evance. In addition, Rhee couched his anticolonial lobbying in pragmatic terms, providing argumen... more evance. In addition, Rhee couched his anticolonial lobbying in pragmatic terms, providing arguments that presaged later rationales for America’s Cold War containment doctrine. Appeasing Japan by acquiescing to its expansion only encouraged further aggression. Aggressionwould continuallymagnify until it precipitated general war, a prediction borne out by Japan’s eventual attack on Pearl Harbor. Here, Fields revises received notions that Rhee’s supporters were merely spoilsmen in search of positions and contracts. Wealthy, privileged, and well-born Americans were drawn to his political vision for idealistic reasons. Theodore Roosevelt’s abandonment of Korea in 1905 to Japanese incorporation was unjust; it had only led to further aggression in Asia, much of it staged from the peninsula. Having done Koreans a bad turn, certain Americans felt honor bound to do them a better one. Fields focuses his analysis onRhee’s anticolonial advocacyduring twodistinctwaves ofAmerican idealism: the postwar Wilsonian andWashington Conference eras (1919–22) and the Pacific War (1941–45). Korean nationalists did not create these waves; they attempted to ride them to decolonization. The initial attempt ended in failure. Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to secure Japanese membership in the League of Nations precluded the possibility of impelling Tokyo’s exit from Korea. During the Washington Conference, US negotiators prioritized global peace through mutually agreed naval disarmament rather than the restoration of Korean sovereignty. Fields stresses Rhee’s pragmatic opportunism throughout. Rhee readilyabandonedWilsonianDemocrats forEurophobicRepublicans, evengoing so faras attempting a rather ill-considered effort to secure Soviet backing against Japanese imperial ambitions in 1933. Furthermore, Korean nationalist organizations consistently manipulated the historical record by presenting Korea as the first victim of Japanese expansion, casting Taiwan’s prior colonization down the memory hole. The fact that Korea entered American public discourse as Japan’s first conquest was a remarkable achievement. Rhee’s lobbying during the Pacific War produced more successful, if quite unanticipated, outcomes. His continual iterations of Korea’s abandonment to Japanese misrule, coupled with the possibility that it might be abandoned again to Soviet imperial designs, generated sufficient public pressure to compel State Department officials to sanction its partial occupation by US forces. For Fields, this decision was premised on symbolism rather than sound strategic sense. US diplomats yielded to extrabureaucratic conceptions of the Americanmission. Korean nationalists fostered these conceptions in a sympathetic public sphere. Although Fields is at times reluctant to state it outright, much of this was showmanship by a ruthless impresario. Rhee pandered to the American mission as a means to power. Upon becoming president of South Korea in 1948, his commitment to democracy was procedural rather than substantive. This monograph is an important contribution to Korean and US foreign policy studies. Much of the literature has heretofore focused on the post-1945 period, making Fields’ work a welcome consideration of prior events. Scholars can use it to obtain a solid understanding of the sociopolitical contexts in which US-based Korean nationalists operated and circulated.
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2018
Author(s): Son, Hijoo; Rhee, Jooyeon | Abstract: This special issue of Cross-Currents—“Diasporic ... more Author(s): Son, Hijoo; Rhee, Jooyeon | Abstract: This special issue of Cross-Currents—“Diasporic Art and Korean Identity”—is the fruit of a two-day conference on “Korean Diaspora and the Arts” held at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2017. The contributors explore new delineations of the political, social, cultural, and emotional landscapes inhabited by Koreans living in diaspora. Korean diasporic artists investigate the meaning of “Koreanness” through their paintings, political cartoons, theater, film, documentary, photographs, and multimedia art. This special issue on Korean diasporic art presents creative expressions of a shared history of trauma, suffering, or displacement, affectively reconstructed or nostalgically reimagined, produced in China, Cuba, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, and the United States. The contributors demonstrate how artists are particularly able to captivate audiences and innovate ways of articulating the multiple aspects of the everyday condition...
Y. David Chung is an artist and filmmaker known for his film and video works, installations, perf... more Y. David Chung is an artist and filmmaker known for his film and video works, installations, performances, drawings, prints, and public artworks. This interview combines two conversations on the concept of Korean identity and diasporic art: one that took place in 2008, after Chung finished filming his documentary "Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People," co-directed with Matt Dibble, and the other in 2018. Hijoo Son and Jooyeon Rhee jointly designed the questions, interviewed Professor Chung, and redacted the transcript into its present form.
This article examines images of migrant workers and brides in recent South Korean films in order ... more This article examines images of migrant workers and brides in recent South Korean films in order to demonstrate how popular m e d i a c a n c o m p l i c a t e t h e i s s u e o f multiculturalism in Korea, and to problematize the ethnic and gender hierarchy embedded in multicultural policies and in the social fabric of Korean society. Introduction: Behind Nation Branding The ways Hallyu is received in other East Asian and Southeast Asian countries show that audiences' involvement in transnational cultural productions goes beyond consumption: as Chikako Nagayama, Millie Creighton, and Mary J. Ainslie discuss in this issue, Hallyu often triggers the audiences' interest in actively engaging with domestic social issues and interregional politics. By paying attention to popular culture's capability to create communicative social space, this paper seeks to answer what role Korean film plays in articulating discourse about multiculturalism within Korea's borders. Although ...
The candlelight movement in South Korea (hereafter Korea) in recent years speaks to a series of i... more The candlelight movement in South Korea (hereafter Korea) in recent years speaks to a series of intense and contentious political and social changes that have been widely witnessed by the public. Held up by hundreds of thousands of citizens in public spaces in major cities across the nation, the candlelight vigils have become the most visible symbol of democracy and the power of the masses. As is evident in its spectacular photographic images that were extensively shared among people through social media, the candlelight movement exemplifies a dramatic moment of the protest culture in Korea. The utilization of visual symbols and images and the facilitation of communication technologies played an integral role in mobilizing the masses in the movement. And citizens’ active use of currently available visual media and new technologies demonstrated the capability of visual culture to generate powerful impacts on society. This special issue pays close attention to the new and dynamic rela...
The transnational dissemination and consumption of contemporary Korean culture, better known as H... more The transnational dissemination and consumption of contemporary Korean culture, better known as Hallyu, has encouraged a wave of academic writing from various disciplines, forming one of the major new developments in the field of Korean studies (Kim 2014, 12). This issue attempts to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on Hallyu by demonstrating how the consumption of Hallyu delineates multiple borders in various societies-national, cultural, gender, class, and ethnicity-borders that are constantly shifting and transforming.
This article examines films that deal with the Kwangju uprising (1980) as a way to see how popula... more This article examines films that deal with the Kwangju uprising (1980) as a way to see how popular art forms such as film have the capability to critique state-led violence of human rights. These films played a central role in elevating the once-provincialized history of the democratization movement to a national one, expanding the meaning and effect of the populist struggle. It reviews the progress of cinematic representation of the uprising as both a cultural site of populist resistance and a source of generating a shared sense of community, while problematizing the gendered representation of the people as victims or heroes in these films in order to uncover the silenced voices and to deconstruct the hegemonic notion of the democratization movement as primarily masculine. The gendered representation of the uprising overlooks women's individual experiences such as the post-traumatic stress disorder caused by sexual violence and social isolation-stories which have been silenced. This article argues that, while the 5.18 cinema produced a strong sense of justice and collectivity among Koreans, we can broaden our understanding of the historical implications of the uprising by being attentive to women's experiences in order to produce a strong sense of moral responsibility that will eventually work toward a fuller reconciliation with the past.
This article explores the cinematic potential of representing a silenced history of Korean reside... more This article explores the cinematic potential of representing a silenced history of Korean residents in Japan who were repatriated to their “homeland” (North Korea) by examining Yang Yonghi’s films...
Modern Korean newspapers played a decisive role in transforming the Korean fiction genre in the e... more Modern Korean newspapers played a decisive role in transforming the Korean fiction genre in the early twentieth century-a transformation that was carried out in two distinctively different cultural and political environments. In the 1900s, reformminded Korean intellectuals translated and authored fictional works in newspapers primarily as a way to instigate Koreans to participate in the nation-building process during the Patriotic Enlightenment movement (Aeguk kyemong undong) period. When Japan annexed Korea in 1910, the Daily News (Maeil sinbo) continually used fiction as a vehicle to deliver the colonial government's assimilation policy, that is, to raise Korea's socioeconomic and cultural status, with the aim of civilizing the society. The rhetoric of civilization is a common feature in fictional works produced during the period. However, what characterized the works serialized in Maeil sinbo was their increasing focus on individual desire and domestic affairs, which manifested itself in the form of courtship and familial conflicts. The confrontation between private desire and family relationships in these fictional works represented the prospect of higher education and economic equity while invoking emotional responses to the contradictory social reality of colonial assimilation in the portrayal of domestic issues in fiction. Looking at Maeil sinbo and its serialization of fiction not as a fixed totality of the Japanese imperial force but as a discursive space where contradicting views on civilization were formed, this paper scrutinizes emotional renderings of individuality and domesticity reflected in Maeil sinbo's serialized fiction in the early 1910s.
evance. In addition, Rhee couched his anticolonial lobbying in pragmatic terms, providing argumen... more evance. In addition, Rhee couched his anticolonial lobbying in pragmatic terms, providing arguments that presaged later rationales for America’s Cold War containment doctrine. Appeasing Japan by acquiescing to its expansion only encouraged further aggression. Aggressionwould continuallymagnify until it precipitated general war, a prediction borne out by Japan’s eventual attack on Pearl Harbor. Here, Fields revises received notions that Rhee’s supporters were merely spoilsmen in search of positions and contracts. Wealthy, privileged, and well-born Americans were drawn to his political vision for idealistic reasons. Theodore Roosevelt’s abandonment of Korea in 1905 to Japanese incorporation was unjust; it had only led to further aggression in Asia, much of it staged from the peninsula. Having done Koreans a bad turn, certain Americans felt honor bound to do them a better one. Fields focuses his analysis onRhee’s anticolonial advocacyduring twodistinctwaves ofAmerican idealism: the postwar Wilsonian andWashington Conference eras (1919–22) and the Pacific War (1941–45). Korean nationalists did not create these waves; they attempted to ride them to decolonization. The initial attempt ended in failure. Woodrow Wilson’s commitment to secure Japanese membership in the League of Nations precluded the possibility of impelling Tokyo’s exit from Korea. During the Washington Conference, US negotiators prioritized global peace through mutually agreed naval disarmament rather than the restoration of Korean sovereignty. Fields stresses Rhee’s pragmatic opportunism throughout. Rhee readilyabandonedWilsonianDemocrats forEurophobicRepublicans, evengoing so faras attempting a rather ill-considered effort to secure Soviet backing against Japanese imperial ambitions in 1933. Furthermore, Korean nationalist organizations consistently manipulated the historical record by presenting Korea as the first victim of Japanese expansion, casting Taiwan’s prior colonization down the memory hole. The fact that Korea entered American public discourse as Japan’s first conquest was a remarkable achievement. Rhee’s lobbying during the Pacific War produced more successful, if quite unanticipated, outcomes. His continual iterations of Korea’s abandonment to Japanese misrule, coupled with the possibility that it might be abandoned again to Soviet imperial designs, generated sufficient public pressure to compel State Department officials to sanction its partial occupation by US forces. For Fields, this decision was premised on symbolism rather than sound strategic sense. US diplomats yielded to extrabureaucratic conceptions of the Americanmission. Korean nationalists fostered these conceptions in a sympathetic public sphere. Although Fields is at times reluctant to state it outright, much of this was showmanship by a ruthless impresario. Rhee pandered to the American mission as a means to power. Upon becoming president of South Korea in 1948, his commitment to democracy was procedural rather than substantive. This monograph is an important contribution to Korean and US foreign policy studies. Much of the literature has heretofore focused on the post-1945 period, making Fields’ work a welcome consideration of prior events. Scholars can use it to obtain a solid understanding of the sociopolitical contexts in which US-based Korean nationalists operated and circulated.
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2018
Author(s): Son, Hijoo; Rhee, Jooyeon | Abstract: This special issue of Cross-Currents—“Diasporic ... more Author(s): Son, Hijoo; Rhee, Jooyeon | Abstract: This special issue of Cross-Currents—“Diasporic Art and Korean Identity”—is the fruit of a two-day conference on “Korean Diaspora and the Arts” held at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2017. The contributors explore new delineations of the political, social, cultural, and emotional landscapes inhabited by Koreans living in diaspora. Korean diasporic artists investigate the meaning of “Koreanness” through their paintings, political cartoons, theater, film, documentary, photographs, and multimedia art. This special issue on Korean diasporic art presents creative expressions of a shared history of trauma, suffering, or displacement, affectively reconstructed or nostalgically reimagined, produced in China, Cuba, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, and the United States. The contributors demonstrate how artists are particularly able to captivate audiences and innovate ways of articulating the multiple aspects of the everyday condition...
Y. David Chung is an artist and filmmaker known for his film and video works, installations, perf... more Y. David Chung is an artist and filmmaker known for his film and video works, installations, performances, drawings, prints, and public artworks. This interview combines two conversations on the concept of Korean identity and diasporic art: one that took place in 2008, after Chung finished filming his documentary "Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People," co-directed with Matt Dibble, and the other in 2018. Hijoo Son and Jooyeon Rhee jointly designed the questions, interviewed Professor Chung, and redacted the transcript into its present form.
This article examines images of migrant workers and brides in recent South Korean films in order ... more This article examines images of migrant workers and brides in recent South Korean films in order to demonstrate how popular m e d i a c a n c o m p l i c a t e t h e i s s u e o f multiculturalism in Korea, and to problematize the ethnic and gender hierarchy embedded in multicultural policies and in the social fabric of Korean society. Introduction: Behind Nation Branding The ways Hallyu is received in other East Asian and Southeast Asian countries show that audiences' involvement in transnational cultural productions goes beyond consumption: as Chikako Nagayama, Millie Creighton, and Mary J. Ainslie discuss in this issue, Hallyu often triggers the audiences' interest in actively engaging with domestic social issues and interregional politics. By paying attention to popular culture's capability to create communicative social space, this paper seeks to answer what role Korean film plays in articulating discourse about multiculturalism within Korea's borders. Although ...
The candlelight movement in South Korea (hereafter Korea) in recent years speaks to a series of i... more The candlelight movement in South Korea (hereafter Korea) in recent years speaks to a series of intense and contentious political and social changes that have been widely witnessed by the public. Held up by hundreds of thousands of citizens in public spaces in major cities across the nation, the candlelight vigils have become the most visible symbol of democracy and the power of the masses. As is evident in its spectacular photographic images that were extensively shared among people through social media, the candlelight movement exemplifies a dramatic moment of the protest culture in Korea. The utilization of visual symbols and images and the facilitation of communication technologies played an integral role in mobilizing the masses in the movement. And citizens’ active use of currently available visual media and new technologies demonstrated the capability of visual culture to generate powerful impacts on society. This special issue pays close attention to the new and dynamic rela...
The transnational dissemination and consumption of contemporary Korean culture, better known as H... more The transnational dissemination and consumption of contemporary Korean culture, better known as Hallyu, has encouraged a wave of academic writing from various disciplines, forming one of the major new developments in the field of Korean studies (Kim 2014, 12). This issue attempts to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on Hallyu by demonstrating how the consumption of Hallyu delineates multiple borders in various societies-national, cultural, gender, class, and ethnicity-borders that are constantly shifting and transforming.
This article examines films that deal with the Kwangju uprising (1980) as a way to see how popula... more This article examines films that deal with the Kwangju uprising (1980) as a way to see how popular art forms such as film have the capability to critique state-led violence of human rights. These films played a central role in elevating the once-provincialized history of the democratization movement to a national one, expanding the meaning and effect of the populist struggle. It reviews the progress of cinematic representation of the uprising as both a cultural site of populist resistance and a source of generating a shared sense of community, while problematizing the gendered representation of the people as victims or heroes in these films in order to uncover the silenced voices and to deconstruct the hegemonic notion of the democratization movement as primarily masculine. The gendered representation of the uprising overlooks women's individual experiences such as the post-traumatic stress disorder caused by sexual violence and social isolation-stories which have been silenced. This article argues that, while the 5.18 cinema produced a strong sense of justice and collectivity among Koreans, we can broaden our understanding of the historical implications of the uprising by being attentive to women's experiences in order to produce a strong sense of moral responsibility that will eventually work toward a fuller reconciliation with the past.
This article explores the cinematic potential of representing a silenced history of Korean reside... more This article explores the cinematic potential of representing a silenced history of Korean residents in Japan who were repatriated to their “homeland” (North Korea) by examining Yang Yonghi’s films...
Modern Korean newspapers played a decisive role in transforming the Korean fiction genre in the e... more Modern Korean newspapers played a decisive role in transforming the Korean fiction genre in the early twentieth century-a transformation that was carried out in two distinctively different cultural and political environments. In the 1900s, reformminded Korean intellectuals translated and authored fictional works in newspapers primarily as a way to instigate Koreans to participate in the nation-building process during the Patriotic Enlightenment movement (Aeguk kyemong undong) period. When Japan annexed Korea in 1910, the Daily News (Maeil sinbo) continually used fiction as a vehicle to deliver the colonial government's assimilation policy, that is, to raise Korea's socioeconomic and cultural status, with the aim of civilizing the society. The rhetoric of civilization is a common feature in fictional works produced during the period. However, what characterized the works serialized in Maeil sinbo was their increasing focus on individual desire and domestic affairs, which manifested itself in the form of courtship and familial conflicts. The confrontation between private desire and family relationships in these fictional works represented the prospect of higher education and economic equity while invoking emotional responses to the contradictory social reality of colonial assimilation in the portrayal of domestic issues in fiction. Looking at Maeil sinbo and its serialization of fiction not as a fixed totality of the Japanese imperial force but as a discursive space where contradicting views on civilization were formed, this paper scrutinizes emotional renderings of individuality and domesticity reflected in Maeil sinbo's serialized fiction in the early 1910s.
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