A History of Korea (74 page)

Image 18
   Son Kij
ng’s photo,
Tonga ilbo
newspaper, Tuesday, August 25, 1936

This episode surrounding the picture of Son Kij
ng—or “Son Kitei,” the Japanese pronunciation of his name through which he was officially known outside the peninsula—is commonly viewed as an act of nationalist defiance. This is undoubtedly true, but the event also represents a window into the overarching patterns of culture and daily life in the late colonial period, with recurring exposure to each others’ lives through mass culture strengthening a sense of commonality. The newspaper, in fact, played the central role in circulating these observations, impressions, and ideas. This prodded Koreans to contemplate and reconsider their collective identity, both through an active engagement with pressing issues of nationhood and a more pedestrian pursuit of their lives.

EXPRESSION, WITHIN LIMITS

The brazen effacement of the Japanese flag on the picture of Son Kij
ng, in fact, epitomized the cat-and-mouse game Korean publications constantly played with colonial censors, as well as the ambiguities straddling the fine line between the overlooked
and forbidden. The colonial state had itself unleashed the expressive energies of the Korean people through the “Cultural Rule” approach launched with great fanfare in the 1920s (
Chapter 17
). And Korean writers, artists, and journalists had no qualms about testing the limits of colonial censorship. After having nipped in the bud potentially disruptive movements throughout the 1920s, in the 1930s the colonial state, whether in print or in action, found itself having to deal with a more fully matured realm of social discourse and interaction. These challenges reached another level altogether with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria following the Manchurian Incident of September 1931, and with the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo a year later. Thereafter, Korea gradually turned into an industrial base for the Japanese Empire’s advance into the Asian mainland.

Ironically, Korean newspapers had served unwittingly as propagandistic conduits for such Japanese designs, as reports about the Manchurian Incident and the imperial army’s exploits fed a growing competition for readership. This was particularly important because reporting about these developments often included news on Korean settler communities in Manchuria. But Korean newspapers in the late colonial period also exhibited behaviors that deliberately fueled anti-colonial or anti-Japanese sentiments. Their coverage of Koreans in Manchuria, for example, included reports about the anti-Japanese Korean guerilla groups operating there. Back home, the newspapers and magazines that grew in circulation and influence served to transmit the Korean colonial experience, especially as windows into and mirrors of everyday life. They also stood as the authoritative forums for debates on the entire range of issues concerning life in colonial Korea. Most strikingly, the opinions, which often became heated, went so far as to condemn colonial policies, wonder about the justice of the colonial condition itself, and even promote specific steps toward independence. A full spectrum of ideologies, from anarchism to communism, found voice in these pages, although many of the most offending passages were excised by the censors before reaching the reader. The consequences for crossing the line often were severe— including dismissal and even, occasionally, incarceration—but this
was not a totalitarian system, at least not until the 1940s wartime mobilization (
Chapter 19
); Koreans, including the elites of the publishing world who had the most to lose, were not brutalized for thought crimes.

Such a delicate equilibrium was sustained also by the fact that Korean newspapers and magazines found outlets for promoting national interests through more benign activities as well. For one, such publications were the canvasses for the most important intellectuals and writers of the time, who established in these pages the foundation for modern Korean literature and thought. Rarely did a full-length novel from this period, for example, first get published outside the established mode of serialization in newspapers or magazines. The publications, in particular the monthly journals whose circulation sometimes outpaced that of the newspapers themselves, also printed the reflections of philosophers and social commentators, the latest findings of scholars, and the works of budding poets. Consumers of the popular press in the late colonial period in turn constituted the first mass reading public in Korean history, and publishers grew powerful as purveyors of information, insight, and opinion.

The two major Korean newspapers of the time, though sometimes criticized by contemporaries as well as later historians for a preoccupation with commercial gain, also displayed a Confucian sense of didactic social responsibility. To be sure, they benefited from their ties to the colonial authorities and often, even if unwittingly, furthered state interests. But they also were quick to promote national causes and laud Korean accomplishments, as exemplified by their leadership in public campaigns on behalf of Korean commercial products. Often the Korean press struck an unabashedly nationalist tone, as seen in the blaring headlines of “Hail the Global Triumph!” and “The Greatest Victory in All of Humanity!” in the
Tonga ilbo
newspaper’s front page the day after Son Kij
ng’s marathon victory. They furthermore pursued a spirited effort to curb illiteracy and expand educational opportunities among the overwhelming majority of Koreans still living in the countryside. They sent educated youth to the provinces to operate and teach in village schools on subjects ranging from hygiene to
history, and of course to propagate the use of the Korean alphabet. One could suggest that this, too, was commercially driven—that the newspapers were simply looking to expand their readerships. But the newspaper companies were often harassed by the authorities on suspicions of inciting nationalism or simply of impeding the colonial government’s own efforts at rural welfare, such as organizing agricultural cooperatives for water, fertilizer, and credit.

THE QUOTIDIAN BLOSSOMING OF MODERN CULTURE

Novels and short stories published in the newspapers and monthly magazines represented only a fraction of the totality of cultural production in the late colonial period that amounted, in hindsight, to the formation of modern Korean culture itself. Indeed, the very notion of a Korean culture to be explored and celebrated as a distinctive, self-enclosed civilizational entity reached full bloom in this era. That this feat was achieved when Koreans did not possess political autonomy constitutes a great irony, but this did not make Korea unique. Colonial or subject peoples throughout world history, if they could evade extinction itself, often forged a keener, sharper sense of collective self. In the modern world, this phenomenon resulted in the creation of wholly new nationalities or, as in the case of India (and Korea), a rejuvenated sense of national identity replenished by cultural enterprises now definitively identified with the nation.

In Korea, the project of creating modern culture through the combination of cultural production and systematic reevaluation of older cultural products had begun at the turn of the century, but it was not until the late colonial period that a critical mass of achievements appeared. The colonial authorities, while remaining on the lookout for explicit calls for independence, not only allowed these activities but actually promoted them. Japanese officials believed that such efforts would act as safe outlets for frustrations on the political front and even result in a reinforcement of the civilizational bonds between Japan and Korea. Regardless, Korean intellectuals
began to engage intensively in research that they openly labeled “Korean Studies” (
Chos
nhak
). Korean historical scholarship, helped in part by large-scale projects sponsored by the government, reached new levels of depth and sophistication, and it sometimes even challenged the validity of colonial rule. Some prominent people of letters, such as Ch’oe Nams
n and Yi N
nghwa, turned their attention to incorporating the study of Korean religion into grand theories of Korea’s place in Asian civilization. Still others took on the task of systematizing and standardizing the Korean written vernacular, which had enjoyed widespread use since the turn of the century but still suffered from a lack of usage standards. The Korean Language Society, comprised of many outstanding scholars of the time, took to fixing this problem by promulgating grammar and spelling rules and compiling an authoritative dictionary.