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COLONIAL MODERNITY MATTERS?

Younghan Cho
Published online: 05 Jul 2012.

To cite this article: Younghan Cho (2012) COLONIAL MODERNITY MATTERS?, Cultural
Studies, 26:5, 645-669, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2012.697709

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 Younghan Cho

COLONIAL MODERNITY MATTERS?

Debates on colonial past in South Korea

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This study summarizes the impact of the colonial modernity thesis upon the South
Korean academy, debates about the colonial past in Korean historiography, and
new approaches that seek to overcome the traditional dichotomy of Korean
historiography, macro-analysis and rejection of modernity as ultimate destination.
Despite these new approaches, polemic that the colonial modernity thesis
instigates, and the inspiration some intellectuals have derived from these, the term
‘colonial modernity’ has not been embraced by the Korean academy. This study
explores this ambivalence, rather than dismissing negative responses as nationalist,
because this scholarly ambivalence reveals the ontological dilemma inherent in the
study or consideration of South Korea’s colonial past. The author contends that
this dilemma is not simply a matter of how to accept or reject the colonial
modernity thesis; rather, it derives both from Korean scholars’ inextricable location
within the legacy of Korea’s colonial wounds, and from Korean academy’s
awareness of its marginality and lack of voice in the global academic regime.

Keywords colonial past; Korean academy; colonial modernity thesis;

anti-Japanism; global academy regime; Korean historiography

Introduction: revisiting the colonial past in South Korea

Many attempts to reframe South Korea’s colonial era (1910
1945) with new
perspectives have been made in both academia and pop culture since the
1990s. Previously, Japanese occupation had been depicted mainly as a stimulus
for resistance. Rather than painting the colonial past as merely gloomy or
desperate, these new efforts consider the era’s complexity and the variety of
people’s experiences as they lived through it. Several groups of scholars have
examined the construction of modernity in Korea under colonial rule, for
example, the introduction of urban planning, technologies such as railroads and
radio, practices such as public education and book reading, and updated gender
roles. Several academic books about these changes have been marketed to
general audiences, some with considerable successes.

Cultural Studies Vol. 26, No. 5 September 2012, pp. 645
669

ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online # 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandfonline.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2012.697709
 646 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

South Korean pop culture has begun to represent this historic era in a
fashionable way. Three feature films set in the colonial period
Modern Boy,
Radio Days, and YMCA Baseball Team
vividly illustrate the establishment of
modern technologies and practices in people’s daily lives. Modern Boy (2009),
which depicts the colonial city of Kyungsung as spectacular and attractive,
includes many scenes of jazz singing and performances. Radio Days (2007)
represents the impact of modern technology upon the everyday lives of
colonized Koreans with the launch of the first Korean radio station, JYBK.
YMCA Baseball Team (2002) shows the first Korean baseball team, in 1905, and
its members’ experiences as they play a modern sport for the first time.
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Although these films were not huge commercial successes, they have sparked
Koreans’ imagination about the colonial past.
This refashioned past might appear to contradict the immediate reality of
South Korea, in which anti-Japanese sentiment is still not only salient but
ubiquitous. Political squabbles about national boundaries and the content of
history textbooks continue to capture public interest, and punishing the pro-
Japanese Koreans and the attempted lawsuits by Korean women forced into
prostitution during Second World War (the ‘Comfort Women’) remain
unresolved. In addition, any kind of sporting match that pits South Korea
against Japan is considered a national event in which national pride is at stake.
Although the aforementioned films use unconventional approaches to
depict anti-Japanese sentiment, such feelings are deeply embedded. Main
characters are members of anti-Japanese movements, for example, and plots
inevitably climax with collisions between Imperial Japan and the colonized
Koreans. The contradiction between romanticizing some aspects of occupation
while also invoking old hatreds invites further inquiries: What is it about
modern depictions of the colonial period that attracts and even amazes Koreans
in the global era? How do today’s people negotiate the gap between
fashionable representation and nationalist ideology (anti-Japanism)? Even
within alternative efforts to explore South Korea’s colonial past, must anti-
Japanism always be presented as an expression of nationalism?
This study traces both the impact and the current location of the colonial
modernity thesis in the South Korean academy (hereafter, Korean academy)
since its arrival from North America in the 1990s. The Korean academy
includes the academic institutions in South Korea, the intellectuals working
there, and academic research and publications in Korean; over the past decade,
debates about the significance of Korea’s colonial past in historiography have
comprised some of its most heated discussions. Although a great deal of
attention has been paid to the idea of colonial modernity, the inspiration and
disapproval it has elicited from South Korean intellectuals have formed an
uneven embrace.
The first task of this study is to revisit these debates in Korean
historiography. Second, it explores the new approaches to Korea’s colonial
past that openly questions the relationship between coloniality and modernity
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 647

(Of course, the colonial modernity thesis is not solely responsible for these
new approaches. Nonetheless, the Korean academy remains unwilling to use
the term ‘modernity’ when describing the nation’s colonial experiences.).
Third, by exploring the Korean academy’s ambivalence about the connections
between coloniality and modernity, it explicates the academy’s ontological
dilemma and marginalization within the global academic regime (Chun 2008).1
Finally, I argue that this dilemma can be traced to the marginality of the
Korean academy within the global academic regime. The Korean academy is
aware of its own lack of voice not only within Korean studies, but also in the
studies of its colonial past. This awareness pushes the Korean academy to be
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sensitive with US academy, but simultaneously, critical of its dependence on

Western theories as well as the colonial modernity thesis, which originated
from the US academy. The ontological dilemma of Korean academy reveals
another colonial condition in present tense within knowledge production.

Debates about the colonial past in Korean historiography

This section briefly reviews the two major perspectives on the colonial past in
Korean historiography, here called ‘exploitation theory’ and ‘modernization
theory’. Exploitation theory emphasizes the misuses and abuses of the Japanese
Empire and Koreans’ resistance to these, whereas modernization theory
considers the modernization and economic development that occurred in
Korea under Japanese control. These perspectives, which represent the
traditional dichotomist approaches of Korean historiography, obscured in-
depth understanding of South Korea’s colonial past until the idea of colonial
modernity began to be circulated.2
Exploitation theory associates Japanese occupation (1910
1945) with
cruelty, victimization, endurance, survival and so forth, as it seeks to
emphasize ‘a uniquely coercive Japanese political repression, Korea’s economic
exploitation, and its cultural obliteration’ (Ahn 2008, p. 159). From this
perspective, the occupation is mainly characterized by two activities: the
assimilation or ethnocide of Koreans and their socio-economic exploitation
(Shin 1997).3 Exploitation theory also highlights Korea’s anti-colonial move-
ments and resistance to the Japanese. This rationale alternately depicts the
colonized as victims of the colonizer and as heroes in the struggle against
colonization; Koreans who worked for or even cooperated with the Japanese
Government are stigmatized as pro-Japanese.
At a social level, exploitation theory contends that Korea’s modernization
process was not only disrupted but also blocked by the violent, humiliating
intrusions of the Japanese Empire. This thesis is intertwined with the ‘theory of
indigenous development’, which presumes that Korean society began to
modernize and develop economically in the late nineteenth century, before the
 648 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Japanese takeover.4 Its major goal, while emphasizing the impediments to

Korean modernization posed by occupation, is to find continuity between this
pre-occupation development and South Korea’s pre-globalization period of the
1960s
1970s. Exploitation theory declares that an autonomous Korean society
would have modernized itself and that this ability was finally regained after
independence from Japan began in 1945 (Shin 1997).
It is worthwhile to note that this highly nationalistic viewpoint has enabled
exploitation theory to become a dominant discourse in Korean historiography.
One historian claims that the principal mission of exploitation theory is to
overcome the colonial view of history that for so long distorted national history
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textbooks and Koreans’ understanding of their past (Jung 1999). The colonial
view of history, which was developed to establish and enhance colonial
control, justified Japan’s occupation of Korea by describing Korea as incapable
of self-determination
an opinion that historians educated during the colonial
period continued to hold after 1945. Against such a colonial remnant, Korean
historians who value a nationalist perspective, strive not only to reveal but also
to condemn the outrages committed during Japanese colonial control (Lee
1997). By appealing to Korean patriotism and national pride, exploitation
theory has made itself attractive to the Korean academy and even Korean
society in general, in which nationalism has been the main ideology for many
decades (Lim 1999, Cho 2008).
Recently, 66 years after Korea’s liberation from Japanese control,
exploitation theory remains hegemonic within Korean historiography. In
response to this entrenched mainstream view, a group of scholars (most of
whom specialize in economic historiography) have demanded an alternative
paradigm.5 This paradigm, which is often summarized as colonial moderniza-
tion, here is referred to as ‘modernization theory’. As a repudiation of
exploitation theory, modernization theory recognizes that positive economic
and capitalist development did occur in Korea under Japanese occupation and
suggests that such development comprised the modernization process under
colonial rule.
Modernization theory is highly critical of the position of nationalism, which
remains largely uncontested both in exploitation theory and Korean
historiography in general. Instead, modernization theory argues that history
cannot be explained simply through the perspective of the nation. By this logic,
exploitation theory is predicated on neither facts nor data but is rather
inaccurate and even propagandistic, because it is contaminated by and
dependent upon nationalist ideology. Ahn (1997, p. 54), an original
modernization theorist, stated that ‘Korean historiography should be liberated
from serving as an ideology of nationalism in order to establish historiography
as a science’.
Exploitation theory provides new interpretations of two economic projects
in particular that the Japanese Empire conducted: the Land Survey Project
(1912
1918) and the Campaign to Increase Rice Production (1920
1934). By
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 649

quoting empirical data and long-term statistics, it posits that these two
initiatives were installed as modern institutions and enhanced Korea’s
economic progress. It also observes that colonized Koreans were not simply
passive victims, but instead actively participated in these and other economic
programs. Predicated on positivism and empiricism, modernization theory
encourages the reassessment of exploitation and development as two sides of
the same coin. In fact, Cho (1998a) suggested that exploitation theory makes
an unacceptable number of empirical errors in its assessment of Korea’s
structural conditions since the late nineteenth century.
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Another motivation of exploitation theory is to explain the rapid economic

development of several East Asian countries (e.g. Taiwan and Singapore in
addition to South Korea) in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a way of
grounding these regional successes in terms of capitalist development,
modernization theory considers the colonial policies of Japan, the former
colonizer, as well as the lasting effects of these policies on the formerly
colonized populations. By contending that colonization did include some
positive effects, for example, substantial industrialization, modernization
theory seeks to establish parallel economic development ratios between the
1930s and the 1960s (Ahn 1997).
When research outcomes based on modernization theory were first
circulated within the Korean academy, most Korean historians either ignored
or were embarrassed by them.6 But in 1997 a special issue of Changjak-kwa
Beepyung [Creation and Criticism] about ‘colony and modernity’ accelerated
the heated discussion between modernization and exploitation theorists.7
Major critiques of modernization theory contended that it dilutes Korea’s
colonial experiences by selectively collecting and interpreting data, particularly
economic statistics. For example, Shin (1997), by observing that more than
half of Korea eventually came to be owned/exploited by the Japanese General
Government, argued that the major outcome of the Land Survey Project was
not modernization of the property allocation system but rather the transfer
land ownership. On the other hand, exploitation theorist Jung (1998)
interpreted the active participation of Koreans in the Land Survey Project as
evidence that that modernization theory privileges a small group of high-status
Koreans (capitalists) while ignoring the other classes.
Another critique claims that modernization theory ignores the many aspects
of Korean life during the colonial period and the 1960s
1970s that cannot be
usefully compared, for example, the separation between North and South that
occurred in 1948 and the civil war fought between 1950 and 1953. Exploitation
theorists argue that some results of colonization in what is now South Korea did
not last until the 1960s; for example, much of the infrastructure established by
the Japanese Empire was located in the North and the civil war destroyed most of
the Japanese-built infrastructure located in the South.8 Exploitation theory also
contends that the East Asian regional economic crisis of the 1990s disproves any
 650 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

connection between Japanese colonial policy and rapid economic development

in formerly colonized countries (Jung 1999).
Some efforts have been made to foment constructive debates or reconcile
the two schools. The idea of development for exploitation, for example, has
been suggested as a middle ground (Ko 2002). However, a widespread
compromise remains elusive because debates between modernization and
exploitation theorists tend to revolve more around strength of conviction,
popularity of position and even the hegemony of certain ideas (e.g.
nationalism) rather objectively verifiable facts. Even if the two schools refer
to the same data or statistics, different conclusions usually result depending on
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how the data are combined and the original purpose of instigating the
argument (S. Cho 2006). Jung (1999) summarized the schools’ contrasting
approaches this way: exploitation theory posits modernity as destination (or
orientation), while modernization theory presumes modernity as reality.
One result of these intractable differences is that the two theories neither
find common ground nor, at times, even fully acknowledge the other’s
position. According to Haedong Yoon (2006), the debates between exploita-
tion and modernization theorists lead them to ignore each other’s arguments
and arrogantly defend their own. Modernization theory has even been
criticized as ‘neo-colonial historiography’ (Ahn 2008) and its members have
been branded as ‘pro-Japanese scholars’ (Cho 1998a, b). The two schools
remain as far apart as ever: neither can persuade nor even gain respect from
the other. Therefore, interested parties seem forced to choose either
exploitation or modernization and exchanges between the two illuminate
little of the multiplicity or complexity of Korea’s colonial past.

The colonial modernity thesis and new approaches

Debates between supporters of exploitation theory and modernization theory
rarely offer new ways to explore Korea’s colonial past, and therefore, fail to
explicate the complicated relationships among colonial control, construction of
modernity and people’s lived experiences during colonial occupation. There-
fore, since the late 1990s growing numbers of Korean scholars have been
pursuing alternative frameworks through which to understand the nation’s
colonial past.9
The term ‘colonial modernity’ was used in the US-based academy
(hereafter US academy) as a way to frame the complex histories of East
Asia and Korea before spreading to and being adopted by the Korean
academy.10 In her edited book, Formations of Colonial Modernity in Eat Asia,
Barlow (1997) contended that colonialism and modernity are indivisible
features of the history of industrial capitalism and suggested colonial modernity
as a framework for thinking about East Asia and the remapping it began to
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 651

undergo in the twentieth century. Similarly, the introduction to Shin and

Robinson’s edited book, Colonial Modernity in Korea (1999) stated that ‘around,
beneath, and beyond the nationalist approaches so prominent in Korean
history . . . [this kind of] writing can enhance our understanding of the Korean
colonial period’ (p. 2).
As mentioned earlier, it is not easy to pinpoint a direct relationship
between the colonial modernity thesis that first emerged from the US academy
and the new approaches that are beginning to be embraced by Korean
academy; nor do I intend to suggest that the colonial modernity thesis is the
sole instigator of these new approaches. It is, however, fair to say that the most
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common polemics that emerge from the new approaches are very resonant
with the colonial modernity thesis, and vice versa. Three dimensions of these
new approaches include (1) displacing the traditional dichotomy within Korean
historiography, (2) overcoming macro-analysis and (3) moving beyond
modernity as the ultimate destination.
First, the new approaches strive to overcome the dichotomy between
exploitation theory and modernization theory, which are still the only accepted
viewpoints in the Korean academy from which to explicate the significance of
Korea’s colonial past. Critiques of the split itself tend to urge rejection of
historiography as the only disciplinary venue through which to investigate the
past. Since the 1990s, literature studies, sociology, anthropology and even
media studies have produced studies about Korea’s colonial era. Literature
studies in particular has begun to produce books for general audiences, a
tendency that has helped revive the market for books about modern Korean
history (Kim 2004).11
A noteworthy effort to develop a long-term perspective was made by two
leading sociologists, Kim and Jung (1997a, b), in their edited volume Modern
Subjectivity and Colonial Discipline Power. Rather than defining the colonial past
either as exploitation or as modernization, the essays in this book traced
connections between the Japanese colonial regime and Korea’s cold war
practices. The first essays described how colonial modernity functions as not
only a legacy of Korea’s past but also as a current rationale that perpetuates a
constant state of military mobilization. The next group of essays focused on the
construction of modern subjectivity in Korea during colonial rule, represented
by social restraint, personal self-discipline and militarization (the latter was still
a powerful force in the 1960s
1970s).12 The contributors suggested that
during occupation, both colonial modernity and modern subjectivity have been
substantially limited by colonial control and the system of mobilization, and
that these elements still resonate within South Korea’s developmental regimes.
Yoon (2003) has noted that the new approaches explore grey areas that are
not captured by the disunion between anti-Japanese and pro-Japanese
activities. Yoon et al. (2006a, b) later attempted to introduce the notion of
compliance with pro-Japanese activities, arguing that the complex motivations
and contradictory behaviours of colonized Koreas cannot be adequately
 652 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

explained the umbrella term ‘pro-Japanism’. Instead of stigmatizing Korean

intellectuals who did not totally reject the notion that any positive outcomes
might have resulted from Japanese occupation, they illustrated the dilemma
faced by such intellectuals at the end of the colonial occupation by calling their
attitude ‘conversion’ (2006). Similarly, Guncha Yoon (2006) suggested that
pro-Japanese activities might be more accurately described as surrendering to
fascism or even as betrayal of humanity, rather than simply as submission to
Japanese governance.
In an attempt to overcome the macro-analysis that characterizes Korean
historiography, new approaches favour examinations of personal, everyday
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practices and life histories during Japanese occupation. The degree to which
modernization or industrialization have traditionally formed the primary
subjects for Korean historiographers is a very live issue; modernization theory
in particular advocates economic development as the most salient perspective
through which to study the nation’s colonial past.
In the introduction to their edited anthology Everyday Life of the Colony:
Control and Rupture (eds. Kong & Jung 2006), Jung (2006) posited that because
the idea of everyday life is a modern invention, examining this idea helps to
reveal the construction of not only of modernity but also of subconscious,
intangible dimensions of colonial life. Paying attention to everyday life, in which
controlling strategies and resisting tactics collide, is a particularly useful way to
explore both the exercise of colonial power and how the colonizing regime can
be disrupted (Joo 2006). Kong and Jung examined three dimensions of ordinary
life: colonization of the body and the everyday (e.g. modern notions of time,
physical education and enforced hygiene)13; colonialism and the politics of space
(the city of Kyungsung, the local markets, etc.); and consumption and the
language of modernity (e.g. English education, the consumption of American
films, female visibility).14 As Hyungkeun Cho (2006) observed, this collabora-
tive volume amply demonstrates the utility of a micro-analytic approach within
the colonial modernity school.
It is important to note that historians of both colonial modernity and
exploitation theory ‘exclude the consideration of gender as a set of power
relations in terms of colonialism and nationalism’ (Ahn 2008, p. 172).15
Nonetheless, emphasis on the micro-dimension also restores the urgency of
gender issues. So far, the constructions of the new woman and the modern
family have been the focal points of analysis. By examining discourses found in
media and literature, numerous studies have considered how the term ‘modern
girl’ came to represent the new (modern) Korean generation in the early
twentieth century, in spite of colonial control (Kim 1999, Joo 2008). Kim
(2008) situated the experiences of a modern girl celebrity, Hyeseok Na
(1896
1948) directly into colonial society. Kim and Jung (2001) demon-
strated that the Korean modern family that emerged during the colonial period
was heavily influenced by both Japanese and American family norms and
ideologies. All of these studies suggest that the concepts of liberation and
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 653

self-discipline in Korean life originated from the colonial-era discourses of

modern girl and modern family.
The new approaches aim beyond modernity as the ultimate destination
that has been regarded as the ideal by Korean society since the colonial era.
Despite their many differences, both exploitation and modernization theories
share some of the same ideological roots, for example, nationalism and
modernization (Bae 2000, Yoon 2003). The new approaches, however, not
only criticize the centrality of modernity or modernization to Korean
historiography, but also question the supremacy of the Western model of
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modernity itself.
A major edited collection in two volumes titled Rereading Modernity:
Towards a New Paradigm of Korean Modernity (Yoon et al. 2006a, b), explicitly
revisited Korea’s colonial past in an attempt to overcome the influence of
modernism and the hegemony of nationalism within Korean historiography.
The contributions covered various issues from Korea’s colonial past through
the development of South Korea in the 1960s
1970s, including the
construction of modernity under colonial rule and continuities between the
two periods.16 The editors presented the colonial modernity thesis as a
framework for explicating Korean modernity, which in turn was constructed
by both Empire (Japan) and the colonized (Korea) during both coloniality
(before 1945) and postcoloniality (after 1945). Haedong Yoon (2006), a main
editor, further argued that every Korean modernity must be regarded as a
colonial modernity. Instead of associating colonialism with a geographic origin
(in this case, Japan), he argued that coloniality should be considered not only a
significant contributor but in fact the central element of the construction of
modernity in Korea.
Perhaps the boldest foray by the new approaches is to question modernity
itself as the ultimate goal in both colonial and postcolonial Korean society.
Many scholars agree that Korean historiography places too much emphasis on
national development and modernization as a nation’s destination, a tendency
that renders it blind to the problems of modernity or modernization that are
specific to Korean society (Kim 1998). In opposition to these traditional
assumptions, the new approaches express concern about and even outright
suspicion towards the very concept of modernity. In short, the question is not
whether Korean society has accomplished modernization; instead, the question
is whether Korean society must strive to reach modernity (Kang 2000). Other
questions closely follow, for example, what kinds of modernity Korean society
has been pursuing and whether there is any alternative to Western modernity
(so far the only possible mode). To proponents of the new approaches,
coloniality provides an opportunity for thinking outside the box of Western
modernity, the original model. Cho (2007) regards coloniality as a potential,
theoretical asset for negating the primacy of Western modernity and ceasing to
define colonial differences as lacks or distortions of (Western) modernity.
 654 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Ontological dilemma of the Korean academy: ambivalence

towards the colonial modernity thesis
In an effort to transcend the central split within Korean historiography, the
new approaches add viewpoints in order to expand understanding of Korea’s
colonial past and the daily lives of Koreans during this era. Several
historiographers, after revisiting the dichotomy, have produced reflexive
views of the colonial past (Cho 1998a, Jung 1999). Much discussion
undertaken by advocates of the new approaches is connected, both directly
and indirectly, with the polemic that the colonial modernity thesis instigates.
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Nonetheless, the term itself has not been well embraced in the Korean
academy (Rereading Modernity: Towards a New Paradigm for Korean Modernity is a
notable exception.). Books and articles rarely include the colonial modernity
thesis as a theoretical perspective; a few mention the term once or twice at
most. The several review articles about Colonial Modernity in Korea are generally
negative although they recognize some contributions, which I will discuss later.
These conditions have led me to ask why the Korean academy is reluctant
to embrace colonial modernity. Even the new approaches are hesitant either to
credit the colonial modernity thesis or to employ it as a major theoretical
framework. Rather than dismissing or denouncing these attitudes simply as
nationalist refusals, I prefer to explore the Korean academy’s ambivalence. Its
magnitude impresses me as an ontological dilemma of dual origins: the
persistence of colonial wounds and the marginality of the Korean academy
within the global academic regime.
The ambivalence of the Korean academy towards the colonial modernity
thesis should be understood in relation to the immediate realities of South
Korea. That is to say, scholars in the Korean academy experience the nation’s
colonial wounds in both structural and psychological dimensions. The scars
from these wounds (successive authoritarian regimes, the separation of North
and South) not only appear as anti-Japanism, in political agendas as well as
theoretical debates, but also materialize as legacies of the cold war. These
immediate realities of current South Korean society have casted livings of
Korean scholars, to whom the colonial past means more than theoretical
debates and research objects. The ambivalence further indicates the
psychological sense of woundedness that seems to overpower scholarly
objectivity.
That the colonial past does not simply belong to the past in South Korea,
but instead constantly haunts the current society in myriad forms, cannot be
overstated. The territorial disputes over the Dokdo islets, controversy about
how the Korean occupation is treated in Japan’s new history textbooks, the
punishment of pro-Japanese Koreans and the situation of former Comfort
Women occasionally garner public attention, that occasionally inflames the
usual anti-Japan sentiments. It is no exaggeration to say that anti-Japanism has
been one of the most popular and tenacious ideologies in South Korea.
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 655

Because anti-Japanism functions as both a powerful and banal ideology, it

becomes very difficult take objective positions, as either a citizen or scholar of
South Korea, about issues related to Japan and its colonial occupation of
Korea. It is even hard to decide whether objectivity is politically and
theoretically correct, and if it is how a South Korean citizen and scholar can be
objective about anti-Japanism. In any case, the colonial past’s negative aspects
past burgeoned along with anti-Communism during the cold war period (Jung
2010). Other consequences, such as various forms of mobilization, self-
discipline and authoritarianism (including self-censorship), the separation
between North and South, and the civil war and its aftermath (including the
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conditions of the truce) continue to evoke deep-rooted fears of inadequacy and

a persistent sense of impending crisis among South Koreans.
The strength of anti-Japanism is deeply rooted in the Korean academy’s
suspicion that the colonial modernity thesis, which credits Japanese occupation
for the genesis of modernization in Korea, is a theoretical spin-off of
modernization theory (one of the traditional dichotomy of Korean historio-
graphy). This cognitive dissonance between a nationalist version of colonial
history
one which demonizes Japan at any cost
and a view more grounded
in objectivity
which would acknowledge at least one positive effect of
colonization
comprises the central dichotomy of Korean historiography.
Perhaps not altogether coincidentally, the term ‘colonial modernity’ in
Korean, sikminji geundaesung, sounds similar to sikminji geundaehwaron, which
translates as ‘colonial modernization’, another term for modernization theory.
In this sense, the Korean academy’s initial rejection of the colonial
modernity thesis may be due at least in part to a simple confusion with how the
term has been translated from English. Suspicious attitudes among Korean
academics towards the colonial modernity thesis are grounded in other, more
substantial reasons as well. One is its foreign origins; both the colonial
modernity thesis and modernization theory first gained attention in the West.
Another is their grounding in their attentions to evolving modernity and
modernization under the colonial occupation, although colonial modernity
thesis is highly critical of the basic rationales of modernization theory. Despite
these conflicts, however, studies on the construction of modernity during
colonial rule in Korea have often been falsely accused of merely repeating
modernization theory. In spite of its falsity, this accusation causes Korean
scholars to be hesitant about accepting any form of the colonial modernity
thesis.
Chun, in his examination of book publication and the newly emerging
modern style of reading during the colonial period, expressed embarrassment
when his position was accused of acknowledging modernization theory
a
charge he denies, (Chun & Jung 2004). Chun specifically states that serious
consideration of colonial modernity in South Korea is often taken as the
equivalent of justifying Japan’s occupation (Chun & Jung 2004), a situation that
echoes previous critiques against modernization theory and its scholars, who
 656 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

are often branded as ‘pro-Japanese’. This label, which is one of the most
humiliating stigmatizations in South Korea, demonstrates the distorted
conditions now prevalent within the Korean academy: scholars must choose
an intellectual position about the construction of modernity based upon
whether it can be qualified as anti-Japanese or pro-Japanese (Cho 1998a, b).
This intrusion of polemic into scholarly matters, although it may seem
ridiculous to Western academics, illuminates the overtly desperate and
ideologically charged conditions under which the Korean academy continues
to operate.
Many studies from the new approaches and the book Colonial Modernity of
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Korea, which originates from the US academy, are similarly criticized for their
focus on consumption, modern practices and civilization professes. Although
the intentions of these works were surely to produce useful studies about the
colonial experience in Korea, their focus is repeatedly interpreted as
romanticization of the colonial period and marginalization of the cruelty
suffered by the colonized.
The new approaches, particularly studies on everyday life during the
colonial period are often criticized for over-emphasizing special events and
individual experiences at the expense of structural historical narratives and for
their failure to adequately consider the impact of coloniality. In his review of
Everyday Life of the Colony (2006), Lee noted the book’s emphasis on privileged
groups and intellectuals in urban areas, as analyses of individual experiences
and specific spaces cannot truly represent the everyday life of the colonized.17
He further contended that deleterious conditions of colonized Koreans should
be regarded as ‘discrimination’ between the colonized and the colonizer not as
‘differences’ between Koreans and Japanese.
The book Colonial Modernity of Korea received critical and even harsh
responses for not emphasizing the cruelty of the colonial occupation, although
the reviews generally recognized the work’s positive contribution to examining
the complexity of modernity, colonization and nationalism. In his review, Kim
(2001) contended that although the book illustrates modernity, which was
constructed during the colonial period, it does not clarify the impact of
coloniality on the construction of modernity and therefore fails to consider
structural dimensions of the colonial past. Do (2001) observed that because the
book fails to recognize colonial reality in favour of a focus on modernity, it
romanticizes a neo-colonialist view. It needs to be noted that Korean academy
is aware of the fact that this book originates from the US academy, which is
seemingly free from the ongoing struggles with the colonial legacies.
Inevitably, Korea’s colonial past has numerous implications for the Korean
academy. As Lee (2010) aptly stated:

To ‘critical’ historiographers of the West who can observe the colonial

conditions from a distance, an assimilation or Japanization policy as a form
of colonial control can function as a version of mimicry, which would
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 657

entail various responses or even seemingly oppositional activities from the

colonized [Koreans]. But to people who live through colonial occupation,
Japanizing policy cannot be interpreted as a sign of resistance.
(pp. 392
393)

Similarly, the colonial modernity thesis might be differently interpreted by the

Korean academy and Western scholars. My intention is neither to justify the
Korean academy’s reluctance to embrace the colonial modernity thesis nor to
evaluate whether the stances of the Korean academy or Western scholars are
more correct. My point is that the fundamental ambivalence about
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modernization within the Korean academy must be understood as the result

of the Korean scholars’ inextricable location within the legacy of Korea’s
colonial wounds.
I suspect that the ambivalence is about more than whether or not colonial
modernity is theoretically valid; specifically, I believe it can be traced in large
part to the marginality of the Korean academy within the global academic
regime and the skewed hierarchy that places Korean or Asian academics below
their American or Western counterparts. The Korean academy’s awareness of
its own lack of voice, even within the discipline known as Korean Studies,
increases its sensitivity to what US academy says about Korea’s colonial past
and about Korea in general. This awareness encourages the Korean academy
both to be critical of its dependence on Western theories and to handle the
colonial modernity thesis, which originated from the US academy, with
caution. In fact, this dependence upon Western theory, which can be described
as a colonial condition within knowledge production, is one of the Korean
academy’s most prevalent and fundamental issues.18
Treatment of the subject of Korea’s colonial past within the Korean
academy repeats this pattern, as did the debates within the Korean academy
between exploitation and modernization theories: when modernization theory
had been sufficiently introduced by Western scholars, Korean exploitation
theorists began to criticize not only its substance but also its dependency upon
Western academia. Shin (1997) uncomfortably observed ‘that several scholars
[of modernization theory] just follow foreign theories and ideas, which, I think,
is not the right way of pursuing truth’ (p. 38). Jung (1998) similarly
commented that Western theories flaunt their power by evaluating and
reconstructing Korea’s modernizing process, a practice that easily leads to
Western negation of Korean subjectivity about its colonial period.
The same dilemma over the prominence of Western scholarship fomented
within the Korean academy in the late 1990s, when the new approaches were
gaining attention and when Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (1997)
and Colonial Modernity in Korea (1999) were published. Although the direct
connection between the two trends (new approaches in the Korean academy
and the evident or assumed supremacy of Western scholarship about the
colonial era), the Korean academy remains highly conscious of the US
 658 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

academy’s output about Korea’s colonial past, particularly in book form. In his
review of Colonial Modernity in Korea, Do (2001) accused the authors of paying
attention to coloniality at the expense of colonialism and extended this
criticism to the US academy’s approaches to Korean studies in general: ‘The
U.S. academy tends to regard Korea’s condition before colonization as a blank
or a vacuum, so it attributes the construction of Korean modernity to the
colonial period’ (p. 266). Jung (2008) raised a similar concern, namely that in
Colonial Modernity in Korea, ‘Korea’ has become a text whose issues foreign
scholars of Korean studies simply investigate from their positions outside of
Korea.19
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This discomfort becomes particularly obvious when the US academy

criticizes nationalist tendencies within the Korean academy and the nationalism
of Korean society in general. The Korean academy found critiques of Korean
nationalism during the colonial period seem especially unbalanced and even
unfair. Korean scholars have made numerous attempts to rebut this myopia on
the part of the West, albeit they often disagree upon not only how to do so but
even about the fundamentals of Korean historiography. In their introduction,
Shin and Robinson (1999, p. 17) declared their intention to ‘move beyond the
current nationalist master operatives in both North and South Korea by
focusing on the complex relations among colonialism, modernity, nationalism,
and identity formation’. Do (2001), however, argued that Shin and Michael
over-emphasized their own goal of attacking nationalism within Korean
historiography and thereby failed to critically examine colonial reality and the
nature of modernity. Ko (2002) noted that Shin and Michael’s book
condemned the inherent nationalism of Korean historiography even as it
conferred prototypical status upon Western modernity, which rendered the
construction of modernity during the colonial past merely a response to
Western influences.20
Evaluations of nationalism have inarguably become the primary battle-
ground between the Korean and US academies. From the Korean academy’s
perspective, the US academy falsely simplifies its approaches into various
expressions of a nationalist tradition. In response, the Korean academy contends
that the US academy’s post-nationalist perspective causes it to put too much
emphasis on condemning any nationalist perspective within Korean historio-
graphy even as it refuses to criticize capitalism and colonialism (Kim 2001, Lee
2007). Other Korean scholars are also not satisfied with the US academy’s
understanding of the role and function of nationalism in Korean society. From
the position of the (former) colonized, nation and nationalism are matters of
desperation and survival; to see them merely as superficial or manipulated
ideologies is possible only from a comfortable distance (Lee 2006).
Although these disagreements have been persistent and at times heated,
the question of how to grasp the relationship between colonialism and
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 659

modernization has gained prominence among Korean scholars. Nonetheless,

the Korean academy still tends to avoid directly confronting colonial
modernity. One simple way around the concept is to use similar terms, for
example, ‘modernity of the colonial’, that hold similar implications. Kim
(2008) uses ‘colonial hybridity’ and argues that this term is interchangeable
with ‘colonial modernity’. The main effect of such manipulations is to
obscure the concept’s direct connections to and the strong influence of the
US academy. Another strategy is to characterize the term ‘colonial
modernity’ as problematic instead of using it as a conceptual tool. For
example, the authors of Everyday Life of the Colony treated the idea of colonial
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modernity as very important, but regarded it merely as a tool for re-

arranging and setting up the relationships of other (established) concepts
(H. Cho 2006). The limitations of this role have discouraged the authors
from questioning the validity of colonial modernity as a conceptual tool that
still sounds abstract and universal.21
By contrast, there are a few scholars in the Korean academy who do
positively embrace colonial modernity as a theoretical concept. In the edited
volumes of Rereading Modernity, the editors adopted colonial modernity as a
frame through which to explicate dualities of both ‘modern’ and ‘colony’.
Their logic was that colonial modernity enables us to understand synchrony
between Empire and colony as well as diachrony between colonial and
postcolonial periods (2006b). In his praise of the utility of the term itself,
Haedong Yoon (2006) observed that colonial modernity in his collaborative
works is not a verbatim translation of the phrase as it is used by the US
academy.
The development of new approaches to Korea’s colonial past and the
disputes over colonial modernity within the Korean academy demonstrate the
degrees of ambivalence that the colonial modernity thesis inspires. I do not
wish to urge the Korean academy to adopt the colonial modernity thesis as a
theoretical concept or ‘colonial modernity’ as a term. Instead, I wish to show
that the Korean academy’s ambivalence about colonial modernity is neither a
unique nor independent phenomenon, but rather an outcome of the Korean
academy’s marginal position and lack of voice within the global academic
regime.
In other words, the ambivalence of the Korean academy is not simply a
matter of how to interpret or accept the colonial modernity thesis; it is
intertwined with the immediate realities of Korean society, both past and
present, and the marginalized position of the Korean academy. This
ambivalence, I think, clearly delineates an ontological dilemma: Korean
scholars do not agree with the positions of foreign scholars, whose geopolitical
locations are free from the ongoing issues that plague South Korea; however,
their voices are limited within their own (national) boundary. This limitation
 660 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

causes their roles in and influence upon studies about Korea’s colonial past to
be strictly marginalized at the global level.

Conclusion: can Koreans speak for the colonial past of Korea?

Initially, in writing this article I wished to explore the Korean academy’s
current approaches to Korea’s colonial past, and to introduce these approaches
to readers who cannot understand materials written in Korean. However, the
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fact that I have written in English does not mean that I am trying to target
American or European readers particularly; unfortunately, writing in English is
the only way I can speak to other Asian scholars in non-Western societies.22 As
I examined evolving debates about the colonial past within the Korean
academy, I realized that for the past a couple of decades, research about this
subject has both increased and has begun to reach more diverse conclusions. In
particular, the new approaches have produced successful collaborative projects
about the multiplicity of the colony of Korea as it faced the flows of the
modern forces both positively (as the nation’s introduction to modernity) and
negatively (as by-products of the cruelty of imperialism).
At the same time, I have realized that such research rarely initiates
productive conversations within the Korean academy or expands the under-
standing of Korea’s experience of coloniality beyond it. Here, the Korean
academy both functions as a national boundary and promulgates mutual distrust
and frustration between, for example, the Korean and US academies. These
limitations cannot be attributed only to the dearth of research, in terms of both
quality and quantity, or to the Korean academy’s inherent nationalist zeal
(which the US academy habitually criticizes).
Perhaps the ambivalence of the Korean academy towards the colonial
modernity thesis reveals how high the stakes really are for the Korean academy
within the global division of intellectual labour. That is to say, the ambivalence
insinuates the Korean academy’s concern that the study of its (national) colonial
past would be dominated by foreign and particularly American academy, which
indicates another colonial condition of Korea in present tense. Thus, at this time
the Korean academy seems to be both sensitive and indifferent to pronounce-
ments by the US academy about Korea, particularly in the name of Korean
Studies. The attention that Korean academy does pay to the US academy often
turns into frustration, which in turn leads to ignoring the US academy’s
conclusions. In terms of Korea’s colonial past, clear examples can be found in
the two academies’ contrasting views on ‘national things’, including the multi-
layered significance of nation and nationalism in Korean history and the
nationalist narratives of Korean historiography. The Korean academy distrusts
the intentions of the US academy, which they suspect are condescending,
instead of actively debating the US academy’s conclusions.
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 661

For its part, the US academy tends to simplify Korean academy into a
mouthpiece of nationalist rhetoric, which the Korean academy naturally finds
insulting. This unproductive cycle is based on the essentially hierarchal structure
of the world academy. The Korean academy cannot make its voice heard in the
same way that the US academy can and lacks the tools even to make complaints
to the US academy. Instead, the current state of Korean scholarship about
Korea’s colonial past is that successive studies seem to disclose more and more
colonial dimensions of the Korean academy; such outcomes undermine the
possibility of the Korean academy being taken as seriously as it feels it deserves

a goal that has been driven by the Korean academy’s desire for global status yet
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has been blocked by its marginal position under Western or American

universalism. As Chun (2008) stated, ‘The institutional functions are primary,
because they are the source of authorial subjectivities’ (p. 695).23 The
ambivalence of the Korean academy towards the colonial modernity thesis
encapsulates its marginality, which Chun called its ‘institutional situatedness’
(Chun 2008). This combination of marginality and ambivalence has formed an
ontological dilemma in the Korean academy, which in turn strives to establish
itself within the hierarchal structure of the global academic regime.
Questions that are both urgent and essential do not centre upon whether
the Korean academy’s complaints are valid or fair, but rather to whom the
Korean academy speaks these complaints, and how. Unfortunately, the Korean
academy seems to be satisfied with airing its discontents among its own
members. Ideally, Korean scholars would speak up and share their research
around the world and particularly with the entity they are most anxious about:
the US academy. But accomplishing such a goal is much easier said than done,
nor do all Korean scholars feel that it is necessary.
Two possibilities that the Korean academy could explore would be to
expand its scope beyond Korea, and to embrace theoretical refinement.
Korean scholars who study the nation’s colonial past rarely venture beyond the
national boundary
that is, the Korean academy and Korea’s history
or
even demonstrate a similar level of interest in the colonial experiences of other
countries such as Vietnam, Manchuria and Taiwan (Chun & Jung 2004).
I believe the effort that would be required to learn about the colonial histories
of other countries and thereby to think connectively would, at the very least,
increase Korean scholars’ understanding of their own colonial past.
Extending its scope would also mean that the Korean academy would pay
more attention to research on non-Western societies and by non-Western
academies (for example, Latin America’s or Africa’s). Currently, the Korean
academy is sensitive largely to domestic concerns and to trends and theories
from the European and US academies. Comparable cross-referencing among
non-Western academies would help locate a structural homology among
‘similar historical experiences shared by Asia, Latin America and Africa’ (Chen
& Chua 2007, p. 1). The lack of supportive infrastructures could make it as
difficult for the marginalized to speak among themselves as they now find it to
 662 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

speak to the centre (i.e. Western academies); however, I am convinced that to

start even one conversation would be worth the effort. The accumulation of
many such conversations might create a small but essential space for scholars,
even Western ones, to think outside of Western universalism.
It seems clear that the Korean academy should also attempt to theorize its
colonial past
in other words, pursue theoretical refinements of the colonial
modernity thesis
and suggest alternatives. Most Korean works on the
country’s colonial past examine individual topics in the form of case studies
instead of developing theoretical configurations; critiques of the colonial
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modernity thesis are more concerned with its limitations or inappropriateness

in Korean contexts than with its adaptation to those contexts. Thus far, it
seems that the Korean academy has no enthusiasm for the possibility of refining
and developing the colonial modernity thesis. Chun’s (2008) impression of the
situation is telling: ‘I have been to many conferences in Asia where ‘‘we’’
Asians complain incessantly about the fact that we are relegated to the role of
local area specialists, while Western area specialists are ipso facto considered
theorists’ (p. 705). Unless the Korean academy can bring itself to struggle with
the theoretical polemics that the colonial modernity thesis evokes, and delve
into theoretical inquires on colonial modernity, the global division of
intellectual labour will be continued in the field of Korean studies.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research

Fund.

Notes

1 Chun uses the term ‘global academic regime’ to highlight the importance of
institutional situatedness in the study of identity, as well as the persistent
global division of intellectual labour particularly between Asia and the West.
2 Reviews of these perspectives have been widely conducted within the
Korean academy but are mostly inaccessible to English readers. Ahn (2008)
provided a fine summary and evaluation in English.
3 Shin (1997) added that the policy of ethnocide policy distinguished the
Japanese Empire from Western empires. All translations from Korean
sources are the author’s unless otherwise noted.
4 This theory both considers the special conditions of Korean history and
presumes universal historic development. One of the most representative
groups is called the School of National Economy (Lee 1997).
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 663

5 According to Jung (1999), the launch of the Research Association of Korean

Modern Economy among Korean and Japanese scholars in 1987 was the first
collective effort by modernization theorists.
6 According to Seokgon Cho (2006), the theory of indigenous development
either ignores or postpones responses to new findings by the school of
modernization theory.
7 Changjak-kwa Beepyung is a well-known and respected South Korean critical
studies journal. Recently, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies published a special issue
on Nakchung Baek, a founder as well as a long time chief-in-editor of this
journal (2010).
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8 Modernization theory does express some concern that, without substantial

evidence, trying to find parallels between the 1930s and the 1960s in Korea
might result in romanticizing colonial control (Cho 1998a).
9 Attempts to call for new approaches include sociocultural theory, theory of
colonial modernity, and other postcolonial approaches. These viewpoints
have yet to find a common terminology, however.
10 For more detailed discussions, see Barlow (1997) in Formations of Colonial
Modernity in East Asia and Shin and Robinson in Colonial Modernity in Korea
(1999).
11 Other works that broke ground in this regard are Kim (1999), Geundaui
Hyungsung [Construction of Modernity: Permitting Dance Halls in Seoul];
Shin (2003), Modern Boy Gyungsung-ul Geotta [Modern Boy Strolling
Kyungsung: Faces of Modernity]. Seoul, Hyunsil Moonhwa Yeonkoo;
Bodrae Kwon (2003). Yeonae-ui Sidae [Age of Romance: Cultural Trends
in 1920s]. Seoul, Hyunsil Moonhwa Yeonkoo; Junghwan Chun (2003).
Geundaejuk Chekilgi [Modern Reading: Birth of Readers and Korean Modern
Literature]. Seoul, Prun Yeoksa; Kwon, M.-A. (2005). Yeoksa-ui Fascism
[Fascism of History: Imperial Fantasy and Gender Politics]. Seoul, Chek-
Sesang.
12 In the same volume, Kim (1997), examined how the introduction of modern
education into child-rearing nurtured colonial subjects for the Japanese
Government.
13 Shin’s (2006) examination of modern education Korea focused on physical
education during the colonial period. The author suggested parallels
between the military mobilization of the 1940s and the authoritarian
control (of South Korea) by President Jung-Hee Park in the 1970s.
14 Kang (2006) traced the social status associated with English in Korea and the
language’s functional usage there. Even during colonization, English was a
form of cultural capital although this cache was motivated in part by the
popularity of Hollywood films. In any case, Koreans under Japanese rule
were eager to learn English.
15 As Ahn (2008) clarified, while modernity is interpellated against colonialism
‘some of the dichotomous concepts are often seen in conjunction with the
 664 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

gender dichotomy male/female’ (p. 165). The conjunction of strong

nationalist commitment and masculine ideology forces even nationalist
historians into either ambivalence about or dismissal of gender-specific issues
during the colonial period.
16 Kwon (2006) examined the women’s spy discourses that became widespread
in colonial Korea after the Sino-Japanese War (1936
1937). Chun (2006)
explored the growing market for children’s books and modernized patterns
of book reading during the colonial period (the former shifted from
recitation to personal reading; the latter shifted from the scriptures to
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functional materials such as textbooks). Daesuk Yoon (2006), Guncha Yoon

(2006) and Haedong Yoon (2006) found structural homology (the repetition
of fascist logic in the definition of ‘national literature’) between the
mobilization of the 1940s and the national development movement of the
1970s.
17 Lee (2006) also referred to the issue of its methodology by arguing that
research on discourse might distort images of the colonial past by
generalizing unique or particular experiences.
18 For the recent reformation of Higher Education and colonial condition of
knowledge production in South Korea, see Kang (2009).
19 Nonetheless, Jung (2008) acknowledged that this book brings many
ambiguous possibilities into focus.
20 Several Korean academics are seriously offended particularly by the
epilogue’s description of Korean historiography. In his epilogue, Eckert
(1999, p. 366) argues that ‘nationalist paradigms have so dominated
intellectual life in Korea that they obfuscated, subsumed or obliterated
virtually all other possible modes of historical interpretation’.
21 Not every author in the volume took the same position. In her examination
of the consumption of American films during the colonial period, Lee (2006)
argued that the construction of cultural landscapes should be explicated
through the perspective of colonial modernity as a universal experience, not
of modernization of a specific colony.
22 Sakai (2003) mentioned that the delight of writing in English is a possibility
of addressing something to people of various nations, not just to an
Anglophone community and suggested subversively appropriating ‘an
imperial history of English’. I do not much agree with the latter.
23 Chun (2008, p. 696) further argued that ‘We should really be deconstructing
underlying institutional regimes and not simply conceptual representations’.

Notes on Contributor
Younghan Cho is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of
International and Area Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in
 C O L O N I A L M O D E R N I T Y M AT T E R S 665

Seoul, South Korea. His research draws on media and cultural studies, with a
particular emphasis on global sports and nationalism in Asian contexts. His
papers have appeared in numerous journals, including Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
(2008), Media, Culture & Society (2009) and Cultural Studies (2011). Dr Cho has
recently finished co-editing a volume on American pop culture in Asia with
Professor Chua Beng Huat, which will be published as a special issue in Inter-
Asia Cultural Studies.
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