The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5 brought about the official end of Korea’s status as a vassal of China. Thereafter, the Chosŏn government began increasingly to assert its independence from China. The abolition of the traditional yŏnho system (under which a year was dated by reference to the corresponding year of the reigning Chinese emperor) in…
In June 1832, the British merchant ship the Lord Amherst sailed into Kodaedo, Hongju-mok in Chungchŏng province and proceeded to ride at anchor for twenty days as it waited for government officials to forward its letter to the King demanding the conclusion of a commercial treaty and an agreement on the fair treatment of shipwrecked…
The Kanghwa Treaty of 1876, and the cultural exchanges between Japan and Korea that followed—exchanges that had been brought to a halt in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration of 1868—paved the way for Japan’s invasion of its neighbour. While some sections of Chosŏn officialdom strove to reform and modernise the system, their efforts to…
Historical introduction: Meiji Japan and Korean reformists, 1881–1905 Throughout the troubled history of Korea’s post-traditional transformation, Japan has served as an important reference point from the very beginnings of Korea’s opening to the West up to the present. However diverse the meanings which ‘Japan’ as a semantic unit could be charged with, it always played…
This paper is part of a broader research project attempting to understand the role of commerce in Chosŏn-dynasty Korea, a project that will hopefully contribute something to our general understanding of the position of commerce in pre-capitalist societies. Commerce has clearly played an important role in human societies since long before the rise of capitalism.…
Debates on the causes of coalition (in)stability date back to more than a century ago; coalition governments have at times been referred to as “structurally weak and unstable” (Lowell, 1896), whereas others (Lijphart, 1994; Rokkan, 1970; Sartori, 1976) have repeatedly emphasised that “multi-party coalition systems are not necessarily unstable and ineffective”. Coalition-building has been seen…
Since they were established in 1948, the two Koreas have been busy building their internal and external legitimacy. Each of the Koreas, while consolidating its internal regime, has struggled with the other for international recognition as the sole legitimate representative of the Korean peninsula. The legitimacy struggles have lasted for years, changing in complexion in…
The kayagŭm zither tradition spread with Korean migration to Japan in recent times, particularly since the early 20th century.1 Since the political division of the Korean peninsula in 1948 and the succeeding Korean War (1950–3), both performance style and repertory have developed independently in South and North Korea, reflecting the somewhat different political and cultural…
Eschatology is best represented in practices of various folk ‘religions’ as well as mortuary rituals in Korean society. This paper analyses three of the most important Korean folk ‘religions’, namely shamanism, ancestor worship and geomancy, in relation to the Koreans’ tripartite view of the human soul. Download article | 194.75 KB 607 downloads … Members…
Female curiosity is here discussed in the context of traditional and modern Korean folktales and proverbs, and the ways in which these conceptualise the issue. These traditional ways of perceiving female curiosity are then juxtaposed with the way it is re-imaged in a contemporary feminist fairy tale. The aim of such comparison is to show…