As one of the core features of modern states, universal schooling provided a tool with which to disseminate the skills and knowledge demanded by the new era of industrialization and interstate competition, as well as to impart what it meant to be a citizen. Citizenship education, in fact, or "civics," lay at the heart of the education enterprise in the modern world, reflecting the new circumstances of competing nation-states and hence prioritizing the cultivation of the population’s identification with and allegiance to a particular nation and/or the state.  An education system, then, came to be regarded as a strategic necessity if not entirely an idealistic or humanitarian one. 

This presentation explores modern Korean state making through an examination of citizen education at the turn of the 20th century.  How did the larger purpose of universal schooling and citizenship education evolve as the Korean state underwent so many dramatic shifts in form, function, and even sovereignty?  What role did the educational institutions, from the state bureaucracy to the schools themselves, play in spreading the lessons of loyalty, allegiance, and identity?  And finally, How did Confucian ethics and statecraft affect the demands of the modern schooling system?  Indeed the legacies of pre-20th century Korea extended well into the colonial era (1910-45), including the period of wartime mobilization in the 1930s and 40s, when schooling became central to the intensified, radical assimilation policy of turning Koreans into "imperial subjects."

Professor Hwang conducts research on the modern transformation of Korea, broadly conceived.  He is the author of Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea (2004), and co-edited, with Professor Gi-Wook Shin of Stanford, Contentious Kwangju:  The May 1980 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present (2003).  His latest book, History of Korea: An Episodic Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan) is expected to be published in 2010.  He teaches courses on Korean history and society, East Asian and world history at the University of Southern California.  He is a graduate of Oberlin College (AB) and Harvard University (Ph.D).

This seminar is supported by a generous grant from Koret Foundation.

The exploration of visual archives related to Korean history has grown at an exponential rate over the past decade.  While photographs ostensibly hold the possibility of tranforming the captured ephemeral moments into the fixity of celluloid perpetuity, they can have profound effects on changing memories of the past, and collapsing time and space.  This lecture examines the history and the meanings of photography in modern Korean history through the two dual prisms of "wormholes" and "phantom zones."

Lynn is the AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research at the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia.  He is also the editor for the journal Pacific Affairs which has been published continuously since 1928.  His research covers a range of topics relating to modern and contemporary Korea (both South and North), and Japan.  His publications include Bipolar Orders: The Two Koreas Since 1989 (2007); "History of Gendered Migration in the Two Koreas," Harvard Asia Quarterly (2008); "Moving Pictures: Postcards of Colonial Korea," International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter (2007); and "Vicarious Traumas: Television and Public Opinion in Japan's North Korea Policy," Pacific Affairs (2006).

Lynn received a B.A and an M.A from University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

When discussing Korea's "Chinese Decade," roughly defined as the dozen or so years prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, most of the attention is focused on the heavy-handed activities of Yuan Shikai in Seoul.  Less well known is that part of this Chinese effort to bind Korea more closely to China involved the absorption of Korea's newly-formed Maritime Customs Service.  Several scholars have looked at this period and the actions of some of the key players such as Sir Robert Hart, Li Hongzhang, Henry F. Merrill, and Paul Georg von Mollendorff.  Using the recently-discovered correspondence of the first commissioner of customs in Pusan, this talk will discuss some heretofore unknown aspects of this attempted takeover by China.

Wayne Patterson received his undergraduate degree in history from Swarthmore College, and his graduate degrees in history and international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.  He has authored or edited eleven books on modern Korea, including The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910 (1994) and The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973 (2000).  He has taught Korean history at a number of institutions in the United States, including Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of South Carolina, the University of Kansas, and the University of Pennsylvania.  He has also taught Korean history abroad, including Ewha University, Korea University, Yonsei University, as Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, and most recently, at the University of the Philippines, as Korea Foundation Visiting Professor.  His home institution is St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, where he is professor of history.  He is currently teaching Korean history as a visiting professor at the University of California - Berkeley.

In the 1950s the North Korean people lived through the cataclysm of the Korean War and the ferment of postwar reconstruction. Rare photographs have now emerged that help shed light on this turbulent era. In an audiovisual presentation, Chris Springer shares some of these photos from his new book North Korea Caught in Time: Images of War and Reconstruction.

The images depict the devastation wreaked by U.S. bombing, the destitution faced by civilians, the operations of the North Korean army, and the reconstruction of shattered cities. Also shown are senior politicians who were later purged and erased from the official record. Chris Springer will explain the photos’ varied origins (from both official and amateur photographers) and discuss what the images reveal about North Korean history.

California-born Chris Springer is the author of North Korea Caught in Time (2009) and Pyongyang: The Hidden History of the North Korean Capital (2003). He also curated the 2002 exhibition Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Budapest, Hungary. His research focuses on North Korean domestic history. He has visited North Korea three times.

Although South Korea has democratized, the weakness of liberalism there as a major political ideology and value system has prevented the full flowering of democracy.  This talk will examine the historical roots of liberalism's failure to take firm root in Korean politics and society.  The causes of such weakness are to be found, in both of the two major social and political forces in Korean society,  conservatives and radical/progressive forces; neither has been or is liberal.  The resulting problems include a strong, highly centralized state and its authoritarian tendencies,  the failure to create a stable party system, civil society's weak autonomy vis-à-vis the state, and inadequate constitutional checks-and-balances among the three branches of government exacerbated by a weak judiciary.  With democratic practice falling ever farther behind the Korean people's aspirations, enhanced liberalism will not solve all problems.  Nevertheless, Dr. Choi argues, it could point the way toward a richer Korean democracy.

Jang Jip Choi is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Korea University, Seoul, Korea, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Sociology Department at Stanford University.  Specializing in contemporary political history in Korea, the theory of democracy, comparative politics and labor politics, professor Choi is the author of many books, scholarly articles and political commentaries on Korean politics,  including  Democracy after Democratization in Korea (2002),  Which Democracy? (2007), and From Minjung to Citizens (2008).  Professor Choi holds a B.A. in political science from Korea University, and  an M.A. and a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Chicago. He was a professor in the department of political science at Korea University until his retirement in 2008.