Korean Modernization

In his book, Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919, Schmid explores the modernization of Choson Korea’s nationalism. The first chapter, “The Universal Winds of Civilization”, describes the political environment of the area that led to the development of the start of Korea’s nationalism. Schmid starts his story in the year 1895. 1895 is a significant year because it was the year that the Sino-Japanese war ended with the treat of Shimonoseki. The treaty officially ended the “Suzerain status” Korea had with China. This opened the door for Japan to interfere with Korea’s internal and external affairs without having to worry about Chinese influence. With the start of Japanese influence in Korea, multiple newspapers were created starting with Tongnip sinmun in 1896. These newspapers attempted to “awaken” the sleeping nation that was still undisturbed by the recent events of the county. The newspapers communicated a common message called “Munmyong Kaehwa”. This idea of “civilization and enlightenment” appealed to the intellectuals and normal citizens of the time because it “offered a conceptual framework in which various groups could come to terms with their recent integration into the global capitalist system” (pg32). Although the message by the intellectuals were to arm the citizens of Korea with nationalism and acceptance of the modern capitalistic world, the same message was pushed by the Japanese because Korea’s sovereignty was in the best interest of Japan’s future plans to annex Korea. This turned off many Koreans at the time that were anti Japanese. I found this particularly interesting. Although the message of nationalism, globalism and capitalism was the movement of the era, because the message was pushed into Korea by the Japanese, many perhaps considered it a pro-Japanese idea. I wonder if this was a factor in the future years of Korea when the country was split between capitalists and communists. To this day, North Korea is very anti-Japanese and perhaps the...