Description

The American occupation of Korea between 1945 and 1948 has been the subject of a number of dissertations, books, articles, and book chapters over the past several decades. Most authors have examined the occupation either as a self-contained era of Korean history and Korean-American relations or as part of the wider story of the origins of the Korean War. This paper will examine the history of the occupation in a new light. In particular, the 1945-1955 period will be treated as an extended, though interrupted, American occupation of southern Korea. An examination of the interplay between Korea and the United States within a wider framework of extended occupation offers us an excellent opportunity to analyze how Cold War dynamics impacted Koreans and Americans, and how, in turn, the diplomacy of these two states shaped the broader parameters of conflict in East Asia.

Steven Hugh Lee is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of two books, “Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1949-1954” (McGill-Queens Press, 1995) and “The Korean War” (Longman, 2001), and a co-edited volume, with Yunshik Chang, entitled “Transformations in Twentieth Century Korea” (Routledge, 2006). He is currently working on two book projects: a global history of the twentieth century (Blackwell Press), and a study of warfare in East Asia since the late nineteenth century (Cambridge).

Description

Today it is common to demur from censuring collaborators with the Axis powers in World War II, citing the impossibility of putting oneself in the untenable position such collaborators then found themselves. Nonetheless contemporary moral philosophy has much to say about the choices men and women face when confronted by complicity with evil. Yi Kwang-su (1892-1950?), Korea’s most distinguished modern novelist as well as one of its more notorious pro-Japanese partisans during the colonial period, offers an compelling test case for ways in which we might attempt to not only understand, but judge, his words and deeds in support of Japan’s occupation of his country. Heeding the ongoing debate over collaboration with the German Reich, this presentation contends that the case of colonial Korea illustrates important first-order ethical issues.

John Whittier Treat is chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University, from which he earned his PhD in 1982. He is the author of POOLS OF WATER, PILLARS OF FIRE: THE LITERATURE OF IBUSE MASUJI (Washington, 1988); WRITING GROUND ZERO: JAPANESE LITERATURE AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (Chicago, 1995; and GREAT MIRRORS SHATTERED: JAPAN, ORIENTALISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY (Oxford, 1999). He has taught at the University of Washington, Berkeley, Stanford, Texas and Seoul National University. His current projects include a volume of edited essays on collaboration in East Asia, 1895-1953.

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