Korean nationalist historiography () is a way of writing Korean history that centers on the Korean minjok, an ethnically defined Korean nation. This kind of nationalist historiography emerged in the early twentieth century among Korean intellectuals who wanted to foster national consciousness to achieve Korean independence from Japanese domination. Its first proponent was journalist and independence activist Shin Chaeho (1880–1936). In his polemical New Reading of History (Doksa Sillon), which was published in 1908 three years after Korea became a Japanese protectorate, Shin proclaimed that Korean history was the history of the Korean minjok, a distinct race descended from the god Dangun that had once controlled not only the Korean peninsula but also large parts of Manchuria. Nationalist historians made expansive claims to the territory of these ancient Korean kingdoms, by which the present state of the minjok was to be judged.
Shin and other Korean intellectuals like Park Eun-sik (1859–1925) and Choe Nam-seon (1890–1957) continued to develop these themes in the 1910s and 1920s. They rejected two prior ways of representing the past: the Confucian historiography of Joseon Korea's scholar-bureaucrats, which they blamed for perpetuating a servile worldview centered around China, and Japanese colonial historiography, which portrayed Korea as historically dependent and culturally backward.
The work of these prewar nationalist historians has shaped postwar historiography in both North and South Korea. Despite ideological differences between the two regimes, the dominant historiography in both countries since the 1960s has continued to reflect nationalist themes, and this common historical outlook is the basis for talks about Korean unification. In the process of trying to reject Japanese colonial scholarship, Korean nationalist historians have adopted many of its premises. Shin Chaeho's irredentist claims over Manchuria, however, have not made it into the mainstream.
Korean nationalist historiography was welcomed by both the left and right sides of South Korea in the 20th century, but in the 21st century, the Korean nationalist historiography was increasingly associated with leftist nationalism, which was critical of anti-communist conservatism.
Historical context
The late nineteenth century was a time of domestic crises and external threats for Joseon Korea (1392–1910). Starting in the 1860s, a series of rebellions caused by excessive taxation and misgovernment threatened the reigning dynasty, while foreign powers — mostly western countries, but also Meiji Japan — used military force to try to open Korea to trade., pp. 433 (rebellions starting in 1862) and 437 (military pressure from westen powers and Japan). The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876 opened three Korean ports to commerce and granted Japanese merchants extraterritoriality in these ports.. This unequal treaty prompted even more foreign interventions, as it turned Korea into a target of rivalry between imperialist powers. (the 1876 treaty "opened the door not only to trade but to foreign interference and a world of trouble"); ("imperialist rivalry over Korea"). One crucial issue was whether Korea was a sovereign state or a Chinese dependency.. Despite Joseon's status as a tributary of Ming (1368–1644) and then Qing (1644–1911) China — which implied the sending of tribute missions and a ritually inferior position of the Korean king vis-à-vis the Chinese emperor — Korea could also dictate both its domestic and foreign policies, creating an ambiguous situation that frustrated western powers. (tribute missions and ritual inferiority) and 37 ("like the Ming, the Qing virtually never interfered with Korean domestic affairs"; "dependent-yet-autonomous status"); ("One of the reasons for the use of violence by the French and Americans was the frustration caused by the ambiguity over who was responsible for the conduct of foreign relations under the tributary system").
To appease tensions, China and Japan signed the Convention of Tientsin (1882), in which both parties agreed not to send more troops to Korea. In 1884, however, Korean reformers supported by Japanese legation guards tried to depose King Gojong (r. 1863–1907), but Chinese troops stationed in Korea intervened quickly to foil the coup.. Ten years later, the Donghak Peasant Rebellion exploded and once again put the Joseon regime in difficulty. King Gojong asked China to send troops to help repress it, but Japan, under the pretext of protecting its interests in the peninsula, sent even more. In July 1894 Japanese forces seized the Korean king and forced him to establish a cabinet that implemented extensive institutional reforms. One of these reforms consisted in establishing the Bureau of History (Pyeonsaguk 編史局), which would play a role in later controversies over history.. Japan's attack on Chinese forces a few days later started the Sino-Japanese War, which was fought over who would control the Korean peninsula.. The war ended with a resounding Japanese victory confirmed by the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), which forced China to recognize the independence of Joseon Korea. But Korea's escape from the China-centered world order simply cleared the way for Japanese imperialist domination..
History of Korean nationalist historiography
Precursors (before 1895) During the later half of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897), many scholars became disenchanted with Sinocentrism and became more conscious of Korea's uniqueness and independence. This trend became known as the silhak ("pragmatic learning") movement. The most important pre-1895 precursor to the rise of nationalist historiography was the erosion of Sinocentrism during the silhak movement.
Non-Sinocentric historiographical ideas began to arise in the works of the scholars Hong Tae-yong (1731–1783), Yi Chong-hwi (1731–1786), Pak Chiwŏn (1737–1805), Yu Deuk-gong (1749–1807), Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836), and Yi Kyu-gyŏng (, 1788–1856). Hong Tae-yong rejected the sacrosanct idea of Sinocentrism that China was superior to all other nations, and argued that all nations were equals. Hong's contemporary Chong Yag-yong argued that any nation excelling in culture could define itself as the "center", and further argued that because Korea had already reached this level of cultural development, it could therefore be called the "center". He also emphasized the importance of additional education in Korean texts such as Samguk Sagi (12th century) rather than the Chinese Classics alone. Park Ji-won lamented that the prevailing Korean historians of his day were beholden to Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian framework, which placed China at the center of the international system. He provided a fresh perspective on the historical territory of Korea as extending beyond the Yalu river into Manchuria. Yi Kyu-gyŏng appealed to intellectuals to write a comprehensive history of Korea within the interpretative framework of independent national identity.
The most representative silhak historiographical work is Yi Ik's (1681–1763) Dongsa Gangmok ("Essentials of the History of the Eastern Country"), which although written in a neo-Confucian framework, demonstrates a more critical than apologetic tone towards the early Joseon dynasty and its establishment.
1895–1945
1895–1905 Contemporary Korean historians trace the roots of nationalist historiography to the Korean independence movement, which emerged in response to the rise of Japanese influence in Korea after Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). Starting in 1895, Korean newspapers started to foster new ways of imagining Korea. In 1896 Seo Jae-pil (1864–1951) and Yun Chi-ho (1864–1945) founded the bilingual (English-Korean) Tongnip Sinmun (the Independent), which was the first Korean newspaper to be published in Hangul. Seo and Yun, who had both come into contact with ideas of "nation" and "independence" during their studies in the United States, tried to promote national consciousness among Koreans, partly through historical education. In 1899 the newspaper translated into vernacular Korean an essay "On Patriotism" that Chinese journalist and historian Liang Qichao had recently published in Japan. But such calls for "Korean political unity and racial solidarity" in turn-of-the-century newspapers were censored by Japanese colonial authorities.. The Tongnip Sinmun was thus forced to close later in 1899. Japanese authorities also suppressed private schools that tried to promote patriotism through the teaching of Korean history, language, and customs.
Social Darwinist ideas of struggle between races were also among the new intellectual currents influencing Koreans at the time. They were introduced to Korea in the 1880s by intellectuals who had traveled or studied in Japan. Their first two proponents were Yu Kil-chun (1856–1914) and Yun Chi-ho (1864–1945), who had both been to Japan in the spring of 1881 as members of Eo Yun-jung's (어윤중, 魚允中; 1848–1896) Courtiers' Observation Mission (조사 시찰단, 朝士視察團), which the Korean royal court had dispatched to observe the Meiji reforms. Yun mentioned ideas on the Korean "race" in editorials published in Tongnip Sinmun, but not enough to disseminate these ideas widely. Indeed, until the imposition of a Japanese protectorate on Korea in 1905, the Pan-Asianist view that Koreans and Japanese, as members of the "yellow race," were allies in a struggle against the "white race," was more salient in Korean newspapers than portrayals of Koreans as racially distinct from the Japanese.
Japanese colonial historiography Mainstream Japanese historiography arose out of a fusion of Western historiography, as introduced by the German Ludwig Riess in 1887, and the Chinese scholarly tradition of evidential research (kaozheng 考證 or kōshōgaku 考證學), which had been established in Japan since the Edo period (1603–1868). Japanese historiography on East Asia (Tōyōshi) was a field led by Shiratori Kurakichi 白鳥庫吉 (1865–1942) which generally followed the negative, orientalist portrayals of China and Korea by the West, while categorizing Japan as separate from both Asia and the West, but as on an equal footing with the West. What Korean historians refer to as Japanese "colonial historiography" can be traced to Tokyo Imperial University's 1890 history of Japan, the Kokushi gan 國史眼, which argued for a common ancestry to Koreans and Japanese (Nissen dōsoron). Based on the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki chronicles, the Kokushi gan asserted that the legendary figures Susanoo, the brother of Emperor Jimmu, and Empress Jingū had ruled or invaded Silla (Korea). Such views of Korea's historical subjugation to Japan became widely accepted in Japanese scholarship and integral to Japan's national history; similar arguments appeared in other books of Japan's Meiji era (1868–1912), such as Ōtori Keisuke's Chōsen kibun 朝鮮紀聞 (1885) and Hayashi Taisuke's 林泰輔 Chōsenshi 朝鮮史 (1892). Another theme in Japanese historical scholarship on Korea was Korea's backwardness, which was first argued by the economist Tokuzō Fukuda in 1902, who said that Joseon was equivalent to Japan in the Heian period (794–1185).