeneous as a result of this long experience of political autonomy and centralized rule. The dynasty ruled through a centralized bureaucratic state adapted and refined from Chinese institutions. The Yi monarch's authority was, in theory, absolute; his authority was augmented by Confucian ideology, a state orthodoxy that supported a stratified social structure. In addition, this orthodoxy legitimated an aristocratic elite's monopoly of bureaucratic service and, by extension, its political and economic power.¹

The Yi monarchs derived their legitimacy from the simple fact that there had been kings in Korea since the earliest recorded history. The founder of the Yi dynasty had assumed the right to rule through military force, but his dynastic pretensions were supported by careful use of traditional monarchical symbols, ritual investiture by the Chinese emperor, and the skillful use of Confucian political ideology. It must be noted, however, that the Yi monarch enjoyed none of the transcendent power or prestige of the Chinese emperor. In ritual terms, the Yi monarch was subordinated to the Chinese emperor, recognized as supreme ruler in his own land, but of lower status. To support the creation of a new dynasty, the Yi founder had petitioned the Chinese emperor for a name for the new dynasty and had requested investiture as monarch. Successful in his attempts for recognition, the founder laid the basis for Chinese-Korean relations that would endure for five centuries.² By acknowledging Korea's ritual subordination and accepting Chinese centrality in a universal world order, the founder solved, for the most part, the problem of Chinese military threat while legitimating his own rule. Although the Chinese never interfered with the authority of the Korean monarch, “his legitimizing role did set limits on the aura of transcendence that surrounded the Korean throne.”³

The China-Korea relationship after 1392 was structured by the ritual of the Ming tributary system that required regular visits by envoys from subordinate nations. The Yi dynasty was allowed more numerous visits as a major tributary. Although the Ming tributary system lapsed after a century or so, Korea maintained its ritual position, even after the rise of the Manchus in the seventeenth century. The Koreans simply maintained the relationship with a different ritual suzerain. By and large, the adherence to the rules and rituals of their tributary relationship served them well. Ritual, however, could not protect them from invasion. The Ming intervention during the disastrous Hideyoshi invasions of the late sixteenth century was inspired more by motives of self-defense than a desire to protect their tributary. Furthermore, loyalty to the Ming after the rise of Manchu power in the early 1600s provoked two nearly fatal incursions by the Manchus.

The principal reason for dynastic stability lay in the unique Korean political and social system. The Yi monarch ruled through a centralized bureaucratic system that was staffed by the yangban elite.⁴ The yangban had many of the attributes of an aristocracy; it maintained itself through the legal and de facto inherited status privileges, landholding, officeholding, and utilization of Confucian orthodoxy for the legitimation of status and economic interests. And as James Palais has observed, “king and aristocrat were both mutually antagonistic and mutually supporting; each was dependent on the other for the continuation of his place in the political and social structure.”⁵ This situation placed the power of the yangban and monarch in a rough state of equilibrium and, again following Palais's argument, “although the state of equilibrium might shift from one pole to another—from relatively strong monarch to aristocratic-bureaucratic domination of the throne—the balance of forces was never destroyed.”⁶ This situation impeded the development of centralized monarchical power as well as political decentralization or the growth of feudalism in Korea. Thus, a power balance between monarch and aristocrats expressed through a partially centralized state bureaucracy characterized the Yi political system.

The Korean masses over which the Yi monarch and yangban class ruled were neither linked closely to the central government nor were they a source of legitimacy for government authority. And incomplete centralization of government authority prevented deep penetration into the predominantly rural society.⁷ Peasant mistrust and avoidance of officials also hampered efficient control of the population.

The population was not, however, separated from governance or internally divided by racial, linguistic, or cultural cleavages. A millennium of stable borders and little in-migration had homogenized the population, and the long rule of the Yi dynasty had continued this process.⁸ Indeed, Korea never suffered the debilitating interethnic conflict that often characterized the collapse of traditional bureaucratic empires during the nineteenth century or multiethnic colonies in the postcolonial era. The Korean masses were thus unified and culturally homogeneous, sharing a well-developed folk culture closely tied to their long history as a tightly knit agrarian society—a fact that eased the process of developing a strong national consciousness in the twentieth century. The long tenure of the Yi dynasty and its elite's adherence to Confucian orthodoxy altered societal values. By the nineteenth century, the Korean masses, although carriers of the shamanistic folk tradition, had begun to emulate elite values with regard to family law, ancestor worship, and interpersonal relations to a certain extent.⁹

The Korean elite, on the other hand, while sharing this general sense of ethnic solidarity, were separated from the masses by their participation in the wide East Asian cosmopolitan culture, which required a familiarity with Chinese writing, literature, political philosophy, and social thought. The Korean elite based the education of their children on the Confucian classics, Chinese poetry, and writing skills in classical Chinese. The civil service examinations, successful participation in which was an important step in gaining government position, required long and tedious preparation, a process beyond the reach of most commoners. The great houses of the Yi yangban followed meticulously formal Confucian family ritual, and relations between yangban families and individuals were governed by strict adherence to rules of etiquette strongly influenced by Chinese norms. In short, the Korean elite self-consciously participated in a cosmopolitan cultural universe. It owed, in part, its very status to their monopoly on formal education. Yet its East Asian cosmopolitanism was based on a foreign language and foreign intellectual tradition; although it was selectively indigenized, this elite tradition separated the ruling class of the Yi dynasty from the remainder of the population, a fact of considerable significance for the development of Korean nationalism at a later date.

Although ignored in the initial thrust of Western intrusion in East Asia, by 1860 the Yi dynasty was well aware of the momentous changes in the international environment. Growing internal difficulties such as peasant rebellion, corruption, mismanagement in government, and imbalance of aristocratic power had already weakened the central government. In addition, Catholicism and the new Eastern Learning (Tonghak) religious movement challenged state orthodoxy. In the midst of this crisis a minor, known to history by his posthumous title, Kojong, ascended the throne in 1864. His father, Yi Ha'ŭng, became the de facto regent and assumed the title Grand Prince (Taewŏngun). The Taewŏngun embarked on a major series of reforms to bolster the power of the throne. He met foreign overtures for trade and diplomatic relations by reaffirming the traditional isolationist policy and reinvigorating military defense. He attacked aristocratic power through major institutional reforms, vigorously persecuted heretics, and repressed rebellion.

In the end, the Taewŏngun's reform program failed. Although successful initially in reasserting isolation in foreign policy, this success was due primarily to the weakness of the early foreign thrust. By 1874 and the majority of Kojong, Korea was faced with persistent and ultimately successful Japanese demands for a commercial treaty and recognition of the Meiji Restoration. In the domestic sphere, although he was successful in eliminating some sources of unrest, the Taewŏngun failed to redress the original balance of social and political forces that weakened the monarchy.¹⁰ The failure to assert monarchical authority under Kojong and the reversion to the original status quo significantly affected Korea's ability to cope with the increasingly dangerous international situation. In the crucial last decades of the nineteenth century the kingdom vacillated: the attempt to concentrate power had failed, and, concurrently, confidence in the validity and ability of the system to reform itself was eroded significantly.¹¹ After 1876, the dynasty lacked purpose and direction, even the will, to react creatively to the pressures it faced.

In 1876, two years after Kojong's majority, Korea was brought into the new international system with the signing of the Kanghwa Treaty with Japan. Treaties with the major Western powers followed in the early 1880s. Although by treaty Korea became an independent actor in the new international system, her leaders continued to view these arrangements as secondary to the primary relationship with China. Treaties simply recognized foreign demands, and multiple treaty arrangements balanced foreign powers against each other, thus preserving Korean autonomy.¹² In the twenty years subsequent to the opening in 1876, the Yi dynasty attempted to participate in the Western state system and retain as well its unique Confucian relationship with China. And the fiction of Chinese stewardship and protection in international affairs provided incentives to avoid troublesome internal reforms. The Chinese defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, however, shattered the illusion of Chinese protection. Yet, in the last fifteen years of Yi rule, the dynasty continued to seek special relationships with her more powerful neighbors, first Russia, then Japan. The result was continued erosion of Korean sovereignty.

Reform, Rebellion, and Korean Nationalism

After 1876, the dynasty took tentative steps to strengthen itself in the face of Korea's changing position in the international environment.¹³ Initial reforms aimed at bolstering the Korean military, training foreign experts, and importing new technology were predicated on maintaining the dynasty in its present form, thus encouraging the support of conservatives. But as the threat deepened in the 1880s, new forces rose that questioned the traditional political system itself. Basing their ideas on the model of Japan's successful modernization program, the progressives of the 1880s began to advocate wholesale changes that anticipated the rise of modern Korean nationalism. Interest in national independence, conceived in terms of the Western nation-state system, took hold among a portion of the Korean political elite.

The self-strengthening program focused on importing Western military technology and training personnel in its operation and construction. A new office, the Office for the Management of State Affairs (T'ongni'gimu amun), was created to coordinate a diverse set of activities with regard to foreign relations with China and other neighbors, border defense, technology imports, foreign-language study, and shipbuilding. In addition, the government recruited and sent students and artisans to study Western military technology at the new Chinese Tientsin Arsenal in 1882. Finally Kojong organized an inspection mission to Japan to gather information on modern government institutions, factories, and foreign trade. The mission was secretly organized to avoid public outcry by conservatives.

The self-strengthening initiatives eventually provoked a backlash by conservative officials and literati. They attacked officials who promoted self-strengthening for undermining the basis of the state by advocating heterodox doctrines and they deluged the king with memorials that warned of moral ruin and affirmed isolationism. The conservative reaction forced the reform-minded officials to defend themselves on ideological grounds. The dynasty's credibility as protector of Confucian values was at stake, but only a serious crackdown on memorialists, including banishment and execution for some, ended the conservative protest.¹⁴

Ultimately, the self-strengthening program failed because of a lack of serious financial commitment by the dynasty. Although the ideological commitment was apparent, government resources, already stretched to the limit, were unavailable for many proposed projects. Students returned from training abroad to find no place to apply their new skills. The T'ongni'gimu amun became a new focal point for factional intrigue, and although Korea was now tied to the “unequal” treaty system with the signing of treaties with the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, the feeling of insecurity with regard to foreign relations continued.

A mutiny by disgruntled troops in the poorly paid Korean army precipitated a major foreign crisis in July of 1882. China and Japan sent troops to Korea to help stabilize the situation. Using the old rationale of “special interests” in Korea, the Chinese sought to counter what they saw as a growing threat of Japanese intrusion. Acting swiftly, the Chinese put down the military rebels and restored Kojong to power. To prevent open conflict with Japanese troops, they opened negotiations and mediated Japanese demands for reparations in the Treaty of Chemulp'o between Korea and Japan. The 1882 mutiny provoked the first serious Chinese intervention into Korean internal affairs, and for the next decade the government was closely monitored by the Chinese. While the Chinese were protecting their own interests, their heavy-handed policy served to stimulate a nationalist reaction in Korea.¹⁵

Continued Chinese interference in Korean affairs was viewed with alarm by a small group of modernizers known variously as the Enlightenment party (Kaehwadang) or Progressive party (Chinbodang).¹⁶ The enlightenment group included young officials and some of the first Koreans to travel and study abroad. Led by Kim Okkyun and Pak Yŏnghyo, the progressives wanted to transform fundamentally Korean governance and society. Although encouraged by self-strengthening efforts, this group sought more than simple material or technological imports grafted on to the body of traditional wisdom.¹⁷ The progressives looked to Japan for inspiration; for example, Kim Okkyun had studied with Fukuzawa Yukichi, a foremost popularizer of Western thought in Japan. Although favored by the king and occupying minor posts in government, the progressives were frustrated by the slow pace of change and by the increasingly obstructionist power of the consort Min clan. The intrusion of Chinese troops and waning of Japane...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the 2014 Edition
• Introduction
• 1. Modern Korean Nationalism
• 2. The Rise of Cultural Nationalism
• 3. Within Limits: Moderate Nationalist Movements
• 4. The Radical Critique of Cultural Nationalism
• 5. Intellectual Crisis in Colonial Korea
• 6. Conclusion
• Notes
• Guide to Romanization
• Bibliography
• Index