Imperial mimicry, modernisation theory and the contradictions of postcolonial South Korea1

1. This article only attempts to deal with postcolonial South Korea. While North Korea's anti-imperialist attitude is another manifestation of postcolonialism on the peninsula—and the problem of the two Koreas is itself a legacy of colonialism—it is beyond the scope of this article. Where the post-division period is indicated, ‘Korea’ is used as shorthand for ‘South Korea’.

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Notes

1. This article only attempts to deal with postcolonial South Korea. While North Korea's anti-imperialist attitude is another manifestation of postcolonialism on the peninsula—and the problem of the two Koreas is itself a legacy of colonialism—it is beyond the scope of this article. Where the post-division period is indicated, ‘Korea’ is used as shorthand for ‘South Korea’.

2. Peter Duus, ‘Introduction: Japan's Wartime Empire: Problems and Issues’, in Peter Duus, Ramon H Myers and Mark R Peattie (eds), The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp xi–xlvii, pp xii–xiii.

3. One factor excluding Japan and its ex-colonies from the now well-established field of postcolonial studies is undoubtedly the difficulty of a non-European colonising language and culture in a discipline that has generally taken root in English departments.

4. Leo Ching, The Disavowal and the Obsessional: Colonial Discourse East and West, Working Papers in Asian/Pacific Studies, Durham, NC: Duke University, 1995, p 18.

5. For example, see Kuan-hsing Chen (ed.), Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, 1998; and Ping-Hui Liao, ‘Postcolonial Studies in Taiwan: Issues in Critical Debates’, Postcolonial Studies 2(2), 1999, pp 199–211. See also T E Barlow (ed.), Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

6. Bruce Cumings, ‘Boundary Displacement: The State, the Foundations and Area Studies During and After the Cold War’, in Masao Miyoshi and H D Harootunian (eds), Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp 261–267, p 264.

7. Leo Ching, Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, p 19.

8. Leo Ching, ‘Yellow Skin, White Masks’, in Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Kuan-hsing Chen (ed.), London: Routledge, 1998, pp 65–86, p 70.

9. Quoted in Marius B Jansen, ‘Japanese Imperialism: Late Meiji Perspectives’, in Ramon H Myers and Mark R Peattie (eds), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, pp 61-79, p 64.

10. Mark R Peattie, ‘Japanese Attitudes toward Colonialism’, in Myers and Peattie, The Japanese Colonial Empire, pp 80–127, p 82.

11. Jansen, ‘Japanese Imperialism’, p 76.

12. Peattie, ‘Japanese Attitudes toward Colonialism’, p 87.

13. Despite the growing influence of the modern architecture movement by the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese sought to imitate the European neoclassical style of the nineteenth century with its clearer imperial connotations. See W H Coaldrake, Architecture and Authority in Japan, London: Routledge, 1996.

14. Chungmoo Choi, ‘The Discourse of Decolonization and Popular Memory: South Korea’, in Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd (eds), The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997, pp 461–484, p 467.

15. Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, 1994, p 86.

16. Harry Harootunian, History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp 59–60.

17. H D Harootunian, ‘Postcoloniality's Unconscious/Area Studies’ Desire’, in Miyoshi and Harootunian (eds), Learning Places, pp 150–174, p 158.

18. Ching, Becoming Japanese, p 27.

19. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p 44.

20. In an extraordinary piece of imperialist justification of 1924, Kita Ikki claims subaltern status for the Japanese in terms of a global class struggle, though his conclusions may not so much be anti-capitalist as hyper-capitalist: ‘As the class struggle within a nation is waged for the readjustment of unequal distinctions, so war between nations for an honorable cause will reform the present unjust distinctions. The British Empire is a millionaire possessing wealth all over the world; and Russia is a great landowner in occupation of the northern half of the globe. Japan with her scattered fringe of islands is one of the proletariat, and she has the right to declare war on the big monopoly powers. The socialists of the West contradict themselves when they admit the right of class struggle to the proletariat at home and at the same time condemn war, waged by a proletariat among nations, as militarism and aggression […] If it is permissible for the working class to unite to overthrow unjust authority by bloodshed, then unconditional approval should be given to Japan to perfect her army and navy and make war for the rectification of unjust international frontiers. In the name of rational social democracy Japan claims possession of Australia and Eastern Siberia.’ Quoted in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1983, p 98.

21. Walter Mignolo and Leo Ching's seminar ‘Global Coloniality’, Duke University, NC, Fall 2001.

22. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p 58.

23. Pai Hyung Il notes that the extensive archaeological and art historical research done by the Japanese in Korea was invariably translated and published in English, sometimes in Chinese, and never in Korean. See ‘The Politics of Korea's Past: The Legacy of Japanese Colonial Archaeology in the Korean Peninsula’, East Asian History 7, 1994, pp 25–48, p 38.

24. Yi Won-sun, quoted in Kazuhiko Kimijima, ‘The Japan–South Korea Joint Study Group on History Textbooks and the Continuing Legacy of Japanese Colonialism’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 30(2), 1998, pp 47–52, p 50.

25. Duus, ‘Introduction: Japan's Wartime Empire’, p xxii.

26. Quoted in Duus, ‘Introduction: Japan's Wartime Empire’, p xxiii.

27. Lt. S Motizuki, The Nippon Spirit, Department of Information, Imperial Japanese Army, 1943, p 30.

28. Quoted in Duus, ‘Introduction: Japan's Wartime Empire’, p xxvii.

29. Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997, p 115.

30. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon, 1978.

31. Seung-mi Han, ‘Colonial Subject as Other: An Analysis of Late Meiji Travelogues on Korea’, in Helen Hardacre with Adam L Kern (eds), New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp 688–701, p 697.

32. Choi, ‘The Discourse of Decolonization’, p 467.

33. Han, ‘Colonial Subject as Other’, p 692.

34. Quoted from Voyages to Manchuria and Korea, in Han, ‘Colonial Subject as Other’, p 696.

35. Han, ‘Colonial Subject as Other’, p 693.

36. In this sense, Ching notes that Japanese colonialism has more in common with French assimilationist colonial policies. Ching, Becoming Japanese, p 98. Robert Young explains aspects of the French centralised colonial system: the ‘colonies were integrated within France as départements d'outre mer and were thus not technically colonies’. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p 32. This is contrasted with the English policy of loose association with its colonial populations.

37. Han, ‘Colonial Subject as Other’, p 700.

38. See Stefan Tanaka's Japan's Orient: Rendering Past into History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

39. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, p 108.

40. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, p 122.

41. Pai, ‘The Politics of Korea's Past’, p 39.

42. Torii Ryuzo, quoted in Han, ‘Colonial Subject as Other’, p 699. The Japanese term ‘jinshugaku’ to translate ‘ethnological’ is supplied by Han.

43. Tokutomi Soho, quoted in Peattie, ‘Japanese Attitudes toward Colonialism’, pp 81–82.

44. Han-Kyo Kim, ‘Japanese Colonialism in Korea’, in Harry Wray and Hilary Conroy (eds), Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983, pp 222–228, p 226.

45. Racial differentiations between Japanese and other Asians followed the European model and were coded as white/non-white. See Nancy Brcak and John Pavia's ‘Images of Asians in the Art of the Great Pacific War, 1937–45’, in Timothy J Craig and Richard King (eds), Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2002, pp 291–304.

46. Carter Eckert, ‘Total War, Industrialization, and Social Change in Late Colonial Korea’, in Duus et al. (eds), The Japanese Wartime Empire, pp 3–39, p 12.

47. Pai, ‘The Politics of Korea's Past’, p 44.

48. Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires 1895–1919, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, p 32.

49. Schmid, Korea Between Empires, p 33, p 87.

50. Michael Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea: 1920–1925, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988, p 69.

51. Pai, ‘The Politics of Korea's Past’, p 27.

52. Pai, ‘The Politics of Korea's Past’, p 44.

53. Paik Nak-Chung, ‘Coloniality in South Korea and a South Korean Project for Overcoming Modernity’, Interventions 2(1), 2000, pp 73–86, p 75.

54. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p 114.

55. Jahyun Kim Haboush, ‘In Search of HISTORY in Democratic Korea: The Discourse of Modernity in Contemporary Historical Fiction’, in Kai-wing Chow et al. (eds), Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001, pp 189–214, p 194.

56. Rob Wilson, ‘Imagining “Asia-Pacific” Today: Forgetting Colonialism in the Magical Free Markets of the American Pacific’, in Miyoshi and Harootunian, Learning Places, pp 231–260, p 245.

57. ‘The origins of postcolonialism lie in the historical resistance to colonial occupation and imperial control, the success of which then enabled a radical challenge to the political and conceptual structures of the systems on which such domination had been based’ (italics added). Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, p 60.

58. Hakjoon Kim, ‘The Political Culture of South Korea as Influenced by National Division’, Korea and World Affairs 8(3), 1984, pp 543–556, p 547.

59. Kim U-chang, ‘The Situation of the Writers under Japanese Colonialism’, Korea Journal 16(5), 1976, pp 4–15. See also, for example, Choi Won-shik, ‘Seoul, Tokyo, New York: Modern Korean Literature Seen through Yi Sang's “Lost Flowers”’, Korea Journal 39(4), 1999, pp 118–143.

60. Kim Hunggyu, Understanding Korean Literature, Robert J Fouser (trans.), Armonk, NY: M E Sharpe, 1997, p 117.

61. Kim, Understanding Korean Literature, p 15.

62. Paik Nak-Chung gives the everyday example of the way that the Japanese promoted Western-style clothing during the colonial period, whereas ‘if the Japanese had imposed their own attire, Koreans would have felt a much stronger urge to revert to traditional Korean costume at the time of liberation’. See ‘Coloniality in South Korea’, p 75.

63. Yi Sang, ‘Tongkyong [Tokyo]’, in Yi Sang Chŏnjip Vol. 3: Sup'il, Yoon-sik Kim (ed.), Seoul: Munhak Sasang, 1993, pp 95–100. In other words, having already become loan-words in Japanese, these nouns of modernity are re-loaned to Korean. This is not to say that the Korean language was not also influenced by Japanese; however, the mediation of English and European loan-words through Japanese renders the colonial relation invisible.

64. Kim U-chang, ‘The Situation of the Writers’, p 5.

65. It is usually recognised that in order to get a professor's job at a university in Seoul a graduate degree from an American university is required—despite the fact that Korea has over 1000 of its own universities.

66. Choi, ‘The Discourse of Decolonization’, p 465.

67. Wilson, ‘Imagining “Asia-Pacific” Today’, p 244.

68. Choi, ‘The Discourse of Decolonization’, p 466.

69. Harootunian, ‘Postcoloniality's Unconscious/Area Studies’ Desire’, p 158.

70. Kim Chong-gi, quoted in Chungmoo Choi, ‘Transnational Capitalism, National Imaginary and Protest Theater in South Korea’, boundary 2 22(1), 1995, pp 235–261, p 239.

71. Choi, ‘Transnational Capitalism’, pp 250–251.

72. Quoted in James K Freda, ‘Discourses of Han in Postcolonial Korea: Absent Sufferings and Industrialist Dreams’, Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies 3(1–2), 1999, para. 23.

73. See Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

74. My thanks to historian Seonmin Kim for this information.

75. Schmid, Korea Between Empires, p 267.

76. Peattie, ‘Japanese Attitudes toward Colonialism’, p 124.

77. Yun Ch'iho, quoted in Eckert, ‘Total War’, p 33.

78. Eckert, ‘Total War’, p 34.

79. Paik, ‘Coloniality in South Korea’, p 76.

80. Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura, p 115.

81. Cumings, ‘Boundary Displacement’, p 264.

82. Cumings, ‘Boundary Displacement’, p 265.

83. Cumings, ‘The Legacy of Japanese Colonialism in Korea’, in Myers and Peattie, The Japanese Colonial Empire, p 489.

84. Cumings also notes how many American Koreans believe themselves to be ‘right after whites’ in the racial hierarchy. See his Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History, New York: Norton, 1997, p 448.

85. For example, Yi Tae-Jin writes of the early twentieth-century, pre-colonial attempt of Korea to modernise itself and the way ‘Japanese colonial rule mercilessly cut off the full realization of the ingenious plan that harmonized both the old and the new in establishing a modern and independent Great Han Empire, a new Korea’, p 121. See his ‘Seoul at the Beginning of the 20th Century: Urban Development Based on Western Models’, Korea Journal 39(3), 1999, pp 95–121.

86. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996, p 107.

87. Pak Unshik, quoted in Kim Hunggyu, Understanding Korean Literature, p 33.