Korean Studies, vol. 19 (1995)

Contents

ARTICLES

Centering the Periphery: Manchurian Exile(s) and the North Korean State by Charles K. Armstrong

Hodge Podge: American Occupation Policy in Korea, 1945-1948 by James I. Matray

Changing Korean Perceptions of Japan on the Eve of Modern Transformation: The Case of Neo-Confucian Yangban Intellectuals by Chai-sik Chung

Sot'aesan and the Reformation of Korean Buddhism by Bokin Kim

Koryô Sôn Buddhism and Korean Literature by Marshall R. Pihl

Sukchong's Triangle: The Politics of Passion by Park Chan Eung

Elusive Narrators in Hwang Sun-wôn by Stephen J. Epstein

Blurred Genders: The Cultural Construction of Male and Female in South Korea by Diane M. Hoffman

On the Prehistory of Korean Grammar: Verb Forms by Samuel E. Martin

Lexical Tones in Korean by Sayhyon Park

Adjustment of Vowel Length at Different Speeds by Sang Oak Lee

Deregulation and Economic Reform in Korea by Cho Soon

BOOK REVIEWS, pp. 183-226

Editor's Note: The three linguistic articles in this volume (by Samuel Martin, Sayhyon Park, and Sang Oak Lee) 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 in the book Korean Studies: New Pacific Currents, available from the University of Hawai`i Press.

Kim Il Sung and other Manchurian guerrilla veterans who came to dominate North Korean politics after 1945 were profoundly influenced by the experience of their anti-Japanese struggle in exile. This influence has shaped the ideology, historiography, and domestic and external policies of the DPRK to the present. At the same time, this exile experience has been given a mythical status in North Korean history, centered on the personality and activities of Kim Il Sung, but reflective of earlier attempts to draw Manchuria into the mainstream of Korean history. The"mythification" of Manchuria has grown steadily over time, and since the early 1970s Kim Jong Il has been closely associated with his father's Manchurian guerrilla struggle, in particular with the image of Mt. Paektu.

Lt. Gen. John Reed Hodge was one of the most important people in recent Korean history. He served as the commander of the U.S. military occupation of southern Korea from September 1945 to August 1948, although he was far from being a prominent U.S. Army officer during World War II. His personal and professional background had a direct and negative impact on his implementation of instructions and his dealings with the Korean people and their political leaders. This article provides evidence that President Harry S. Truman's decision to appoint Hodge as occupation commander was a serious mistake. His narrow experience and lesser command responsibilities caused him to make decisions that greatly increased political polarization in the divided country, creating the circumstances that would result in the outbreak of the Korean War.

Before the modern period, Koreans tended to view Japan with a mixture of antipathy toward a ruthless invader and condescension toward a more peripheral member of their China-centered world. As that world began to change on the eve of the modern era, some reform-minded Korean intellectuals began to view Japan in a different light, seeing its heterodox Confucianism and its military culture as strengths rather than as marks of backwardness. By the eve of the colonial period, many looked to Japan as a model of how Koreans could adapt to the modern world without losing their national character.

This work analyzes Sot'aesan's ideas for reforming Korean Buddhism, compares his views to those of the more moderate Buddhist reformer Manhae, and examines the issue of whether or not the Won Buddhism established by Sot'aesan can still be considered Buddhism. It focuses on Sot'aesan's creative interpretations of Buddha, dharma, and sanga, concluding that, although Won Buddhist teachings remain essentially Buddhist, the religious community of Won Buddhists departs much more radically from traditional Buddhist norms.

This study approaches the rise of Sôn poetry and its contributions to mainstream, secular poetry by looking at the careers and works of five eminent Sôn monks of the late Koryô, whose lives span more than two hundred years of Koryô history from just before the 1170 revolt of the military officials until after Mongol domination, which ended in 1351. It begins with the eminent twelfth-century monk Chinul, who is credited with reviving and reforming Sôn Buddhism, and continues with four other monks who followed the path he blazed: Hyeshim, Ch'ungji, Pou, and Hyegûn. Not only did these monks have close connections with the Ch'oe family military regime but some also were willing to voice a social conscience. Moreover, in the field of literature, they contributed new forms that served their own Sôn Buddhist needs while also contributing to mainstream literature in a major way.

By the latter half of the Chosôn period, the Korean vernacular written in hangûl had become a well-established means of descriptive and imaginative expression, even though Chinese written in hanmun continued to be the preferred medium for documenting and authenticating the historical record. This study compares the official and impersonal record in the Sukchong shillok against the more colorful and subjective text of the Inhyôn wanghu chôn to flesh out both the politics and the personalities in the dramatic story of a love triangle involving King Sukchong (r. 1674-1720), the noble and virtuous Queen Inhyôn, and the low-born and passionate Lady Chang.

Hwang Sun-wôn's elusive narrators force the reader to take an active role in shaping the meaning of his stories. The shifting viewpoint implicitly acknowledges that dogmatic interpretations are untenable. His accumulated short stories accommodate not only a multiplicity of speakers but, more important, a multiplicity of listeners. This tolerance for and interest in a variety of viewpoints is an important reason why Hwang has gained a place for himself among the few Korean authors with wide appeal outside his native land.

In South Korea, gender has been commonly considered a manifestation of an unquestioned dichotomy between male and female domains, reflecting "official" Neo-Confucian views of male and female as inherently separate and unequal statuses. This study argues that we must move away from facile acceptance of male-female relations in contemporary South Korea. Rather, it proposes that there are levels of Korean behavior and cultural psychology in which the oppositions of "official culture" are subverted or otherwise deconstructed, principally by a process of gender identification. This deep psychological and cosmological emphasis on the essential equality and undifferentiated nature of male and female, coexisting with a radically gender-differentiated social structure, is seen as an inverse image of the ways gender is constructed in the United States, where efforts toward equality and nondifferentiation in social structure belie a fundamental psychological emphasis on conflict stemming from perceptions of absolute opposition and difference. It is suggested that we move beyond Western patterns of dichotomous conceptualization that have characterized so many discussions of gender to consider alternative ways of looking at male and female present in indigenous cultural psychologies.

The modern systems of verb endings found in Korean and Japanese have developed by incorporating certain auxiliary stems and delexicalized nouns, and many of these have etymologies that are shared by both languages. Arguments are presented that the mutually exclusive Middle Korean RETROSPECTIVE, EFFECTIVE (or aorist), and PROCESSIVE aspectual markers are bound auxiliaries attached to the verb stem. Moreover, the important infinitive ending is shown to have properties that indicate that it originated as a similar bound auxiliary. The modern Korean endings -ko, -ki, and -key are explained as complexes built on the effective marker plus other elements. Remarks are also made on the development of other formations in Korean and Japanese. The evidence continues to point to a prehistoric relationship between Korean and Japanese that is more intimate than can be demonstrated between either of those languages and any other language.

Standard Korean (hereafter, Korean) is in general known to have no contrastive lexical tone system. However, if we closely examine the intonation patterns of the language, we come to suspect that some items carry their underlying tones. The present study examines the tonal behaviors of these items in order to determine whether they really have lexical tones. If they do have lexical tones, I will also attempt to show how they can be represented in the lexicon.

The main hypothesis in this study is that vowel length plays a key role in speech production and synthesis. In noisy, less-than-ideal situations, vowels are regarded as "unmarked," whereas consonants are comparatively valued as conveyors of important information. However, I argue that the duration of vowels is more important in characterizing speech tempo. Vowel length differs in proportion to tempo. When we change tempo, the length of consonants is not affected very much, while the length of vowels is considerably altered.

In its all-out push for export-led growth, the Korean government increasingly came to rely on direct control of the economy. Among the undesirable legacies of this largely successful effort are inflation, the dominance of large conglomerates, an underdeveloped financial sector, inefficient allocation of resources, and the inevitable corruption that arises from overregulation and the overconcentration of power. Efforts to improve efficiency and competitiveness by simply deregulating the economy are likely to exacerbate rather than correct these structural imbalances. A more comprehensive, long-term reform program is needed.