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Book Reviews Tongnip hyöphoe yön'gu: Tongnip sinmun, tongnip hyophoe, manmin kongdong-hoe in sasang kwa undong [A study of the Independence Club : The thought and movement of the Independent, the Independence Club and the Popular Assembly] ,by Yong-haShin [Sin Yong-ha] , Seoul: Ilchogak, 1976, xii, pp. 678, W 6,000. Of the many efforts for reforming and strengthening Korea in the late nineteenth century, those of the Independence Club (1896-98) are the most noteworthy and celebrated. Noteworthy because its goals were multifarious and its organization and activities were truly broadly based, in social as well as geographic terms. The club sought reform in all facets of the nation's life—in government, education, economy, and the habits of both mind and body. As often stated in its official organ, the Tae-chosön tongnip hyöphoe hoebo and in its unofficial mouthpiece, the Tongnip sinmun, the club's aim was to earn for Korea the contemporary twin stamps of modernity: puguk kangbyöng and munmyöng kaehwaguk (A prosperous and militarily strong and civilized and enlightened nation). By these words the club essentially meant a nation whose life would be patterned after that of the West and Japan. In Darwinian fashion the club reckoned that this was, the only way to ensure Korea's continued existence as an independent entity. Though the top leadership of the Independence Club was solidly yangban, its lesser activities represented a good cross-section of the society at large. Some of them even came from such lowly and despised groups as butchers, monks, and kisaeng. In the final months of its existence the club also branched out across the various provinces. All in all, the club constitutes perhaps the most significant chapter in the formative period of modern Korean nationalism. 225 226Book Reviews It is natural for Korean historians, then, to attempt to study the ideology and movement of this organization intensively and to evaluate its contribution to their country's political development. Many studies, both good and indifferent, of specific aspects of the club have appeared in recent years in a variety of Korean journals of history. These have included quite a few articles by Professor Shin, and it is these, plus one previously unpublished manuscript, that this book comprises. The result is a massive work, a veritable mine of information on virtually all aspects of the club. Herein is everything you ever wanted to know (assuming you did) about the club. Professor Shin is a meticulous and indefatigable researcher. He has exhaustively used all the available materials on the subject—newspapers , magazines, government documents, and private diaries. The book is profusely, even excessively, footnoted. To this extent Professor Shin's work is a product of tremendous energy and discipline. Regrettably, Professor Shin's intellectual discipline does not go far enough to embrace analysis where it should have been most rigorously exercised. In fact, thoughtful analysis and critical judgment seem conspicuous by their absence in the book. Reading it no one can escape the impression that whether consciously or not Professor Shin set out to present the club as a bundle of sweetness and light and that each specific detail offered by him comes out as an embellishment of this theme. Professor Shin is often euphoric over the "achievements" of the club but more often than not he fails to see the gap between the club's noble pronouncements and its poverty of action. From this inevitably flows the most fundamental and glowing flaw of the book. Professor Shin fails to raise and discuss thoughtfully the overriding questions: Why did the club come to a quick and sad end? It had started out with royal endorsement and wide public support . How did the government then liquidate the club without resistance in late 1898? What was the nature of its "popular" support? Professor Shin does not discuss these questions, either in terms of the sociopolitical dynamics against, or rather in the midst of, which the club functioned or in terms of the inner tensions and weaknesses of the club's own leadership. Consequently this book is often reduced to an overextended eulogy. Professor Shin's book thus cannot be passed...

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