Korean Studies, vol. 18 (1994)

Contents

ARTICLES

The Two-Stage Transitional Period Between Medieval and Modern Literature
Cho Dong-il

Enlightenment Period Newspapers and Fiction
Suh Chung-Woo

Enlightenment Period Fiction and the Formation of a Writer Class
Kwon Youngmin

Texts as Contracts in the Political Economy of Korea, 1896-1926
David R. McCann

Monks, Medicine, and Miracles: Health and Healing in the History of Korean Buddhism
Don Baker

Confucianism in the Late Koryô and Early Chosôn
John Duncan

The Role and Dynamics of Nongovernmental Actors in Contemporary Korea
Roland Bleiker, Doug Bond, Myung-Soo Lee

Local and Regional Council Elections in 1991: Features and Political Implications
Sae Wook Chung

The Cultural Dimension and Context of North Korean Communism
Young Whan Kihl

The Political Economy in Microcosm: The Korean National Livestock Cooperatives Federation
David I. Steinberg

REVIEW ARTICLE

Explaining Development in South Korea and East Asia: A Review of the Last Dozen Years of Research, pp. 171-202
Timothy C. Lim

BOOK REVIEWS, pp. 203-248

Editor's Note: All of the articles in this volume were presented at the First Pacific Basin International Conference on Korean Studies held in Honolulu from 27 July to 2 August 1992. More selected papers from the conference can be found in Korean Studies 17 [and 18 and 19] and the book Korean Studies: New Pacific Currents, available from the University of Hawai`i Press.

The Two-Stage Transitional Period Between Medieval and Modern Literature, pp. 1-12
Cho Dong-il, translated by Bruce Fulton

Some scholars insist that modern Korean literature began when Western literature was introduced after the Kabo Reforms of 1894. Others see its indigenous beginnings in late Choson times, from about the eighteenth century. This work sees some validity in both views. It identifies two stages in a period of transition that began as early as the seventeenth century. During the first stage, lasting until 1860, traditional literati writing in classical Chinese began to show a critical awareness of then-current social conditions, even while others writing in vernacular Korean continued to depict traditional Chinese settings and Confucian morals. Even the p'ansori novels are moralistic, in spite of their insistence on liberation from social constraints. After the first Western impact about 1860, writers of shinsosol [the new novel] began to stress themes of enlightenment and national revitalization, even though an undercurrent of conservative fatalism flows beneath the surface. By the beginning of the modern period in 1919, medieval themes of moral imperative had yielded to modern themes of confrontation between the self and the world.

Enlightenment Period Newspapers and Fiction, pp. 13-22
Suh Chung-Woo, translated by Bruce Fulton

This study examines journalism's decisive contribution to the emergence and development of fiction during the Enlightenment Period in Korea. It finds that, although fiction existed, fiction writers did not exist as a class. Instead, reporters composed fiction in order to promote enlightenment and modernization, and newspapers incorporated fiction into journalism in order to promote sales. Early fiction thus functioned as a form of journalism.

Enlightenment Period Fiction and the Formation of a Writer Class, pp. 23-29
Kwon Youngmin, translated by Bruce Fulton

During the Choson era, writers of literature seem not to have made a living of their avocation. It was only during the Enlightenment Period that novel-writing became a profession and a class of novelists arose. This study briefly examines the new social and economic circumstances that allowed such a class to come into being and characterizes the initial evolution of this new class.

Texts as Contracts in the Political Economy of Korea, 1896-1926, pp. 30-49
David R. McCann

This study explores a process of negotiated political and economic dispossession in Korea from the late 1890s, when ideas of modernization first began to invoke an implicit relationship with the West, to the 1919 Declaration of Korean Independence. It examines the middle stages of the political dispossession, a process that eventually framed the discourse characteristic of the poems of Manhae Han Yong-un, Sowol Kim Chong-shik, and other Korean writers of the 1920s--poems in which little or nothing is ever stated about the actual conditions of life in Korea at the time, and in which the addressee is characteristically a person who is loved but absent.

Monks, Medicine, and Miracles: Health and Healing in the History of Korean Buddhism, pp. 50-75
Don Baker

Throughout Korean history, religion has gained much of its appeal from the sense of control and the modicum of hope that it has been able to provide the afflicted. In early Korea, before Koryo times, any religion had to show that healing was one of its powers if it wished to be taken seriously as a religion. Early Korean, Chinese, and Japanese sources indicate that the role of monks in fighting illness and death were a factor in the spread of Buddhism throughout the Korean peninsula.

Confucianism in the Late Koryô and Early Chosôn, pp. 76-102
John Duncan

One cause of confusion over the nature of early Choson intellectual history has been the practice of evaluating the thought of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Korean scholar-officials from the standpoint of the Zhu Xi orthodoxy of mid and late Choson. This study reevaluates the ideas and policies of the prime architects of the new dynasty, men like Cho Chun and Chong To-jon, in the context of Koryo intellectual traditions and the Yuan-dynasty Neo-Confucianism that was introduced into Korea in the late thirteenth century.

The Role and Dynamics of Nongovernmental Actors in Contemporary Korea, pp. 103-122
Roland Bleiker, Doug Bond, and Myung-Soo Lee

This study extends and refines earlier hypotheses about the constructive potential of influences "from below" on questions of democratization and unification in Korea. It carefully distinguishes "direct action" from other forms of political action and suggests that nonviolent direct action, fomented in the discourse of civil society, offers greater potential for constructive change than does "routine" political action, which operates within a more circumscribed institutional framework and yields more predictable and more limited results.

Local and Regional Council Elections in 1991: Features and Political Implications, pp. 123-138
Sae took Chung

South Korean voters cast ballots on 26 March 1991 to elect 4,304 representatives to local councils at the city, county, and urban-ward level. They voted again on 20 June to elect 866 representatives to regional councils at the metropolitan and provincial level. These local and regional elections, the first in 30 years, herald the revival of a system of autonomous self-government and mark an important milestone on the road to democracy in South Korea. This study examines the voting behavior and election results in order to gain a better picture of the electoral culture and concludes with a few recommendations for the future development of local democracy in South Korea.

The Cultural Dimension and Context of North Korean Communism, pp. 139-157
Young Whan Kihl

A new perspective is needed in studying North Korea's brand of communism that takes note of parallels between the traditional cultural legacies and the ideological rhetoric of chuch'e socialism. In the process of adapting to the cultural context of North Korea, Marxist-Leninist ideology has evolved into an intensely nationalist ideology unique to North Korea. Although Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as Christianity and shamanism, have officially been banned as unscientific superstitions, their cultural legacies linger on.

The Political Economy in Microcosm: The Korean National Livestock Cooperatives Federation, pp. 158-170
David I. Steinberg

The National Livestock Cooperatives Federation (NLCF) illustrates in microcosm tensions in formulating internal and external policy in Korea. Formed in 1981 as an offshoot of the state-sponsored agricultural cooperatives, it became independent of government in 1987 as a wave of pluralism swept Korea. Although initially formed to implement state policy and still subsidized by the state, it gradually acquired an agenda of its own and began to compete for control of assets at the local level. Even as the importance of the agricultural sector declined in the national economy, the influence of the livestock subsector rose as meat consumption rose. Its leadership now publicly opposes government policies on import liberalization.