Nam-Lin Hur

The full abstract for this thesis is available in the body of the thesis, and will be available when the embargo expires.

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This dissertation, entitled “Between the Pillar of State and Social Stigma: Military Reform and Military Exile in Chosŏn Korea, 1863–1894,” examines military reform policies and the concurrent enforcement of military exile from 1863 to 1894 during King Kojong’s reign. While the Chosŏn government undertook military reforms to bolster its defenses against escalating foreign threats and emphasized the military’s importance, it paradoxically employed military service as punitive measures for offenders, adhering to traditional legal norms. This study argues that, contrary to the prevailing perception of military reform as a process of “modernization,” the Chosŏn government’s policies remained deeply entrenched in traditional values, prioritizing civil over military ideals and lacking any objective to fundamentally transform the military system. Furthermore, the sustained implementation of military exile underscored King Kojong and the ruling class’s perception of military service as a form of social disgrace.This dissertation is organized into three chronological chapters. Chapter One reexamines the characteristics of military policies, the changing status of military officials within the government, and the development of military exile during Taewŏn’gun’s regency from 1863 to 1873. Chapter Two explores King Kojong’s military reform policies, which reversed Taewŏn’gun’s major military agenda, including military exchanges with foreign states, efforts to strengthen royal guards, and the expansion of military exile to enforce national policies during the king’s first decade of direct rule between 1873 and 1884. Chapter Three examines King Kojong’s military policies and the enforcement of military exile during his second period of direct rule (1884–1894), highlighting Chosŏn’s continued reliance on Qing China’s military forces—grounded in traditional international relations—and the persistent implementation of military exile until the Kabo Reform of 1894.Through the analysis of military reform policies and the military exile practice, this study illuminates the characteristics of military affairs in Late Chosŏn during the late 19th century. It examines the contradictory nature of these reforms and the enduring influence of tradition, offering deeper insights into King Kojong and the ruling class’s stance on military reform while shedding light on the broader nature of the regime’s reform policies during this pivotal period.

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In 1882, a boat carrying Chinese merchants landed at the Korean port of Inch’ǒn, after the conclusion of the Sino-Korean Trade Regulation between Qing China and Chosǒn Korea. These newly arrived Chinese merchants, under the protection of the Qing legation in Chosǒn as guests of Chosǒn's suzerain state, were expected to enjoy favorable privileges in local business and trade in this foreign territory. This thesis examines the evolution of Chinese merchants' economic activities and their daily lives during the late Chosǒn period, with the objective to use the Chinese-in-Chosǒn case to re-cast the way IR understands imperialism and the Qing’s defensive imperialism in Chosǒn in the late nineteenth century. The thesis comprises five chapters. Chapters 1 through 4 chronicle the journey of Chinese merchants, starting from their discrimination in Japanese settlements, the establishment of Chinese settlements in Chosǒn, and their temporary dominance in the fabric business. Despite the challenges stemming from the Qing authorities’ limited understanding of international law and intense competition and conflicts with Japanese merchants, Chinese merchants achieved temporary economic prosperity in the Korean peninsula during the early 1890s. However, their circumstances underwent a significant transformation with the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in1894. Chapter 5 delves into the difficulties Chinese merchants encountered when all their privileges were revoked. Sino-Korean tributary relations was terminated following the war, but prior to that, the Qing Dynasty made concerted efforts to preserve this relationship. The arrival of Chinese merchants on the Korean peninsula were integral components of Qing's strategy to uphold its suzerain state status over Chosǒn. This thesis posits that Qing China's approach in the Korean peninsula significantly diverged from the intentions and practices of other imperial powers, and it provides a comparative analysis with Meiji Japan's approach for context. Chinese merchants' arrival on the peninsula aimed at competing with their Japanese counterparts and maintaining Qing's authority over Chosǒn. Given the Qing Dynasty's aim to sustain its tributary relationship with Chosǒn, this thesis concludes that the Qing's approach can be characterized as a form of defensive imperialism in late Chosǒn Korea.

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This dissertation involves an examination on the social mechanisms of trust and cooperation in Tokugawa society from the unification in the early seventeenth century through the end of the samurai rule in the late nineteenth century. In this project, I examine nearly seven hundred Tokugawa-period agreements, namely Bonds of Trust (tanomi shōmon), to understand how they emerged and buttressed social cohesion in early modern Japan. They were written promises primarily used to elicit cooperation within a group of Tokugawa villagers when they stood in resistance to competing groups and samurai feudal rule. In my discussion that centers on their connections to ukebumi (“letters of acceptance”) and kishōmon (“divine oaths”)—the contracts of ancient origin which traditionally employed the threat of divine punishment as a deterrent to defection—I shed a light on the new function of these Bonds of Trust by examining how they rose in dominance over the covenant with kami and buddhas and emerged as a secular institution for meting out rewards over the course of Tokugawa period.

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This dissertation investigates the Late Chosŏn Korean vernacular music genre known as chamber music and a new music community comprised of professional musicians from diverse social strata, including female musicians in chamber music practice. I raise a series of questions about music practice in social relations: the formulation of the court music domain in the Confucian platform; cultural assumptions surrounding musical activity and the place of musicians; the characteristics of chamber music among the cultivated and the vulgar; the agency of musicians in social distinctions, such as class, gender, and region, in the Late Chosŏn and the specific positionality of female musicians in diverse music venues.₃ The dissertation is divided into four major chapters. The first chapter covers the issue of ideal music within a Confucian framework, the taxonomy of court music, the contentions surrounding the enjoyment of music, and the movement of court musicians into private music venues in the Late Chosŏn period. The second chapter deals with the formation of chamber music, focusing on the specific location of chungin (second status) musicians who had multifaceted relationships with the patron group from the upper class and their interventions in the reshaping of chamber music as cultivated. The third chapter deals with female musicians called kinyŏ (known as female entertainers; courtesans), not least interrogating the complex character of the female musicians who performed both for official ceremonies and in private chamber music venues. The fourth chapter delves into the voices and narratives of kinyŏ that included their strategies as part of the struggle for social recognition. I further examine the environments of kinyŏ who engaged in commodifying the musical and cultural assets in kibang (known as pleasure quarters) and pursue the intricate connection between female musicians and the urban entertainment business in the Late Chosŏn period. My analysis of chamber music and professional musicians articulates the dynamic cultural forces that reformulated the dominant aesthetic based upon Confucian morality. The heterogeneous social realities captured in the music scene will enable us to reconsider Late Chosŏn society, which has been explained with the blanket term “Confucianization” applied to all social levels. 

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This study reassesses the politics of religious institutions from the late medieval to the early Tokugawa era in Japan. It suggests that the dominant discourse on the topic has been constrained by a theoretical tension between religion and the state as the main framing device. What has been overlooked is the interplay between geographical manifestations of religion and politics. This study examines documents of the Kōyasan Buddhist temple, to learn how monks overcame tensions at the contested space of the temple from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It was found that in the late medieval period (fourteenth to the late sixteenth centuries), the numinous power of the temple was exploited by monks to transform themselves into regional overlords. Monks controlled land through the medium of a sacred landscape and governed the region in unison with deities. This changed with the emergence in the late sixteenth century of the unified state of early modern Japan. The state curtailed the potential of the sacred to give rise to autonomous power, all the while consolidating its hold by ritually tapping the numinous power of a national landscape. It also entrenched its power at the heart of the temple society by issuing land grants. Accompanying this shift was an epochal change in the manner by which the temple space was organized. In the medieval period, monks forged a ritualized unity to overcome conflict and impose order. The unitive impulse was broken inadvertently by the state with its land grants. Internal divisions hardened and it no longer became possible to overcome differences. Divided groups then tapped the state’s judicature to rebuild their society. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, the source of order at the temple shifted from the sacred to the state. For monks, both authorities were higher powers that they needed to contain the fluidity of their contested space.

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This dissertation examines the issue of clerical marriage among Korean Buddhist clerics during the Japanese colonial period in Korea. The majority of celibate monks and scholars in South Korea accuse clerical marriage of bringing about the deterioration of “pure” Korean Buddhist tradition. This dissertation argues that clerical marriage was, in fact, one of the survival tactics of Korean Buddhist monks who were confronted with significant changes foisted upon them under Japanese colonial rule, changes that included the introduction of the modern household register system and the change in the relationship between teacher and pupil in Korean Buddhist monasteries. Clerical marriage can be seen as a barometer that exposes the complicated relationship of Buddhist ethics and colonial rule. The dissertation is divided into five major chapters that proceed in chronological order. Chapter One revisits late Chosŏn Buddhism, a period which saw the emergence of a “dharma family” that allowed monks to bequeath their private property to their dharma descendants with the purpose of its being used for memorial services. Chapter Two examines the temple bylaws and clerical marriage in the 1910s. Temple bylaws brought the issue of “clerical marriage and meat-eating” to the surface for the first time in the history of Korean Buddhism. Chapter Three discusses the revision of the temple bylaws in the 1920s that, in essence, removed the disadvantages previously experienced by monks who married and ate meat. Chapter Four centers on the hot debate over clerical marriage in 1926, and analyzes the way in which Korean Buddhists understood clerical marriage and the revision of the temple bylaws. Chapter Five traces the practice of clerical marriage through an examination of the household registers of Korean monks, and addresses the way that the modern household register system became intertwined with the spread of clerical marriage. This chapter also shows that clerical marriage was practiced by full-fledged monks in the early 1920s. A close examination of clerical marriage and its multiple facets by presenting concrete and tangible examples of Korean married monks may provide a deeper understanding of just how Buddhist ethics, modernity, and colonialism were interwoven.

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This study examines the development of the concept of “bushido,” or the “way of the warrior,” in modern Japan, focusing on the period between the mid-nineteenth century and the early 1930s. The popular view holds that bushido was a centuries-old code of behavior rooted in the historical samurai class and transmitted into the modern period, where it was a fundamental component of Japanese militarism before 1945. In fact, the concept of bushido was largely unknown before the last decade of the nineteenth century, and was widely disseminated only after 1900, especially after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. This study argues that modern bushido discourse began in the 1880s, and was dependent on political and cultural currents relating to Japan’s modernization and the nation’s attempts to redefine itself in the face of foreign “others,” primarily China and the West. Following more than a decade of largely unquestioned thrusts towards modernization and Westernization after 1868, Japanese thinkers looked to their own traditions in search of sources of national identity. The first discussions of bushido at this time were not the work of conservative reactionaries, however, but were conceived by relatively progressive individuals with considerable international experience and a command of Western languages. Some of the first modern writings on bushido clearly posit the concept as a potential native equivalent to the English ethic of “gentlemanship,” which was widely admired in late-nineteenth century Japan, and much of early bushido discourse should be seen primarily as a response to outside stimuli. This study examines the causes and effects of the “bushido boom” that took place between 1898 and 1914, which firmly established the concept not only in Japan, but throughout the world. In this context, this study analyzes the use of bushido by the Japanese military and educational system, as well as its popularization by prominent figures in the early twentieth century. This study also examines the reasons for the decline in the popularity of bushido between 1914 and the early 1930s, thereby providing points of departure for future research on the trajectory of bushido from 1932 to the present day.

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