“Skilling Toil: a new form of artisanship in papermaking in late Chosŏn Korea”

Jung Lee (Ewha Womans University)

Paper in pre-modern Korea was known for its unique qualities of a white glossy surface and cloth-like strength, becoming an important item in tributary exchanges and private trade. The unique material of paper mulberry and related technical innovations, including toch’im, the repeated beating of just-produced paper that provides sizing and fulling effects, were crucial to this fame. However, scholar-officials, who integrated papermaking as a state production system for the important provision of administrative and tributary needs, made toch’im a corvée, even penal labor, thus dismissing it as simple toil.

Their dismissal is not unique. Historiographies of technology are generally silent about toil, focusing instead how we invented ourselves out of it. However, papermakers in late Chosŏn Korea chose to identify their artisanship with toch’im and eventually succeeded in securing recognition for that toil. By examining this skilling of toch’im, this paper changes and contemplates the historiographical silence concerning toil. It overcomes the archival silence accompanying the embodied skill by tracing toch’im’s contours through its changing associations with the social and material entities of society that were being reshaped. It thus re-situates toil within the interconnected transformation of society and technology in a Korea that was ‘modernizing’ in various ways.

“Science, State, and Spirituality: Creationism in South Korea, 1981-1999”

Hyung Wook Park (Nanyang Technological University)

I analyze how scientific creationism became a major social movement in Korea during the late twentieth century. As Ronald Numbers claimed, Korea became "the creationist capital of the world, in density, if not in influence." Borrowing historical literature on developmental state and the post-Westphalian conditions, I argue that this growth reflected Korean creationists' pursuit of their own desire (rather than that of the state and dictators) in the age of globalization and post-developmental state. I will show that creationism, imported from America, offered them a means to defy both religions and sciences constructed within the constraints of Korea's developmental state, which embodied its Confucian legacy, military dictatorship, and postcolonial experiences. In creationism, members of the Korean Association for Creation Research (KACR) found a means to overcome their lower cultural status in this country, and to become conservative intellectuals in their local Christian communities, which in turn fostered their participation in the global creationist movement. To women in KACR, creationism gave an opportunity to contest gender discrimination in both churches and academia, which were shaped under the developmental state. In explicating these issues, I utilize Peter Beyer's theory of "post-Westphalian conditions" that accounts for how late twentieth-century religions transformed themselves within global mass media and new entertainments and loosened their ties to the states that had patronized them in their "Westphalian" past. I will thus explain why it has been so hard to dismantle creationism, which formed a new post-Westphalian spirituality that overcame Korea's old limitations rooted in its developmental state.

Vitality of Empire”: Demographic Studies by Keijo Imperial University in Colonial Korea in 1930s”

Ji-young Park (Seoul National University)

Previous studies regarding scientific institutes of the Japanese empire have focused only on either a purpose of the scientific institutes as a means for imperial control or their activities to constitute a transnational academic network, but both of the characteristics are two sides of the same coin. This paper intends to show how the both characteristics of the scientific institutes of the Japanese empire are related to each other by taking the demographic studies by Keijo Imperial University (KIU) established in Korea under Japanese colonial rule in 1930s as an example. Analyzing the research themes that the demographers of the KIU shared with other demographers in the Japanese empire and the alteration of those themes in the colonial Korea, this paper reveals the followings. First, the demographic study by the KIU was derived from a project for introducing medical science of the United States of America that was promoted in a close relationship with Johns Hopkins University. Second, demographers at KIU shared the goal for calculating the fundamental “vitality of Japanese people” with other demographers in the Japanese empire. Third, they have altered their original methodology to determine the “vitality” of not only Japanese people emigrated to Japanese colonies, but also natives of the colonies, due to the imperial expansion policy of the Japanese Government-General of Korea. To conclude, this paper argues that the demographic research by the KIU was an attempt to make a consistent statistical frame for calculating the “vitality” of each ethnic group in the entire Japanese empire.

“Reconfiguring Korean Birds : Bird Conservation and the Discourse of Extinction in South Korea, 1956-1973”

Hanah Sung (Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Seoul National University)

This presentation explores the role of Korean ornithologists in reshaping the idea and practice of bird conservation in South Korea from the 1950s to 1970s. Historians of science have recently demonstrated that ornithology was developed in the emerging regime of bird protection in the early twentieth century in the United States and European countries. Moreover, they have shown that ornithologists took a critical role in developing the idea of wildlife conservation in national and the international levels. In South Korea, after the Korean War, there were two governmental agencies managing wildlife: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry working on wildlife census, and Ministry of Culture and Information which designated mammals, birds, and fish as Natural Monument. Since the 1960s, the Korean Institution of Ornithology in Kyung Hee University, the first ornithological research institution in South Korea, participated in both sectors to produce the knowledge of Korean birds. By analyzing the practice of the Korean Institution of Ornithology, I will maintain that the ornithologists group of the Kyung Hee University, who could make a connection with scholars abroad, as well as with the Korean governmental agencies, introduced the discourse of extinction from the international community of ornithologists and translated it into one that fit into the Korean context. By focusing on these Korean ornithologists as a translator of the international discourse of extinction, this presentation contributes to the understanding of the establishment of ornithology as a scientific discipline, and the interconnection between the scientific knowledge of birds and environmental concerns in Korea.

“The Construction of 'Autism Epidemic' in Korea”

Hawon Chang (Seoul National University)

The 'autism epidemic', which started in developed countries such as the US and UK, is emerging as an important social issue in more and more countries. In Korea, the number of children diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically since the mid-2000s. But there is still disagreement among experts over the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism is becoming an epidemic in Korean society.

In Korea, a latecomer of autism sciences, how is the number of children with autism increasing? How is the medical authority about autism constructed? How is the role, responsibility, and experience of Korean mothers changing? How is the concept of autism changing?

This study analyzes how the modern conception of autism and the discourse of early diagnosis lead to the practices of Korean mothers, in order to understand a phenomenon of autism epidemic in Korea. The discourse of various actors, obtained through a multi-sited ethnography including in-depth interviews with ‘autism experts’ and participatory observation of the Internet communities of parents with children with or at risk of autism was analyzed.