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Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity, edited by Hyung I1 Pai and Timothy R. Tangherlini. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1998. 230 pp. $18.00 paper.
Published in 1999, this book is a collection of nine articles written by wellknown Koreanologists of North America. Critical reviews of Korean nationalism have been rare so far because of the sensitivity of the issue and also because of the hegemonic status of the ideology of nationalism in Korea. Starting as an anticolonial narrative and then being consolidated throughout the postcolonial period, nationalism has been the "master narrative" in Korea. Therefore, nationalism has never been questioned or challenged on the Korean Peninsula. Rightists and leftists, conservatives and radicals, Koreans have uniformly cherished and supported the nationalist cause over others, and nationalism has been the single most important source of political and even moral legitimacy in both South and North Korea. This volume was written because "even now there are not many scholars in Korean Studies, whether on or off the Korean Peninsula, who have attempted to systematically contest any of these nationalist narratives" (p. 11).
Of course, being the master narrative does not mean that nationalism in Korea is a coherent and cohesive ideology. Rather, as many of the authors of the volume point out, there have been many interpretations of national identity, and different political forces have contested and negotiated the substance of it. The antihegemonic populist movement of the 1980s and its clash with the established ideologies revealed the contested character of Korean nationalism and national identity. This, as well as postmodern influences on history, prompted academics to pay heed to the different narratives of nation and national identity, and thus the late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed an increasing number of Koreanologists dealing with the politics of nationalism. They include Michael Robinson, Henry Em, Kenneth Wells, Nancy Abelmann, and Sheila Jager,' among others. This volume represents this new trend of critical studies of Korean nationalist politics.
The authors of this volume deal with a wide range of nationalist politics, from the national cultural-preservation system, language, and religion to music and literature. Hyung Il Pai's article, "The Colonial Origins of Korea's Collected Past," reveals that the current artistic treasure and monument preservation system...