2.1 2010 Korean HISTORIES Korean Histories 2.1 2010 THE IDEA OF STAGNATION IN KOREAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: 3 FROM FUKUDA TOKUZO¯ TO THE NEW RIGHT – Owen Miller WHEN HISTORY IS MADE: HISTORY, MEMORY AND THE POLITICS 13 OF REMEMBRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY KOREA – Koen De Ceuster KEEP YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER: PROTECTING KOREA’S POP CULTURE 34 IN CHINA – Roald Maliangkay A SEARCH FOR NEW APPROACHES TO RESEARCH ON KOREAN 45 BUDDHIST HISTORY – Jongmyung Kim WRITING HISTORY IN KORYO:˘ SOME EARLY KORYO˘ WORKS 57 RECONSIDERED – Remco E. Breuker KAIBARA EKIKEN’S PREFACE TO ChINGBIROK: A JAPANESE EDITION 85 OF THE BOOK OF CORRECTIONS – W.J. Boot LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 90 COLOPHON 91 Owen Miller The idea of stagnation in Korean historiography FROM FUKUDA TOKUZO¯ TO THE NEW RIGHT INTRODUCTION In the twentieth century the concepts of progress and The idea of a stagnant past giving rise to a backward stagnation became deeply embedded in the conscious- present is by no means unique to the study of Korean ness of people everywhere, but perhaps especially so in history. This idea was almost universal in the approach of the minds of those living in the late developing countries colonizing European nations to the subjects of their impe- like (South) Korea, who are constantly reminded of the rial domination, from at least the late eighteenth century need to ‘catch up’ or to eliminate any vestiges of the ‘stag- onward. Perry Anderson has given an excellent overview nant’ past. of the genesis and development of the ideas of ‘Asiatic’ However, in the academic world the concept of stagna- stagnation and despotism as employed by thinkers as tion cannot be reduced simply to a matter of Eurocentric diverse as Machiavelli, Bacon, Montesquieu, Hegel, John ideology or a tool of imperialism, since it often forms a Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. He has also analysed the part of serious scholarly attempts to analyse the history way in which Marx and Engels absorbed many of these of particular countries and reflects, however imperfectly, ideas in the mid-nineteenth century in the formation of the real geographical and temporal unevenness of human their views on Asia, giving some parts of Marxist theory historical development. When it comes to the politically a distinctly ‘Orientalist’ slant.1 The concept of stagnation ambiguous nature of the concept of stagnation, Korea is itself can be understood as an inversion of the concept of a case in point. In the historiography of Korea, stagna- linear progress, invented in the course of the most recent tion was first used as a justification for Japanese colonial- world-historical transition from pre-capitalist to capi- ism and later adopted by Marxists seeking revolutionary talist societies. This dichotomy between past and future social transformation; the concept is still today causing was something novel, replacing the prevailing cyclical or controversy among Korean historians who line up on messianic conceptions of time. As Shlomo Sand has writ- either side of the debate over ‘internal development’ ver- ten recently, sus ‘colonial modernity.’ The rupture caused by modernization detached human- This article will introduce themes that will be developed ity from its recent past. The mobility created by industri- further in an upcoming monograph-length study of Marx- alization and urbanization shattered not only the rigid ist historiography in Korea and East Asia. The planned social ladder but also the traditional, cyclic continuity monograph will address the recurring dichotomies of between past, present and future.2 stagnation/progress and particular/universal in the East 1 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1979), pp. 462-483. For further discussions of Eurocentrism and the origins of the Euro- centric view of history see Samir Amin, Eurocentrism (London: Zed Books, 1989); Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). 2 Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (London: Verso, 2009), pp. 62-3. KOREAN HISTORIES 2.1 2010 OWEN MILLER THE IDEA OF STAGNATION IN KOREAN HISTORIOGRAPHY Asian historical debates of the twentieth century. As part are more complex and can only be transcended with a of that broader project, this article will focus on how the more fundamental re-evaluation of the progress/stagna- concept of stagnation or backwardness has been applied tion dichotomy. to Korean history, from the beginning of the twentieth century up until the present day, looking at three scholars FUKUDA TOKUZO’S¯ STAGNATION THEORY who have worked within this paradigm.3 We will begin The first figure that looms large in the history of stag- with the Japanese economist Fukuda Tokuzō 福田德三 nation theory in Korea is that of the Japanese economic in the early years of the twentieth century, then look at thinker Fukuda Tokuzō (1874-1930). Fukuda was born in the mid-century work of Korean Marxist historian Chŏn Tokyo in 1874 and after a precocious academic career at Sŏktam 全錫談, before concluding with an overview of Hitotsubashi University (then called Tokyo Higher Com- some of the ideas of Rhee Younghoon 李榮薰, the con- mercial School 東京高等商業学校), he went in 1898 to temporary Seoul National University study for a doctorate in Germany economic historian. under Karl Bücher and Lujo Bren- Although previous scholarship tano, both scholars of the German has paid attention to stagnation Historical School of Economics.4 theory, this attention has gener- In Japan, Fukuda is known as an ally consisted of a rather formulaic anti-Marxist liberal economic thinker denunciation of Japanese colonial who was keenly interested in social historiography. In this scheme, stag- policy and sought to theorize ‘wel- nation theory is simply one element fare economics.’ In Korea, though, of Japanese colonial domination that Fukuda is known almost exclusively had to be overcome by the theories of as the author of the original stagna- internal development developed by tion theory that would become one North and South Korean scholars in of the perennial ideological props of the post-liberation period. Whatever Japanese colonial rule on the penin- the intrinsic problems of stagnation sula. Shortly after receiving his doc- theory itself, this article aims to show torate in Germany and returning to that such an approach to the concept Fukuda Tokuzō Japan in 1901, Fukuda Tokuzō visited is far too simplistic. The three schol- Korea. It was this visit that inspired ars examined here have offered quite different concep- the 1904 essay that has given Fukuda such an infamous tions of stagnation in Korean history and differing expla- role in Korean historiography, entitled “The economic nations of its causes. The political and historical contexts organizations and economic units of Korea” (“Kankoku in which they have approached the problem of stagna- no keizai soshiki to keizai tani” 韓國の經濟組織と經濟單 tion have varied greatly and their political motivations 位).5 Here he made an explicit contrast between the nor- for applying the concept have occupied opposite ends of mal, developmental path of Japan which, in his doctoral the spectrum, stretching from revolutionary socialism to thesis of four years earlier, he had described as similar conservative neoliberalism and colonial apologism. Con- to that of Germany, and the abnormal development of trary to the general assumption of nationalist historians Korea.6 in Korea that stagnation theory was simply a tool of colo- For Fukuda one of the main symptoms of Korea’s back- nial ideology that had to be ‘overcome’ in the postcolonial wardness that he had observed during his visit was the era, this article will show that the politics of stagnation underdevelopment of private ownership in land. Accord- 3 While I do not argue that these three scholars exhaust the history of stagnation theory in Korea, they are, I believe, representative of the three distinct forms that stagnation theory has taken over the last century. 4 For more on the life and ideas of Fukuda Tokuzō, see Inoue Takutoshi and Yagi Kiichiro, “Two Inquirers on the Divide: Tokuzo Fukuda and Hajime Kawakami,” http://www.econ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yagi/FUkkawiy.html (accessed 8/7/2010); Tessa Morris-Suzuki, A History of Japanese Economic Thought (London: Routledge, 1989). 5 Fukuda Tokuzō, “Kankoku no keizai soshiki to keizai tani.” 6 Yi Ch’ŏlsŏng, “Shingminji shigi yŏksa inshik-kwa yŏksa sŏsul,” Han’guksa 23 (Seoul: Han’gilsa, 1994): pp. 150-151. KOREAN HISTORIES 2.1 2010 OWEN MILLER THE IDEA OF STAGNATION IN KOREAN HISTORIOGRAPHY ing to him even state or royal ownership of land was schaft a society had to go through the stage of Stadtwirt- essentially a fiction, and the yangban 兩班 ruling class schaft, which in Europe and Japan was equated with the had social privileges rather than landed estates. Another feudal political system. This belief then translated into sign of backwardness could be found in human relation- Fukuda’s central explanation of Korean historical back- ships, where relations of obedience between commoners wardness: the contention that the country had lacked and yangban prevailed and relations between free indi- a feudal stage in its history.11 It was this stage that had viduals were lacking. Likewise, in the Korean villages the made it possible for countries like Germany and Japan to clan system predominated, meaning that there was no achieve modernity, even if they lagged behind some other concept of the individual, no independent small family European countries. Lack of a feudal stage, according