Non-Western colonial rule and its aftermath: Postcolonial state formation in South Korea.

Abstract

This dissertation begins with two questions regarding the postcolonial state formation in South Korea. First, how is it possible for the postcolonial state to simultaneously oppose and follow the colonial state in its structure? Second, what explains those characteristics of the postcolonial state formation in South Korea that differ from the cases that passed through Western colonial rule? Working through two analytical axes of colonial structure and non-Western characteristics of Japanese colonialism, I examine how Korean anticolonialisms were framed during the colonial period, and how this framing affected the postcolonial state formation. During the colonial period, three anticolonial nationalisms emerged: liberal nationalism, socialism/communism, and ethnic nationalism. The trajectories of anticolonial nationalisms hinged on how colonial structure was constituted. Native policy in particular, unintentionally as well as intentionally, framed the trajectories. By the end of the colonial rule, rightists remained, but liberal nationalism as an ideology was debilitated. Ethnic nationalism grew as a form of non-political intellectualism, produced as ideological contestation but also as the hegemonic inscription of colonial culture. In addition, the colonial state's different stance on liberal nationalism and socialism/communism produced antagonism between left and right. The postcolonial state culture, <italic>Ilminjuui</italic>, had its own idea of the state in which the state was identified with the nation and was depicted as a family in which the state-society distinction was nullified. It was statist as well as nativist. It was certainly nurtured by ethnic nationalism, but at the same time, it closely resembled the political culture of the colonizer. I identify two mechanisms that made this ironic resemblance possible. One was the simultaneous hegemonic inscription and ideological contestation that characterized ethnic nationalism. The other was the postcolonial political and ideological configuration that reproduced colonial political and ideological configuration, which enabled the politicization of ethnic nationalism that was homologically related to Japanese political culture. If the neotraditionalist colonial state stood negating liberalism and communism, the postcolonial state culture arose as an antithesis of liberalism and communism. The way colonial structure evolved imposed strong structural constraints on postcolonial politics in a way that led to the reproduction of colonial culture in the postcolonial state formation.