What do you think?
Rate this book
Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919
"Korea Between Empires" chronicles the development of a Korean national consciousness. It focuses on two critical periods in Korean history and asks how key concepts and symbols were created and integrated into political programs to create an original Korean understanding of national identity, the nation-state, and nationalism. Looking at the often-ignored questions of representation, narrative, and rhetoric in the construction of public sentiment, Andre Schmid traces the genealogies of cultural assumptions and linguistic turns evident in Korea's major newspapers during the social and political upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Newspapers were the primary location for the re-imagining of the nation, enabling readers to move away from the conceptual framework inherited from a Confucian and dynastic past toward a nationalist vision that was deeply rooted in global ideologies of capitalist modernity. As producers and disseminators of knowledge about the nation, newspapers mediated perceptions of Korea's precarious place amid Chinese and Japanese colonial ambitions and were vitally important to the rise of a nationalist movement in Korea.
Newspapers were the primary location for the re-imagining of the nation, enabling readers to move away from the conceptual framework inherited from a Confucian and dynastic past toward a nationalist vision that was deeply rooted in global ideologies of capitalist modernity. As producers and disseminators of knowledge about the nation, newspapers mediated perceptions of Korea's precarious place amid Chinese and Japanese colonial ambitions and were vitally important to the rise of a nationalist movement in Korea.
480 pages, Paperback
First published July 17, 2002
2 people are currently reading
234 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 23, 2019
For many reasons the author deserves kudos for having produced a stellar piece of scholarship. First, he reviewed a wide array of Korean, Japanese, and English language primary and secondary sources. For those readers who wish to follow up on these they are clearly footnoted in the text and then at the back of the book.
Second, the book is very well organized. Each chapter reviews some specific aspects of the interactions which took place between the Japanese who were trying to colonize Korea and the Koreans who were trying to cope with and in many cases struggle against having their country and their lives taken over.
Third, despite KBE being an academic book it is quite readable. Its chapters are broken down into sections which focus on narrower elements of the topic at hand. For the most part Schmid’s prose is concise and direct. His analyses of the issues he depicts are clear, thorough, and nuanced. In fact, there are sections of the book where the info is so comprehensive as to become a bit tedious. As one moves through the text one can get a sense of the complexity of the political, social, and intellectual conflicts which took place between the Japanese occupiers and their Korean subjects between 1895 and 1919.
IMHO there are two modest flaws with this book. First, it is quite dense. Ie, as noted above there is so much information with names, dates, etc that it is slow going. If the reader wants to assimilate, let alone recall, much of what is being presented, he/she has to read very carefully and probably in chunks of 10-15 pages at a time.
Second, Schmid is careful to provide English translations of Korean or Japanese terms when he first uses them. But about midway through the book he stops doing that for words he has already used a few times. This was not a problem for me with the Japanese terms because I have heard or read of most of them elsewhere. It was a challenge, however, with the Korean ones because I am completely unfamiliar with that language. I often found myself having to go back to remind myself what the term meant. This got to be annoying as I progressed into the later stages of the book.
Overall, though, I recommend KBE highly for one who wants to learn a great deal about the Japanese colonization of Korea from the latter’s perspective. I would add one other proviso besides the fact that it is dense/occasionally a case of TMI: it will be a bit easier for the reader who already knows the basic dates, issues, etc of the colonization of Korea by Japan. Those not having that foundation of knowledge may find it very slow going indeed.
Given its modest flaws I would rate it a 4.5.
Second, the book is very well organized. Each chapter reviews some specific aspects of the interactions which took place between the Japanese who were trying to colonize Korea and the Koreans who were trying to cope with and in many cases struggle against having their country and their lives taken over.
Third, despite KBE being an academic book it is quite readable. Its chapters are broken down into sections which focus on narrower elements of the topic at hand. For the most part Schmid’s prose is concise and direct. His analyses of the issues he depicts are clear, thorough, and nuanced. In fact, there are sections of the book where the info is so comprehensive as to become a bit tedious. As one moves through the text one can get a sense of the complexity of the political, social, and intellectual conflicts which took place between the Japanese occupiers and their Korean subjects between 1895 and 1919.
IMHO there are two modest flaws with this book. First, it is quite dense. Ie, as noted above there is so much information with names, dates, etc that it is slow going. If the reader wants to assimilate, let alone recall, much of what is being presented, he/she has to read very carefully and probably in chunks of 10-15 pages at a time.
Second, Schmid is careful to provide English translations of Korean or Japanese terms when he first uses them. But about midway through the book he stops doing that for words he has already used a few times. This was not a problem for me with the Japanese terms because I have heard or read of most of them elsewhere. It was a challenge, however, with the Korean ones because I am completely unfamiliar with that language. I often found myself having to go back to remind myself what the term meant. This got to be annoying as I progressed into the later stages of the book.
Overall, though, I recommend KBE highly for one who wants to learn a great deal about the Japanese colonization of Korea from the latter’s perspective. I would add one other proviso besides the fact that it is dense/occasionally a case of TMI: it will be a bit easier for the reader who already knows the basic dates, issues, etc of the colonization of Korea by Japan. Those not having that foundation of knowledge may find it very slow going indeed.
Given its modest flaws I would rate it a 4.5.
October 16, 2012
very lucid, elegantly written contribution to studies on modern korean history (/historiography), esp. production of national knowledge within (/in response to) capitalist modernity. i probably should have read this years ago, but blah that's how it goes.
May 10, 2024
I can see individual chapters being used in classes very well, but as a whole I feel that they don’t always hang together especially well. That being said, a lot of really thorough close readings of newspapers from Korea and Japan. The author makes the point very effectively about the co-opting of the themes of nationalist self criticism by Japanese imperialists, but I feel like something is missing there (or did I just miss it.) was it co-opting the same critique or were the authors of these opeds pulling from a similar theme for different purposes. (I’m not making my point well, but I think it’s that “co-opting” suggests, to me, a certain intent. I don’t feel that the author persuaded me of the intent of Japanese newspaper publishers to take the themes of critique from the Korean nationalist press and use them for colonial ends, if he was trying to. It’s hard to prove intent, so I thought the use of that word felt a bit odd in the conclusion.)
Overall some really good chapters, chapter six “Peninsular Boundaries” and chapter seven “Beyond the Peninsula” were both well put together, and six in particular really gave me some new information.
Overall some really good chapters, chapter six “Peninsular Boundaries” and chapter seven “Beyond the Peninsula” were both well put together, and six in particular really gave me some new information.
May 12, 2018
I'm taking a korean literature class and I thought we would read korean books, but it's more like a class about korean literature and what influenced it. We're barley reading any korean.
March 4, 2008
It's a good dissertation, and a nice contribution to the very limited number of good books on modern Korean history. Its framework is conventional, which is not a problem, and most importantly, it's neatly done. I personally prefer seeing a bit more challenging or ambitious attempts in dissertations, however. Let's see what I will think when I get to the writing stage :)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews