Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories [Hardcover]

Hyung Il Pai (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 067400244X | ISBN-13: 978-0674002449 | Publication Date: June 1, 2000

In this wide-ranging study, Hyung Il Pai examines how archaeological finds from throughout Northeast Asia have been used in Korea to construct a myth of state formation. This myth emphasizes the ancient development of a pure Korean race that created a civilization rivaling those of China and Japan and a unified state controlling a wide area in Asia.

Through a new analysis of the archaeological data, Pai shows that the Korean state was in fact formed much later and that it reflected diverse influences from throughout Northern Asia, particularly the material culture of Han China. Her deconstruction of the uses of the archaeological finds by nationalistic historians reveals how they have been utilized to legitimate Korean nationalism and a particular form of national identity.

(20010301)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Pai takes an archeological perspective on how the Korean identity has been destroyed, altered, and rewritten. She explores the need for Koreans to reclaim their racial-national identity. She explores Korea's need for identity through the facts and arguments of social migration, ethnic diffusion, parallel evolution, and cultural trade and theft...This is an interesting book, at times quite provocative...[and] loaded with revealing facts...[Pai] has produced a studied research, a solid reference source that could be used in an activist's argument on Korean issues of identity.
--Bill Drucker (Korean Quarterly 20010601)

This major contribution to both intellectual history and archaeology traces and analyzes the stories fashioned by Japanese colonial scholars and Korean nationalists to account for Korean origins. Theoretically sophisticated, widely read, and armed with a fine sense of irony, [Pai] shows how, despite themselves, Korean nationalists accepted concepts developed by their Japanese predecessors, and how efforts to fashion a common ancestry to serve as the basis for a shared postcolonial national identity continue in both Koreas today...[Pai] goes beyond discussing the evidence or lack of same for various theories, and offers her own eminently cogent interpretation of cultural interaction with China and state formation.
--C. Schirokauer (Choice )

About the Author

Hyung Il Pai is Associate Professor of Korean History and East Asian Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067400244X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674002449
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #411,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dense but important for understanding Korean and East Asian nationalism, August 11, 2006

By 

Sin Chae Ho "a korean studies student" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories (Hardcover)

This book weaves together the separate fields of nationalist studies, archaeology, and history to show how the past has been used to construct a modern, Korean identity. Hyung-il Pai fills a large gap in the understanding of Korean identity in taking on difficult questions like: When was the first "Korean" state? What makes a premodern group of people or artifact "Korean?" How is the politics of the present projected retrospectively on the past in order to construct a basis for nationalism?

One caveat - this book is for the academic reader and contains much fluffy jargon. But at its heart, the arguement of this book is basically correct and needs to be understood more widely.

Final note - This book may upset Koreans, who have a deep sense of nationalism based on historical grievances against the Japanese. Pai's book shows how history is abused and distorted to establish a praiseworthy Korean history that is largely fictional. One could cite 10,000 examples of Koreans' historical inventions, but the most famous is that there was a Korean state 5,000 years ago called "Old Chosun" - this is based on an account of a myth written in the 12th century AD in the Samguk Yusa ("Miscellany of the Three Kingdoms") of a god coming down from heaven to transforms a bear into a woman and then marrying her, producing the founder of Korea. This demystification of Korean nationalist history touches nerves, as you can see from the other reviewer, but it is nonetheless a very necessary book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well written and persuasive, October 20, 2008

By 

Sharon Goetz (near San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories (Hardcover)

I read this book precisely because it goes out on an ideological limb (a limb that distresses one prior reviewer, apparently). Pai analyzes the nationalizing impulses of twentieth-century Korean and Japanese scholars, and she shows where their various claims are supported by archaeological or documentary evidence (and where they really aren't). I gather that she isn't a linguist, formally speaking, since her arguments tend to use non-linguistic evidence; those interested in Korean historical linguistics might browse Ho Min Sohn's The Korean Language (Cambridge Language Surveys).

Unlike other reviewers, I found the book straightforward to read and well constructed, but I'm accustomed to academic monographs (albeit in a different historical field). It's part of an ongoing scholarly discourse--it uses but doesn't abuse jargon, which is refreshing.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First rate - but difficult to plow through, May 2, 2007

By 

S. M Darragh "lirelou" (Seoul, Korea) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories (Hardcover)

The biases of those interested in this book are: Korea does/does not have 5000 years of history. The author is quite outspoken in his assertion that, if by "Korean" we mean a "Korean state", then a Korean state can only be traced as far back as the third century AD. Though the archeological record of those peoples who became modern Koreans go further back than that. He renders a valuable service in placing names to the various progenitors of the 5000 year history view, and the trends of thought that they represented. Not being tremenduously interested in archeology, my eyes glazed over with the myriad descriptions of dig sites that undoubtedly interest true archeologists. It is easy to see why this dissertation has offended so many Korean nationalists, particularly those in whose eyes the inhabitants of Gogoryo of 2500 years ago are identical genetic, linguistic, and cultural twins to modern day Koreans. A useful book for anyone interested in Korean origins, but targeted to those with more than an amateur interest in archeology.