Regional Rebirths: Imperialization, Pan-Asianism, and Narratives of “Conversion” in Colonial Korea Mi-Ryong Shim Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Mi-Ryong Shim All rights reserved ABSTRACT Regional Rebirths: Imperialization, Pan-Asianism, and Narratives of “Conversion” in Colonial Korea Mi-Ryong Shim This dissertation examines writings that major Korean intellectuals produced during the Asia-Pacific War, when the Japanese empire embarked upon an aggressive expansion into the Asian continent and eventually entered into war against the United States. As the empire mobilized its colonized populations for the war effort under the banner of imperialization (hwangminhwa/kōminka), the reach of the colonial state penetrated to nearly all aspects of Korean society. As a result, this period has been narrated within postwar nationalist Korean historiography as a particularly traumatic experience. Within this narrative, many of the texts I examine in this dissertation have been explained as the intellectuals’ abandonment of their original ideological or philosophical positions of Korean nationalism or anti- imperial socialism to turn “pro-Japanese” (ch’inil/shinnichi, literally “intimate with Japan”) in engaging with or supporting the empire’s wartime propaganda. But instead of the usual emphasis on the shift or break, I consider the period as a continuation or development of the intellectuals’ existing socio-political and cultural concerns, particularly regarding the relationship between the intellectuals and the masses. Although the intellectuals’ engagements with the wartime discourses of imperialization, conversion (chŏnhyang/tenkō), and Pan-Asianism – all of which were taken up by the colonial state to mobilize the Korean population – are seen as collaboration with the colonizers, the future that these Korean intellectuals envisioned cannot be adequately explained as “Japanese.” Rather, the writers I discuss sought to explore during the late colonial period the possibilities of different alternatives to an older imperialist “universalism,” where domination of foreign peoples and lands was justified in the name of spreading universal values. Japan’s colonization of Korea under the mission of bringing “civilization and enlightenment” (bunmei kaika) was one most immediate manifestation of the contradiction that such problematic “universalism” brought on in the colony. But the relation between Japan and Korea was not the only problematic site that concerned the Korean intellectuals. They also grappled with issues of increasing social and cultural gap between the urban and the rural, as well as the anxiety that they had merely imitated the West in their pursuit of modernity, at the expense of their own cultural authenticity. In response to these key questions regarding the experience of Korean modernity, Korean intellectuals employed discourses of agrarianism, dialectical materialism, and nativism that had emerged before the wartime period. I examine how the Korean intellectuals continued to explore key elements of these discourses in their discussions of conversion, imperialization, and Pan-Asianism. Through examining editorials, letters of public confessions, and literary texts that narrated instances of ideological conversion whereby individuals critical of imperialism – often from a Marxist position – would come to support the Japanese empire, the first chapter explores how ideological conversion may have served as one of the earliest forms of imperialization. The second chapter delineates the ambivalent stance taken up by the philosopher and cultural critic Sŏ In-sik (1906-?) regarding the East Asian Community (tong’a hyŏptongch’e, tōa kyōdōtai), a vision of a new social order that would overcome the limits of both bourgeois liberalism and fascist nationalism. I demonstrate that while the philosophical basis for the ideals the East Asian Community appealed to Sŏ for its dialectical reasoning, Sŏ also sought to use dialectics to formulate a position of skepticism regarding the realization of the new social order. The third chapter provides a historically contextualized close- reading of essays and literary works by the writer Yi Hyo-sŏk (1907-1942) to demonstrate a case of Korean nativist aesthetics intersecting with multiculturalist Pan-Asian regional identity championed by the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere to decenter the West. The fourth chapter traces how writers and literary critics such as Ch’oe Chae-sŏ (1908-1964) envisioned the integration of colonial Korea and Japan proper as a dialectical process that would leave both parties fundamentally transformed. By linking these Korean intellectuals’ engagements with wartime discourses to their earlier concerns, the dissertation moves away from views of the wartime period as historical aberration and suggests a longer history of imperialization in colonial Korea. It also intervenes in the growing scholarship on the history of Japanese empire by highlighting the engagement of colonized intellectuals. This perspective underscores the ways in which East Asian imperial formations consisted of multiple metropolitan forces, thus illuminating the complex functioning of empire that can often elide a singular colonizer and colonized binary. TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………..i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………….………………………………………..ii Note on Transliteration and Translation.…………………………………………...………………....iv Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….………………………..1 1. “Conversion” and the Question of the Recovered Self………………………............12 2. New Order, Superstition, and the Moment of Critical Reflection: Sŏ In-sik on the Contemporary Period of historical Transition……………….....41 3. “Return to the Orient”: Materiality, Performing Bodies, and Commodity in Yi Hyo-sŏk’s Late Colonial Literature………………………………………………………..82 4. Ch’oe Chae-sŏ and the Imperialization of the Colony…………………………........118 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..............................................168 Selected Bibliography…….………………….……………………………………………………………..174 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am greatly indebted to a number of people without whose help the completion of this dissertation would have been impossible. First and foremost, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my advisors, Theodore Hughes and Tomi Suzuki, for their unwavering support, exceptional generosity, and kind guidance. Their belief in the value and potential of my work helped me to push through the many twists and turns of this project, and made its completion possible. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee. In his seminars and comments, Charles Armstrong regularly pushed me to think with greater clarity and specificity. Kim Brandt has been an inspiration for me as a teacher, writer, and researcher. I was very fortunate to receive wonderfully insightful comments from Janet Poole as part of my committee. I have also had the good fortune to meet and work with many great scholars during my research years in South Korea and Japan. I thank Kim Chul at Yonsei for kindly hosting me as a visiting researcher at Yonsei University. I also thank Kwon Bodurae and Moon Kyoung-Yeon for the wonderful conversations. My time in Korea would not have been nearly as nice without Jang Young-eun’s company and friendship. During my research year at Waseda University, Toeda Hirokazu’s kind consideration and generosity helped me in myriad ways. Like so many others, I was a beneficiary of Watanabe Naoki’s phenomenal ability to bring together scholars and to build supportive intellectual communities. It was a privilege for me to be a part of ii the Jinbun hyōron kenkyūkai/ Inmunp'yŏngnon Yŏn’guhoe, where I got to meet great colleagues like Shin Ji-young, Kwak Hyoungduck, and Ryu Chung-hee. In New York too, I was surrounded by a wonderful group of graduate students who helped to make my years at Columbia memorable. Special thanks to those members of the dissertation writing group who read portions of this dissertation and gave me helpful feedback: Arunabh Ghosh, Liza Lawrence, Jenny Wang Medina, Chelsea Schieder, Nate Shockey, Brian Tsui, Stacey Van Vleet, and Yurou Zhang. I thank them, as well as Dan Asen, Dajeong Chung, Sun-Chul Kim, Jimin Kim, Cheehyung Kim, and Michael McCarty, for their good humor and company. This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous funding and support from the Korea Foundation, Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. My biggest debt of gratitude goes to my family. I thank my mother, father, and sister for always being there for me with more patience and kindness than I could ever hope for. Finally, my partner Tim Yang, my closest confidant and greatest supporter from the very beginning of this project. To him I dedicate this dissertation. iii NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION I follow the McCune-Reischauer system in romanizing Korean names and terms. For Japanese names and terms, I use the Revised hepburn system of romanization. Korean and Japanese names are given in their original order of family name first, except in citations to author’s works published in the English language. For certain terms, I refer to their transliterated forms, rather English translations,