[KS] Our Biases

[Pak, Jacqueline]

Dear List,

I agree that we should allow ourselves to be self-critical of our own
scholarship in Korean Studies in the past for the progress and development
of better future.  Including my own numerous shortcomings and weaknesses as
a human being and junior revisionist scholar, I may be so bold enough to
venture into this territory since I appear to be inadvertently responsible
for this controversy from the start. 

It may be difficult and possibly unfair to generalize about "white
American", or "white male American", Koreanists who came of age in the
sixties, just as about "Korean" or "Korean-American" scholars.  Korean
Studies as we know today would not exist without the rich contributions of
so many anti-Viet Nam war protestors who went to Korea as peace corps
volunteers and learned about Korea with affection and concern for the
country and returned to America and developed this thriving field of
knowledge and discipline. And they have not only pursued topics in history
but certainly other areas as well with a sense of vigor and commitment.

Yet, Gene raises a valid and worthwhile point to ponder, and increasingly,
I suspect that we have to squarely face this issue in Korean Studies. My
own call for new paradigmatic possibilities was, in essence, addressing
this very problematique that we simply cannot avoid or escape, i.e., to
assess and critique the limitations and problems of the existing
historiography in the process of a paradigmatic shift toward new and better
understanding.  How can this process ever be stilled?

>From the outset, when I spoke of the need to be careful about the issue of
collaboration, I was referring to this problematique.  Certainly, there
have been problems with an earlier representation of colonial history and
collaboration by this generation of historians.  

To discuss an example I know, An Ch'angho had been represented and
understood as a gradualist and pacifist. From my scrutiny, it turns out
that An promoted military action all his life in the Far East.  Both Yi
Kwangsu and An Ch'angho had been considered together as "cultural
nationalists", or that Yi's Minjok kaejoron influenced by An Ch'angho was
believed to have showed their collective willingness to only work within
the colonial framework as "passive collaborationists."  Yet, my research
shows that if there ever was 'ilp'yon tansim' patriot and revolutionary
(who by the way composed a song called Tansimga), this was An Ch'angho who
spent most of his activist life as an exile anyway. Tangled with the
celebrated collaboration case of Yi Kwangsu, a leader of the Korean
anticolonial movement and the veritable founding father of the republic
came to be terribly misunderstood!  

One does not need to exaggerate the implications of such misunderstanding
or misjudgement on modern Korean history of the twentieth century. How can
this happen?  We need to inquire: What were the political dynamics and
milieu of historiographical writing at work when such occurred?  In what
ways were these famous historical figures used or appropriated as a
historical referential and imaginary after the Kwangju massacre?  

Is it not then reasonable to urge for more sensitivity and care about the
colonial history or collaboration?  Is Koreans' authentic voice of
nationalist struggle then not significant and meaningful to discern the
genuine historical facts of Korean nationalist movement and leadership? 
How about other works? And their ideological underpinnings and biases?

Koen has already problematized the issue of an overly ideologized and
politicized historiography which by its nature cannot be considered
empirically "objective" or sound, and Gene has discussed a strong sense of
social activism which underscored such works.  Well intended moral idealism
was definitely part of the underlying impulse but its overt ideological
drive was also its problem and excess which we now need to pay close
attention and explore.


Jacqueline Pak (Christian, 1.5 and fourth-generation Korean American woman
revisionist academic)

 

 


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