© 2017 JAE KYUN KIM YELLOW OVER BLACK: THE PRECOLONIAL AND COLONIAL HISTORY OF RACE IN KOREA, 1883-1945 BY JAE KYUN KIM DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Moon-Kie Jung, Chair Associate Professor Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Associate Professor Brian Dill Assistant Professor Jungwon Kim ABSTRACT This dissertation discloses that anti-Blackness and other deeply held notions of race in precolonial and colonial Korea (1883-1945) were pivotal in how Koreans made sense of their vulnerability and, later, subjection to colonization and of their supposed "temporary" backwardness on the path to civilization as well as independence. First, during the precolonial period (1883-1910), Koreans constructed imagined racial inferiors, especially Blacks and American Indians, without their corporeal presence, and in doing so centrally shaped Korean racial identity from its beginning. By proposing the concept of the colonially vulnerable to call attention to the positions and outlooks of peoples and states that were susceptible to foreign rule in the age of empire, as well as drawing on the insights of W.E.B. Du Bois, this dissertation thereby reveals how Koreans rendered Blacks and American Indians peoples without history, along with the subsequent relation to racial slavery and its afterlife. Second, under the militaristic rules (1910–1919) of the Japanese Empire, in contrast to the assumption that race was not significant in colonial Korea due to racial akin-ness between the colonizer and the colonized, the Japanese colonial regime was forced to embrace the racial similarity discourse, risking their imagined superiority, and to criticize anti-Blackness in the United States in order to establish the colonial legitimacy over the pro-U.S. sentiment of the colonized leading back to the precolonial period. Meanwhile, though colonization put Koreans on the same footing as their imagined racial inferiors who were destined to be enslaved or extinct per their imagined construction, Koreans’ anti-Blackness and racial hierarchy persisted as revealed, for instance, in the unnoticed racial subtext of the Declaration of Independence. Third, even though colonial Korea under the cultural rules (1919–1937) has often been regarded as a period of discursive shift since anti-racism ii discourse seemed to prevail on the surface, this dissertation further reveals that the period should be examined through the "deep schemas" of racism even without racial contestations and policies. As opposed to shallow anti-racism ideology, the deep schemas of anti-Blackness and racial hierarchy were transposed into different extra-racial schemas. From the most controversial discourse of national reconstruction to aspects of everyday life such as intimate desire and intra- Korean relationships, these schemas of anti-Blackness provided Koreans with the guidelines for perceiving and interacting with their perceived racial inferiors, especially Blacks, as well as the symbolic inferiority of Blackness. Fourth, during the wartime empire (1937-1945) which has often been characterized by the "polite racism" of the Japanese Empire mainly due to the wartime needs and the tenet of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere against white supremacy, Koreans, who would have internalized the colonial tenet, persistently relied on anti- Blackness. Furthermore, though the current racism against Southeast Asians in South Korea has been considered as something new independent of anti-Blackness, this dissertation further reveals how anti-Blackness in colonial Korea was transposed into racism against Southeast Asians as the Japanese Empire annexed the region by demonstrating how their imagined backwardness was constructed vis-à-vis that of Blacks by Koreans. Finally, this dissertation concludes with several post-independence stories of anti-Blackness leading up to contemporary Korea by implying the continuing significance of anti-Blackness beyond the precolonial and colonial eras. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: THE PRECOLONIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACIAL INFERIORS IN KOREA, 1883 – 1910 ................................................................................................................... 22 CHAPTER 2: RACE AND BLACKNESS IN COLONIAL KOREA, 1910-1919 ...................... 48 CHAPTER 3: THE DEEP SCHEMAS OF ANTI-BLACKNESS IN COLONIAL KOREA, 1919-1937 ..................................................................................................................................... 76 CHAPTER 4: TRANSPOSITION OF ANTI-BLACKNESS: RACISM AGAINST SOUTHEAST ASIANS IN LATE COLONIAL KOREA, 1937-1945 ...................................... 108 EPILOGUE ................................................................................................................................. 135 APPENDIX: METHODOLOGY................................................................................................ 147 NOTES ........................................................................................................................................ 160 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 187 iv INTRODUCTION1 Among all the races, since whites are the most brilliant, diligent, and courageous, they have gradually defeated other inferior races all around the world and acquired land and forests. Therefore, some races among the inferior, who cannot learn whites’ knowledge and customs, should be gradually extinct.2 Once used to be the most used fuel for heating in the 1980s, only less than 0.5 percent of households, mostly poor, use heating coal in South Korea and delivering it to the poor has become one of the popular charities. In the middle of delivery, the chair of Korea’s ruling Saenuri Party made a racist joke at the expense of one of the volunteers. "Your face color is the same as the briquettes’ color." Kim Moo-sung, who led the poll at the time to succeed President Park Guen-hye, was addressing a Nigerian exchange student. Though many people were initially disturbed, public interest dissipated after a quick apology ("Rep. Kim Moo-sung" 2015; "S. Korean Presidential Frontrunner" 2015; Yoon 2015). Perhaps better-known, North Korea had also received an uncommonly public denouncement from Washington in May 2014 after a piece from a North Korean worker, Kang Hyeok, on Rodongsinmun (Workers’ Newspaper), the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea, referred to Obama as "a wicked black monkey" and "a crossbreed with unclear blood." The Korean-language edition elaborated in even less restrained rhetoric—to roughly translate one sentence from the original, "Blackish body, bleary gray eyes, gaping nostrils, thickly swollen mouth, and pointed ears with rough hair, the more [you] look at [him], [he is] literally a monkey kind in the African primeval forest" (Kang 2014). Nevertheless, in its analysis of the rant, the Washington Post somehow found "some clear 1 contradictions in North Korea's stereotyping," noting that "the North maintains active ties with several African countries and just signed a cooperation agreement with Nigeria" (Fish 2014; Harlan and Goldfarb 2014; "North Korea Media" 2014; Saul 2014). Despite significant differences between the two Koreas, this dissertation focuses on something rarely noticed, the origin of an underlying parallel: anti-Black racism. In contemporary South Korea, racial expressions such as Kim’s remark do not seem to be isolated occurrences but something not difficult to be heard. According to a report from the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK, hereafter): Migrants are avoided as they were "dirty," "noisy," and "smelly" and despised as "savage," "ignorant," "lazy," and "greedy." Migrants workers from less-developed countries are considered as a group "who come to a country they do not belong and steal works" thereby harming the Korean economy. Muslims are potential "terrorists" who are open to commit crimes. Marriage migrants are "sold to be a pathetic child bearer" as well as "prostitutes." Hate speeches toward migrants go beyond simply yelling "go back to your country" as they lead to the instigation of discrimination that urges to control and deport them for the sake of "protecting Koreans and preventing crimes" (2016: 108). A statement from the commission also lifts a racial remark toward Blacks. Titled "Have you smelled blacks," a post from the Internet goes on to rant "Two blacks from Sudan in our dorm smell ewe the **** (laughter)" (NHRCK 2011). To Blacks in Korea, anti-Blackness even seems to be extremely overt. When a young African American man, Ashanti Lee, shows up as a substitute teacher at a kindergarten, in contrast to the prior amicable phone interview, the owner stutters and then says, "Oh, no, no. Black ugly, white okay" (Hazzan 2014). Meanwhile, along with the racial remarks about Obama, mob attacks on Black Cuban diplomats in North Korea 2 reveal similar anti-Black racism that resonates with its populace (Myers 2010). A following question would be, then, in what context do the two Koreas’ racisms share a common genealogy. Granted that foreign population in South Korea has