Korea: Outline of a Civilisation Brill’S Korean Study Library
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Korea: Outline of a Civilisation Brill’s Korean Study Library Edited by Ross King (University of British Columbia) In co-operation with Boudewijn Walraven (Leiden University) Sun Joo Kim (Harvard University) Rüdiger Frank (University of Vienna) VOLUME 4 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bksl Korea Outline of a Civilisation By Kenneth M. Wells LEIDEN | BOSTON This book is published with the generous support of the International Center for Korean Studies, Korea University’s Center for research, publication, and development in Korean Studies. The International Center for Korean Studies was established in 2003 to support scholarship and exploration of Korea in the humanities and social sciences, and to promote new research in Korean Studies to a wide international audience. Cover illustration: A blend of old and new in central Seoul, late 1990s. Photo by author. This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1876-7079 isbn 978-90-04-29971-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30005-7 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ix List of Maps and Illustrations xii Political Chronology of the Korean Peninsula xiii Introduction 1 1 From Tribes to Monarchies 10 Location and Territory 10 The Mists of Time 11 Wiman Chosŏn 13 The Three Kingdoms 15 The Silla Bone-rank Aristocracy 17 United Silla 19 The Problem of T’ang China 21 The Challenge of Regional Aristocracies 22 Rise of the Koryŏ Dynasty 27 The Mongol Presence 29 2 Buddhism, Confucianism and the People 32 Silla Religion and Culture 32 Classical Religion 33 Buddhism 36 Buddhism and Art 39 Koryŏ Buddhism 40 Confucianism 45 The People 50 Social Policy and Welfare 50 The Status of Women 51 The Rise of the Military 54 3 The Grand Tradition I: The Pillars of Orthodoxy 59 The Neo-Confucian World 61 The State and Economy 62 The Metaphysics of Orthodoxy 67 Education and the Growth of Factions 73 The Japanese Invasion 75 Science and Technology 79 The Grounds of Longevity 83 vi contents 4 The Grand Tradition II: The Other Side of Orthodoxy 85 The Regulation of Women 87 Religion 90 Buddhism 90 Classical Religion 93 Catholicism 97 Literature and Thought 99 The Scholars’ Revolt 107 5 The Tradition Under Siege 111 The Imo Incident 111 The Taewŏn’gun 114 Challenges to the Grand Tradition 115 The Enlightenment Party and the Kapsin Coup 120 The Tonghak Movement 124 The Peasant War of 1894 125 The Kabo Reforms 127 The Independence Club 129 Formation of the Independence Club 131 Independence Club Activities 132 The Enlightenment Movement 138 6 The Nation in Question 143 Japan’s Annexation of Korea 145 Economic Developments 150 Land Management 150 Industry, Trade, and Commerce 151 Independence Movements 153 The March First Movement 154 The Movement Abroad 155 Prescriptions for a New Korea 159 Culturalist Movements 159 Socialist and Communist Movements 161 The United Front Movement 163 Cultural Developments 164 Education 164 Publications 165 Literacy and Literature 166 Gender Movements and the ‘New Women’ 168 Liberal Feminists 170 Ideological Divisions 171 contents vii Religious Movements 173 Buddhism 174 Ch’ŏndogyo 174 Christianity 176 Christianity and Socialism 181 The Shintō Shrine Edict 183 War and the End of Colonial Rule 186 Conclusion 187 7 A Nation Divided, 1945–1990 188 The Road to Permanent Division 189 The Korean War 195 Orthodoxy in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 197 Chuch’e Ideology 197 Economic Policy 205 Orthodoxy in the Republic of Korea 211 Self-reliance and Unity 211 Economic Policy 213 The New Yangban 217 Confucian Categories and Mass Society 218 Dynastic Politics and the Cause of Communism in the North 219 Autocracy, Military Rule and Democracy in the South 223 The Struggle for Democracy in South Korea 227 Student Movements 227 The Kwangju Uprising, May 1980 230 8 Civilisation, North and South, 1945–1990s 233 Education 235 The Meaning of the Family 239 South Korea 240 North Korea 242 Women and Society 243 Women’s Employment in South Korea 245 Women and Politics in South Korea 248 Literary Reflections in South Korea 251 Literature of Engagement 253 The Minjung Movement in Literature 254 Pure Literature 256 Literary Reflections of Gender 257 Religion and Society in North Korea 260 Buddhism 263 viii contents Folk Religion 264 Christianity 265 Religion and Society in South Korea 268 Christianity 268 Buddhism 274 Confucianism 276 Shamanism 278 9 Unfinished Business The Democratic Transition in the South and the Question of Reunification 284 Legacies of the Kwangju and Minjung Movements 284 The Economic Crisis of 1997–98 287 The Nature of Democracy 292 The Sunshine Policy and North-South Relations 296 Concluding Remarks 305 Bibliography 307 Notes on Sources 307 Bibliography 308 Index 319 Preface and Acknowledgements This book has been a long time in the making, and has grown out of my experi- ences of teaching at universities primarily in Australia and the United States of America and to a lesser but still important extent in South Korea, The Netherlands and New Zealand. While teaching and interacting with students from many backgrounds, I began to develop the kind of course contents on traditional and modern Korea that I should like to have had access to in my own students days. There are several excellent surveys of Korea’s history framed by a political chronology of changes in political leadership or administration. Rather than replicating their contributions, I wished to present Korea’s long history as a story of a civilisation framed by developments and changes in con- ceptions of human relations, the optimum shape of society and how its parts fit together. I became concerned, to give one example, that treatment of ani- mistic beliefs and practices during the Chosŏn period was almost entirely missing from general histories of Korea. Yet these played important roles among the vast majority of the population and were recognised at the highest cultural and political levels. An appreciation of the depth of the subscription to these beliefs and practices in traditional times is vital to understanding that which often takes contemporary visitors to and scholars of Korea by surprise: the pervasive vitality of animism and shamanism in Korea today. By the same token, one cannot leave major “political” events covered in other histories out of a general history simply in order to make it different. This would not be useful as a textbook, for example, if it did not include nar- rative on key events or the nature of administrations. It is important also that readers gain an overall sense of Korea’s history, by which I mean happenings and developments that have had an impact on the majority of the popula- tion at the time and thereafter. What I aim to achieve is an understanding that behind or intertwined with (leaving out issues of causation here) such happenings and developments are systematic ideas, systems of belief, net- works and emphases of culture, lineage structures, ideologies of gender and of hierarchies and so forth. In what we call “modern” Korean history, the align- ment of “ political” and “cultural” chronologies is much closer than in earlier times, largely because of how the development of mass culture attendant on the “death of the peasantry” and rapid urbanisation has taken place in recent history. I have devoted some discussion to this feature of modern Korea both in the introduction and as it arises in the later chapters, and have provided a political chronology for readers’ convenience. x preface and acknowledgements I have used the McCune-Reischauer (M-R) system of romanisations for Korean words and also for most personal names. Where a Korean has chosen or is commonly known by a particular spelling, such as Rhee Syngman, Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee, the M-R version is provided in parentheses. Place- names likewise are given in M-R version, excepting only Pyongyang and Seoul. In footnotes to writings in Korean by Koreans, I follow the Korean custom of placing family names first, followed by given names. Where a Korean author has published in English, I have followed the Chicago Manual of Style order of putting the family name last. For all authors in the bibliography, I follow the standard practice of family name followed by given names. For dates in the early period, I use BC and AD rather than BCE and CE, because the argument in favour of using the latter, that it is culturally neutral, does not in my view hold water. To name a dating system that originated from and still concurs with the western calendar based on periods before and after Christ a “common era” appears to me certainly more culturally imperialistic than the BC–AD system, which at least leaves room for people of other calen- dric traditions to employ their own system.