The 91st WIAPS Seminar (Jul. 8th)

Date & Time

Jul. 8, 2024 (Monday) 12:25-13:00

Venue

ZOOM Webinar

Intended Audience

WIAPS Full-time Faculty/Research Associates, WIAPS Exchange Researchers/Visiting Scholars/Visiting Researchers, GSAPS MA/Ph.D. Students

Presentation

Presenter

BUKH, Alexander (Professor, GSAPS)

Presentation Theme

South Korea’s National Identity and Japan: Beyond the “History Problem”

Abstract

The question of national identity has been one of the most widely debated topics in the academic literature devoted to Korea-Japan relations in the post- Cold War era. Works that focus on the Korean side of the Korea-Japan nexus can be roughly divided into two groups. One group traces the centrality of the anti-Japanese sentiment in Korean national identity to the direct experience of Japan’s colonial policies. The other group focuses on the post-Cold War era and emphasizes the role of  Korean collective memory of colonization that rose to the fore of the public discourse in Korea as a result of various factors such as the demise of the communist threat, democratization, domestic rivalry between the conservative and the liberal camps, non-state actors and socio-political practices.  This talk doesn’t seek to challenge the validity of these explanations but to suggest that historical memory hasn’t been the only factor in shaping Korea’s national identity vis-a-vis Japan. Here I will argue that economic relations between Japan and Korea during the 1970s-1980s and the discourse on Japan’s economic aggression that emerged during this period played an important role in shaping the identity of the so-called “386 generation” which came to dominate the public discourse in Korea from the 1990s onwards. This discourse along with other factors, I argue, created the background for the emergence of the colonial history related frictions in the 1990s.