Searching for a Korean Modernity

The significant social, political, economic, cultural, and even psychological forces that have defined the last several centuries are often collected under the term modernity. To be sure, the very expansiveness of this concept makes it difficult to grasp. At the same time, the processes bound up with modernity have colored life in societies across the globe, and the Korean peninsula is certainly no exception to this trend. This course will explore the historical interspersing of Korean society, politics, and culture with the disparate global phenomena bound up with modernity and conceptions of ‘modernization’.

By doing so we will be able to approach the complexities of modernity as a concept by grounding it in the various ways that it has been incorporated, refracted, rejected, and contested within Korean society over the last 150 years. This will involve looking at the ways in which various forces of modernity interacted with Korean society. Ultimately, we will seek to understand the ways in which the search for, and struggle over, a Korean modernity stands at the fulcrum of a series of key historical junctures across its history. Indeed, this is a struggle that persists into the present day.