Related Papers
•"From the Age of Heroic Production to the Birth of Korean Literature, Capital Flows, Transnational Media Markets and Literary Production in the Colonial Period," 사이間 SAI ·Vol. 6 (May 2009), 9-35.
Michael Kim
Korean literary critics and authors active in the 1930s evoked a sense of crisis and despair about the state of Korean literature. The financial foundations of Korean literary production throughout most of the early colonial period were tenuous, and there was a strong sense that colonial readers were indifferent to Korean literature or had a strong preference for foreign literature. By the late 1930s, however, the state of literary production in colonial Korea had changed dramatically. Professional writers were able to make a living from their manuscripts, and the volume of literary output reached unprecedented levels. Significant capital flowed into cultural production, and Korean authors increasingly participated in a transnational literary field that stretched throughout the Japanese Empire. Yet just as the market for Korean literary works achieved capitalist levels of production, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 triggered wartime controls of the publication industry. During this last phase of the colonial order, Korean writers began to reconceptualize Korean literature into National Literature, which was written in Japanese and intended for an expansive audience that resided throughout the Japanese empire. The literary history of late colonial period would ultimately raise fundamental questions about what constituted Korean literature and literary authorship within the rapidly expanding transnational media market of the Japanese Empire. This article examines this complex relationship between the dynamics of literary markets and changing conceptions of Korean literature during the colonial period.
Korean Englishes, Uneven Asias, and Global Circulation, 1895-1945
2016 •
Hyo Kyung Woo
Acta Koreana
2017 •
Jamie Jungmin Yoo
This article explores the transnational interaction of early modern Korean literature with special attention to the practice of " censorship. " By examining media control by the government authorities in both late Chosŏn Korea and late imperial China, this study aims to examine how the state and policymakers attempted to control the flow of unorthodox books and how the production of books epitomized the cultural values of the day. " What value system prompted the authorities to forbid a certain body of texts? " " What agencies were instrumental in the circulation of books? " By analyzing various travelogues to Beijing (yŏnhaengnok) and notes on poetry (sihwa), this article examines how the transnational interaction between China and Korea and changing textual environments influenced the production of literature in late Chosŏn. Using a specific case study of Yi Tŏng-mu (1741–1793), this article demonstrates that various " informal networks " outside of conventional channels functioned as the actual key drivers of book culture. In particular, a number of " book brokers " in the Qing and Chosŏn facilitated the distribution of forbidden books. My study on these circulatory dynamics reveals how negotiations between the control of media and the distributing of books influenced the textual environments and how the cultural value system shaped the production of literature. Keywords: censorship, circulation of books, early modern Korea, informal networks, production of literature, Sino-Korean interaction, transnational, Yi Tŏng-mu, yŏnhaengnok
The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature edited by Heekyoung Cho
(Book Chapter) Manuscript, Not Print, in the Book World of Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) (2022)
2022 •
Si Nae Park
The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature
HYBRID ORTHOGRAPHIES AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN LITERATURE IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY KOREA
2022 •
Daniel Pieper
This chapter examines the phenomenon of “experimental textuality” in the first decade of the twentieth century, whereby previously separated vernacular (han’gŭl) and cosmopolitan (hancha/hanmun) linguistic elements were combined in novel ways, a process that both foreshadowed and mediated the textual establishment of modern Korean fction and nonfction genres in the next decade. These experimental writing styles were a response by Korean language reformers to the perceived disunity between the spoken and the written language (ŏnmun ich’i 言文二致). They also represented an attempt to bridge the gap between elite and popular readerships and to overcome the “crisis of the vernacular” due to its perceived lack of standardization and legitimacy. These experimental forms of writing ofer an informative backdrop to the subsequent script-based “genrefcation” of Korean writing as “pure” han’gŭl literature on the one hand and mixed-script (kukhanmun) expository writing on the other. This development in Korean writing represented a fundamental reconfguration of the Korean linguistic landscape: the shift from a premodern, cosmopolitan language ideology based on hierarchical compartmentalization of scripts to modern language ideologies inspired by language nationalism that sought a path to increased literacy and eventually established a genre-based separation of scripts.
Acta Koreana
KOREAN AS TRANSITIONAL LITERACY: LANGUAGE POLICY AND KOREAN COLONIAL EDUCATION, 1910 –1919
2015 •
Daniel Pieper
•"Literary Production, Circulating Libraries, and Private Publishing: The Popular Reception of Vernacular Fiction Texts in the Late Choson Dynasty," Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 9, No 1, (Fall 2004), 1-31. Reprinted in Brokaw and Kornicki, eds, The History of the Book in East Asia (2013).
2004 •
Michael Kim
This study examines the appearance of interpretive communities of popular readers in the late Chosŏn period. Popular readers formed around fictional texts that could be borrowed from circulating libraries or purchased from private publishers. While sources that directly address the phenomenon of popular reading during the Chosön period are rare, considerable information can be gleaned from Western language publications on Korea and careful attention to the material construction of popular fiction texts. Many Western visitors to Korea had a particular interest in Korean print culture, and their writings can present some valuable insights into the social reception of popular texts and the distribution of vernacular fictional works through markets, bookstores and circulating libraries. The material construction of popular fiction texts also witnessed major changes during this period, and fictional works produced by private publishers and circulating libraries assumed physical forms that were highly suited for the reading practices and preferences of popular readers. While considerably more research on this topic needs to be done, the findings of this study suggests that popular readers could be found throughout late Chosŏn society, and they may have been highly concentrated in areas such as Seoul and among certain social groups like elite women.
Journal of Korean Studies
Making Sense of Fiction: Social and Political Functions of Serialized Fiction in the Daily News (Maeil sinbo) in 1910s Korea
2017 •
Jooyeon Rhee
From Center to Periphery: The Demotion of Literary Sinitic and the Beginnings of Hanmunkwa—Korea, 1876–1910
W. Scott Wells
From the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa to Korea’s annexation in 1910, the last thirty-five years of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) were witness to some of the most impactful events in Korea’s modern history. Through encounters with Western powers and the influence, both direct and indirect, of a rapidly modernizing Japan, many Koreans began to reappraise their country’s Sino-centric past and the once-shared knowledge, symbols, and practices of the traditional East Asian cosmopolitan order. A major consequence of this reappraisal was the demotion of Literary Sinitic (commonly known as Classical Chinese) from its long-held status as the de facto official written standard of state and its removal from the center of the curriculum of state-sponsored education to the periphery in the guise of a newly created classroom subject hanmunkwa. This thesis details how shifts in the terminology for both Literary Sinitic and the vernacular script, the educational activities of Western missionaries, the abolition of Korea’s traditional civil service examination system, the establishment of a Western-style educational system, the proliferation of new Literary Sinitic teaching materials and methodologies, and the influence of Japan combined at the end of the Chosŏn dynasty to demote the learning and use of Literary Sinitic. Furthermore, this thesis shows that Literary Sinitic’s demise was not simply the collateral damage of a predestined and unavoidable rise of Korea’s native script, but was, by the time of annexation, already a long though still unfinished process. The reappraisal and demotion of Literary Sinitic in Korea is important for more than merely understanding the precolonial moment in Korea. It is vital to improving our understanding of Korea’s part in the disintegration of a once vibrant East Asian cosmopolitanism, while further exploring the early development of hanmunkwa will also help us apprehend the lingering effects and influences exercised by once transcultured practices, even after those practices are reimagined and reconfigured according to new, nationalized frameworks.
Journal of Korean Religions
"The Trouble with Christian Publishing: Yun Ch’iho (1865–1945) and the Complexities of Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea," Journal of Korean Religions, Volume 9, Number 2, October 2018, pp. 139-172.
2018 •
Michael Kim
Yun Ch’iho (1864–1945)’s voluminous personal letters and diaries have placed him at the center of a diverse array of historical studies on modern Korean history. Yun’s diaries can be especially helpful in revealing important aspects of a Christian publishing company called Ch’angmunsa, which began operations in January 1923. Yun’s diary entries yield insights into not only the complexities of the colonial publishing market, but also the entangled history of Korean Christianity during the cultural rule period of the 1920s. The establishment of Ch’angmunsa was part of a broader movement among Korean Christians to achieve more cultural autonomy from the Western missionaries. Korean Christian leaders maintained close relations with the missionaries who spread Christianity in Korea, but they also sought to establish their own basis for Christian cultural production. Through a close reading of Yun’s diary, we can gain a better understanding of the challenges of Christian publishing, the complexities of the Christian Nationalist movement, and the tensions between the missionaries and the Korean Christian leadership in colonial Korea.
