Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925 (review)

Book Reviews187 the consultative structures and decision-making processes through which these instruments are ultimately brought into play. Though Amsden provides some interesting hints about the evolution of particular firms and sectors, we still have relatively little monographic work on the origins and development of particular enterprises in the postwar period, nor on the political structures, such as the Federation of Korean Industries, through which the largest firms were represented . Such work would provide evidence on a number of important political issues raised by Amsden, including the concept of"discipline" and the balance of power between state and business over time. I have slighted a number of topics in Amsden's account, including an interesting treatment of firm size and industrial concentration, an excellent summary of Korea's macroeconomic policy, and some intriguing suggestions about the mutually reinforcing effects of productivity and output growth. I have focused, rather, on what I consider to be core theoretical points—particularly on those around which some controversy and disagreement is likely and warranted. Despite my disagreements with Amsden's account on a number of points, Asia's Next Giant will be the reference point in a number of important debates, and is thus a must-read for anyone interested in Korea's economic development. Stephan Haggard Harvard University Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925. By Michael Edson Robinson. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1988. Pp. x, 217. Bibliography, index. $25. However one chooses to define nationalism as a phenomenon, nationalist movements focus on the creation, retention, reformation, or recovery of a nation-state, largely depending on a nation's own condition and its relations to other powers. The claim that the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 created modern Korean nationalism, still heard in some quarters, is preposterous. Nevertheless, Japanese colonial rule did narrow Korean nationalism, previously concerned with nation-building in a broad sense, to the immediate task of regaining national political independence. Before 1910, nationalist leaders advocated reform to retain independence and create, or ree- 188Journal ofKorean Studies reate, a nation-state. Could reform serve also to retrieve national sovereignty once it was lost? The cultural nationalists of the 1920s believed it could, but only after an extended period of reform and modernization of the Korean people based on new (i.e., Western) education and economic training. Their view of political liberation came into focus only, as it were, down the end of a telescope. Such political gradualism naturally went against the grain of the time, especially after hopes had been raised and dashed during the massive March First movement and its aftermath. Consequently it was subjected to severe criticism by the radical Left and Right in Korea in the 1920s, and the actual or intended role of the cultural nationalists continues to be one of the most controversial issues in the historiography of modern Korean nationalism. Were the culturalists unaware of the implications of mass participation in nationalism after 1919— or did theyjust hold the "commoners" in contempt? Were they compromisers with Japanese power? Collaboration by leading culturalists such as Yi Kwangsu in the 1940s has raised the question whether they were not collaborators from the outset. Was their position in the twenties the basis of their betrayal in the forties? Or at least, did their culturalism make them especially susceptible to Japanese pressure? It is these issues, and the continuing project of defining nationalism in Korea, that Michael Robinson's most welcome book addresses . The introduction quickly moves the reader into the discussion . Following the March First movement, the new governorgeneral , Saitö Makoto, implemented the "cultural policy" as a correction of the former militarist policy. "In retrospect," the author comments, "the cultural policy was a brilliant co-optative maneuver. . . . [B]y expanding the acceptable arena of political and cultural activity, they provided an escape valve for tensions in the colony. . . . The goal was to make Japanese rule acceptable not only to world opinion, but to gain legitimacy within the colony as well (sic)" (p. 4). Apart from the obvious factor of Japanese suppression of nationalism , the author adduces failure among nationalists to agree on how to think and act under the changed circumstances of the "cultural...