A. "The Tempos of Decolonization: Violence, Temporality, and Colonial Korea." (Political Theory) - Forthcoming
To what extent does revolutionary violence delay or accelerate the process of decolonization? In early 20th century colonial Korea, anticolonial thinkers were divided over the temporal role of violence in decolonization. On the one hand, pessimists preferred waiting for the right moment to achieve decolonization without resorting to violence. On the other hand, optimists sought to bring about that moment through the uncompromising use of violence against the colonizer. This debate is evident in the writings of Lee Gwang-su (1892–1950) and Cho So-ang (1887–1958). For Lee, the colonized would eventually achieve decolonization if they patiently awaited the right moment for negotiations. He argued that reactionary violence would be counterproductive, as it would merely provoke the colonizer and eliminate the possibility of constructive dialogue. In contrast, Cho believed that the colonized must actively initiate decolonization through the use of violence against the colonizer. For him, a violent revolution would foster confidence and pride among the colonized, ignite solidarity with other colonized peoples, and ultimately compel the colonizers to reconsider their grip on power.
B. "Two Theories of Self-Determination: The Discourse of Democratic Transformation in Colonial Korea." (Political Theory)
This article examines two distinct ways in which anti-colonial thinkers in early 20th century Korea reconstructed their non-democratic tradition in an attempt to justify (rather than take it for granted) the claim of self-determination. The exposure to modern education and ideas of democracy prompted these thinkers to critically engage their tradition in the struggle for self-determination. That said, they could not simply abandon the cultural foundation of their nation. Japanese colonial rule drew its legitimacy from not only an assimilation ideology that the Japanese and Koreans shared the same ethnic origin but also a developmentalist conception of the colonized that they were premodern and incapable of self-rule. In order to reject imperial domination, Korean anti-colonial thinkers needed to invent out of their country’s non-democratic tradition (1) an unassimilable nation/people (2) capable of self-rule. Drawing upon the political writings of two early 20th century thinkers in colonial Korea, Yi Kwang-su (1892-1950) and Cho So-ang (1887-1958), I discover from their political thought two nuanced approaches to this project of inventing “the people” in the colonial world. I argue that while Yi succeeded in rebutting the colonial ideology of assimilation, he fell into the trap of developmentalism. I contend that Cho, on the contrary, sidestepped this trap with his revisionist reading of the Confucian past as a history of democratic transformation, thus providing an immediate alternative to imperial sovereignty.
C. "Inverted Founding: Emperor Organ Theory, Constitutionalism, and Koku-min." (European Journal of Political Theory)
This article presents Minobe Tatsukichi’s emperor organ theory as a novel understanding of the temporality of founding. In contrast to a conventional framework of founding which legitimizes the constitution by postulating the pre-constitutional power of “the people,” emperor organ theory invents “the people” out of the Meiji Constitution as a democratically empowered subject to-come. In so doing, emperor organ theory calls upon the transformation of shin-min (臣民), the presumed subject of the emperor, into koku-min (国民), the people of this constitutional state. However, emperor organ theory also highlights the contingency of founding moments: though koku-min emerged through the Diet as a conceptually new political actor in Japan’s nascent constitutional state, it never solidified its sovereign status as “the people.”
D. "Reconstructing the Nation: A Critique of Confucianism in Lee Gwang-su's Political Thought ." In Confucianism at War: 1931-1945. Ed. Shaun O'Dwyer. Routledge.
The pioneering Korean modern novelist and intellectual Lee Gwang-su is a controversial figure in the history of Korean political thought. On the one hand, Lee actively participated in the legitimization of Japanese rule shortly after he was released from imprisonment in 1937. On the other hand, he joined independence movements in his early years and produced numerous writings on the future of Korea. Despite these twists and turns in his attitude toward the colonial ideology, Lee was nevertheless surprisingly consistent in his critique of Confucianism throughout his career. As widely known, he equated Confucianism with a mode of domination perpetuated by government elites. While this critique of Confucianism in Lee’s political thought has received much attention from Koreanists, it remains unclear how this critique is related to his visions of authentic Koreaness and modernization that he portrays in his writings up to and during World War Two. The primary aim of this essay is to propose an explanation of this intellectual development in Yi’s political thought.
E. "The 2022 South Korean Presidential Election and the Gender Divide among the Youth." (Pacific Affairs)
The 2022 South Korean presidential election was the county’s most closely contested election since a democratic direct electoral system was initiated in 1987, with less than a 1 percent difference separating the two major candidates among 34 million votes cast. Despite some parallels with and continuities from previous elections, the 2022 election saw new voting alignments emerge based on one topic: gender equality. In this essay, we explain how and why gender became such a prominent issue during the 2022 election campaign, and how this affected voting patterns, especially among male and female voters in their twenties and thirties. Specifically, we argue that gendered voter behaviour during the election arose from rising anti-feminist sentiments among young men, and that the two main presidential candidates politicized the issue to maximize their support. This in turn, triggered the consolidation of a young female voting bloc in response. Using an original survey conducted in January 2022 with an approximate nationally representative sample of 1,017 respondents, we identify two possible causes of rising anti-feminist sentiments among young men: the belief that women receive preferential treatment in employment opportunities and mandatory military service for men. In addition, through an embedded survey experiment run before the elections, we proposed that political candidates with pro-gender messages were less likely to receive support from young men, while candidates with anti-gender messages were likely to receive more support: these projections were confirmed by the actual voting breakdowns of the recent election. The results suggest that the new administration must handle gender issues with extreme care to ensure that divergent perceptions of the gender divide do not become further polarized over the next few years, since such a development could very well fuel democratic deconsolidation in South Korea.
F. "Translational Nation: Politics and Re-presentation at the Independence Hall of Korea." (Positions: Asia Critique)
This article develops a theory of nation form as translational, referring to the praxis of re-presenting and thus rendering sensible the nation through examining the Tongnip Kinyŏmkwan (Independence Hall of Korea), a national museum designed to commemorate Korea’s anticolonial resistance efforts and its independence from the Japanese Empire in 1945. Translation in the context of this article alludes to the praxis of re-presenting and thus reconstituting the nation through what Rancière calls “the distribution of the sensible.” The Hall, in other words, suggests that the nation does not matter unto itself but rather that it is in such moments of articulation and sensibility that the nation is hailed into existence. This article makes the argument that the interactional outcomes between visitors and the Independence Hall direct us toward an interpretation of the Hall as a space of enactment of the translational nation, which refers to a re-formation of nation through translation across interrelated matrices including text, trauma, and time. This translational praxis, understood in the context of the interplay between state-sponsored zeal and popular anemia, centers on the translation of communicative text into theatrical text, somber tragedy into diluted play, and discrete historical events into a posthistorical genealogy.
G. "Show Me the Monolingualism: Korean Hip-hop and the Discourse of Difference." (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies)
Today, the ubiquitousness of Korean hip-hop is evident in the popularity of the reality show Show Me the Money (henceforth referred to as SMTM), a musical competition featuring aspiring Korean and Korean American hip-hop artists. While the show has always been a platform for linguistic hybridity, as Korean hip-hop has never been truly “monolingual,” the recent evolution of the show to include Korean American artists has focalized the linguistic and cultural hybridity that inheres global hip-hop more generally and Korean hip-hop more specifically. Undoubtedly, these two matrices of difference, linguistic and cultural, are invariably intertwined, particularly in the Korean context, where being “authentically” Korean itself hinges on proficiency in the Korean language. The analysis develops what Gramling (2016. The Invention of Monolingualism. London: Bloomsbury) terms the “invention of monolingualism,” in particular with SMTM in relation to questions of verbal hygiene and the discourse of authenticity and emulation. We argue that SMTM should not be understood as a mere space for the documentation of various acts of transgressing monolingualism through linguistic and cultural hybridity. Instead, it unveils the social and geopolitical conditions by which the very commitment to, along with the presumed precarity of, “monolingualism” is afforded an ideological platform in the first place.
H. Monograph - Inverted Founding: The Discourse of Democratic Transformation in Early 20th Century Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea (Work in Progress).
From Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès to Bruce Ackerman, political theorists and legal scholars have pondered the complex relationship between the radical potential of a democratic constitution which claims to bring about a new beginning and the apparent inability of that act to provide a legitimate foundation for the new constitution. On the one hand, “the people” acts in the name of popular sovereignty to declare its independence from a tyrant, colonial power or other and subsequently creates a constitution that is designated to serve as the basis of a new, and specifically democratic, political order. On the other hand, however, “the people” cannot claim as the normative basis of what it seeks to establish by virtue of that act. If “the people” cannot appeal to the authority of the previous regime because it has rejected it, but also cannot appeal to the authority of the new regime because this is what its action intends to bring about, then the very attempt to create a new democratic constitution appears to lack legitimate authorization.
Although this alleged paradox of democratic founding may appear to be merely a philosophical question, its legal and political implications are both evident and profound. If “the people” is incapable of authorizing a democratic constitution at the founding moment, then to what extent is that constitution legitimate? In order to shed new light on these enduring complexities of democratic founding, I introduce the political thought of two 20th century intellectuals, the Japanese constitutional theorist Minobe Tatsukichi (1873-1948) and the Korean independence activist Cho Soang (1887-1958). More specifically, I argue that these two thinkers read “the people” out of the constitution instead of positing its emergence prior to the process of constitutionalization. Such an inverted founding – one in which a democratic people unfurls from the constitution – complicates the familiar logic of founding and attendant concepts of constituent power and democratic legitimization. The wager of this study is that it can serve as a practical model for non-democratic countries that are struggling to navigate the transition to constitutional democracy.