Korean Studies, vol. 16 (1992)

Contents

ARTICLES

North Korea and the Changes in Eastern Europe
Hajime Izumi, 1
The sweeping changes in Eastern Europe since 1989 have had no counterpart in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, the North Korean leadership downplays the impact of these changes on their country. North Korea is not about to abandon socialism. Nevertheless, the North is on the defensive, for the gap in national strength between North and South is widening as never before. North Korea is finally attempting to improve its people's standard of living while calling for unification with the South through a confederation. Under these circumstances, it seems best for Japan, South Korea, and the West to adopt a policy of accommodation toward the North, encouraging peaceful change there, improving relations with Pyongyang, and hoping that North Korea will open itself to the outside world.

U.S. Policy Toward North Korea in the 1990s
Chae-Jin Lee, 13
Since the Korean War, the United States has maintained a one-sided approach toward the Korean peninsula--pro-Seoul and anti-Pyongyang. Its policy toward the North has been one of military containment, diplomatic isolation, and economic sanctions. In the 1990s, though, with the changing political climate in South Korea and the Communist bloc, together with the fruition of the South's policy of rapprochement with Eastern Europe, Russia, and China, the United States will probably have to reassess that policy. While retaining its security commitment to South Korea, the U.S. may find it advisable in the long term to adopt a gradual process of multilateral diplomatic and economic accommodation toward the North.

North Korea in the 1990s
Dae-Sook Suh, 29
This article discusses the prospects for the future of North Korea after Kim Il Sung leaves the scene, and considers the tasks that will face his successors. The first task of the new leaders will be to restore the Korean Communist revolutionary tradition by placing the exaggerated claims by Kim and his guerrilla comrades in proper historical perspective. Second, Kim long Il, the heir-apparent, should adopt a system of collective leadership. Third, Kim long Il should reward the North Korean people for their toil, produce more consumer goods, and minimize political mobilization as a means to achieve economic goals--and all the while try to improve the North's economic image abroad. Last, the new leaders in the North should pursue unification of the peninsula not through terrorism or liberation of the South, but through a policy of reconciliation involving visits to the South, establishment of a liaison office in the South, domestic changes in the North, and a reevaluation of foreign-policy goals.

Musical Composition in Twentieth-Century Korea
Andrew P. Killick, 43
This article explores the nature of musical creation in Korea and traces the development of the Western notion of composition through the main figures of twentieth-century Korean music. Korean composers have long been divided into composers of kugak (traditional music) and yangak (Western music). There have been attempts to cross the barrier between these two groups, and the extension of the Western concept of composition to traditional music has led to the development of what is referred to paradoxically as "new traditional music." Kugak composers such as Kim Ki-su came to adopt a fully modern approach to composition for traditional instruments. On the other hand, the emergence of a generation of kugak composers in the 1960s has encouraged yangak composers to utilize traditional music as a source of inspiration and material. These developments have led Korean composers to concern themselves increasingly with achieving a synthesis of Korean and Western music.

The Logic and Practice of Literary Nationalism
Kwon Youngmin, translated by Marshall R. Pihl, 61
The Korean original of this article was first published in March 1988 and in December of that year won the Seoul Cultural Arts Criticism Award, sponsored by the Seoul shinmun newspaper. The author is Professor of Korean Literature at Seoul National University and a frequently published literary critic. He is also Editor of Munhak sasang (Literary thought) magazine. In this article, he accounts for the turn-of-the-century roots of Korean literary nationalism and sketches its development into the present. He argues that the nationalist literature of 1970s should be recognized as a distinct period in contemporary literary history and critically traces the emergence of literary populism in the 1980s.

Mother Russia: Soviet Characters in North Korean Fiction
Brian Myers, 82
From the early 1950s to the Sino-Soviet split in the mid-1960s a salient type of North Korean literature was the "friendship story"--a work that cast individual Soviet men and women as mentors and saviors of Koreans. That most of these characters were women in the medical profession suggests that North Korean writers perceived the relationship between the USSR and their country as a politi-cal version of the mother-child bond. The selflessness and courage of the Soviet heroines contrasts with the childlike helplessness and passivity of their (usually male) patients. The depiction of these patients, however, violates the traditional emphasis of socialist realism on the ability of the human will to transcend all. The explanation seems to lie in the propensity for reform-minded Korean intellectuals to denigrate the backwardness of the homeland in contrast with the "advances" of foreign countries. It is likely that cultural policy makers in the North, such as Han Sor-ya, decided to wholeheartedly adopt the mother-and-child motif upon its first appearance in Yi Ch'un-jin's 1948 story "Anna."

From Raiders to Traders: Border Security and Border Control in Early Choson, 1392–1450
Kenneth R. Robinson, 94
The compromising of the country's border areas by decades of Jurchen and Japanese depredations presented the new Choson government with an immediate policy challenge. Having obtained legitimacy after investiture by China in 1401 and 1403, the Choson court moved to secure its northern and southern border areas through a combination of diplomacy, naturalization of border peoples, and trade policies. With the borders secured, the court shifted to a policy of maintaining security by limiting access to and travel within the country. At the same time, the court regularized its foreign relations by implementing a hierarchy consisting of Ming China at the top and then Choson, the Japanese, and the Jurchen, in that order. By the early fifteenth century, these policies had enabled Choson to realize its objectives of border security and border control.