Abstract
The New Right movement that arose in the early 2000s in South Korea was a response to a change in ownership of Korean nationalist discourse during the preceding decades. Although nationalism was the preserve of the South Korean right wing from the trusteeship crisis in 1945 through the end of the Park Chung Hee regime, a historiographical revolt in the 1980s that emphasized the historical illegitimacy of the South Korean state allowed the Left to appropriate nationalism. With the loss of nationalism from its arsenal, the Right turned to postnationalist neoliberal discourse to blunt the effectiveness of leftist nationalist rhetoric. An examination of New Right historiography on the colonial and postliberation periods, however, shows that despite the recent change in conservatives’ stance on nationalism, a preoccupation with the legitimacy of the South Korean state remains at the center of right-wing historical narratives. The New Right represents old wine in new bottles.
The South Korean New Right was a conservative movement that arose in the early 2000s in response to a perceived need for reform in conservative ideology after successive defeats in the political arena.1 Accompanied by much fanfare and support in the conservative media, these reformist conservatives launched the New Right movement in late 2004 and announced their intent to upgrade Korean conservatism in the age of neoliberalism and globalization.2 But internal divisions within the movement between intellectual and civic group wings, the quick jump into politics prior to establishing a firm and distinctive intellectual base, and association with the unpopular president Lee Myung-bak (2008–13) sank the movement in the political sphere before it could truly take off, leading even key ideologues to lament that the New Right was “dead” as early as 2008.3
But if the New Right quickly faded away in the realm of party politics, it has proved much more durable, influential, and even controversial in the sphere of historiography.4 Indeed, the New Right became most notorious for its associated scholars’ revisionist claims about Korea's colonial and authoritarian pasts, arguments that even some New Rightists disavowed (Ha 2007, 176). New Right–associated scholars attacked leftist nationalist historiography condemning the oppression and exploitation of the Korean people under Japanese colonial rule (1910–45) and the subsequent authoritarian regimes of Syngman Rhee (1948–60) and Park Chung Hee (1961–79). Amid the rise of what historian Namhee Lee (2019) calls the “discourses of triumphalism” in South Korea after the collapse of the communist bloc in the 1990s, the New Right presented alternative, arguably more positive interpretations of the impact of Japanese colonialism on the Korean people and society and offered a defense of the Rhee and Park regimes. These efforts in the realm of historiography continued during textbook disputes that lasted through the end of the Park Geun-hye administration (2013–17). Even more recently, the best-seller status in 2019 of the polemic Panil chongjokchuŭi (Anti-Japanese Tribalism), coauthored by several New Right–associated economic historians, demonstrates the resilience of this historiographical wing of the New Right movement (Yi Yŏng-hun et al. 2019; Yun Min-hyŏk 2019).
One of the distinctive traits of New Right historiography has been its strident defense of the South Korean state's historical legitimacy despite its neoliberal moniker, which I will call “statism.”5 The New Right has presented a neoliberal political platform supporting free markets, globalization, and limited government (Harvey 2005, 64; Kang Chŏng-in et al. 2009, 106–9, 113–14).6 Neoliberalism does not preclude the presence of the state; indeed, neoliberalism has always recognized the necessity of state intervention in defending the market and the transnational mobility of capital from potentially restrictive political, and especially democratic, pressures (Harvey 2005, 64–86; Slobodian 2018, 13–16). But statism runs deeper in New Right ideology and historiography, such that it appeared to certain critics that neoliberal rhetoric was hiding the true core principle of statism (An Hyŏn-hyo 2010; Yun et al. 2006, 14). The relationship between the state and neoliberal ideals for the New Right can be summed up as retrospective justification: South Korea's ultimate attainment of the neoliberal vision of a market economy and liberal democracy was only possible because of the state's earlier heavy-handed intervention in economic development and authoritarian politics—a necessary evil when South Korea was poor, faced economic constraints, and was vulnerable to communist attack from North Korea. Frustrated with mainstream Korean academic literature for insufficiently crediting the state for its accomplishments and highlighting only its undemocratic shortcomings, New Right scholars have concentrated on boosting the state's legitimacy and accomplishments, a central project for conservatives since South Korea's establishment.
In its attack on leftist historical narratives that downplay the state, the South Korean New Right has resembled the contemporary Japanese neoconservative movement, except for one key aspect: the former's explicit denunciation of nationalism. Unlike the Japanese right wing, for which the Japanese state and nation have been congruent, the South Korean New Right has attacked the notion of nationalism itself, particularly criticizing the egalitarian, anti-elite focus of Korean leftist nationalism. Given the continued strength of ethnic nationalism as a powerful political force—especially after the worsening of relations between South Korea and Japan in 2019—it would appear at first glance to be foolhardy to abandon nationalism so blatantly.7
Among even ordinary Korean conservatives, however, such nationalist fervor has been weakening. That the rejection of Korean nationalism, at least its historical anti-Japanese core, has increased mainstream support in conservative circles is reflected in the popularity of Panil chongjokchuŭi, which criticizes nationalist historical narratives and excoriates leftists for perpetuating the influence of nationalism in Korean politics. Of course, there remained prominent conservatives who dismissed the book's arguments for being at odds with the views of Korean society (Pak Kwang-su 2019). But the demographics of the book's consumers—namely, men in their fifties and sixties—indicate that a substantial portion of those who would normally be identified with traditional conservatives either bought into or were sympathetic to the previously unpopular New Right positions on history (Herŏldŭ kyŏngje 2019).
Indeed, the New Right's opposition to nationalism marks a rupture with Korean conservatives’ previous espousal of nationalism. Despite recent characterizations of Korean nationalism as mainly left wing, it was actually the Right that had been key propagators of ethnic nationalism for decades under the Rhee and Park regimes. What caused this shift in which nationalism was dropped from conservative ideology?
The answer lies in the Right's determination to continue defending the state despite significant changes in the relation between the nation and state in public discourse. Right-wing nationalism featured the South Korean state at its core: the Korean nation and the South Korean state were congruent and compatible; the state was the primary defender of the nation through anti-communism and promoter of the nation's interests through economic development. In contrast, the New Right has overtly elevated the state over the nation as the main historical subject (De Ceuster 2010, 17; Lee 2019, 37; Yun et al. 2006, 14).
This separation of the state and nation was not an innovation by the New Right; rather, it was a reluctant appropriation of the fruits of previous leftist scholarship, which shifted the ownership of nationalist discourse from the Right to the Left. The New Right's attempt to legitimize conservative elites and the state was certainly motivated by a desire to reinvigorate the political fortunes of the Right in the 2000s, as Tikhonov (2019) has argued. But in the broader picture, this was the result of circumstances surrounding nationalist discourse, which the right wing had relied upon heavily; their distancing was compelled by attacks from leftist scholars in the 1980s on the very nationalist credentials of the South Korean state and its officials by reexamining their historical background and links with foreign imperialism. Perhaps this result was inevitable, given Korean nationalism's innate anti-colonial character since its origins in the late nineteenth century; the right wing and the state sought to meld nationalism with anti-communism through the trope of resistance against Soviet imperialism, but conservative elites remained vulnerable to accusations of collaboration with external powers, such as Japan and the United States, leaving their connections with anti-colonial resistance unstable. Ultimately, through its offensive, leftist historiography “dislodged the Korean nation from the South Korean state” (De Ceuster 2010, 16), separating the nation and state in both leftist and rightist historiographies. But whereas nationalism, thereafter firmly appropriated by the Left, remained a powerful political tool granting legitimacy to its wielder, the Right became tied to a delegitimized state. The Right's search to reestablish its and the state's legitimacy was the catalyst for the rise of the New Right and its accompanying attack on Korean nationalism itself to deny the latter's effectiveness as a political weapon. In short, the rupture in conservatives’ stance toward nationalism was caused by the continuity in their stance toward the state.
Right-Wing Nationalism, Anti-communism, and the State
With the end of colonial rule in 1945, anti-Japanese sentiment ran high among the Korean public. While some right-wing figures, such as Kim Ku (1876–1949) and Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), were associated with anti-Japanese nationalism, many other members of the conservative elite had been closely associated with the colonial regime. However, this did not preclude the right wing from appropriating anti-colonial nationalism; the heightening of Cold War tensions and the division of the Korean peninsula into communist and anti-communist regimes produced another opportunity to shift the frames of Korean nationalism. Soon after its establishment, the South Korean state and its conservative allies mixed anti-communism and right-wing nationalism, a combination that historian Kim Su-ja (2008) argues became the hegemonic discourse in South Korea for decades. The result was an anti-communist nationalism that appropriated the theme of anti-colonial resistance by directing it against the communists, who were labeled pawns of Soviet imperialism. Moreover, anti-communist nationalism was innately statist: its core premise was that South Korea was the legitimate representative and defender of the Korean nation.
Within the framework of anti-communist nationalism, communism was labeled as anti-national, not only for its elevation of socioeconomic class over the nation, but also for its association with what was deemed Soviet “Red imperialism.” The trigger for this narrative was the trusteeship crisis at the end of 1945, in which Koreans of all political stripes erupted in furor against the proposed joint management of the peninsula by the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China. When Korean communists abruptly switched their position to favor negotiations on trusteeship instead of outright opposition, the right wing quickly accused them of being Soviet stooges, shifting the dynamics of Korean politics and nationalism (Cumings 1981, 214–25; Kim Su-ja 2008). Rightists, many of whom had struggled to escape their collaborationist backgrounds, went on the offensive and claimed nationalist legitimacy for opposing renewed foreign rule. They derided communists, who had once been praised as nationalist heroes for their anti-Japanese activities, as “anti-national traitors” (pan minjok maegungno or panyŏkcha) for supporting continued foreign rule while taking orders from a foreign power, the Soviet Union. The North Korean invasion that sparked the fratricidal Korean War in 1950 was given as further proof of the communists’ lack of nationalist credentials for decades onward: not only was it believed that Soviet puppet masters had commandeered the invasion, but the war also claimed the lives of millions of Korean nationals, while North Korea's continued aggression afterward prevented the attainment of the pressing task of peaceful national reunification (Kukpangbu 1979; Kukpangbu Chŏnghun'guk 1979).
Consequently, the South Korean state and its allies, including nationalist historians, claimed that it was South Korea that had truly inherited the Korean nation's historical tradition of anti-colonial resistance. Few were as central to the dissemination of a conservative, anti-communist, nationalist historiography than the historian and bureaucrat Yi Sŏn-gŭn (1905–83), who has sometimes been labeled the chief ideologue of the Park Chung Hee regime.8 Yi's frameworks of “the history of overcoming national crisis” (kungnan kŭkpoksa) and the “autonomous nationalist view of history” (chuch'ejŏk minjok sagwan) deeply influenced Park and were integrated into state-mandated history textbooks beginning in the 1970s (Pak Ch'an-sŭng 2008; Son 2009).9 In Yi's framework, instances of internal division and factionalism hampered the development of national strength while inviting ruinous foreign invasion. But at every such juncture, the Korean nation overcame these crises through total unity and the display of a resolute spirit of anti-foreign resistance. This spirit was continuously transmitted throughout Korean history all the way back from the hwarang of Silla to the March First Movement in 1919. As the legitimate successor to the Korean Provisional Government that arose directly after the March First Movement, South Korea inherited and embodied the Korean innate spirit of resistance as well. The parallels to and lessons for the modern era were obvious: once again facing a national crisis of foreign invasion—that of communist, Soviet imperialism, whose Korean supporters could be accused of practicing toadyism (sadaejuŭi)—it was imperative that Koreans unite behind the South Korean government (Son 2009).
The South Korean state's legitimacy was thus intimately connected to its role as the true representative, guardian, and advocate of the Korean nation. In South Korea, government propaganda during and after the suppression of the Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Rebellion in 1948 painted the Republic of Korea and its coercive organs as the competent, compassionate guardians of the Korean nation against leftist forces that threatened its members’ lives (Im 2006, 286–92). Meanwhile, right-wing youth group leaders such as Yi Pŏm-sŏk (1900–1972) and An Ho-sang (1902–99), both of whom were cabinet members of the inaugural Rhee administration in 1948, asserted the congruity of the state and the Korean nation (Pak Ch'an-sŭng 2002, 231–42).10 For example, in his articulation of the doctrine of ilminjuŭi (One People Principle), the unofficial state ideology for the first few years of the First Republic (1948–60), An wrote that the “state is the house of the nation”; the conflation of state and nation continued to be expressed in 1970s military education documents (An Ho-sang 1950, 32; Kukpangbu 1979, 45). In the 1960s, the state commenced major historical commemoration projects that implicitly connected the Park regime with illustrious nationalist heroes, such as Yi Sun-sin (1545–98), the admiral who had helped defeat the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s and shared Park's military background, and King Sejong (r. 1418–50), the Chosŏn king credited with the invention of han'gŭl, whose reign represented a past golden age for the Korean nation that Park sought to echo through economic development (Chŏn 2000, 85–107). Moreover, military ideological training (chŏnghun kyoyuk) materials, perhaps the most systematic expression of South Korean state ideology, taught soldiers that South Korea possessed nationalist legitimacy through its inheritance of national tradition and spirit and its pursuit of the great national tasks of modernization and peaceful reunification (Kukpangbu 1979; Kukpangbu Chŏnghun'guk 1979).
The ultimate objective of anti-communist nationalism was the defense of the state through nationalist legitimation. Over time, however, there was growing skepticism about aspects of the anti-communist nationalist frame, such as the trope of “North Korean puppets” (Pukkoe) of Soviet imperialism, which increasingly rang hollow when compared with South Korea's own unequal relationship with the United States. By the late 1970s, critics of the regime began brandishing potent nationalist ammunition of their own by drawing on South Korea's turbulent history, dealing devastating blows to the state's nationalist legitimacy.
Leftist Nationalist Historiography and the Delegitimization of the South Korean State
The statist nationalism of the Right remained hegemonic from the birth of South Korea in 1948 to the end of the Park regime in 1979. However, despite the state and its supporters’ claim to the anti-colonial nationalist mantle, the right wing's associations with external colonial or neocolonial powers—namely, Japan and the United States—created significant vulnerabilities in the Right's nationalist credentials. The turning point was the rise of leftist historiography in the 1980s, which represented a dramatic intellectual revolt against the authoritarian state. While anti-communist and leftist nationalist paradigms shared a focus on resistance to foreign encroachment, the leftist nationalist narrative of Korean history diverged in asserting that the Korean nation (minjok) had not yet gained true autonomy from external forces—the United States, not the Soviets or communists—that had maintained control of the nation after 1945 through the complicit, collaborationist elite holdovers from the Japanese colonial regime who led the authoritarian South Korean state. Thus, it was nationalist to oppose the state and seek to overthrow the dictatorship, which would simultaneously liberate the Korean nation. This task required a revolutionary reading of the Korean past, one that separated the nation from the South Korean state. The result was a shift in control over nationalist discourse from the Right to the Left, setting the stage for the Right's eventual divorce from nationalism altogether in the 2000s with the rise of the New Right.
The prelude to the leftist nationalist revolt came during the tumultuous period of transition from one dictatorship to the next after the assassination of Park Chung Hee in 1979. Hopes for democracy quickly vanished with military general Chun Doo Hwan's (b. 1931) successive coups in 1979 and 1980, culminating in the massacre of hundreds of civilians during the Kwangju Uprising in May 1980, cementing Chun's grip on power. A notable result of Kwangju was a surge in radicalism and anti-American nationalism among the opposition, especially among student activists. The central role of laborers and the unemployed during the Kwangju Uprising confirmed to guilt-ridden leftist activists and intellectuals that the masses (minjung), whom they considered the core of the Korean nation, were more than ready to assume their role as the main agents of Korean history and the leaders of potential revolution (Lee 2007, 44–55, 234–39). Consequently, Marxist ideas spread rapidly among student activists. Furthermore, already disillusioned by Washington's nonintervention in preventing the bloodshed, activists and intellectuals began to perceive, especially after the United States endorsed the Chun regime (1980–88), that the Americans openly supported dictatorship and opposed sociopolitical change in South Korea. Anti-American sentiment sharply rose in the 1980s as a result.
In this context, leftist histories became preoccupied with explaining the prolongation of authoritarianism throughout Korean history despite the public's demand for democracy. The representative text here was the series Haebang chŏnhusa ŭi insik (hereafter Insik), translated as An Understanding of History before and after Liberation, the first volume of which was published in 1979.11 In this monumental series, the emphasis on the minjung and the rising tide of anti-Americanism in the 1980s were combined and refocused in critical examinations of the American military occupation of southern Korea (1945–48). Insik and similar leftist histories “exposed the inglorious origins of the South Korean state and negated cold war historiography by positing as nationalist the resistance to the UN-sponsored separate elections in 1948 on which South Korea claims its legal basis” (Em 2013, 16; emphasis in original), transforming anti-state, anti-establishment oppositional discourse into a nationalist cause. The subversive underlying argument of the series was that because of the state's dubious origins as a product of American and right-wing collusion, the South Korean regime in all its iterations from Rhee to Chun was anti-national and illegitimate, and opposition to the state was thus innately nationalist. In sum, Insik extensively utilized nationalism specifically to critique the conservative regimes that had dominated South Korean politics since the state's founding.
Critical histories of the late 1970s and 1980s such as Insik thus located the answer to the puzzle of continuous authoritarianism in South Korea's founding in 1948, arguing that Korea had never broken free from its colonial status, but merely transitioned from Japanese to American hegemony. In particular, the underground publication and distribution of Korean translations of the first volume of American historian Bruce Cumings's The Origins of the Korean War (1981) fanned the flames of anti-American sentiment among activists and intellectuals, who lamented the loss of South Korean independence and agency (Park 2005, 273). Although the first volume of Insik, published two years before the English edition of Origins, already contained arguments about the American role in the formation of the South Korean regime (Song 2015, 27–31), Cumings's book gained fame because it appeared to offer irrefutable evidence, gathered from previously inaccessible American documents, that U.S. occupation policies deliberately blocked social revolution in Korea (and by extension, a united Korean nation-state) through its maintenance and utilization of a powerful and coercive state apparatus from colonial Japanese foundations and its installation of right-wing collaborationist figures into key positions of power (Cumings 1981). The conviction arose among intellectuals and activists that South Korea was, and had been, an American neo-colony, held back and controlled by American national interests for decades. In fact, South Korea was unfavorably compared to North Korea, which seemed to have achieved true autonomy after liberation (Lee 2007, 109–44). Leftist intellectuals concluded that only social revolution led by the masses could drive out foreign rule in South Korea and grant genuine autonomy to Koreans (Park 2005, 271–72).
A key consequence of leftist nationalist historiography was the severance of the bond between state and nation to which De Ceuster (2010, 16) refers. The renewed scrutiny of the postliberation era damaged the right wing's—and, by extension, the South Korean state's—nationalist credentials by highlighting the close association of conservative elites with the Japanese and the Americans. The Right's collaborationist history with the Japanese was already well known; the revelations about the American military occupation and its intervention in Korean politics proved even more explosive, for they appeared to confirm to leftist intellectuals how the South Korean government had been dominated by American neocolonial power from the beginning. Given the state's historical lack of nationalist legitimacy, it could no longer be considered the embodiment of the nation; in fact, the state existed in opposition to the nation.12 For instance, the historian Kang Man-gil (2015, 20), in his introduction to the second volume of Insik, contended that the central task of a national history was to “overcome division” (pundan kŭkpok) by transitioning from a “division statist perspective” (pundan kukkajuŭijŏk sigak) to a “unified nationalist stage” (t'ongil minjokchuŭijŏk tan'gye). To Kang, a true national history moved beyond a focus on a state that was the product of division; the Korean nation transcended South Korea. The question of who lay at the core of the nation also mattered to leftist historians; it was not the state or political elites, but the minjung who should stand front and center of national history. Only through the participation of a powerful minjung as a historical subject would the nation attain autonomy (Song 2015, 20).
In short, according to leftist historiography, South Korea had never possessed nationalist legitimacy because it was established as a right-wing state through foreign intervention, filled with leaders with questionable or explicitly anti-nationalist credentials. In leftist narratives, the state could not claim that it was the primary representative, defender, and promoter of the nation. Indeed, the South Korean state's oppressive actions against society, including outright murder of civilians, was a testament to this fact. The legacies of leftist nationalist historiography that delegitimized the state persisted well into the 2000s despite mainstream historiography's growing embrace of postnationalist and postmodernist paradigms in the twenty-first century. While the minjung movement lost momentum after the 1987 democratization reforms and was removed to the margins of political discourse in South Korea by the 1990s, ethnic nationalism remained a powerful force (Shin 2006, 175–81). Moreover, the loss of nationalist credentials by the South Korean state was something from which it struggled to recover. The New Right's main motivation since then has been the restoration of the South Korean state's historical legitimacy.
New Right Historiography and Criticisms of the Nationalist Paradigm
The success of leftist historiography in detaching the nation from the state did not cause conservatives, or the state itself, to completely abandon nationalist beliefs; many conservatives continued to identify with nationalism, and the military continued to produce moral education lessons identifying South Korea as the legitimate representative of the Korean nation even into the 2000s.13 However, it was no longer viable to rely on nationalism to prop up the state and Korean conservatives, who searched for ideological support for their politics. Moreover, with the successive political victories by progressives in the late 1990s and early 2000s, conservatives grew anxious to salvage their political legitimacy. Conservatives were angered not only by leftist scholarship but also the progressive presidential administrations’ attempts at “settling the past” (kwagŏ ch’ŏngsan). This included a series of Truth Commissions on authoritarian and anti-communist violence, further diminishing the state's legitimacy, alongside investigations into Korean colonial collaborators, many of whom possessed inconvenient ties to conservatives (De Ceuster 2010, 18–22; Em 2013, 157; Ha 2007).
At this juncture, the imperatives of conservative politics soon converged with the anti-nationalist offensive in historiography. What distinguished the various strands of right-wing scholarship that would eventually amalgamate into New Right historiography was the tacit acceptance of the separation of nation and state. But in opposition to the Left's elevation of the former at the expense of the latter, conservative scholars pursued the reverse in identifying with the South Korean state and made its defense their primary objective.
In the academic sphere, the main salvo of the counteroffensive on leftist historiography was the two-volume series Haebang chŏnhusa ŭi chaeinsik (hereafter Chaeinsik), translated as A Reinterpretation of History before and after Liberation, which was published in 2006 (Pak Chi-hyang et al. 2006b, 2006c). The series covered topics about the colonial period in the first volume and the postliberation era and the 1950s in the second volume. While other publications by New Right–affiliated intellectuals have covered similar topics, Chaeinsik was central to the New Right's attempt to directly shape scholarly and public discourse, and its core arguments and frameworks have maintained prominence in more recent New Right publications.
As its title indicated, Chaeinsik was a direct counter to the Insik series and signaled the editors’ intention to tear down the leftist narratives about the postliberation period that had become dominant in the literature while upholding state legitimacy. The series was ostensibly a collaborative work of scholars of all political stripes who sought to push Korean historiography beyond the tired nationalist framework (Tikhonov 2019, 18–19).14 The individual chapters were commended for their academic value and postnationalist or postmodern premises. But the editorial framing possessed clear political intent, particularly in the contributions of two of the four editors, Pak Chi-hyang (b. 1953), a professor of Western history, and economic historian Yi Yŏng-hun (b. 1951).15 The editors explicitly stated that their goal was to counteract the historical views expressed by Insik, the so-called 386 generation, and the progressive Roh Moo-hyun administration (Pak Chi-hyang 2006a; Pak Chi-hyang 2006b, 11; Pak Chi-hyang et al. 2006a, 616–17).16 In addition, the editors’ discussions of objectivity, balance, and presentism in historical views were transparent political attacks on previous leftist historiography. According to Pak (2006b, 14–16), the editors merely sought to move away from a biased and narrow-minded historiography toward a “balanced view of history” (kyunhyŏng chaphin yŏksagwan) that reflected the complexity of historical events and figures and acknowledged both the positive and negative aspects of life in the colony, implying that academics had only focused on the latter. Yi Yŏng-hun emphasized empiricism and objectivity as constituting the core of the “professional” historian's approach, criticizing the contributors to Insik and leftist nationalist historians in general for their biased, politicized readings of the past—although critics of the series were quick to note Yi's own politicized uses of history (An Hyŏn-hyo 2010, 203–4; Yi Yŏng-hun 2006, 32–47). Furthermore, Pak and Yi's rhetoric mirrored American conservative think tanks’ deployment of the vocabulary of “balance” and the “marketplace” of ideas to fight back against a perceived liberal hegemony in policy formulation (Stahl 2016, 4).
The editors also directly attacked the concept of nationalism itself, which by this time was associated with the Left. Yi Yŏng-hun (2006, 56–57) argued that nationalism was “dangerous” because, being fundamentally derived from the clannish and barbaric—that is, uncivilized—criteria of blood, it innately generated mutual suspicion, antagonism, and eventually violence among nations. In his companion piece to Chaeinsik, Yi Yŏng-hun (2007, 34, 45–47) criticized nationalism as a “fundamentalist” concept for Koreans that had become too politically strong relative to democracy and liberalism, making sinister connections between nationalism and the tyranny of Nazi Germany, Japanese imperialism, and North Korea. In her preface to Chaeinsik, Pak Chi-hyang strongly condemned the hegemony of the nationalist paradigm, which she claimed had stifled any true understanding of Korea's past. In her view, nationalism was an exclusive (paet'ajŏk) and violent (p'ongnyŏkchŏk) ideology that sought to prove the superiority of one's nation to the detriment of other nations. She added that nationalist history consequently distorted proper historical understanding due to the sole focus on the nation at the expense of other concepts, subordinating other values, such as liberty and human rights, to the nation (Pak Chi-hyang 2006b, 13–14). Despite potential sympathy with these criticisms of nationalism's distortion of history, postmodern scholars distanced themselves from Chaeinsik, contending that the editors’ beliefs in capitalism and the priority of economic growth fundamentally contradicted postmodernism's task of deconstructing and overcoming capitalist modernity and modernist consciousness (An Hyŏn-hyo 2010, 224; Yun et al. 2006, 15).
Notably, despite their condemnation of nationalism, the editors continued to express support for a “patriotism” toward the state, which represented the pinnacle of civilization. In the editors’ roundtable discussion in the second volume, Pak stressed the difference between nationalism and patriotism, declaring that a “healthy patriotism” (kŏnjŏnhan ŭimi ŭi aeguksim) and “a love of one's country” were desirable (Pak Chi-hyang et al. 2006a, 681), indicating a clear separation in her perspective between the problematic and narrow-minded Korean nationalism and undervalued South Korean patriotism.
Moreover, Yi Yŏng-hun's (2006, 55–63) emphasis on “civilizational history” (munmyŏngsa) as the true topic of modern Korean history reflected his statist concerns. Although Yi claimed that the starting point of civilizational history was the self-interested economic man, homo economicus, because the state acted as the mechanism that united diverse humans and their divergent interests into one peaceful order, allowing them to escape “barbarism” (yaman), Yi (2006, 56) declared that “the state is the symbol of civilization.” In short, the civilizational history that Yi preferred was equivalent to the history of the state. Yi's civilizational discourse thus paradoxically subsumed the ostensible protagonist—the neoliberal conception of the self-interested individual—under the state, which emerged as the true historical subject (De Ceuster 2010, 16–17).
Meanwhile, the narrative strategy of upholding statism at the expense of nationalism was reflected in the framing of topics in Chaeinsik. Because the South Korean state possessed strong continuities with the colonial period, in terms of policies, personnel, and structures, New Right historiography aimed at addressing several of the features of colonial rule commonly portrayed in a negative light such as economic exploitation and collaboration. The political implications were clear: countering nationalist historians’ wholly negative portrayal of the colonial era protected the South Korean state that had inherited its modernizing legacies.
Analysis of the colonial economy, in fact, was arguably the origin and core of New Right historiography, the roots of which lay in the disillusionment among leftist scholars with nationalist frameworks for the Korean economy. Influenced by the materialist analysis of Marxist economic historian Paek Nam-un (1894–1979), who had searched for internal sources of Korea's historical development, leftist nationalist historians beginning with Kim Yong-sŏp (1931–2020) and Kang Man-gil (b. 1933) argued that colonial rule interrupted the economic modernization that had begun in the 19th century during the late Chosŏn Dynasty (Em 2013, 133, 151). The resulting historical framework, called “internal development theory” (naejaejŏk palchŏnnon) or the “sprouts theory” (maengaron), posited that the sprouts of capitalism were in place by the late Chosŏn, only for authentic capitalist growth in Korea to be blocked and distorted by Japanese colonial exploitation (sut'al). This theory stood as a counter to Japanese colonial historiography which argued that Korea was “stagnant” until colonization and could never have modernized and industrialized on its own (Em 2013, 12; Miller 2010).
But with South Korea's economic growth, many intellectuals grew dissatisfied with this nationalist understanding of the Korean economy. One of the most important converts from the Left was An Pyŏng-jik (b. 1936), a former Marxist economic historian.17 An had originally contended that South Korea could not be considered capitalist, for Koreans had never advanced to an autonomous capitalist stage because of their subordination to the Japanese and Americans. To unlock its economic potential and achieve a true capitalist development stage, South Korea had to escape its neocolonial relationship with the United States and become fully independent. Otherwise, South Korea's economy would eventually implode. However, South Korea's continued economic growth in the 1980s even after the collapse of the Park regime caused An to change his views on the possibility of autonomous capitalist growth in Korea, abandon his leftist politics, and join Japanese economic historians in declaring South Korea a successful “middle-developed” (chungjin) capitalist country (An Pyŏng-jik 2007, 49–69; Tikhonov 2019, 15).
Consequently, An and his disciples, including Yi Yŏng-hun, led the charge from the 1980s onward in countering existing nationalist paradigms about the Chosŏn and colonial economy, proposing a new framework called “colonial modernization theory” (singminji kŭndaehwaron). The premise of subordinate Korean colonial capital carried over from leftist scholarship, but, with the benefit of hindsight, rather than explaining the causes of a dependent South Korean economy, the colonial economy was viewed as the beginning of Koreans’ path to attaining capitalist civilization. Proponents of colonial modernization theory denied the existence of pre-colonial “sprouts” of capitalism, characterizing late Chosŏn as stagnant and lacking in modernity in a similar vein to colonial historiography (Miller 2010, 8–10). Moreover, these scholars, including in Chaeinsik, downplayed the narrative of Japanese exploitation of Korea and instead emphasized how the Korean colonial economy underwent sustained growth and significant structural transformation, while Koreans experienced higher standards of living, laying the material, institutional, and human capital foundations for future South Korean economic takeoff (Chu 2006; Kim Nang-nyŏn 2006). In short, the New Right asserted that the origins of South Korea's high-growth economy and modernity lay in the colonial era, implying that there were benefits to Koreans of colonial management of the Korean economy—a deeply unpopular claim among the mainstream of Korean society and academia—while also helping to “establish the legitimacy of subsequent South Korean governments” that were seen “as the inheritors of that colonial modernity” (Miller 2010, 11).
Problematizing the previously dichotomous representation of colonial-era collaboration and resistance became another focus of New Right revisionism. The field of collaboration studies in Korea had previously expanded the scope of notable collaborators to much of the ruling elite and contributed to delegitimizing the postwar South Korean regime (De Ceuster 2001, 230). To mitigate this effect, New Right scholars questioned the very concept of collaboration. Both Yi Yŏng-hun (2007, 102) and Pak Chi-hyang (2006a; 2006b, 17) asserted the futility of clear differentiation between the concepts of “resistance” and “collaboration,” while Yi (2006, 50–51) likened the fervor with which Korean nationalists attacked collaborators to religious fanaticism. These criticisms of the Manichaean portrayals of collaboration and resistance converged with Korean postmodern scholars’ emphasis on the “gray zone” between the two (Yun et al. 2006, 39), but the Chaeinsik editors retained a political agenda behind their reasoning. If the definition of and criteria for “collaboration,” “resistance,” and “nationalist” became unclear, the stigma from the historical figures, usually right wing, long suspected of collaborative activities would be removed. Acting in concert with the Japanese was unavoidable for the vast majority of the colonized if they were to maintain their livelihoods; thus, the argument went, political and economic leaders had no choice but to work with their colonial overlords. To support this contention, Pak and Yi interpreted Yi Hye-ryŏng's (2006) contribution to Chaeinsik on the han'gŭl movement's complex relationship with the colonial state as arguing that even a venerated symbol of nationalist resistance was susceptible to collaborative activity, even though that was not the author's main claim (Pak Chi-hyang 2006a; Yi Yŏng-hun 2007, 101–2).
The editors also questioned whether collaboration was necessarily a betrayal of the Korean nation at all. First, they asserted that collaborators made their choices for the benefit of Koreans as a whole, that they were nationalist in their own way. Citing Cho Kwan-ja's (2006) labeling of the notorious nationalist-turned-collaborator Yi Kwang-su (1892–1950) as a “pro-Japanese nationalist” (ch'inil naesyŏnŏllisŭt’ŭ) in her chapter in Chaeinsik, Pak Chi-hyang (2006a) contended that many Koreans turned to collaboration to further the interests of the Korean nation for a lack of better options.18 Yi Yŏng-hun (2007, 104–5) argued that other nationalist intellectuals were in a similar position in making the painful, paradoxical choice of collaboration to advance Koreans to the higher level of civilization that Japanese enjoyed. Second, the editors maintained that the eventual fruits of collaboration consisted of the successes of South Korea. Pak (2006b, 18) wrote that “unlike the upper-strata of pro-Japanese collaborators, technocratic collaborators contributed greatly to the construction of the state after liberation.” Thus, she argued that the “collaboration” of Koreans, particularly bureaucrats and technocrats, should not take away from their positive roles in the South Korean state. The hoped-for result by the New Right of questioning the concept of collaboration, while simultaneously expanding and partially erasing the category of “collaborator,” was the restoration of legitimacy to the South Korean state by removing the stain of collaboration from its early leaders and administrators.
Ultimately, the New Right's rejection of nationalist frameworks in analyzing the colonial past, as seen in Chaeinsik, was meant to weaken leftist nationalist historiography by rejecting its core premise of internal development, justify the South Korean state's economic links with the colonial regime by underlining the colonial economic foundations of South Korea's impending industrialization drive, and diminish the impact of collaboration as a factor in determining legitimacy by relativizing it and denying its analytical value.
Reconsideration of the Founding of the South Korean State and Syngman Rhee
In addition to the critique of nationalist paradigms of the colonial past, New Right scholars attempted to reverse the negative characterizations of the formation of South Korea in 1948. Noting that August 15 was the day of both national liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 as well as South Korea's founding three years later, New Right intellectuals lamented that the public only cared for the former. To mark the sixtieth anniversary of South Korea's establishment, several New Right scholars, in a series of lectures (Kim Yŏng-ho 2008a), proclaimed that South Korea's creation in 1948 was of “revolutionary” significance as the first modern, liberal democratic nation-state in Korean history (No 2008, 13) and signified “true liberation” (chinjŏnghan Kwangbok) because it was through the state that the Korean nation attained its success (Kim Yŏng-ho 2008b, 79). Moreover, New Rightists viewed the founding of South Korea as the fruit of Koreans’ decades-long search for a modern state and liberal democracy (Kim Yŏng-ho 2008b, 94). The debate over how to remember August 15 turned into a public controversy after conservative politicians, including the Lee Myung-bak administration, sought to change the official designation of the August 15 national holiday from Liberation Day, or Kwangbokchŏl (literally translated as Day of the Restoration of Light), to Kŏn'gukchŏl (literally translated as State Foundation Day). Although the move to rename the holiday failed, the debate about which event to commemorate continued. As Patrick Vierthaler (2018, 167) argues, the heart of the controversy was not about whether South Korea was founded in 1948, but a clash between two uncompromising interpretations of Korean history, one centered on the ethnic nation and one on the state. The “Kŏn'gukchŏl Dispute” and New Rightists’ emphasis on South Korea's historical significance firmly established modern Korean conservatism's adherence to the latter.
Intertwined with this effort to alter public perceptions of South Korea's early history was the rehabilitation of the image of Syngman Rhee, South Korea's first president. Long unpopular and widely remembered as an authoritarian, hard-line anti-communist under whose rule democracy and the economy both floundered while corruption flourished, the New Right recast Rhee a patriot who, through his wily moves, steered South Korea on the right path when at its weakest and most vulnerable. According to Yi Yŏng-hun (2007, 234–35, 239), Rhee was a “realistic” (hyŏnsilchŏk) and “pragmatic” (sillijŏk) politician who faced the daunting task of state building (nara seugi) during a time of turmoil and stark political polarization. While effusive in their praise for Rhee's firm belief in and institutionalization of liberal values and liberal democracy during both his lifetime and presidency, New Rightists simultaneously wrote that it was both inevitable and warranted that certain liberal democratic norms would be contravened to ensure the survival of the republic given the communist threat (Yi Chu-yŏng 2011, 224). Authoritarian practices such as the closure of the opposition-affiliated newspaper Kyŏnghyang sinmun and the execution of progressive politician Cho Pong-am, both in 1959, were downplayed (Yi Chu-yŏng 2011, 226). Meanwhile, the 1952 Pusan Political Crisis, during which Rhee coerced lawmakers to enact a constitutional amendment that allowed for direct presidential elections to ensure his victory (Ra 1992), was justified because Rhee was the only viable, politically competent leader in a time of crisis who possessed a vision and goal beyond his own self-preservation and self-aggrandizement (Kim Il-yŏng 2006a). New Right scholars depicted Rhee as the resolute, Machiavellian leader that South Korea needed during the early period of internal instability and external threat (Kim Yŏng-ho 2008b, 91–92; No 2008, 21–27).
Rhee was also credited for laying the groundwork for future industrialization and democratization. Political scientist Kim Il-yŏng (2006b) asserted that the land reforms implemented under Rhee, previously downplayed by leftist scholars, broke the economic and political power of the landlords and opened the door for new capitalists to replace them in the transitioning economy, and second, the reforms redistributed political power downward and facilitated the development of democracy in Korea. Rhee was also praised for his development of the social infrastructure such as education that facilitated South Korea's transition to high-speed growth (Pak Chi-hyang 2006b, 20; Yu 2006, 452–60). Yi Yŏng-hun (2007, 247–48) argued that the future prosperity of South Korea was achievable thanks to the state-building process Rhee began, while An Pyŏng-jik (2007, 162) contended that the 1950s were a transition period in which Koreans fine-tuned the developmental model that served as the blueprint for growth in the 1960s.
Alongside its critiques of nationalism, by salvaging Syngman Rhee's reputation and emphasizing the historical significance of South Korea's founding in 1948, the New Right sought to mitigate the leftist attack of the illegitimate origins of the South Korean state. Highlighting the basis for economic growth and liberal democracy that were ostensibly laid during the early years of South Korea, New Right scholars sought to shift the terms of the state legitimacy debate away from nationalism. These defenses of Rhee and the early South Korean state despite their authoritarian actions lay bare the statist core of New Right narratives.
Conclusion
Although many professional historians accepted the need to move beyond nationalist paradigms of examining Korean history, most scholars dismissed New Right historiography for its blatant political motivations and objectives. Frustrated in its efforts at reshaping academic historical scholarship, the New Right swiftly turned its attention to reshaping public historical views through textbook reform. These endeavors, beginning in 2008 with the publication of “alternative” (taean) textbooks to compete with what conservatives viewed as left-leaning mainstream textbooks, culminated in an alliance with the Park Geun-hye administration to revert from a certification to a state-published (kukchŏnghwa) textbook system, a policy that failed only after Park's impeachment and the inauguration of Moon Jae-in in 2017. And just when it appeared as if New Right historiography had finally reached the end of its relevance, Panil chongjokchuŭi became a best-seller.19
Korean conservatives’ early attempts to control nationalism were perhaps doomed to fail from the beginning. Anti-Japanese nationalism, because of the circumstances of Korean history, has been innately an anti-colonial nationalism, which has often associated with the Left in other postcolonial societies in which elites have had a history of cooperation with the colonial powers. The Right sought to identify with and propagate anti-colonial nationalism through the discourse of anti-communist nationalism under the Rhee and Park regimes. But the leftist nationalist historiography in the 1980s demonstrated the deep links that conservative elites and the South Korean state possessed with Japanese colonialism and American neocolonialism. Even though leftist nationalist historiography began to recede from the Korean academic mainstream in the 1990s, the damage to conservatives’ and the South Korean state's (anti-colonial) nationalist credentials was already done, lingering to the present. The anti-nationalism of the New Right was the result of conservatives’ process of coming to terms with no longer being able to wield nationalism as a political weapon and their determination to dilute its effectiveness in the hands of the Left.
In comparing the South Korean New Right to other movements around the world, the most similar case on the surface appears to be contemporary Japanese conservatism. In addition to neoliberal economic policy, Abe Shinzō and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have also embraced historical revisionism that restores a more positive reading of the modern Japanese past (Nakano 2016; Saaler 2016). It is not a coincidence that South Korean New Right historical narratives bear similarities to those pushed by Japanese right-wing historical revisionists. As Tikhonov (2019, 14–17) observes, the efforts to overturn a critical view of modern Japanese history resonate deeply with South Korean conservatives, even to the point of borrowing specific vocabulary.20 Similar to the South Korean case, Japan's historical controversies have been driven by the Right's concerns about the weakening of its domestic political position, Japan's international status, and of Japanese national identity because of the perceived spread of critical histories of Japan's wartime past.
What distinguishes Japanese right-wing discourse from the South Korean one is the lack of separation between nation and state in the former—in other words, the unspoken assumption that the nation and state are congruent. In Japanese historical revisionists’ reinterpretations of the past, the actions of “Japan” are those not just of the state, but implicitly of the combined nation-state. Hence, the revival of nationalist history that the Japanese right wing seeks is synonymous with a statist history; the admonition against “masochistic” (jigyakuteki) history is directed against leftist histories that condemn both the state and nation. The Japanese rightists have been able to use their nationalism aggressively, tying their historical revisionism to amending the Peace Constitution and demanding a more assertive international posture, whereas South Korean conservatives have fought a decades-long battle simply to reshape the contours of what constitutes historical legitimacy. It is possible that the current LDP is what South Korean conservatism would have looked like today had it not been for the leftist intellectual revolt in the 1980s.
As the story of the New Right demonstrates, historical interpretations of the Korean past are intimately tied to the country's political struggles. Indeed, one's historical perspective is a useful predictor of one's political position and vice versa. In these conflicts, nationalism has played a unique role in determining which side gains the upper hand by imbuing or removing historical legitimacy. South Korea's status as a postcolonial nation-state has affected the relationship among nationalism, the Left, and the Right. South Korean conservatives are now taking the unique position of rejecting nationalism altogether and doubling down on their statism to weaken their progressive opponents and attempt to establish a new standard for historical legitimacy.21 The resurgence of New Right narratives in 2019 suggests that historiography as politics by another means is likely to continue in Korea for the foreseeable future.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professors Carter Eckert, Sun Joo Kim, and Andrew Gordon for their insights, expertise, and guidance throughout the process of research and publication. This research was supported by the Korea Institute of Harvard University, the Academy of Korean Studies, and the International Center for Korean Studies at the Kyujanggak Institute of Seoul National University. All of the opinions and views expressed in this article, as well as any shortcomings or errors, are my own.
Notes
These included consecutive losses in the presidential elections of 1997 and 2002; the unsuccessful impeachment of progressive president Roh Moo-hyun in 2004; and the conservatives’ loss of the legislative majority in 2004 as public opinion soured on the impeachment effort.
Although conservatism and right-wing politics are not necessarily the same, I use “conservative” and “right-wing” interchangeably in this article. I follow Norberto Bobbio's (1996) conception of the left-right axis in politics, in which “right” expresses “anti-egalitarian” political stances. Conservative political movements in general espouse more anti-egalitarian political positions and thus significantly overlap with right-wing politics.
For more on the New Right's history as a political movement, see Ch'oe (2008). For the statement on the “death” of the New Right, see Chang (2008).
While this historiographical faction of the New Right is the focus of this article, the individuals and groups I label as the New Right form only a slice of a broader “New Right,” which consists of a diverse set of political and intellectual actors whose ideologies sometimes diverge.
By emphasizing the defense of the South Korean state's legitimacy, my definition of statism differs slightly from the Korean understanding of statism as kukkajuŭi, which prioritizes state authority over individual liberties and rights and possesses a meaning akin to understandings of fascism (Pak Ch'an-sŭng 2002, 201). However, the line is blurred whether the New Right seeks to emphasize state legitimacy to defend neoliberalism, or if state legitimacy is the end in itself. If the latter, “statism” here is not so distant from kukkajuŭi.
For more on the New Right's ideological campaign, see the multiple series on the movement in the Tonga ilbo: “Nyu Rait’ŭ, ch'immuk esŏ haengdong ŭro” [The New Right, from silence to action], running from November 7 to November 14, 2004, and “Nyu Rait’ŭ, punyŏl esŏ t'onghap ŭro” [The New Right, from schism to unity], running from December 1 to December 7, 2004.
Although the basis of Korean discourses on unification, North Korea, and the concept of tanil minjok (singular ethnic nation) has gradually shifted from ethnicity to culture (Campbell 2016), anti-Japanese nationalism has remained strong, especially after the turbulence in bilateral relations in 2019 (see Kim and Kang 2019). Campbell herself (2016, 100) notes “the intense anger and nationalist sentiment” among younger South Koreans over issues such as Japanese history textbooks, Tokto/Takeshima, and the East Sea/Sea of Japan.
Yi was active as a historian, military officer, and government official, including a stint as minister of education under Rhee. Yi was also a confidante of Park Chung Hee, regularly visiting the Blue House and personally delivering lectures on history to Park and his Cabinet. For more on Yi, see Pak Ch'an-sŭng (2008).
Chuch'ejok here signifies the view of the Korean nation as the autonomous historical subject that maintained its agency even through its numerous crises.
Yi Pŏm-sŏk was the first prime minister and first minister of defense of South Korea; he held the two posts concurrently. An Ho-sang was the first minister of education. For more on Yi, An, and their ideology of ilminjuŭi, which has been considered by recent scholarship as a Korean-style fascism, see Pak Ch'an-sŭng (2002).
The first volume of Insik was published in 1979, and the final volumes of the six-book series were published in 1989.
This process had already begun in the 1950s due to, ironically, the mass education system under Rhee; the curriculum inculcated in students the prioritization of serving national interests even at the expense of the state (C. R. Kim 2017).
See the weekly moral education lessons published in the Kukpang ilbo.
Many contributors expressed anger and embarrassment at being misled by the editors regarding the political intent behind Chaeinsik (Yun et al. 2006, 12–13).
Among the editors, only literary scholar Kim Ch’ŏl was not an admitted New Rightist, while Yi Yŏng-hun and political scientist Kim Il-yŏng were strongly associated with the movement.
The “386 generation” denotes those Koreans, particularly those with leftist politics, who reached their thirties in the 1990s, went to university (and were active in the student movement) in the 1980s, and were born in the 1960s.
An was involved in debates among leftist scholars that preceded a schism within the student movement in the 1980s between the nationalist National Liberation (minjok haebang), or NL, and the class-oriented People's Democracy (minjung minju), or PD, factions (An Pyŏng-jik 2007, 49–54; Em 1993, 469; Shin 1995).
Cho argued that Yi Kwang-su was a nationalist because Yi maintained his advocacy for Korean interests, calling on the Japanese government hold to its assimilationist rhetoric and eliminate discrimination and inequality against Koreans.
New Right–affiliated scholars such as Yi Yŏng-hun have also built large online presences, especially on YouTube.
Characterizations of leftist history in Japan as “masochistic” (jigyakuteki) were repeated in South Korea (chahakchŏk) to deride the historical views of the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration, first by Sin Chi-ho in 2004 (Ha 2007, 185). Kim Yŏng-ho (2008b, 77) also used that term in his 2008 lecture.
The rise of anti-Chinese rhetoric among conservatives in the wake of the controversial deployment of THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) in South Korea in 2016–17 and the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019–21 raises questions about whether the Korean right wing has truly abandoned nationalism, or merely abandoned anti-Japanese nationalism in favor of anti-Chinese nationalism.