1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910465630803321

Autore

Moon Yumi

Titolo

Populist collaborators [[electronic resource] ] : the Ilchinhoe and the Japanese colonization of Korea, 1896-1910 / / Yumi Moon

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2013

ISBN

0-8014-6794-2

0-8014-6795-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (313 p.)

Disciplina

951.9/02

Soggetti

HISTORY / Asia / Korea

Electronic books.

Korea History

Japan History

Korea Politics and government 1864-1910

Korea Foreign relations Japan

Japan Foreign relations Korea

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Author's Note -- Introduction -- 1. The Korean Reformers and the Late Chosŏn State -- 2. People and Foreigners: The Northwestern Provinces, 1896-1904 -- 3. Sensational Campaigns: The Russo-Japanese War and the Ilchinhoe's Rise, 1904-1905 -- 4. Freedom and the New Look: The Culture and Rhetoric of the Ilchinhoe Movement -- 5. The Populist Contest: The Ilchinhoe's Tax Resistance, 1904-1907 -- 6. Subverting Local Society: Ilchinhoe Legal Disputes, 1904-1907 -- 7. The Authoritarian Resolution: The Ilchinhoe and the Japanese, 1904-1910 -- Conclusion -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

An empire invites local collaborators in the making and sustenance of its colonies. Between 1896 and 1910, Japan's project to colonize Korea was deeply intertwined with the movements of reform-minded Koreans to solve the crisis of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). Among those reformers, it was the Ilchinhoe (Advance in Unity Society)-a unique group of reformers from various social origins-that most ardently



embraced Japan's discourse of "civilizing Korea" and saw Japan's colonization as an opportunity to advance its own "populist agendas." The Ilchinhoe members called themselves "representatives of the people" and mobilized vibrant popular movements that claimed to protect the people's freedom, property, and lives. Neither modernist nor traditionalist, they were willing to sacrifice the sovereignty of the Korean monarchy if that would ensure the rights and equality of the people.Both the Japanese colonizers and the Korean elites disliked the Ilchinhoe for its aggressive activism, which sought to control local tax administration and reverse the existing power relations between the people and government officials. Ultimately, the Ilchinhoe members faced visceral moral condemnation from their fellow Koreans when their language and actions resulted in nothing but assist the emergence of the Japanese colonial empire in Korea. In Populist Collaborators, Yumi Moon examines the vexed position of these Korean reformers in the final years of the Choson dynasty, and highlights the global significance of their case for revisiting the politics of local collaboration in the history of a colonial empire.