KF뉴스레터-Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea

Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea

With grant support from the Korea Foundation, the Cornell East Asia Series has recently published Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea, which was co-edited by Professor Pang Kie-chung of Yonsei University and myself. Despite the fact that the field of Korean history in the United States has seen significant growth over the past decade, there are still not enough materials in English to properly teach modern Korean history. Since such a substantial amount of scholarship on modern history has emerged in South Korea since the 1980s, one strategy to overcome this limitation would be to translate more of this material into English.
The objective of this publication is to introduce one of the major "schools" of South Korean historiography to English-language audiences. This "schools" is centered on Professor Kim Yong-sop, formerly of Yonsei University, and his students. As is widely known, their research has focused on socioeconomic and intellectual history and their interrelationship. One contribution of this "schools" has been to develop a framework for Korean history that has done much to refute the "stagnation theory," which was propounded by Japanese scholars to justify its takeover of Korea. This historical framework has also contributed to a deeper understanding of the historical roots of the Korean peninsula's division.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I covers the period before the Japanese occupation. Chapter 1 is a seminal article by Professor Kim Yong-sop that synthesized his decades of case study research on socioeconomic history. He argued that Korea, during the late Joseon period, was undergoing a process of feudal breakdown. In response, there emerged two conflicting approaches to reform: what he has referred to as a "landlord path" and "peasant path." This conflict shaped the fundamental historical dynamics of the early modern era, which eventually led to the division of the country.
Subsequent research conducted by his students served to build on his historical framework. In chapter 2, Professor Chu Chin-Oh of Sangmyung University provides a reinterpretation of the thought of the Independence Club. Chapter 3 summarizes the work of Professor Choi Won-kyu of Pusan National University on cadastral surveys conducted by the Great Han Empire at the turn of the century.
Part II focuses on socioeconomic history after 1910. The chapter by Professor Kim Yong-sop is an overview of Japan's agricultural policies and their impact on the landlord system. In chapter 5, Professor Hong Sung-Chan of Yonsei University analyzes years of case study research to examine the major types of modernizing landlords during the period. In chapter 6, Professor Kim Seong-bo of Yonsei University evaluates North Korea's land reform effort of 1946, based on a wealth of new information obtained from Soviet archives.
Part III covers the intellectual history of the occupation period, with a particular focus on three major intellectuals. The chapters of this part are by Professor Pang Kie-chung, on the Marxist historian Paik Nam'un; Professor Lee Ji-won of Daelim College, on the journalist and historian An Chaehong; and Professor Hong Sung-Chan on the economist Yi Sunt'ak.
Young scholars and graduate students of Korean history in the U.S. translated the Korean materials into English. Funding for the translation work was provided by Yonsei University. It is hoped that this publication is useful for undergraduate courses on modern Korean history and introductory graduate seminars. It is further hoped that the availability of this publication will stimulate additional translation work that can contribute to the growing intellectual exchanges between scholars in Korea and those of the English-language world.

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Landlords, Peasants, and Intellectuals in Modern Korea

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