While most studies on Korean nationalism centre on textual analysis, Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism offers a different approach. It looks at expositions, museums and the urban built environment at particular moments in both colonial and postcolonial eras and analyses their discursive relations in the construction of Korean nationalism. By linking concepts of visual spectacle, urban space and governmentality, this book explores how such notions made the nation imaginable to the public in both the past and the present; how they represented a new modality of seeing for the state and contributed to the shaping of collective identities in colonial and postcolonial Korea. The author further examines how their different modes were associated with the change in governmentality in Korea. In addressing these questions, the book interprets the politics behind the culture of displays and shows both the continuity and the transformation of spectacles as a governing technology in twentieth-century Korea. Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism is a significant contribution to a study of the politics of visual culture in colonial and postcolonial Korea. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Culture and Heritage Studies and Asian Studies.

The Development of Modern South Korea provides a comprehensive analysis of South Korean modernization by examining the dimensions of state formation, capitalist development and nationalism. Taking a comparative and interdisciplinary approach this book highlights the most characteristic features of South Korean modernity in relation to its historical conditions, institution traditions and cultural values paying particular attention to Korean's pre-modern civilization.

Turning from more traditional modes of historical inquiry, Korea Between Empires explores the formative influence of language and social discourse on conceptions of nationalism, national identity, and the nation-state.

Campbell deftly weaves the narratives of her subjects with the wider theoretical literature on nationalism and identity.... A great read. --Andrew I. Yeo, Catholic University of America An important contribution to the literature on nationalism and contemporary Korean studies. --Nora Kim, University of Mary Washington Why have traditional views of national identity in South Korea¿views that for years drove a demand for reunification¿been challenged so dramatically in recent years? What explains the growing ambivalence and even antagonism of South Korean young people toward unification with North Korea? Emma Campbell addresses these related puzzles, exploring the emergence of a new kind of nationalism in South Korea and considering what this development means for the country¿s future. Emma Campbell is visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.

This book offers new insight on how key historical texts and events in Korea's history have contributed to the formation of the nation's collective consciousness. The work is woven around the unifying premise that particular narrative texts/events that extend back to the premodern period have remained important, albeit transformed, over the modern period and into the contemporary period. The author explores the relationship between gender and nationalism by showing how key narrative topics, such as tales of virtuous womanhood, have been employed, transformed, and re-deployed to make sense of particular national events. Connecting these narratives and historic events to contemporary Korean society, Jager reveals how these "sites" - or reference points - were also successfully re-deployed in the context of the division of Korea and the construction of Korea's modern consciousness.

The minjung (people's) movement stood at the forefront of the June 1987 nationwide tide that swept away the military in South Korea and opened up space for relatively democratic politics, a more responsible economy, and new directions in culture. This volume is the first in English to grapple specifically with the nature of a national development that lies at the center of the last three decades of tumult and change in South Korea.

This book explains the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism, which is based on the sense of a shared bloodline and ancestry. Belief in a racially distinct and ethnically homogeneous nation is widely shared on both sides of the Korean peninsula, although some scholars believe it is a myth with little historical basis. Finding both positions problematic and treating identity formation as a social and historical construct that has crucial behavioral consequences, this book examines how such a blood-based notion has become a dominant source of Korean identity, overriding other forms of identity in the modern era. It also looks at how the politics of national identity have played out in various contexts in Korea: semicolonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization.

This pathbreaking study presents a feminist analysis of the politics of membership in the South Korean nation over the past four decades. Seungsook Moon examines the ambitious effort by which South Korea transformed itself into a modern industrial and militarized nation. She demonstrates that the pursuit of modernity in South Korea involved the construction of the anticommunist national identity and a massive effort to mold the populace into useful, docile members of the state. This process, which she terms “militarized modernity,” treated men and women differently. Men were mobilized for mandatory military service and then, as conscripts, utilized as workers and researchers in the industrializing economy. Women were consigned to lesser factory jobs, and their roles as members of the modern nation were defined largely in terms of biological reproduction and household management. Moon situates militarized modernity in the historical context of colonialism and nationalism in the twentieth century. She follows the course of militarized modernity in South Korea from its development in the early 1960s through its peak in the 1970s and its decline after rule by military dictatorship ceased in 1987. She highlights the crucial role of the Cold War in South Korea’s militarization and the continuities in the disciplinary tactics used by the Japanese colonial rulers and the postcolonial military regimes. Moon reveals how, in the years since 1987, various social movements—particularly the women’s and labor movements—began the still-ongoing process of revitalizing South Korean civil society and forging citizenship as a new form of membership in the democratizing nation.

Nationalism, National Identity and Movements begins by presenting an examination of how forced migratory movements, although seeming to question traditional national principles of the sovereign state as well as undermining or even eroding nationalist value systems, ended up strengthening the power of the nation-states during the period after the Second World War. In particular, it will investigate how different waves of refugees contributed to the consolidation of one specific type of nationalism: the ethnic one.Next, the authors analyse the role of national narratives in the development of national identity. This interdisciplinary approach offers a more complete and analytical understanding of how narratives of national identity are produced, transmitted and finally consumed by the members of a nation.Also in this book, detailed theoretical rationale for the relationships between identification and threat perceptions is presented, exploring the issues related to causal direction and links to attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies. Although having a national identity on its own is not troubling, possessing an inflated sense of national identity, referred to as national group narcissism, may lead to biased perceptions of intergroup relations.Following this, the authors describe three different types of artworks and the identities associated with each artist in order to reveal the complex process through which Korean identity is formed. This research identifies the first type of artist as one who left South Korea as an adult in order to be deterritorialized from the given territory, and the individual's Koreanness has been one rediscovered by dialectical play with the Other.Usage of the colonial discourse is proposed as a way to represent social relationships, providing additional opportunities for the analysis of the political situation in Russia. Thus, the work of contemporary intellectuals who identify themselves as "Russian nationalists" is analyzed. Conclusions are made regarding the fundamental conflictual nature of intellectuals.The construction of a unified Mexican national identity is depicted in the concluding chapter, in a territory originally divided by adversarial ethnic groups into one nation glued by a common language and history. The authors conclude that nationalism in Mexico must be understood within educational, historical and contextual influences to assess costs and benefits.