Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910–1945

The nine chapters of this edited volume trace an extensive range of social transformations on the Korean peninsula under Japanese rule. In “Colonial Rule and Social Change: The Paradox of Colonial Control,” Yong Chool Ha compares and contrasts what he sees as opposing examples of state intervention in the form of the education system, on the one hand, where colonial authorities actively created new and tightly controlled institutions, and the traditional family system, on the other hand, where officials could exploit resistance to change for their own gain. In “The Politics of Communication and the Public Sphere in 1920s Korea,” Yong-Jick Kim asserts that Korean print capitalism flourished into a brief but nonetheless vibrant public sphere in the early 1920s that was effectively crushed by colonial authorities by 1926, inhibiting public discourse that would have aided in Korea's decolonization in 1945. Co-authors Seong-Cheol Oh and Ki-Seok Kim demonstrate in “Expansion...