2025/06/01 by Seungyop Shin · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Japanese History and Culture #Chinese history and philosophy #Asian Culture and Media Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/10357823.2025.2505053
openalex publication_date 2025/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Korean nationalist and Japanese colonialist narratives initially dominated historiography in colonial Korea, but this article shows how Marxist socialism helped intellectuals reinterpret Korea’s past through systematic analysis using novel frameworks such as class relations, social formations, and the motive forces of historical development. Among those who probed Korean history by applying Marxist materialism was Yi Ch’ŏngwŏn (1914–?), a prominent and prolific author. By investigating Yi’s views and works, the article illuminates his academic contributions, charts the evolution of his Marxist critique of colonialist and nationalist discourses, and explicates the role and significance of history in the context of colonial rule during the 1930s and 1940s. Facing the global capitalist crisis and Japan’s imperialist expansion, Yi situated Korean history within the conceptual scheme of the world’s forward progress, and defended his stance against critics from different ideological backgrounds. In his scholarly quest for a future beyond capitalist modernity, Yi adopted the Hegelian notion of the dialectic between ‘universality’ and ‘particularity’ to position Korean history within the teleological frameworks of human history. Yi’s efforts to overcome colonial Korea’s existing historiographies, however, ultimately reinforced the structure of domination, as he was confined to the dialectic’s binary form.