Han'guk kŭndae kwahak kisul illŏk ŭi ch'ulhyŏn [The Emergence of Modern Korean Scientific and Technological Manpower] (review)

BOOK REVIEW Kim Kŭnbae. Han’guk kŭndae kwahak kisul illŏk ŭi ch’ulhyŏn [The Emergence of Modern Korean Scientific and Technological Manpower] Seoul: Munhak kwa chisŏngsa, 2005 Min Suh Son Received: 12 September 2007 /Accepted: 12 September 2007 / Published online: 18 April 2008 # National Science Council, Taiwan 2008 For years now, historians of science and technology in Korea have shied away from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century largely to avoid dealing with the implications of the Japanese colonial period as it relates to Korea’s modernization and modernity. This is in no small part a consequence of the shortage of primary sources on this topic from the Taehan Empire period (1897–1910) and the predominance of Japanese sources for the colonial era (1910–1945), which would lead anyone to the cursory conclusion that modern science and technology emerged in Korea through the singular efforts of the Japanese. It is no wonder then that Kim Kŭnbae undertook the momentous task of documenting this period in a book that covers what is essentially a gaping hole in our knowledge of science and technology in Korea between the years 1897 and 1945. Admittedly discouraged by the lack of sources and affected by personal feelings towards the colonial past, Kim expresses his reluctance to examine this period of which he writes, “The topic of my doctoral dissertation initially dealt with Korean science in the post-liberation period. This was because it seemed that the kaehwa (Enlightenment) period was heavily steeped in tradition while the colonial period had no real emotional pull for me. However, I soon came up against two problems, namely, the complete lack of sources and the poverty of understanding on the period immediately preceding it” (7). Over the course of four chapters, this book addresses the introduction; expansion; and, ultimately, deterioration of scientific and technological training begun during the Taehan Empire to Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation in 1945. This ambitious project focuses primarily on positioning the Korean people as central agents in the cultivation and development of manpower at this time, answering basic yet essential questions regarding how scientific knowledge was acquired, by whom it was acquired, and how things changed under the colonial regime. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal (2007) 1:267–269 DOI 10.1007/s12280-008-9033-x M. S. Son (*) History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA e-mail: minsuh@jhu.edu The first chapter examines the rise of science and technological studies between 1897 and 1910 in a search for continuity between preoccupation Korea and the colonial period. Kim argues that a significant amount of local development in scientific and technological studies existed even before the Japanese arrived on the scene. Kim accomplishes what he sets out to do, presenting an abundance of data – numbers on student enrollments, general curricular information, and even tracing specific career paths of individuals – a heady task of original research that was clearly the result of painstakingly combing through dense primary-source materials. Although the story that emerges from these statistics is one of shifting status structures as people from lower- and middle-status groups filled these schools and traveled overseas to study, unfortunately, we receive limited analysis to this effect. It seems that if Kim had used these data towards a broader degree of analysis to see how it related to other sociopolitical changes beyond the specific purview of scientific and technological training – especially when linked to other secondary work that has been conducted on topics such as political participation, social activism, lifestyle, culture, and thought – then the resulting narrative could be an important one in understanding the attitudes of common people towards modernization and modernity at the everyday level in this underexamined era. The next three chapters span the entire colonial period. The second chapter examines the time during which the Japanese were stabilizing their rule in Korea. During this stage, Koreans were enrolled mostly in inferior industrial schools whose instruction was not widely acknowledged while Japanese students dominated the enrollment of officially established industrial schools—a situation that reflected the institutionalized ceiling placed on Korean education. The third chapter, which...