Introduction to Special Section: A Translational Reading of the Invention of Korea's Confucian Traditions

One prevalent discourse of Japanese colonialism was the emphasis that Korea's Confucian traditions had originated from China and that Korea had failed to modernize under the Chinese influence. This colonial discourse defined Korea's Confucian traditions as different and "backward" in contrast to the modernization-oriented traditions of the "West" or Japan. Such an interpretation thus regarded Confucian traditions as fundamental to the national and collective identity of the Korean people. In contrast, the post-1945 South Korean historiography aimed to decolonize the prevailing colonial discourse from the nationalist standpoint. This involved "reinventing" or reconstructing Confucian traditions into something that are unique to Korea (or have been sufficiently Koreanized), while also reinterpreting the traditions as being closely aligned with "Western modernity."

The current reassessment of the Confucian tradition underway in many places in the world, including South Korea, still involves such polarizing interpretations. Often thought of as uniquely Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or East Asian, the Confucian legacy is predominantly conceived in a polarized and essentialized manner, as either hopeless "pre-modern backwardness" or its own sprout of modernity. This line of investigation is limited insofar as its deployment of the paradigm of Western modernity unavoidably conjures up the image of an "East Asian modernity" or a "Confucian modernity." Such a conjuring, inter alia, essentializes East Asian modernity and entrenches the hegemonic discourse of Confucian modernity in the region, which is a cause for concern.

To move past the essentialized visions of the Confucian tradition in East Asia and elsewhere,¹ this Special Section calls into question, first, the naïve assumption seeking to displace the Eurocentric "western modernity" with an Eastern counterpart, often by means of proliferating modernity into modernities. Second, by questioning the "multiple modernities" trajectory, we bring into focus the ways in which South Korea reinscribed the historiographical significance of particular moments onto nationalized history, intelligible through the shifting political demands. Finally, by highlighting that the invention of the Confucian tradition is contingent upon how the identity of its Other is conceived in relation to one's own within particular spatiotemporal historical contexts, we engage in a transnational reading of what have been incorporated as integral parts of the territorialized historiography of modern nation-states.²

Daham Chong's article is a postcolonial critique of both Japanese colonial historiography and post-1945 South Korean historiography's reconfiguration of the Confucian tradition of Korea. The two historiographies shared a very essentialized understanding of Korea's Confucian tradition as a unique element of Korean society, an understanding based on the same overarching narrative of evolutionary modernization, despite their contradictory definition of Confucianism as either premodern backwardness or the root of modernity.

To move beyond these still dominant, essentialized, and bipolar views on the Confucian tradition of Korea, Chong's paper, based on the transnational perspective, provides critique on a particular aspect of South Korean historiography's redefinition of Confucian traditions. This paper historicizes the post-1945 South Korean historiography's application of Max Weber's bureaucracy and modernization theories. Influenced by the U.S. academic fields of social sciences and East Asian studies, South Korean historians applied Weberian theories to the studies of Koryŏ-Chosŏn's civil service examination system and social status system. In this effort, the post-1945 South Korean historiography on late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn struggled from 1945 to early 2000 to redefine and reinvent certain Confucian traditions. By appropriating Max Weber's bureaucracy and modernization theories, the civil service examination system came to be seen as exhibiting the unique characteristic of meritocratic modernity that is also observed in "Western Modernity." Chong's paper concludes by rethinking the meaning of this appropriation within the broader context of the Cold War and South Korean postcoloniality.

Young-chan Choi's article is about the shifting perception of Confucianism by Protestant missionaries and Korean Protestant believers at the end of the nineteenth century. The Korean Protestants and Anglo-American missionaries had different moral and political reasons for religious adherence. A notion central to the missionary was "proper religion," which was grounded in...