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Title: Korea Between Empires by Andre Schmid ISBN: 0-231-12539-9 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Solid, with a few gaps in coverage
Comment: In this well-written book, the author explores the genesis of Korean national conciousness. He focuses much attention on the members of the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement and the newspapers they published from roughly the years 1895 to 1910. He does a good job linking the rise of Korean newspapers to the development of national identity. Many of his points are salient and well-argued, but the book does contain several gaps in coverage.
For example, by his own admission, Schmid's book is elitist with his focus on the educated elite who could read newspapers written in a hybrid Chinese/vernacular script. It is fine to focus on the elite, but Schmid fails to articulate how popular conceptions of the nation affected the theories of the elite. Schmid's book is inherently dogged by binaries such as elite/non-elite and colonial/non-colonial, despite his claim to overcome them. At the end, we are left with a sense that the newspaper editors, who wrote in the presence of Japan's "civilization and enlightenment", were wholly responsible for the formation of Korean national identity. I feel this reading gives too much priority to the Japanese presence and also leaves us stuck in the traditional mentality that Koreans simply reacted to Japan.
In all fairness, Schmid does illustrate examples from the past (such as the 1712 Kando incident) to suggest that there were people who began to conceive of the nation long before Meiji Japan. However, he tends to anacronistically imbue these events with more significance than they apparently warrented in their time. He also fails to draw a conclusive link between pre-Meiji nationalist ventures and the newspapers of the Patriotic Enlightenment Movement.
In all, this book is a valuable contribution to the field, but it's narrow focus on newspapers does weaken his overall argument. He should have stuck with an analysis of newspapers, which he explores so elegantly, and not have tried to describe Korean nationalism in its totality.
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Title: Colonial Modernity in Korea by Gi-Wook Shin, Michael Robinson, Daqing Yang ISBN: 0674005945 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Studies of the East Asian Institute) by Charles K. Armstrong ISBN: 0801440149 Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Culture and the State in Late Choson Korea (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 182) by Jahyun Kim Haboush, Martina Deuchler ISBN: 0674007743 Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center Pub. Date: 01 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology by Martina Deuchler ISBN: 0674160894 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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Title: Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism by Sheila Miyoshi Jager ISBN: 076561068X Publisher: East Gate Book Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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