“If one dismisses the minjok, there is no history.” – Sin Ch’ae-ho
Korean ethnic nationalist historiography is based on the idea that the Korean people have existed as an ethnic group – minjok – throughout the entirety of history since around 2000 B.C. The idea of minjok developed primarily during the period of Japanese colonialization (1910-1945) among leading nationalist historians. It was a way to emphasise the uniqueness and superiority of the Korean people in the face of subordination from the Japanese. This sense of Korean ethnic (and cultural) superiority was reinforced by popular nationalist histories published mainly in the 1930s, including the works of Sin Ch’ae-ho and Choe Nam-son, as representative of the Korean people’s “spirit of survival and struggle.” [1]. Yet, the time at which minjok is said to have existed, or been introduced into intellectual thought, is a key source of debate and there are significant conceptual consequences depending on which argument you agree with.
The idea of the Korean people as a single ethnic race first entered Korean vocabulary in the late-1890s under the term minjok. The precise origins of the term are difficult to identify, but it appears only sporadically in various Korean nationalist texts in the ten years prior to the Protectorate Treaty of 1905. Prior to the 19th century, there was a very limited sense of loyalty towards the idea of Korea as an abstract ‘nation’ or towards ‘Koreans’ as a people [3]. The use of the two characters ‘min’ and ‘jok’ – which derived from terms associated with ‘popular’ and ‘familial’ – combined to produce a useful term that intellectuals could use to naturally refer to the nation in Korea. This also helped to blur the recent origins of the term, suggesting a much further reaching claim of nation stretching into the “distant past.” [2].
Andre Schmid notes that the important primary texts in the period 1895-1905 were all written without the use of minjok, despite all individually discussing nationalist concepts [2]. As the term became more commonly used in popular newspapers and writings of the early 20th century, such as in the Hwangson sinmun, its definitional boundaries became more concrete. In a four-part editorial published in June 1907 entitled ‘Minjok-ism’, the editors referred to the minjok as the basis of the state (kuk), and maintained that all of the people must “work together for the benefit of the minjok.” [4]. The term was vital in the determining of nationhood in Korea, acting as an objective entity which, when combined with the features of nation – territory, language, people etc. – presented an argument for the continued existence of Korean autonomy. Understandably, it became a key force in nationalist writings that stood in opposition to the common Japanese narrative of the Korean nation as subordinate. Thus, minjok developed as a key conceptual tool through which the nation could be considered, and therefore placing it either as a 20th century construction or as something that existed throughout the entirety of Korean history furthered different arguments about Korean national sovereignty, intertwining with the colonialist politics of the period.
Named the father of Korean nationalist historiography, Sin Ch’ae-ho was the first historian to combine the idea of minjok with the Korean national founding myth surrounding the figure Tan’gun. The earliest account of the myth of Tan’gun appears in the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of Three Kingdoms), which was a collection of myths compiled by the Buddhist monk Iryon in the thirteenth century [5]. The story of Tan’gun recalls:
“Tan’gun descended from Heaven in the year 2333 B.C. and landed under a sandalwood tree on Mount Paektu. According to this account, Tan’gun taught the people more than 360 arts, such as agriculture, medicine, and law, as well as offering them a new set of moral principles.” [5].
Sin took the myth of Tan’gun and aimed to separate its mythical elements from its historical actuality, tracing the Korean ethnic national origin, and by association Korean traditional culture, back to Tan’gun as a founding historical figure [6]. Sin’s writings are arguably more widely read now than during his lifetime, and the message behind his claims of minjok as an unconscious and perpetualconcept were deeply political and anti-Japanese. Sin concerned himself with issues of Korean identity in his writing of national histories, contributing towards the Korean self-strengthening movement [8].
Sin’s intrinsic claim concerning minjok was that its emergence into mainstream histories written at the beginning of the 20th century was not the product of a modern construction, but rather a discovery of an objective historical entity that had always been present amongst the Korean people. Regardless of whether Koreans were conscious of minjok as constituting their nation, Sin argues that its introduction signified a recognition of an objective unit that prior historians had failed to observe. It did not “signify a new conceptualisation” of what ‘nation’ meant in Korea but revealed an alternative axis on which empirical inquiry could be completed [9]. In presenting minjok as an ahistorical entity, Schmid states that it “transcended the very history that produced it.” [15]. Sin’s historical narrative based on this ‘discovery of minjok’ legitimises it as an eternal concept and was key to nationalist anti-colonial discourses of the 1920s and 1930s. Sin’s distinctive historiography set the agenda for later nationalist historiography during the colonial period, insisting on Korea’s uniqueness within world history and testifying to Korea’s long history of resistance to “foreign aggression.” [10].
Later criticisms of this aspect of nationalist historiography from Marxist historians such as Paek Nam-un argued that in emphasizing Korea’s uniqueness, and therefore it’s apparent inherent nationhood in resistance to colonialism, fed into the narrative that their isolation meant they needed to be incorporated into the wider nation-state system. This incorporation, Japan argued, should happen through their imperial framework [11]. Equally, the idea of Korea as a sovereign nation did not exist prior to its introduction to the international system [12]. This paradox within nationalist thought meant it had to continue to differentiate itself from colonialist discourses, and even as it writes about resistance and post-colonial developments it does so through the rational models of knowledge that came from colonialism. Thus, the narratives found in nationalist historiography and the narratives found in colonialist historiography served to mutually constitute one another.
However, Henry Em insists that minjok was a modern construction, and that it is important in examining later democratic developments in Korea, and how they relate to nationalist movements, to identify it as such [7]. A similar argument is furthered by Eugene Weber who states how the French peasant was “nationalised” – ie: made French – only in the latter decades of the 19th century through a strategy of standardisation of national language and customs [13]. Thus, the prevalence of modern state structures was a prerequisite to the formation of a ‘national’ culture. Em links the assertions of Sin’s nationalist historiography to new democratic modes of thought that imagined Korea as an autonomous subject with an inherent sovereignty present from the inception of Tan’gun, and with continuous possibilities into the future of Korea as an independent nation [14].
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[1] Pai, Hyung Il, (2000) ‘The Formation of Korean Identity,’ in Constructing “Korean” Origins, Harvard University Asia Centre, p. 2
[2] Schmid, Andre (2002) ‘Narrating the Ethnic Nation,’ Korea between empires, 1895-1919, Colombia University Press, New York, pp. 173-174
[3] Em, Henry H. (1999), ‘“Minjok” as a Modern and Democratic Construct: Sin Ch’aeho’s Historiography,’ in Shin, Gi-wook; Robinson, Michael (eds.), Colonial Modernity in Korea, Cambridge: Harvard University Asian Center, pp. 337-338
[4] Schmid (2002) p. 174
[5] Schmid (2002) p. 175
[6] Em, Henry H. (2013) ‘Nationalizing Korea’s Past’ in The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea, Duke University Press, London and Durham, p. 80
[7] Em (2013) p. 77
[8] Robinson, Michael (1984) ‘National Identity and the Thought of Sin Chae’ho: Sadaejuui and Chuch’e in History and Politics,’ The Journal of Korean Studies, Duke University Press, Vol. 5, p. 122
[9] Schmid (2002) p. 182
[10] Em (2013) p. 97
[11] Em (2013) p. 84
[12] Em (2013) p. 100
[13] Em (2013) p. 78
[14] Em (2013) p. 83
[15] Schmid (2002) p. 198