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The Meanings of America in Modern Korea: A Study of Korean Diplomatic, Cultural, and Intellectual Engagements with America, 1852-1945

Abstract

The scholarship on the history of Korea-U.S. interactions (1866 onwards) remains limited from 1905 to 1945. As the Japanese protectorate ended Korea-U.S. diplomatic relations, scholars have often focused on the interactions up to 1905 and after 1945. In doing so, the literature occluded non-diplomatic interactions that continued throughout the colonial period and their significance to post-1945 relations and to Korean society generally. This dissertation redresses this issue by exploring pre-1945 Korean diplomatic, cultural, and intellectual engagements with America--with a focus on "Americanism" during the colonial period--and their significance to Korean society.

This dissertation argues that these engagements with America were significant to Korea's modern experience in two ways. First, within the contexts of colonialism and the global rise of the U.S. and "Americanism" post-WWI, a significant group of Koreans articulated America as the source of political and cultural solutions for Korea's colonial situation and upheld American institutions and developments as models. This articulation of America, in turn, had direct links to the adoption of American models in certain reform and development efforts in South Korea. Second, America became a significant vantage point for the contradictions of capitalist modernity and a specific reference point for articulating Korea's particularity.

This study asserts global dynamics as an inseparable dimension to Korea's engagement with America. The Koreans' discourse on America is explored in relation to the post-WWI rise of the U.S. and Europe's and East Asia's discourse on America in the 1920s and 1930s. This project's contributions are two-fold. First, by revealing the often overlooked significances of America in Korea during the colonial period, the project offers a way to historicize and better understand the discourses and patterns that govern post-1945 relations. Second, it highlights the temporal simultaneity and resemblances in Americanism in Korea with that of other parts of the world, and roots them in capitalism that allowed for forms of Americanisms to rise globally at the same time and make them gain currency in each region. Through this global framework and emphasis in the roots in capitalism, the project rethinks the tendency in Korean historiography to privilege Japanese mediation of Western civilization when examining the origins of modern Korea.

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