| Index ASCJ
Executive Committee
Contact the organizers: Asian Studies Conference (ASCJ)
c/o Institute of Asian Cultural Studies, International Christian University 3-10-2
Osawa, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181
Conferences
Inaugural conference
1998 conference
1999 conference
2000 conference
Conference venue
Nearby hotels
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
|
|
1999 June 26 conference
Room 201
6.Searching for Korean Identity Under Japanese Rule: Colonial and
Postcolonial Considerations
Chair: Mark E. Caprio,
Rikkyo University
This panel is centered on themes related to Korean identity formation in both the
pre-World War II setting of the Japan-controlled Korean peninsula, and the postwar setting
of Korean residents in Japan.It will consider this topic from historical, sociological,
and political perspectives. Throughout most of this century a significant number of the
Korean diasporic population have been living under the authority of various Japanese
governments.In both the colonial and the postcolonial settings, these people have
struggled to maintain their Korean ethnicity amidst political and societal pressure to
assimilate.It is the Korean resistance to the Japanese assimilative advances that the
papers in this panel seek to address.Erin Chung's paper addresses the problem of
citizenship among Korean residents in Japan today.Why is it that many choose not to accept
Japanese citizenship and retain their Korean identity, even though their socio-political
identity is closer to that of their country of domicile? Chung's paper will examine the
politics of citizenship from both the Japanese government and the Korean resident's
perspective. Young Mi Lim examines the construction of Koreanness within a Japan-centered
environment from a historical perspective.Her paper will demonstrate alterations in the
aspirations of Korean intellectuals to pass Koreanness on to the next generation. Mark
Caprio's paper examines the use of the media as a means of identity expression in a
colonial setting.Here he uses the Korean newspaper, the Dong-A ilbo, to demonstrate one
means used by the Korean people to create and preserve their Korean identity, while the
Japanese administration used it as a vehicle of control and suppression.
1) Erin A. Chung, Saitama University. "Citizenship, Nationality, and
Ethnicity in Japan's Korean Community: Toward a New Theory of National Identity"
This paper will analyze the mutually constitutive relationship between postwar Japanese
citizenship policies and Korean community voluntary associations.In particular, I will
discuss the institutional factors that have mediated the construction of the Korean ethnic
minority group through the lens of Korean community voluntary associations and, in turn,
the role that these organizations have played in transforming discourse on national and
local citizenship for foreign residents in Japan.Both as Japan's large st foreign
community and as one of its most persistent colonial legacies, the case of the Korean
ethnic minority in Japan poses a number of puzzles regarding the intersection of
citizenship, nationhood, and ethnic identities.Why do many Korean residents choose to
maintain their Korean nationalities when their socio-cultural identity is associated
primarily with Japan?How have transformations in state-generated policies regarding Korean
community members affected their conceptions of their rights, obligations, and civic
identities? What role do Korean residents, as members of a long-term foreign
community, play in the organization of Japanese civil society?How does the exercise of
citizenship by minority groups of a host country affect the state?I will explore these
questions by focusing on 1) the politics of granting citizenship to Koreans within the
Japanese national community; 2) the politics of attaining Japanese citizenship within the
Korean community; 3) the impact of citizenship policies on collective Korean identity
formation; and 4) the impact of minoritized identities on the material and discursive
constitution of Japanese citizenship itself.
2)Young Mi Lim, City University of New York."The Crisis of Resident Korean
Intellectuals: the Social Construction ofKoreanness by Koreans in Japan"
This paper examines how ideal Korean-ness has been imagined and re-constructed during the
post-war period among the resident Korean intellectuals and activists.I will focus on the
transformations of Korean-ness within Japanese social and language contexts during the
past three decades (the 1960s through the 1990s).There, the conventional notion of
Korean-ness has been deduced from the Korean blood and lineage, and the essential
Korean-ness, consisted of distinct language, history, and culture, has been constructed.
Throughout this process of re-constructing the "authentic" Korean-ness to resist
Japanese cultural and institutional hegemony, the advocates of Korean ethnic education
continue emphasizing the significance of the systematic learning of their
"authentic" language, history, and culture, all of which potentially strengthen
the symbolic and essential connection with the Korean peninsula.The very same
intellectuals have adjusted their discourses on the very same issue of education and
language to have a more realistic vision to reflect their solidified permanent presence in
Japan and accelerating Japanization of their younger generations.Even within a more recent
pluralistic activism of which agenda is to pursue the common good with the Japanese, they
had to re-construct their unique heritage drawn from their Korean lineage. By tracing
historical changes in their educational beliefs, I will analyze the ways in which
different types of intellectuals share similar strategies in re-configuring the racialized
and marginalized Korean-ness, while reflecting their own double consciousness, i.e. being
Korean, living in Japan, and thinking, reading, and writing in Japanese.
3) Mark E. Caprio, Rikkyo University."The Media as a Means
for Empowerment and Suppression: Korean Identity and the Dong-A ilbo"
Among the concessions made to the Korean people following the March First (1919)
Independence Movement was their right to publish their own newspapers in their
vernacular.Although heavily restricted through censorship, the newspapers founded after
1920 provided the Korean people with a vehicle for promoting Korean identity among its
readers.Through this vehicle Korean journalists scrutinized Korean traditional culture,
promoted women's rights, and informed their readers of other non-Korean independence
movements throughout the world, including those in Ireland and India. Journalists also
created Korean heroes, as well as Japanese villains, within the pages of these
newspapers.For the Japanese, allowing the Korean people this means of expression served
the imperial power in two ways.First, it helped to counter the wave of criticism Japan
received following its brutal handling of the Korean independence movement.Second, it
provided the Japanese with a window through which to view the Korean people, one that they
later used to suppress a potentially damaging second independence movement following the
death of the last Korean king, Sunjong, in 1926. This paper will first examine how the
newspaper can act as a medium for both the creation and the preservation of a national
identity. Here the Dong-A ilbo (East Asian daily) will be examined as a (Korean)
vernacular newspaper with the ambition of preserving Korean-ness under Japanese
occupation.It will then demonstrate the counter-side of this freedom of expression, that
of its use by the Japanese authorities as a means for information gathering and eventual
suppression of expression.
top
|
