The Review of Korean Studies

Abstract

This article analyzes the reality of Japan as a as a military “base-state,” at the time of the Korean War as well as Japan’s reaction to the Korean war. It is well established fact that during the Korean War, Japan achieved independence and returned to the international society by signing the Peace Treaty of San Francisco. After Japan’s defeat in the World War II, Japan declared herself to be a “Peace-State,” but during the Korean War, Japan converted to a “base-state,” which was initially given as a basic framework to transition into a “base-state” to sustain Japan’s survival and future after the war. The Korean War gave Japan the appropriate timing for the serious reflection on the war and peace, in the vacuum of battle made in the reality of a war. In this situation, in Japan which was resembled a laboratory of “war and peace,” peace had experienced a typical diversification. First of all, the diversification of rise and fall occurred. On the one hand, fall to war reality occurred, on the other, rise to the vacuum of battle took place. Secondly, the diversification of entry and escape occurred. In the reality of the Korean War, some tried to guarantee peace by entering any one of camps, others tries to realize peace by escaping from all of camps. With the Korean War intersecting the abovementioned rise and fall, entry and escape pacifism in Japan was diversified into four categories: “constitutional pacifism,” “absolute pacifism,” “camp pacifism,” and “armament pacifism.”Postwar pacifism in Japan had been developed as diversification or combination of above mentioned four kinds of pacifism. “Pacifism in everyday life” is the most distinctive type of all them. It is composed of “constitutional pacifism” and “absolute pacifism,” and deploys as a superposition of the two types of pacifisms. Naturally, the two pacifisms have been inseparable, and they have been unable to exist without the other. While the constitutional pacifism tried to descend, it ascended as a canon of Japanese pacifism, and absolute pacifism tried to ascend but descended and rooted deeply in the mind of the Japanese people.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the following three questions: (1) how did the Koreans and the Korean organizations in Japan react to the Korean War, and what were their positions to the conflict?; (2) how did the South Korean government, the General Headquarters (GHQ), the Japanese government and the Japanese Communist Party respond to the Korean organizations in Japan, and what were their political goals vis-à-vis the organizations?; and (3) what were the impacts of the Korean War on the Korean residents in Japan? When the Korean War broke out, the activities of right-wing Mindan were stagnant, and the left-wing camp was yet to form an alternative organization since the dissolution of Jo-ryeon. While the officials of these organizations were showing a wide variety of reactions to the conflict that broke out on their homeland, the Mindan supported the capitalist South while the former officials of Jo-ryeon actively supported the communist North. The fratricidal war instilled deep division and mutual hatred not only in the Korean Peninsula, but also among the Koreans in Japan. Until now, many of Korean population in Japan do not interact with each other without lingering animosities even though no borders are dividing them. The Korean Government, the GHQ, the Japanese government, and the Japanese Communist Party prioritized their own political interests over the rights and welfare of Korean residents in Japan. In order to advance their political agendas, various actors interfered with the Korean organizations and mobilized the Korean residents to their respective advantage. In order to control the Korean population, they installed various surveillance systems which violated the ethnic minority’s human rights. The devastating legacies of that era continue even today. Most of the control and surveillance systems invented by the GHQ and Japanese government more than 60 decades ago are still in operation which further violates the political, economic, and citizenship rights of Korean residents of Japan.

Abstract

Korean historical memory is preoccupied with lingering legacies of the colonial era and divisive interpretations of the Korean War. A Japanese woman, Ms. Tauchi Chizuko, the “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans,” is commemorated at the intimate intersection of bilateral mnemonic politics and historical reconciliation. The daughter of a colonial master married a local man of humble origin, and continued to aid the socially underprivileged even after Japan’s defeat in WWII. Tauchi’s social services during the Korean War define her symbolic significance where a former oppressor was transformed into the repentant sinner. This article argues that Tauchi’s memories are closely connected with the dynamic memory politics of Korea-Japan relations: her symbolic representation as remorseful Japan and a possibility of Korea-Japan historical reconciliation.

Abstract

If the virtue of reciprocity and mutual help and citizenry ethics of being responsible is not separable from the moral of “the owed must be paid back,” how can community be a revolting agency of financial markets? This paper contemplates limits to community as a potential source of mystification about how to fight capitalism. In order to do so, this paper does not denounce the community as useless, rather demonstrates the legacy of community building as contingently on-going revolutionary attempts. In the context, this paper has a double edge of dealing with community: on the one hand, it historicizes the emergence and re-emergence of “community” in the anti-capitalist state legacy through a window of Humanities Studies Movement in the post-Asian Financial Crisis; on the other hand, it opens up a critical view of the very revolutionary goal as potential enemy, critically engaging in Lazarrato’s insight from his recent book, The Making of the Indebted Man.

Abstract

The North Korean government of Kim Jong-un is experiencing multiple simultaneous challenges to its legitimacy, but few could be more serious than the inflow and circulation of information in society. This paper uses three case studies to specifically examine how the North Korean state is responding to this danger by actively projecting narratives of transformation: “re-defectors,” sports, and Kim Jong-un’s court orchestra, the Moranbong Band. In every case, it becomes clear that the state is employing an active strategy, not only responding to negative external portrayals, but also trying to shape its own image both within and without its borders. In order to understand how the state interacts with the North Korean public, this paper employs Thomas Callaghy’s trifurcated “domain consensus” as a framework by which to sub-categorize Pyongyang’s approach: normative, utilitarian, and coercive. It focuses on the first of these types of consensus formation, the normative, by exploring the information strategies used by the Kim Jong-un government as it seeks to promote a revised Weberian “reciprocity of expectations” with the population.

Abstract

Abstract

In this article, I examine Koryŏ pseudo-biographies as allegorical representation of the view of human nature depicted in the Mencius. Kim Ch’ang-nyong has revealed through comparative research that Koryŏ writers consulted anthologies known as lei shu when writing pseudo-biographies. The lei shu is reprinted texts under subject categories such as “wine.” In this article, I will discuss the significance of the theme of “things of the same kind” in lei shu and pseudo-biographies, with reference to Neo-Confucianism, particularly the view of human nature expressed in the Mencius. Moreover, as Pak Hǔi-byŏng has observed, Yi Kyu-bo synthesized Zhuangzi’s perception of oneness with the Way, with Mencius’ belief that our minds are “of a kind” in having the capacity for goodness. The layers of plot were possible through word play such as paranomasia, in which metaphor was used for its literal and metaphorical meaning. This tracing of a metaphor to its source expressed the theme of “inquiry” (yuan) that Han Yu and Yi Ch’ŏm emphasized in their writings in the genre of the “inquiry,” and in the pseudo-biography, with its tracing of representations of a subject in texts.