Cultural

Nationalism in
Colonial Korea,
19201925
Michael Edson Robinson
With a new preface by the author
korean studies of the henry m. jackson
school of international studies
Clark W. Sorensen, Editor
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korean studies of the henry m. jackson
school of international studies
Over the Mountains Are Mountains: Korean Peasant Households and
Their Adaptations to Rapid Industrialization, by Clark W. Sorensen
Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 19201925,
by Michael Edson Robinson, with a new preface by the author
Offspring of Empire: The Kochang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean
Capitalism, 18761945, by Carter J. Eckert, with a new preface by the author
Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyngwn
and the Late Chosn Dynasty, by James B. Palais
Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea, by Gi-Wook Shin
The Origins of the Chosn Dynasty, by John B. Duncan
Protestantism and Politics in Korea, by Chung-shin Park
Marginality and Subversion in Korea: The Hong Kyngnae
Rebellion of 1812, by Sun Joo Kim
Building Ships, Building a Nation: Koreas Democratic
Unionism under Park Chung Hee, by Hwasook Nam
Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 19101945, by Mark E. Caprio
Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japans War, 19371945,
by Brandon Palmer
Heritage Management in Korea and Japan: The Politics
of Antiquity and Identity, by Hyung Il Pai
Wrongful Deaths: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea,
compiled and translated by Sun Joo Kim and Jungwon Kim
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Cultural Nationalism
in Colonial Korea,
19201925
Michael Edson Robinson
With a new preface by the author
university of washington press
Seattle & London
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This publication was supported in part by the Korea Studies Program of the
University of Washington in cooperation with the Henry M. Jackson School of
International Studies.
1988 by the University of Washington Press
Preface to the 2014 edition 2014 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
university of washington press
po Box 50096, Seattle, wa 98145, usa
www.washington.edu/uwpress
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Robinson, Michael Edson.
Cultural nationalism in colonial Korea, 19201925 / Michael Edson Robinson ;
with a new preface by the author.
pages cm (Korean studies of the Henry M. Jackson
School of International Studies)
Originally published: Seattle : University of Washington Press, 1988.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99389-8 (paperback)
1. NationalismKoreaHistory20th century. 2. NationalistsKorea
History20th century. 3. IntellectualsKoreaHistory20th century.
4. KoreaHistoryJapanese occupation, 19101945. 5. KoreaPolitics and
government19101945. 6. KoreaIntellectual life20th century. I. Title.
DS916.55.R63 2014
951.9'03dc23 2013048055
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum require-
ments of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
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To June and Homer
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface to the 2014 Edition xi
Introduction 3
1. Modern Korean Nationalism 14
2. The Rise of Cultural Nationalism 48
3. Within Limits: Moderate Nationalist Movements 78
4. The Radical Critique of Cultural Nationalism 107
5. Intellectual Crisis in Colonial Korea 137
6. Conclusion 157
Notes 167
Guide to Romanization 191
Bibliography 197
Index 213
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ix
Acknowledgments
I began to work on the research for this book in 1975 in preparation
for my Ph.D. dissertation under the direction of Professor James B.
Palais of the University of Washington. I owe a profound debt of grat-
itude to Professor Palais for his tireless support and encouragement
and his invaluable scholarly criticism and advice at all stages of this
project. I would also like to thank Professors Kenneth B. Pyle and
Bruce Cumings for their assistance and encouragement during and
after my graduate studies.
The research and preparation of this book was supported at var-
ious stages from the following sources: National Language Fellow-
ship Grants, H.E.W. Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research
Abroad Fellowship, Social Science Research Council, John Randolph
Haynes and Dora Haynes Faculty Fellowship, and the International
Cultural Society of Korea. While in Korea, I beneted from the guid-
ance and support of Professor Kim Junyop at the Asiatic Research
center of Korea University. In addition, discussions with Professor
Lew Young-ick of Hallyon University provided me with insights that
improved the manuscript. Professor Sin Yongha also helped me at crit-
ical times during my stays in Korea, and I must also acknowledge Kim
Kunsu for opening his collection of colonial periodicals to my scrutiny.
Finally, I owe a special debt to Professor Chong Chinsok for giving
unselshly of his time and expertise as I submerged myself in the often
bafing world of Korean colonial publications.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at the University of South-
ern California Department of History. In particular, I beneted from
discussions and comments from Professors John E. Wills Jr. and Gor-
don M. Berger. Special thanks are also due the staff of the U.S.C.
Department of History, especially Martha Rothermel who, without
complaint, prepared the manuscript in its numerous incarnations.
In addition, I am grateful to the University of Washington Press
for their interest in the manuscript. The labors and professional skill
of my editor, Margery Lang, greatly enhanced the manuscript. I, of
course, am responsible for any errors or omissions.
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x Acknowledgments
My greatest debt I save for last. I wish to thank my parents, Homer
and June, for giving me the gift of learning and introducing me to the
world of books. Their interest in teaching led me to the life of scholar-
ship. And, nally, a special thanks to my wife, Ellen Brennan, for her
patience, support, and love during both the dark and light moments.
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xi
Preface to the 2014 Edition
The research for Cultural Nationalism was done largely in the mid-
1970s, reecting my training in political science theory based on
structuralist understandings of nationalisms antecedents. The book
thus does not utilize the vocabulary that evolved in the late 1980s
to describe nationalism as a constructed notion, nor was I aware,
when writing it, of the uses for narrative theory. By the 1990s, a better
understanding of intellectual and cultural history had come to dom-
inate the eld. If it had been written then, this would have been a
different book.
However, the work still has legs. Indeed, the debate in the 1920s
between radical nationalists, who were informed by their enthusiasm
for social revolutionary programs, and their older, moderate to liberal
capitalist and culturalist colleagues, presaged the emerging global
struggle between alternate paths to modernity. It is sometimes hard to
remember that in the 1970s, leftist intellectuals in North America and
Europe, in the absence of a true understanding of the Cultural Revo-
lution, were still interested in Maoism and the great experiment under
way in the Peoples Republic of China. I wonder how the nationalist
debates would be framed today, if we began our study from scratch
without the context of the Cold War.
Framing the discourse of the 1920s as the emergence of the decisive
left-right ssure of the nationalist movement served to highlight and
create the historical roots of what became a divided Korea after 1945.
While not denying the pivotal role played by the joint occupation of
the US and the USSR, historicizing the roots of Koreas divided nation-
alist movement added depth to the discussion of how the combined
leadership of Koreas nationalist and socialist movements was effort-
lessly (or so it seemed) polarized in the crucial 194548 interregnum,
before the emergence of separate Korean nation-states. Highlighting
the early ideological divide between fundamentally different visions
of a future Korean nation helped us understand the distortions in
each Korean states master narrative deployed for legitimation pur-
poses. In the mid-1970s, nationalist historians berated my choice of
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xii Preface to the 2014 Edition
Yi Kwangsus essays as representative of a moderate nationalist strat-
egy. Apparently Yis later vilication as a collaborator was enough
to discredit his earlier writings, yet any serious examination of the
debates at the time would nd Yi in the middle of nationalist activity
and speaking for a broad segment of activists. Moreover, working on
this project at the height of Park Chung Hees Yusin repression made
it difcult to discuss the breadth and quality of socialist discourse evi-
dent at the time, as I had picked subjects that did not t into a highly
politicized and narrowly framed nationalist history. Had I been in the
North trying to do the same, I probably would not have been able to
do this study at all.
Happily, historical study in contemporary South Korea is no longer
completely tyrannized by the crushing weight of political correctness
or censorship. That said, in East Asias struggles over the narrative and
memory of the Great Pacic War, we still see evidence of how politi-
cally controversial historical interpretation can be manipulated. While
politicized nationalist historians continue their attempts to police his-
tory, they are unable to suppress the burgeoning interest in subjects
considered out of bounds in the 1960s and 1970s. Over time I think
this study helped stimulate an opening for the serious consideration
of the intellectual, social, and even economic history of Korea under
Japanese colonial rule. The eld of colonial history greatly expanded
after the late 1980s, both in South Korea and among non-Korean his-
torians. And serious study of the period allowed us to qualify the 1945
break and see continuities once obscured by the politics of division.
This study makes a number of assertions that still inform our under-
standing of the intellectual debates of the 1920s:
The fragmentation of the Korean nationalist movement was
located in this decade and found its expression in the burgeoning
publishing world of the early cultural-policy era.
The new Japanese censorship regime that came with Saits
reforms was much more porous than originally believed, and it
allowed a much broader scope of ideological debate than might
have been expected.
The sources of cultural nationalist inspiration lie in the intellectual
activity of the Korean Enlightenment in the decades preceding
annexation.
The cultural policy ultimately shaped the nationalist debate in
favor of a more moderate, accommodationist line by selectively
silencing the voice of the radical left over time.
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Preface to the 2014 Edition xiii
In addition, the books consultation of colonial publications as sources
demonstrated their validity in broadening our understanding of intel-
lectual, social, and political history of Korea before 1945.
If I were to redo this study today, it would remain substantially the
same, but I would insert myself more freely in the narrative. I remem-
ber feeling constrained by training that taught historians to remain
objective and remote. Clearly, however, I was working inside a par-
adigm that offered a certain charged vocabulary as well as a world-
view from which I could hardly detach myself. Acknowledging that
would have made the task easier. I would integrate subsequent theo-
retical advances in our knowledge of the phenomenon of nationalism.
I would also integrate the insights of Benedict Andersons Imagined
Communities (1983) with regard to the role of publications in this
process of imagining.
Modern Korean nationalism began as an elite project in the late
nineteenth century and progressed through the rst decades of the
twentieth century, culminating in the great outpouring of the March
First movement in 1919. This movement is often considered the arrival
of modern, mass nationalism in Korea. But now I would submit more
boldly that while colonial repression helped create a nationwide unity
of loathing that exploded in 1919, it was only with the expansion of
the Korean press and publishing thereafter, and the discourse it pro-
duced, that the real process of creating a positive and permanent sense
of what it meant to be Korean in the third decade of the twentieth
century began.
Michael Robinson
Bloomington, Indiana
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