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Hyung Il Pai, Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2000. 543 pages. ISBN: 0-674-00244-X.
Reviewed by Roald Maliangkay
Leiden University[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 4 (2001): 170-173. Acta Koreana is published by Academia Koreana of Keimyung University.]
Nationalism has been a major force in the creation of the Korean state in the twentieth century. It was fueled during the colonial period when it underpinned the struggle for independence. Korean intellectuals promoted patriotism, and with it a sense of nationhood, yet the question of identity suddenly became an important issue when Japanese archaeologists began digging into Korea's past. Their activities and those of anthropologists, paid for largely by the Japanese government, focused on the history and culture of Korean civilization. The Japanese military government planned to assimilate the Korean people and the outcome of the studies, so it hoped, would serve to facilitate the assimilation process. It also made efforts to prevent expressions of a distinct Korean identity. For that purpose it imposed strong censorship and ruled that, among other things, the Korean Confucian institution was to be broken down, Korean history books rewritten, and Japanese taught as the primary language at schools.
After the liberation, the ensuing strong anti-Japanese sentiments helped the state to further boost nationalism, this time in order to increase competitiveness and productivity, improve national unity, and preempt criticism of the government. The success of South Korean president Park Chung Hee's policy of cultural indoctrination, in particular, was such that today most South Koreans share the same ideas about their unique cultural heritage and 5,000-year history. Park's nationalism focused on the threat from foreign powers and the uniqueness of Korea's national identity. It involved advocating old Confucian values that underscored the responsibility shared by all strata of society in achieving the state's economic and political objectives. Perhaps under the influence thereof, many Koreans, both scholars and laymen, began dealing with their colonial past their own way. They did so either by blaming the Japanese for stripping the country of its cultural treasures and economic resources, and leaving the country in ruins, or by rewriting the history of Korea, which they considered to have been greatly contrived by the Japanese during the colonial period. The starting point was to "prove" the historical truth of the myth of Tan'gun, who allegedly founded the first Korean state as early as 2333 B.C. Popular support for adopting the Tan'gun theory was significant, and was further gained under Park's rule. Due to this widespread support, and the fact that many of these historians gained prestigious positions in the academic world, the misconceptions stand largely uncorrected and continue to thwart objective Korean historiography.
In Constructing Korean Origins, Hyung Il Pai tackles most of the post-colonial historiographical constructions. With great dexterity she examines how and whether Korean historians have used the available data in formulating their many preconceived theories on the existence of Tan'gun's very early and purely Korean civilization, which, so they argue, was one of formidable cultural development and influence. Based on her findings, she shows that, instead, the first Korean state was not an isolated culture and cannot have been formed until much later.
In terms of the number of pages, the book is divided in two sections. The first part is made up of seven chapters, and the second of a relatively long section (127 pp.) of appendices, followed by the notes, bibliography, glossary and index. In the introduction, "The Formation of Korean Identity" (pp. 1-22), Pai summarizes the factors that led to the current trends in historiography. She outlines the nationalist cultural policy of South Korea's post-war governments and the nationalist activities of scholars, and explains how they have managed to shape the Korean identity. Urged on by the fast industrialization and urbanization, the government has become the arbiter in terms of which archaeological sites are salvaged from destruction by building projects. According to Pai, it is now "the supreme authority over the 'authentic domain of identity'" (p. 13). Not only do I find her assessment of the role of the state here overly strong, but unless one recognizes the shared interests of the state and the archaeologists, the former seemingly contradicts what follows on page 17. There, Pai writes that due to the extensive interference with Korea's past by the Japanese, the Korean archaeologist has become the "mostwidely recognized" and "most authentic authority" on what constitutes the Korean identity.
In "The Colonial Origins of Prehistoric Korea" (pp. 23-56), Pai elaborates on the colonial activities of Japanese archaeologists in Korea. She describes the enormous scope of their research and discusses the most important Korean racial theories. Japanese archaeologists were the founders of archaeology in Korea. They not only excavated hundreds of burial sites, but also identified more than two thousand of them. Because, moreover, they published their findings in many reports over the years in a language similar to Korean and would eventually even train the first generation of Korean archaeologists (p. 35), their work and methodology have had an enormous impact on Korean historiography and archaeology to date. The excavated objects were carefully restored and preserved, and many of them were taken to the museums in the capital. To prevent further damage to the objects, the Japanese enacted a series of laws and measures, aimed at both Korean looters and Japanese soldiers (p. 33). Pai argues that the system of kokuho (Kor.: kukpo = "national treasures"), which the current Korean cultural properties preservation system employs, started with the enactment of the 1916 law (p. 434 n. 29). The term, however, does not appear in the law (see Chosen sotokufu 1916: 3-5) and in Korea appears not to have been introduced until after the end of the Pacific War. It was first used in the name of a committee, the Kukpo myôngsông ch'ônnyôn kinyômmul imshi pojon wiwônhoe (Interim Committee for the Preservation of Natural Monuments, Places of Scenic Beauty and Historic Interest, and National Treasures), which the then Minister of Education, Kim Pômnin, established on 19 December 1952 to carry out repairs on cultural properties damaged during the Korean War (Chông Chaejong 1985: 4; see also Maliangkay 1999: 78). There is no doubt, however, that the system, and with it the concept of national properties, found its origin in the 1916 law.
Chapter 3, "The Mythical Origins of Ancient Korea" (pp. 57-96), primarily deals with the Tan'gun myth and how noted nationalist historiographers, such as Sin Ch'ae-ho, Ch'oe Nam-sôn, Paek Nam-un and Kim Chae-wôn, began using it to define a new and foremost distinctive, separate Korean history. As she discusses the claims made by these early scholars and their contemporary followers, Pai systematically repudiates their state-formation theories, which heavily relied "on data, methodologies and data inherited from the Japanese" (p. 96). In the consecutive chapter, "Korean State-Formation Theories: A Critical Review" (pp. 97-126), she shows how racism already imbedded in the methodology of Japanese archaeologists led to the contrivance of Korean state-formation theories. Criticizing the methodology of the general Korean archaeology today, she says:Korean scholars today have yet to fathom the imperialistic motives lurking behind colonial scholarship's imagined Korean racial origins in "primitive" Manchuria, even though they continue to target Japanese ancient historians as arch-villains for their "distorted" view of Korean history (p. 98)
Pai also warns against the adoption of Confucian ideas, which emphasize a dynastic lineage and presume a certain superiority (p. 112). Instead, she proposes a new approach to understanding Korean prehistory, which focuses on the interactions between identifiable groups. This method is illustrated in the following two chapters, "Lelang: A Case Study in Cultural Contact and Cultural Change" (pp. 127-173) and "The Lelang Interaction Sphere in Korean Prehistory" (pp. 174-236). In these chapters she systematically discusses the data and objects collected of the Han dynasty commandery of Lelang and paints a clear picture of the cultural interactions spheres in the area. By doing so, Pai proves quite convincingly that the first Korean state cannot be dated earlier than around 108 B.C.
In the final chapter, "Nationalism and Rewriting the Wrongs of the Past" (pp. 237-287), Pai once more underscores the importance of history and archaeology as political tools. She relates the 1995 dismantling of the building of the Seoul National Museum, the former headquarters of the Japanese Government-General in Korea, and the issues the handling of cultural heritage raises from the perspective of identity. In describing the history of the museum, however, she fails to mention that because the properties, many of which had long been hidden from view, were turned into national icons, the Japanese intentionally deprived some of them of their religious significance (De Ceuster 2000; see also Maliangkay 1999: 79). In her final conclusion, Pai once more repeats what she set out to prove, namely that "'the ancient' is as an indispensable and unavoidable source of a nation's identity."
Despite the large number of novel claims Pai makes in her book, I found most of them well supported. The only two hiccups I came across were the "musicologists tell me," which turned out to be based on personal communication with no more than one person (p. 423 n. 12), and, on a similar note, "the Japanese perspective" (p. 238, 460 n. 8), which is also backed up by one presumably primary source only. Overall, the style and editing are excellent. The book reads very well and has a clear layout. The index and glossary are, unfortunately, very short, the first listing only 150 words, the second 134. Their constrictions were probably necessary to limit the total number of pages, though I would have thought that specific terms such as sadae-the first mention of which (p. 15) is not listed in the index-minjok t'ujaengsa (pp. 137, 245), hwabunh'yong (?) (p. 135) and chuch'e (pp. 59, 254) certainly merited listing. As far as the editing is concerned, I only found one inconsistency on p. 121, where Pai speaks of a majority of 77 percent, which on p. 452 n. 26 seems to be 75.4 percent. Apart from a few occasional misspellings (see Leland [Lelang] on p. xii, Sôkkurram [Sôkkuram] on p. 434, and Talch'um [T'alch'um] on p. 468 n. 54), the translations and romanizations are very consistent and accurate. On two occasions, however, I felt that words had been too quickly repeated: "During subjects" and "the main agenda people" on page 36 and 37, and "Thus peninsula." and "The Korea" on page 240 and 243.
Constructing Korean Origins is a wonderful achievement. It is thorough and provocative and a very important addition to Korean historiography. My own prime interest being cultural policy and music, I personally found the case studies of chapters 5 and 6 somewhat turgid at times, because of their great detail and the complex comparisons of data, but the remaining chapters are certainly significant to Korean cultural studies in a more general sense. This is simply a brilliant piece of work that I trust will soon find its way to the reading lists of all Korean history and East Asian archaeology classes.References:
Chông Chaejong. 1985. "Munhwajae wiwônhoe yaksa [Short History of the Cultural Properties Committee]." Munhwajae 18:1-18.
Chosen sotokufu. Taisho 5 [1916]. Chosen koseki chosa hokoku [Reports on Investigations of Ancient Sites in Korea]. Keijo.
De Ceuster, Koen. 2000. "The Changing Nature of National Icons in the Seoul Landscape." Review of Korean Studies 3: 2: 73-103.
Maliangkay, Roald H. 1999. Handling the Intangible: The Protection of Folksong Traditions in Korea. Ph.D. thesis, The University of London.
Citation: Maliangkay, Roald H. 2001
Review of Hyung Il Pai, Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories, (2000)
Korean Studies Review 2001, no. 10
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr01-10.htm
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