The field of late Chosŏn studies thrives on a diversity of viewpoints. No scholar, including myself, likes being labeled, but arguably one may recognize three distinct approaches. Dominant in Korea, the oldest perspective privileges the nation and finds class useful for explaining Korea's transition to modernity. In the West, an alternative approach critiques teleological paradigms and instead stresses the stability of late Chosŏn society dominated by Confucian yangban. More recently, a third way has rejected rigid Marxian categories of class while recognizing fundamental similarities shared by late Chosŏn Korea, late imperial China, Edo Japan, and other sedentary societies of early modern Eurasia.
Though not exclusively, Sun Joo Kim's book strongly reflects the second approach. This study argues that the 1812 Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion embodied factors that are better understood when they are distanced from considerations of nation or class, especially the center's discrimination against northerners while exploiting local resources (pp....
