Ch’oe Namsŏn and Identity Construction through Negotiation with the Colonizer

Abstract

This paper takes a closer look at Ch’oe Namsŏn’s construction of Korean identity during the colonial period. Ch’oe was ambiguous towards Japan, seeing it as many other intellectuals did, as a model for Korea’s modernization, and was aware that Japan would be both Korea’s “oldest friend” and “biggest obstacle” in this regard. After his imprisonment for his role in the Korean independence movement in 1919, he started to cooperate with the Japanese to influence colonial knowledge production and therefore decided to “negotiate” directly with the colonizer. In his “Treatise on Purham culture,” Ch’oe included Japan in the same cultural sphere and saw it as less of Other than the West and China. While his theses and arguments were based on Japanese research and written in Japanese, Ch’oe maintained a Korean identity within the colonial setting not by a “negation” of Japanese research, but by “negotiation” through its reinterpretation and autoethnography. Due to his referring to Japanese scholars and due to the ambiguity of his mimicry his work can be considered “at once resemblance and menace,” and simultaneously as collaboration and resistance.

Keywords

• Colonial Period
• Ch’oe Namsŏn
• Purham Culture
• Autoehnography
• ambivalence
• resistance
• collaboration
• mimicry