The Northern Region, Identity, and Culture in Korea

The Northern Region, Identity, and Culture in Korea

The Northern Region, Identity, and Culture in Korea

Conference
October 20-21, 2005

Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS)
South Building, Concourse level (1730 Cambridge Street)
Harvard University

Kenneth R. Robinson
Born in the Los Angeles area, Ken Robinson attended college in California. He earned his Master's Degree in East Asian Studies from Stanford University, the Ph.D. in History from the University of Hawai'i. His master's thesis was a historiographical study of the so-called Mimana Nihon-fu, his dissertation a treatment of Korean-Japanese and Korean-Jurchen relations the early Chosŏn period. He has lived in Korea and Japan for twelve years. Robinson's current research utilizes visual images, identity, and administrative structures to examine borderland areas in Chosŏn.
"Residence and Foreign Relations in the Peninsular Northeast in the Fifteenth Century"
This paper seeks to problematize the interactions between the Chosŏn government and non-Koreans living in "Hamgyŏng-do." In specific situations, Chosŏn court regulations categorized Jurchens as people living not completely within the Korean state. The spatial complexities in the peninsular northeast that such regulations recognized and reconstituted expose limits to the jurisdictional sovereignty of the Korean monarch, suggesting that fifteenth-century kingship need be considered also in terms of territorial sovereignty. That is, Korean state policy distinguished between royal territory and the Chosŏn court's ability to enforce regulations everywhere within royal territory. In this view, the expansion of jurisdictional sovereignty in the peninsular northeast becomes a longer process than in that which emphasizes the establishment of the six garrisons in the 1430s-early 1440s and military control.

Nae Hyun Kwon
Nae Hyun Kwon specializes in late Chosŏn social and economic history as professor at Korea University, Seoul, Korea. Prof. Kwon wrote a master's thesis on the peasant resistance movement in 1862. His doctoral thesis, entitled "Chosŏn hugi P'yŏngan-do chaejŏng unyŏng yŏn'gu" [Financial operation of P'yŏngan province in the late Chosŏn Dynasty], looks into the particularities of the P'yŏngyan provincial financial system, especially how regional operations changed to meet demands of funding Chosŏn diplomatic and military missions to Qing China. Prof. Kwon examines the particularities of these social changes at the local and regional levels. Recently, he has participated in the digitization of family registers of the late Chosŏn dynasty and is devoted to the study of the daily life of the villagers through such projects. He is also looking into the distinctive features of P'yŏngan province from a social and economic viewpoint.
"Chosŏn-Qing Relations and the Society of P'yŏngan Province in the Late Chosŏn Period"
Chosŏn and Qing envoys in the late Chosŏn period traveled along the highway between Ŭiju and Seoul. Although this is an established fact, the spatial, social, and economic implication of this exchange for P'yŏngan Province has not been satisfactorily recognized. Due to location, residents of the three southern provinces were usually outsiders in Chosŏn exchanges with the Qing. For example, in Hamgyŏng province, trade with northern neighbors was restricted to designated spots, and as the province itself was far north, the Hamgyŏng-Qing trade was conducted far removed from the central diplomatic and trade route with China.
Although the Ŭiju-Seoul highway passed through Kyŏnggi Province, because its highway section was short the impact of diplomatic missions on the province area was much less than that to the P'yŏngan Province. Half of the highway passed through the P'yŏngan Province which resulted in envoys from both countries staying the longest in that region. This created huge economic burdens for its residents. In the eighteenth century, the P'yŏngan Province spent a total of 60,000-70,000 yang of cash to provide food, gift, transportation, and others for each mission from Qing China. Although this amount was less than what the central government used (80,000-90,000 yang), the cost of receiving Qing envoys was nonetheless an extremely heavy burden for the P'yŏngan people.
The P'yŏngan Province had two additional financial responsibilities. One was to provide goods for the Chosŏn envoys going to China; the other was to cover the trade funds and expenses that the envoys incurred during their stay in China. A part of the expenses was loaned out to official interpreters in the name of government-owned silver. In reality, however, silver from the P'yŏngan treasury covered more than 40% of the total cost. The Ministry of Taxation and various military agencies at the central government were responsible for the remaining part while the southern Hwanghae and Kyŏnggi provinces—also along the highway—were exempt. The P'yŏngan Province also had to produce more than half the trade goods for "Chunggang kaesi," a temporary trade post on an island in the lower reaches of the Yalu River.
Some compensation was made for such economic burdens. First, P'yŏngan province could reserve the considerable taxes collected from its people without sending it to the central government. Also, the P'yŏngan province was granted authority to participate in and profit from the rich trade in Shenyang or Ch'aengmun (willow palisade gate). This authority was especially reserved for Ŭiju, a border town, where envoys of both countries stayed the longest and incurred the most expenses.
Participation in trade with the Qing provided a solid foundation for the growth of the regional economy. Northern merchants subsequently tried to translate their economic influence into social and political power in the area. However, their fortunes fluctuated when foreign trade profits declined after the eighteenth century in P'yŏngan province, and the financial incentive from the central government disappeared. Increased resentment towards the rich and heightened feelings of resistance in this period reflected such changes.

Soo-chang Oh
Professor Oh Soo-chang from Hallym University, Korea, specializes in Korean history, particularly the political and regional history of the late Chosŏn period. The book, Chosŏn hugi P'yŏngan-do sahoe palchŏn yŏn'gu [A Study on the Social Development of the P'yŏngan Province during the Late Chosŏn Period] (2002 Ilchogak, Seoul) builds upon his doctoral dissertation from the Seoul National University. His previous papers look at central government politics, popular rebellions in the late Chosŏn period, and the digital contents of the Korean history websites. He is currently interested in the distinguishing characteristics of the Chosŏn government system.
"Expectations and Policies of Pyŏngan Province in the Early Nineteenth Century; Perspectives from the Local and the Center"
This paper examines how government officials and the residents of Pyŏngan Province understood the social problems of the province respectively. It also investigates the most practical agreements they were able to reach to satisfy both demands from the local and the policies of the center in the early nineteenth century. There were various ideologies and policies engendered by the central government officials and the Pyŏngan residents. In this paper I classify them into four categories in accordance with the sources of the opinion; that is, local or central, and upper or low social status groups: ① The Confucian thought and mysticism of commoner intellectuals as represented in the figure of Hong Kyŏngnae, the leader of the rebellion named after him ② The personal political desire of the literati as represented by the thoughts of Paek Siwon, an intellectual from P'yŏngan Province ③ The personnel policies of top officials represented by the political comments of Kim Chosun, the most powerful politician in the central government at the time ④ The socio-economic policies of the high-ranking administrative officials represented by Chŏng Mansŏk, the governor of P'yŏngan Province. These various figures held such diverging views that it was impossible to reach an agreement among them. The top officials and the P'yŏngan Province upper class were able to agree on only one concession—that limitations imposed on P'yŏngan Province literati be abolished and that they be given more opportunities to advance to the higher positions. The agreement and its consequent policies resulted in the most conservative measures for the established social system at both central government and local society levels. This meant that social agency was located elsewhere and that the thoughts and policies of the upper class, whether spatially located at local or central levels, were rendered ineffectual in advancing the P'yŏngan social policy interests.

Gwi-Ok Kim
Gwi-Ok Kim is Professor of Sociology at the Hansung University in Seoul, Korea. She received her Ph.D. from Seoul National University in 1999 and is the author of a number of books and articles, including Wóllamin úi saenghwal kyónghóm kwa chóngch'esóng [The Identity and Life Experiences of the Refugees from the North] published by Seoul National University Press in 1999. The volume won an award for excellence from the National Academy of Sciences in Korea. Her main academic interests are war and division, unification and the peace making process, divided families and women, and diaspora communities. Fieldwork is the key to her research because she adopts a methodology that utilizes oral history to unearth stories and materials buried in people's memory.
"Life Experience and Culture of the People from Hamgyŏng Province during the Japanese Colonial Rule"
This paper will center on the life experiences of people living in Hamgyŏng province during the Japanese occupation period. Although there was an urban population in Hamgyŏng, tradition was an especially important part of life in both urban and rural areas. Modern and Japanese colonial elements also influenced familial and social relationships. This paper’s objective is to examine how these elements operated in everyday life.
With this aim, this paper intends to provide a rough overview of everyday life in Hamgyŏng province during the 1930s and 1940s by means of oral histories provided by thirty-one people (twenty-two men and nine women) from Hamgyŏng province. They were in their teens and twenties before 1945; therefore, they have retained vivid memories of Korea in the 1930s and 1940s under Japanese colonial rule. Through the memories of their adolescent years, I hope to represent their home village, as well as family and school relationships, not only to recount their views and experiences during the Japanese colonial period, but also to gain a glimpse of everyday life in village communities—where people lived, what they ate and wore.
Since this paper is based on interviewee accounts, it risks making generalizations from individual experiences and is constrained by the limitations of insufficient research into written sources. I strongly feel the need to conduct more research and hope this paper will serve as an impetus for such work in the near future.

Yoo-seung Jang
Yoo-seung Jang is a doctoral student at Seoul National University and Permanent Researcher at the Korean Classics Research Institute (Minjok munhwa ch'ujinhoe). His current research focuses on Chosŏn literature written in classical Chinese, especially of the literati from the northern regions. His scholarship seeks to subvert the traditional academic tendency of marginalizing literature produced by northerners. To this end, Jang sheds proper light on the literature of this region and helps reconstruct a distinct cultural identity cultivated by the literati of the north.
"Regional Identity of the Northern Literati; A Comparative Study of the P'yŏngan and Hamgyŏng Provinces"
This paper investigates the regional identities of seventeenth and eighteenth century Chosŏn literati from two northern Korean provinces. It is an inquiry into how these "northern literati" emerged as a distinct group and how they envisioned a regional culture and history distinguishable from the rest of Chosŏn Korea.
The northern region was politically and culturally marginalized by the "center" during the Chosŏn dynasty. The northern literati devoted themselves to overcoming the long standing regional discriminatory practices which emerged due to the different cultural history of the localities. The paper argues that these writers consciously fashioned a distinct regional identity through literary pursuits which flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and continued through to the modern period.
One way to understand the nature of the northern literati regional identity is through their writings. The Sŏgyŏng sihwa 西京詩話 [A talk on poetry of the western capital], a collection of critical essays, and the Kwanbuk sisŏn 關北詩選 [A selection of poems from Hamgyŏng Province], an anthology of poems, are notable in that these works were regionally conceived and published. They are compilations of regional literary history and therefore provide good representations of literati identity distinct to the northern areas. From these works, we can understand that the northern literati writings were distinguishable from those of other major literary trends of Chosŏn Korea and can appreciate the northerners' pride in local literary traditions, culture, and history. This paper argues that such public literary endeavors engendered a common northern identity distinguishable from that of the south.
In addition, by demonstrating that the literati of P'yŏngan and Hamgyŏng provinces had their own regional identity and culture, this paper reveals the extent of cultural diversity throughout Chosŏn Korea. It also demonstrates how cultural identities differed from locality to locality, and not just north from south. For example, the regional identity and culture embraced by the P'yŏngan literati were distinguishable from that of the Hamgyŏng counterparts, despite conventional tendencies to group the north as one region. Because each province had its own history and cultural practices, this paper shall pay particular attention to the differing ways the literati from each province regarded their own regional history, and formed scholarly communities.

Min Jung
Min Jung is Professor of Korean Literature at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. Since completing his doctoral degree from the Hanyang University in 1990, he has devoted himself to writing and scholarship. His publications include the popular Hansi mihak sanch'aek [A stroll through Aesthetics of Poems in Classical Chinese] and Mich'yŏya mich'inda [Only a Maniac Will Succeed]. Prof. Min's research focuses on the theory of writings in Chosŏn dynasty, literature in the eighteenth century, aesthetics of poems written in classical Chinese (hansi), Chosŏn literati's perceptions of space through their travelogues, and comparative study of paintings and literature. He was an exchange professor at Taiwan National Chengchi University in 1998-99 and is currently a visiting scholar at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
"The Shadow of Anonymity: The Images of Northerners of the Korean Peninsula in the Works from 18th Century 'Records of Hearsay' (kimun)"
This paper investigates Chosŏn literati perceptions of northerners through a close reading of unofficial biographies found in eighteenth century munjip (collected works). Literati from the north were politically and socially marginalized during the late Chosŏn period. However, as interest in human life itself increased in the eighteenth century, so did the number of writings about people from the north. These writings were a means to understand contemporary perceptions of the northerners.
The main sources for this study are texts which tell us about interesting and unusual northern personalities like Kim Hong-yŏn a well-traveled man from Kaesŏng, a horseman named Mr. Ma (Horse), a beggar from Hwanghae Province, and a brave Kaesŏng merchant. Some others include the "righteous Chi Yak-ryong" from P'yŏngyang Province, a scholar from Sŏngch'ŏn, a fearless hunter from Hamgyŏng Province, and the filial kisaeng Turyŏn from Pukch'ŏng. These portraits reveal some traits commonly attributed to the people from this region. The northerners are depicted as particularly intolerant of injustice and disinclined to seek worldly reputations. They enjoy traveling and adventure. They honor human ethics and possess extraordinary qualities, but always without inviting particular attention to themselves. Even when specific names are revealed, they do not gain individual social recognition and are therefore free from social conventions. The northerners in these portraits are shown endowed with extraordinary standards of morality which in turn make them quite critical of the immorality and injustices in the world. In a way, their unusual morals set them apart from the rest and contribute to their general unconventional air.
The biography writers introduced these figures to the general public with the intention of exposing unfair personnel policies at Chosŏn court and with the hope of recovering the individuality that had become buried in the rapid pace of late Chosŏn urbanization. By emphasizing the existence of remarkable personalities from this marginalized region, they tried to expose the reality of unfair regional discrimination practices. Their efforts, however, failed in conferring social recognition to these northerners, who subsequently moved into "the shadow of anonymity." This paper questions why this particular social and intellectual phenomenon took place in the eighteenth century and the trend had anything to do with circumstances surrounding the 1812 Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion.

Mark E. Caprio
Mark E. Caprio is professor in the Department of Law and Politics at Rikkyo University, Tokyo Japan. His research interests include Japan-Korean relations over the twentieth century, particularly the period of Japanese colonial occupation and the present North Korean nuclear issue. He is working on a manuscript tentatively titled "Japanese Assimilation of Koreans, 1910-1945."
"Images of the North in Occupied Korea: 1905-1950"
With few exceptions the Japanese administration in Korea during the thirty-six year period of occupation of the peninsula allowed for few regional distinction in its colonial discourse. The Japanese-Korean relationship was Naisen, and the Korean people Senjin. Should the peninsula be incorporated as an integral part of Japan, bemoaned one government-general employee, it would probably be names Seikaido (roughly the prefecture of the western sea). It is the exceptions, the few times that the Japanese wrote on the hokusen (northern Korean) or the nansen (southern Korean), that enlighten contemporary historians most as to the images that Japanese, Westerners, and even Koreans held of the various regions of the peninsula during this period. Most often these references consider the historical and geographical influences on the peoples. Medical studies classified the people of the northern region less civilized than their southern counterpart, who was less civilized than the Japanese; travelers described the north as cold and rustic, characteristics that they transferred to the residents. To the Japanese the region was troublesome: not only was it a location of intensive anti-Japanese terrorist-like activities, but its major city, P'yongyang, was a hotbed for the Christian religion that the colonizers loathed. Indeed, this alleged inhospitality had convinced Resident General Ito Hirobumi—then on a tour with the Korean emperor—that only Japanese annexation could bring the Korean people to civilization. Later, Japanese residents dispatched by their companies to work in the north received additional "hardship compensation" for their sacrifice.
The northern region took on a new importance once the Japanese moved into Manchuria in the 1930s. It was first the most critical link between the Japanese homeland and the "jewel" of the Japanese Empire. Its failure to hold the chain together would have spelled disaster for Japan's visions for a unified Northeast Asia.
This paper will examine the images of the northern region drawn during the years of Japanese occupation. It will look through travel records, journal articles, medical reports, and other documents that record the views of Korean peninsular residents on the geographical and cultural characteristics of this region. It will consider 1) how these images developed and 2) in what way they influenced government-general policy. One question that this paper will entertain is the effect that regional and global developments alter these images during the course of Japan's rule over Korea. The recordings of these images (both in written and oral form) made their way to the United States military during the war, particularly after it contemplated Korean involvement in efforts against the Japanese from 1942 and after it began to plan for the U.S. postwar occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1943. Thus, this paper is also interested in the legacy of Japanese colonial images of this northern region. What effect did they have on the American military administration in Korea during this occupation, as well as of the enemy to the north at the time of the outbreak of the Korean War?

German Kim
German Nikolaevich Kim defended his candidate's thesis (USSR PhD-equivalent) in 1989 in the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Kazakh Academy of Sciences on the subject of "The Socio-cultural Development of the Koreans in Kazakhstan (1946-1966)." In 2001, he was named Docent (equivalent to Associate Professor) by the Presidium of the Supreme Attestation Commission of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and in 2002 he was appointed Full Professor in World History. Currently he serves as Head of the Department of Korean Studies. Kazakh National University named after al-Farabi. Dr. Kim's research covers all aspects of the history of the ethnic Korean minority in Russia and the former USSR, and also extends to Korean history more generally. Among other books, he has published a History of Korean emigration in two volumes, a History of Korean religions, and numerous journal articles in both Russian and Korean. Dr. Kim is also active in the Korean community in Kazakhstan and the former USSR, and serves as Vice-President of the Association of Koreans in Kazakhstan, President of the Association of Korean Studies in Kazakhstan, and Editor-in-Chief of the "Newsletter of Korean Studies in Kazakhstan."
"The Northern Region of Korea As Portrayed in Russian Sources, 1860s-1913" (by German King and Ross King)
In this paper, we survey all the published Russian-language accounts of northern Korea from the period 1869-1913. These include works by Russian travelers and explorers; merchants; regional government officials, administrators and their representatives; military officers; scholars and representatives of Russian learned societies; missionaries; students from the Oriental Institute in Vladivostok; writers; ethnographers and anthropologists. Our presentation begins with a short introduction to some of the theoretical and methodological problems in any examination of Russian narratives of exploration and discovery in Korea. Then in Part One, in order to contextualize the different Russian sources cited, we begin with a survey of Russia's contacts with Korea and Koreans preceding the 1860s, before continuing in Part Two with an overview of the Russian materials on the Russo-Korean 'contact zone', which we define as northeastern Korea, the Korean border along the Yalu and Tumen Rivers where many of the early Russian expeditions conducted their work, and finally the South Ussuri krai in the Russian Far East with its new communities of recently-arrived Korean settlers, predominantly from the Korean northeastern province of Hamgyŏng. We focus in particular on Russian claims of 'difference' between 'northern' and 'southern' Koreans, both in terms of their physical appearance and their 'national character'. Neither the Russian observations of an ethnographic and pseudo-scientific racist nature, nor the special features of Russian 'Orientalist' discourse as revealed in Russian-language narratives about Korea from this period, have been collected and analyzed in a comprehensive manner before.

Donald N. Clark
Donald N. Clark is Professor of History and Director of International Programs at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. His interest in Korea began with his childhood in Seoul growing up as the son of Presbyterian missionaries and continued when he returned in the U.S. Peace Corps in the 1960s. Clark earned his Ph.D. in East Asian History at Harvard University in 1978, the year he joined the faculty of Trinity University. In the course of his academic career he has lived in and visited Korea many times, as a Fulbright Fellow, exchange professor, and participant in many conferences. He has long been active in the Association for Asian Studies Committee on Korean Studies, serving three terms as its chair. He is the author of Christianity in Modern Korea (1986), Culture and Customs of Korea (2000), and Living Dangerously in Korea (2003), co-author of Seoul Past and Present (1969), Discovering Seoul (1986), and a textbook entitled Modern East Asia (2004), and editor of and contributor to many volumes including The Kwangju Uprising: Shadows over the Regime in Seoul Korea (1988) and three years of the Asia Society's Korea Briefing series (1991-93).
"The Missionary Presence in Northern Korea Before WWII: Human Investment, Social Significance, Historical Legacy"
In 1891, the Canadian James Scarth Gale and the American Samuel A. Moffett trekked from Seoul to Pyongyang and eastward to Wonsan and back, exploring possibilities for Protestant mission work in northern Korea. This semi-legal journey, which took three months and was full of interesting, even legendary, encounters with northern "natives" was the beginning of foreign missionary work in what was to become the most fertile "field" for Christian propagation in Korea. Moffett soon settled in Pyongyang and founded a missionary station that grew and spawned hundreds of churches and Christian institution in the Pyongan provinces.
The response to Christianity in northern Korea was partly a function of local conditions and social patterns, as well as an authentic spiritual response to the ongoing national crisis in Korea. Protestant and Catholic missionaries used education as a way to attract interest, founding schools for children and adults. Korean Christians took over much of the leadership of the movement. One key to the spread of Christianity was the emphasis on local organization and financing, rather than dependence on foreign missionaries. Another was the attraction of women to the churches, as worshippers and leaders in their own right, offering Korean women rare opportunities to play public roles as community leaders.

Doo-Hyeon Paek
Professor Doo-Hyeon Paek specializes in Korean language and literature, particularly kugyŏl and Chosŏn period documents written in vernacular Korean. He is currently Professor of Korean Linguistics at the Department of Korean Language and Literature, Kyungpook National University, Korea. He is the author of six books and more than sixty articles. His recent book, Hyŏnp'ung Kwak-ssi ŏn'gan chuhae [Vernacular letters of Hyŏnp'ung Kwak family, annotated with modern Korean translations], contains meticulous deciphering and interpretations of old vernacular Korean writings. Through this book as well as other articles on the Hyŏnp'ung Kwak family sources, Prof. Paek has been devoting his time to refiguring the everyday lives of Chosŏn Koreans. He also collects old Korean documents and makes them known to the public so these invaluable linguistic and historical assets are recognized, studied, and preserved.
"On the Correlation Between Non-realization of ㄷ[t]-palatalization and Regional Identity in P'yŏngan dialect"
The most significant aspect of the P'yŏngan dialect [평안방언] is that it has not gone through the t-palatalization process experienced by most other dialects of the Korean language. As such '정거장' is pronounced '덩거당' and '천 天' pronounced '턴,' for example, and this non-realization of transformation from ㄷ, ㅌ sounds to ㅈ, ㅊ remains the peculiar characteristic of the P'yŏngan dialect. The transformation from ㄷ, ㅌ sounds to ㅈ, ㅊ is called t-palatalization; this process took place in the dialects of Kyŏnggi, Kangwŏn, Kyŏngsang, Chŏlla, Cheju as well as those of the areas contiguous to P'yŏngan, namely Hwanghae and Hamgyŏng. In this way, t-palatalization was a phonological change firmly taking root in most Korean dialects, with the only exceptions being the dialects of P'yŏngan and Yukchin, situated in the northern extremity of Hamgyŏng Province. Why did this not occur in the P'yŏngan dialect? The purpose of this paper is to illuminate just what the reasons are and to discuss how this exception relates to the formation of identity in the P'yŏngan region.
In the dialects of Chŏlla, Kyŏngsang and Hamgyŏng regions, the ㄷ>ㅈ palatalization had already begun in the latter half of the sixteenth century and, in some cases, in the early seventeenth century. By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the phenomenon had already become quite flourishing. In fact, even in the materials published in Seoul ㄷ>ㅈ palatalization forms appear quite frequently by the mid-eighteenth century. The P'yŏngan dialect, however, had not gone through the palatalization well into the early part of the twentieth century, leaving a temporal gap of about 400 years between the palatalization process of the P'yŏngan dialect and that of other regional dialects. This discrepancy between the P'yŏngan dialect and that of other regions was due not only to phonological elements, but also to many other factors involving language use such as those of a socio political nature.
Until the present day, linguists of the Korean language have explained the non-realization of ㄷ>ㅈ palatalization from a phonological standpoint having to do with the pronunciations of the P'yŏngan dialect. As the palatalization of the dental ㅈ, ts> ʧ is a necessary step in attaining the ㄷ(t)>ㅈ(ʧ ) transformation, according to the traditional line of comprehension, the P'yŏngan dialect simply did not have the basic elements for the latter transformation. In other words, the reason the P'yŏngan dialect does not experience ㄷ>ㅈ transformation until the early part of the twentieth century is due to the lack of palatalization of ㅈ. While this type of interpretation can serve as the phonetic and phonological explanation of the non-realization of ㄷ>ㅈ transformation in the P'yŏngan dialect, it does not satisfactorily answer the conundrum of the palatalization of ㅈ not manifesting only in the P'yŏngan dialect for 400 years. This paper contends that in addition to the linguistic understanding of this curious phenomenon, other elements need to be taken seriously into consideration; as people are the subjects of language use, it is virtually impossible that the speakers' understanding and attitude toward their language, rather than the simple linguistic mechanisms underlying the language itself, do not yield significant influence on the changes of the said language.
During the Chosŏn Dynasty, P'yŏngan province was the target of extreme socio political discrimination, and the people of this region harbored an equal amount of despair and the sense that they were being wronged due to the said discrimination, resulting in a mixed barrel of antipathy toward the central bureaucracy and general feelings of inferiority. In order partly to assuage them and to reclaim a sense of regional pride, the people of the region emphasized that P'yŏngan province was the seat of civilization on the Korean peninsula. Moreover, they secured and confirmed the understanding that the P'yŏngan dialect was the correct model of the Chosŏn language; otherwise put, the P'yŏngan people understood their dialect with the non-realization of t-palatalization, its distinct characteristic, to be the only legitimate and correct preserver of the Chosŏn language at the time of Hunmin chŏngúm with its five-sound [오음 五音] system. The people residing in the northwestern region understood the P'yŏngan dialect to be distinct from those of the seven other provinces and, through it, took much pride in such distinction, a sentiment clearly reflected in Paek Kyŏnghae's "Opinion on the Rights and Wrongs of the Dialects of Our Country 我東方言正變說" included in Paek's collection of writing. As such, the linguistic attitude or perhaps the aforementioned identity vis-á-vis the distinctness of the P'yŏngan dialect, in combination with the sentiments resulting from the political discrimination imposed on the P'yŏngan region, propelled forward the formation of P'yŏngan regional identity.

Ross King
Ross King is Associate Professor of Korean in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. His major research interests are Korean language and linguistics, including:

Korean historical linguistics (esp. Korean historical grammar, Middle Korean, pre-hangul sources on Korean, and the putative genetic relationship of Korean to Macro-Altaic, including Japanese)

Korean dialectology (esp. the dialect(s) preserved by the ethnic Korean minority in Russia and the former USSR, and 'kyop'o Korean' or diasporic varieties of Korean, in general).

History of Korean linguistics, including the history of Korean linguistic thought in Korea, Korean language and nationalism, Korean language ideologies, as well as the history of Korean linguistics and language pedagogy outside Korea.

Korean language pedagogy, including both post-secondary (university) and K-12 instruction. For the former, please visit http://www.asia.ubc.ca/korean/, and for the latter, please visit http://www.ConcordiaLanguageVillages.org and go into the "Korean Language Village" pages.

Korean-to-English literary translation.

"Dialect, Orthography and Regional Identity: P'yongan Christians and Korean Spelling Reform, 1903-1933"
Introduction
In his fascinating paper presented at the first of these workshops, Paek (2004) presented evidence of two types that speakers of Phyengan dialect in the late 18th and early 19th centuries had developed a strong dialect-based linguistic identity. The first argument was based on the fact that reprints edited and published in Phyengan province of earlier hankul books 'corrected' linguistic forms in line with Phyengan dialect phonology, and the second argument was based on Payk Kyenghay's (1765-1842) "Atong pangen cengpyen sel" [An opinion on the rights and wrongs of our nation's dialects], found in Payk's muncip, the Swuhocip. This Phyengan dialect-based linguistic identity hinged on the recognition that lack of t-palatalization was a dialect marker specific to Phyengan, and moreover, that this lack of t-palatalization was the "correct pronunciation (cengum) and... followed the old sounds of Seycong[;]... the Kwanse region is the origin of Korean language and writing."
Paek, citing Labov's famous 1960s study on Martha's Vineyard, tries to explain the 400-year gap with respect to onset of t-palatalization between Phyengan dialect and other Korean dialects in terms of "socio-historical linguistics," but I would like to extend his observations in two ways. First, I show that the strong sense of dialect pride and dialect-based regional identity in Phyengan manifested itself in two different debates about Korean orthography in the modern period, and that the effects of Phyengan attitudes at that time can still be seen today. Secondly, I demonstrate that the Phyengan dialect identity facts are better treated from the point of view of "language ideology," a relatively new interdisciplinary field that brings together linguistics, sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, and anthropology to shed light on questions of language and identity.
Phyengan Protestants against Spelling Reform
Briefly, the first orthography debate took place between 1902 and 1904 when certain Western missionaries, led by James Scarth Gale and Yi Changcik, his Korean assistant on the Bible Translation Committee, convinced the missionary community to approve a reformed orthography for immediate use in all Protestant publications, including, of course, the Bible. This new spelling, which followed a "one sound one character principle," had the following features:

Abolish the "alay a"

Change the "alay a" to u in the accusative particle

Abolish "y" after s, c, ch (se, sye → se; ca, cya, co, tya → ca)

This new system was supposed to have the effect of unifying language and writing throughout the entire country, but "because of the severe backlash from church members in the northern region, it was decided at the October meeting to revert to the old spelling . . . This was because of pressure from the churches in the northwest region who claimed that abolishing the "alay a" would make it impossible to write northwest dialect properly." (Lyu et al., pp. 59-60; 117)
The second spelling debate concerned the Unified Hankul Orthography, announced in 1933 by the Cosene Hakhoy (today's Hankul Hakhoy). Here again, Phyengan Protestants refused to go along with the new orthography, and one Reverend Chay Cengmin, in particular, was harsh in his attacks on the Hankul orthography:
"Sino-Korean readings should be rendered in their historical spellings, and the 18 members of the Unified Orthography Committee should have their heads chopped off for ignoring Phyengan dialect. Why create 18 patchim and increase one hundred-fold the illiteracy pains of the uneducated when we can get along fine with just 8 patchim? . . . In terms of numbers, church members who live north of the Taytong River account for more than half of Korean Church people, and many Church members in the other 11 provinces are South Phyengan peoples who have scattered from their homes..."

Because of the opposition from the Phyengan faction, the Korean Bible Society and other Protestant groups were not able to approve adoption of the new orthography until 1937, after a delay of 4 years, and even as late as 1939, "the continued and stubborn obstruction of a few [Phyengan] individuals" meant that the Korean Bible did not actually until appear in the new orthography until 1952.
Language ideology and script reform
Heath (1989, p. 53) defines language ideologies as "self-evident ideas and objectives a group holds concerning roles of language in the social experiences of members as they contribute to the expression of the group." Gal (1998, p. 323) notes that " . . . ideologies that appear to be about language, when carefully reread, are revealed to be coded stories about political, religious, or scientific conflicts . . . " And language ideologies often refer to script and orthography; Schieffelin and Doucet (1998, pp. 285-286) write: " . . . orthographic debates are rich sites for investigating competing nationalist discourses. To draw on Anderson's (1983) evocative notion, orthographic choice is really about "imagining" the past and the future of a community . . . Language ideologies are likely places to find images of "self/other" or "us/them," as, for example, in the recent debates about the English Only movement and American language policies." Phyengan Protestants' ideas about their dialect and hankul orthography are a potentially rich site for a discussion of Phyengan regional identity and language ideology.
The Legacy of Phyengan Dialect-based Resistance to Orthographic Reform
The Phyengan dialect speakers' position on hankul orthography is best summed up as follows: 1) our dialect uniquely preserves consonant distinctions that go back to the time of invention of the Korean script; 2) therefore, Phyengan dialect is more 'correct' than other dialects of Korean; 3) the 'historical' (pre-reform) hankul spellings honored those distinctions (even if they did not write them exactly as they are preserved in Phyengan dialect); 4) reformed spellings – especially in the case of Sino-Korean – dishonor our dialect (and hence 'correct language') and destroy distinctions useful in a reader-friendly orthography.
The net effect of this particular dialect-induced orthographic ideology is a tendency toward hardline morphophonemic spelling – the urge to spell all morphemes the same, all the time. This is precisely the type of orthography that was experimented with in Siberia in the 1910s in the journal Tayhanin cyengkyopo, the editorial leaders of which (Yi Kwangswu, in particular) were from Phyengan province. It is also true of North Korea's hankul orthography today, especially with regard to the way it handles Sino-Korean.
Finally, the case of the Phyengan Protestants and their opposition to reformed orthography reinforces yet again that linguistic nationalism and linguistic national identity in modern Korea is, more than anything else and perhaps more than anywhere else, a matter of writing system: it is a rare example of script-based linguistic nationalism (see King in press and King forthcoming).

Seung-Hee Jeon
Seung-Hee Jeon is a postdoctoral fellow at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. Her dissertation entitled "Rethinking Truth after 'the Age of Extremes': An Analysis of the Chronotope of Anamnesis in Autobiographical Narratives by Pak, Klüger, and Kogawa" examines a dynamic concept of truth embodied in memoirs by women survivors of the Korean War, the Japanese Internment, and the Holocaust. Her current research interests include revising this dissertation and turning it into a book tentatively entitled The Age of Extremes, the Surviving Truth. She is also working on a book about literary memoirs by major modern Korean authors, a working title of which is Trauma, History and Literary Memoirs in Modern Korean Literature. In this latter project she plans to examine different narrative strategies in literary memoirs by such major authors as Kim Hak-ch'ŏl, Ch'oe In-hun, Pak Wan-sŏ, Han Lim-hwa, and Sin Kyŏng-suk. Her research interests extend to the areas of film studies, children's literature, travel narratives, and Asian American studies.
"Korean History from Late Nineteenth to Mid-twentieth Century from the Perspective of a Kaesŏng Merchant Family in Pak Wanso's Kkum-en-dul It-hil-li-ya"
Kkum-en-dul It-hil-li-ya (Kkum), Pak's three volume 'historical novel,' has been largely ignored by major South Korean literary critics. There could be some external reasons for this critical neglect. For one thing, as Pak is known to be the master of the genre of 'the novel of manners,' critics might not have taken Pak's 'historical novel' as seriously as they would have done with her other more typical novels. For another, this three volume historical novel could look like a minor achievement in the Korean literary scene, where about ten or more volume historical novels such as Hwang Sŏg-young's Chang Kilsan, Pak Kyŏngri's Toji, or Cho Chŏngnae's T'aebaek sanmaek and Arirang are the rule than an exception. There seems to me, however, a more important reason for the critical neglect of Kkum, one that is more intrinsic to the novel's theme itself. During the mid-1980's and early 1990's, when Mimang (the original title of Kkum) was published, what we might roughly call 'grand paradigm' was prevalent in discourses on modern Korean history. There is a tendency, in this paradigm, towards a simplistic understanding of history, one that limits our understanding of history according to neatly divided dualistic categories along the lines of class and nation, which is also tinged with moralistic undertones. It seems to me that this tendency towards simplification and moralization is especially relevant to the critical neglect of Kkum. Whereas many other historical novels deal with conflicts between the ruling and the oppressed classes or between the nationalist and pro-foreign forces, Kkum examines Korean history of the same period from the perspective of a merchant-chungin family in Kaesŏng. While the major discourses on these class and national conflicts are very often inseparable from hasty and simplistic moral judgments, Kkum directs our attention to moral complexities in many ambiguous situations. This paper examines how Kkum demands that we broaden and deepen our understanding of recent Korean history by introducing a much neglected "marginalized" and "regional" perspective to the Korean literary and historical scene.

Chong Bum Kim
Chong Bum Kim received a Ph.D. in modern Korean history from Harvard University in 2004 and was a Korea Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow the following year. His main research interest is the religious and cultural history of modern Korea, with a focus on Protestant Christianity. He is currently Assistant Professor of History at Central Missouri State University, where he teaches East Asian and world history.
"For God and Country: The Osan School in Colonial Korea"
The Osan School was founded in 1907 by the entrepreneur and nationalist Yi Sŭng-hun (1864-1930) in his hometown of Chǒngju, North P'yǒngan province with the mission of providing a new, modern education for the future leaders of the Korean nation. In the decades that followed, the school became associated with some of the most prominent political, intellectual, literary, and religious figures of the colonial period, from Yi Kwang-su and Kim So-wǒl to Cho Man-sik and Ham Sǒk-hǒn.
This paper examines the nationalist vision that formed the basis of the school. Like many of his fellow nationalists, Yi believed that education was central to achieving independence from the Japanese and to building up a strong and modern nation. In what ways did Osan as an institution address and further these goals? For the teachers and students of Osan, what did it mean to learn for the sake of the nation? How did this nationalist vision relate to the strong religious (Protestant) and regional (northwest Korea) identities of the school?

Mikael Adolphson (Discussant)
Brought up in Kalmar, Sweden, where he used a thirteenth century castle as his playground, Professor Mikael Adolphson has been a historian as long as he can remember. After graduating from high school in the late (and joyful) 1970s, he went to Lund's University, where he graduated with a B.A. in History in 1984. A premodernist, he was inspired by the similarities between medieval Europe and Japan to focus his attention on pre-1600 Japan. He spent two years studying Japanese at Stockholm University before receiving a scholarship from the Japanese Education Ministry in 1986. During the next two and a half years he lived in Kyoto and Osaka while studying at Kyoto University under the guidance of Professor Oyama Kyohei. In 1989, he entered Stanford University's Ph.D. program with Professor Jeffrey P. Mass as his mentor. Returning to Kyoto University in the spring of 1992 for dissertation research, he also worked for the Japan Volleyball Association as an interpreter. He resumed at Stanford in the fall of 1993 and finished his dissertation two years later. Before coming to Harvard in the fall of 1999, Professor Adolphson taught Japanese and East Asian History at the University of Oklahoma for four years. His publications include "Enryakuji: an Old Power in a New Era," in The Origins of Japan's Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century (1997) and The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers and Warriors in Premodern Japan (2000). At present, Professor Adolphson is working on concluding two projects, which will be published in the near future. He is the co-editor, together with Professor Edward Kamens of Yale University and Stacie Matsumoto, a graduate student at EALC, of Centers and Peripheries in Heian Japan, a multi-author volume based on a conference at Harvard in June 2002. Another forthcoming study, entitled The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Sôhei and Monastic Warriors in Japan, will shed light on the forces of Japan's powerful temples and the myths and imagery surrounding the phenomenon known as sôhei ("monk-warriors"). [Homepage: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rijs/people/faculty/m_adolphson.html]
Peter K. Bol (Discussant)
Peter K. Bol is the Charles H. Carswell Professor East Asian Languages and Civilizations and a Harvard College Professor. His research is focused on intellectual, social, and cultural change in China since the seventh century. He is the author of or a contributor to The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History (2003), Ways with Words (2000), Culture and the State in Chinese History (1998), Energizing China: Reconciling Protection And Economic Growth (1998), "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (1992), Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (1992), and Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching (1990), Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage (1989) and various articles on intellectual and cultural history. He has lectured widely in the China, Taiwan, and Japan, as well as in the United States.
His current research projects include a study of the relationship between Confucian ideology and Chinese history and a study of Chinese local culture and society from the twelfth century into the present. He is involved in several projects aimed at enhancing digital information linkages between East Asian and Western research centers. He also directs the China Historical Geographic Information Systems project, collaboration between Harvard and Fudan University in Shanghai to create a GIS for Chinese history. [Homepage: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ealc/people/pkbol.html]

Vipan Chandra (Discussant)
Born in Rawalpindi in what is now Pakistan but then was undivided India, Vipan Chandra obtained his initial college education in India. In the late 1960s, he studied the Korean language at Yonsei University and later did his graduate work at Harvard under the late professors Ed Wagner and Ed Reischauer, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1977. Since that year he has been teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Indian history at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., though he also covers Korean cultural history in some of his courses.
Vipan Chandra's scholarship has remained firmly in Korean studies, though. His book on the enlightenment movement and the Independence Club was published by the Institute of East Asian Studies, U-Cal, Berkeley in 1988. He has also published numerous articles and reviews dealing with modern Korean history in scholarly journals and popular magazines, some in the Korean language. For many years he was a regular contributor of columns to the Korea Times and the Korea Herald. For several years he also served as the book-review editor of the Journal of Korean Studies, now housed at Stanford. He has been a participant in several panels on Korean history at scholarly gatherings, such as those of the AAS, and also in some previous conferences and workshops on Korea at Harvard.
He is married to Myong-suk Chandra, whom many in the conference know well.

Carter J. Eckert (Discussant)
Carter J. Eckert, Professor of Korean History at Harvard University, was born in Chicago in 1945 and originally trained in Western ancient and medieval history at Lawrence College and Harvard. He subsequently developed a strong interest in Korea and East Asia as a result of his experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Seoul in the late 1960s and 1970s. After several years of working and studying in Korea, he returned to the United States for doctoral study in Korean and Japanese history at the University of Washington, Seattle. Since 1985 he has been teaching modern Korean history at Harvard, including a popular undergraduate course called "The Two Koreas," and working to build up the Harvard Korean studies program. In addition to developing the undergraduate Korean studies program, in the past two decades Professor Eckert has also trained numerous Harvard graduate students, many of whom are now heading major Korean studies programs in North America and other parts of the world.
For eleven years, from 1993 to 2004, Professor Eckert served as the director of the Korea Institute at Harvard and presided over a major financial and academic expansion that transformed the Institute into one of the university's most active and respected international studies centers. As Professor of Korean History and a continuing member of the Institute's Executive Committee, Professor Eckert intends to devote himself full-time to his scholarship and to enhancing the study of Korean history at Harvard, including the introduction of new courses and the promotion of dialogue and exchange with scholars working on Korean history throughout the world, including China, Japan, Europe, and, of course Korea itself.
Professor Eckert is also taking an active role in Harvard's international study program as a member of university's Committee on Out-of Residence Study, which monitors and assists the development of Harvard College study abroad and internship programs and other foreign research and learning opportunities for undergraduates.
Professor Eckert is the author of a number of books and articles, including Offspring of Empire: The Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, which received the John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History from the American Historical Association, as well as the John Whitney Hall Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. He is also a co-author of Korea Old and New: A History, a widely-used university textbook on Korean history. His most recent publication is "Korea's Transition to Modernity: A Will To Greatness," in Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia, edited by Merle Goldman and Andrew Gordon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). In 1996-97 he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. Currently he is engaged in several projects relating to modern Korean history, including a study of the historical forces and context of the May 16 Military Revolution in South Korea. He is also working on a new textbook of modern Korean history for Oxford University Press.
Over the years Professor Eckert has also been active in the larger field of Korean studies outside Harvard. As director of the Korea Institute, he played an important role in bringing international scholars in Korean studies to Harvard and in helping to promote Korean studies programs in other countries, including Europe and Latin America. He has served as chairman of the Committee on Korean Studies for the Association for Asian Studies and on many other boards and committees related to the promotion of scholarship on Korea and the enhancement of U.S.-Korean relations, including the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Asia Society, and the Korea Society. He is presently a member of the Advisory Committee of the Korea Foundation, the Editorial Board of the Journal of Korean Studies, and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (NEAC). In 1998 he received an honorary appointment as Adjunct Professor of Yanji University of Science and Technology in China, and in 2004 he was appointed Honorary Distinguished Professor of Ewha University in Seoul. In 2004 the Korea Foundation also honored Professor Eckert with a special plaque commemorating his eleven years of service as director of the Korea Institute at Harvard.
Professor Eckert lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts within walking distance of Harvard. In addition to his interests in Korean history, he also reads extensively in European history and literature and enjoys a wide variety of Western and Asian art, architecture, food and wine, films, and music, as well as travel (especially to ancient historical sites), and ocean views, walks, and swims. Some of his favorite places include New York City, Cape Cod, Rome, and Pogilto (in Korea). [Homepage: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ealc/people/eckert.html]

Kyung Moon Hwang (Discussant)
Kyung Moon Hwang is Associate Professor of Korean History at the University of Southern California. Currently, he is teaching as a visiting associate professor in the department of history at Yale University. After completing his college education from Oberlin College in 1990, he received an AM in the Program in Regional Studies--East Asia in 1992 and a PhD in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1997 at Harvard. His first monograph, Beyond Birth, Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea, was published by the Harvard Asia Center in 2004. He is also co-editor of Contentious Kwangju, The May 18th Uprising in Korea's Past and Present. His recent research interests focus on the development of the modern state in Korea in the first half of the twentieth century.

Wesley Jacobsen (Moderator) Professor Wesley Jacobsen was born in Tokyo and spent the majority of his childhood in Japan, returning to the United States in his later high school years. After graduating from Wheaton College (Illinois) with undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Religious Studies, he went on to do graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1981. It was during his graduate years that his academic interests turned to Japan and to the study of the structure of the Japanese language, occasioned in particular by an eighteen-month period spent in residence at Tsukuba University in Japan for dissertation research. Following graduate school, he taught Japanese language and linguistics for twelve years at the University of Minnesota before joining the faculty at Harvard, where he is currently Director of the Japanese Language Program. He has spent research leaves in Japan at the National Language Research Institute in Tokyo, Kobe University, Dokkyo University, International Christian University, and Kyoto University. His research interests center on concepts of time, reality, and participantstructure (transitivity) and their interaction in Japanese grammar and on the development of effective teaching strategies for such concepts. His publications include The Transitive Structure of Events in Japanese (1992), On Japanese and How to Teach It (1992, co-editor), and articles in a variety of journals and books on tense, aspect, conditionals, negation, and transitivity in Japanese as well as on the mutual contributions of linguistics and language teaching. He served as advisory editor to Kodansha's Basic English-Japanese Dictionary (1999). [Homepage: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rijs/people/faculty/w_jacobsen.html]

Sun Joo Kim (Conference Organizer and Moderator)
Sun Joo Kim was born in South Korea and lived there until she graduated from Yonsei University with a B.A. in history in 1984. She immigrated to the United States that same year and began her graduate training in September 1988 at the University of Washington, earning a master's degree in Korean history in June 1992. In June 2000, she earned her doctoral degree in Korean history from the same university. Her dissertation titled "Marginalized Elite, Regional Discrimination, and the Tradition of Prophetic Belief in the Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion" proposes to provide a comprehensive and integrated view of the causes and developments of the rebellion, not only by examining the rebellion itself, but also by exploring the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions during the late Chosŏn period that led to the rebellion. The book manuscript that grew out of this dissertation, titled A Region Protests: Marginalized Elite, Regional Discrimination, and Subversive Culture in the Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion of 1812, will be published by the University of Washington Press.
Her research on the Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion has led her to expand her academic horizon to the field of peasant rebellions in nineteenth century Korea, as well as local history of the northern region of the Korean peninsula. Her investigation of the1862 popular uprisings that occurred in the three southern provinces of Chosŏn Korea seeks to understand the causes and the character of these rebellions, particularly in comparison to the earlier popular movements in the northwestern region in 1812. A revised article titled "Taxes, Local Elite and Rural Populace in the Chinju Uprising of 1862" was submitted to the Journal of Asian Studies in June 2005 for peer review.
Her research interests in the local history and culture of Korea's northern provinces led her to organize "The Northern Region, Identity, and Culture," a three-year project (2003-6) which intends to create an international forum for interdisciplinary exchange between the social sciences and humanities. The aim is to stimulate academic interest in the historical experiences, cultural variances and transformations, and literary expressions of the peoples and cultures of the northern region. Two workshops were held at Harvard University (in June 2004 and February 2005) and an international conference is scheduled for October 20-21, 2005. Professor Kim will be the editor of the anticipated conference volume. Grants from Harvard University's Korea Institute (2003-6), Asia Center (2004-6), Harvard-Yenching Institute (2005-6), the Korea Research Foundation (2004-6), and the Korea Foundation (2005-6) have supported this project.
She has received a number of fellowships and scholarships since her graduate years: Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) (1989-91, 1992-3, 1994-5); Social Science Research Council Doctoral Research Fellowship (1993-4); Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council Small Grants for Korean Studies (2000-1); Korea Foundation Advanced Research Grant (2003-4); and various small grants from the University of Washington and Harvard University.
In 2001, she began teaching Korean history as Assistant Professor of Korean History at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, where she is now Associate Professor of Korean History. [Homepage: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ealc/people/sjkim.html]

Gari Keith Ledyard (Discussant)
Prof. Ledyard specializes in Korean Studies, mainly in the field of history but also in general literature, culture, and current affairs. He is presently King Sejong Professor Emeritus of Korean Studies of Columbia University in the City of New York. While in military service (1953-56) he served in Korea and Japan as an intelligence specialist. He then enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees, all in classical Chinese language and literature. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1964, and has on several occasions served as Chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. He was the founding Director of the East Asian Institute's Center for Korean Research in Columbia's Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
He served for many years on the Joint Committee on Korean Studies of the Social Sciences Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, and also on the Committee on Korean Studies of the Association for Asian Studies, doing a term as Chairman of each. He is author of The Korean Language Reform of 1446, The Dutch Come to Korea, and many articles on Korean history and politics in professional journals. He has also published articles in the fields of Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian history. He speaks Korean moderately well, also is experienced in Chinese and Japanese and uses all three languages in his research.
He has made frequent trips to Korea (including one twelve-day visit to north Korea), China, and Japan, and has been the recipient of overseas research grants from, among others, the Ford Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Japan Foundation. He has served as a consultant to the Department of Education, the Department of State, the Foreign Service Institute, the U.S. Information Agency, the National Geographic Society, the New York Times, and other prominent organizations and institutions. He has testified twice as an expert witness before Congressional committees.
His current research interests involve various projects in the field of Korean history and in Korean affairs. He is also at work on a general history of Korea.
Dr. Ledyard was born in Syracuse, New York, 28 April 1932.

Sung-Yoon Lee (Moderator)
Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo Research Associate, Korea Institute, Harvard University. As the first holder of the new position at Harvard, Lee will run in the 2005-06 academic year a new seminar series, the "Kim Koo Forum on U.S.-Korea Relations." Since graduation from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1998, Lee taught for seven years Korean history and international politics at his alma mater. In 2000 Lee taught Korean politics at Bowdoin College, the first-ever course on Korea in the history of the college.

David R. McCann (Discussant)
David R. McCann is Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature and Director of Korea Institute. His academic interests include history and translation of Korean poetry, Korean cultural formations, and the literatures of war. [Homepage: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ealc/people/dmccann.html]

Sang-Suk Oh (Moderator)
Sang-Suk Oh is Senior Preceptor in Korean Language at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization, Harvard University.

Elizabeth J. Perry (Discussant)
Elizabeth J. Perry is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government. She is a comparativist with special expertise in the politics of China. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, she sits on the editorial boards of nearly a dozen major scholarly journals. Professor Perry's research focuses on popular protest and grassroots politics in modern and contemporary China. Her books include Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 (1980); Chinese Perspectives on the Nien Rebellion (1981); The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China (1985), Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (1992), Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Chinese Cities (1995), Putting Class in Its Place: Worker Identities in East Asia (1996), Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution (1997), Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective (1997); Chinese Society: Change, Conflict, and Resistance (2000), Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China (2002); Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China (2002); Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship and the Chinese State (2005); and Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China (forthcoming). Her book, Shanghai on Strike: the Politics of Chinese Labor (1993) won the John King Fairbank prize from the American Historical Association. [Homepage: http://www.gov.harvard.edu/Faculty/Bios/Perry.htm]

Project Description

1^ST Workshop 6/12/2004

2^ND Workshop 2/18-19/2005

Conference 10/20-21/2005