우리들의 자화상

A Mapping of South Korean Studies of Modern Chinese History

This paper is a critical sketch of modern Chinese historical scholarship as practiced by South Korean historians, including myself. Drawing an intellectual topography of modern Chinese history in Korea today could help illuminate the way toward a vision of future South Korean historiography. I wish to note the following points in this paper. Firstly, I consider the political democratization of Korean society. Secondly, the generation gap. Thirdly, the research environment needs to be considered. The institution and the changing circumstances of universities cannot but affect the study of the historian in any way. Distinguishing ‘progress’ from ‘non-progress’ no longer produces meaningful results in modern Chinese scholarship. Rather, self-reflection on the study itself would be more significant. Korean researchers of modern Chinese history kept a distance from the ideological turmoil in Korea in the 1990s. They/We was afraid of being actively involved in the changing realities. They/We was negligent in deliberating on essential issues. I would like to attribute one of the reasons to the “standard research model," developed by the second-and third-generation scholars. This style of writing, which consists of explicating the significance of the research theme, examining precedent researches, discovering and reorganizing facts, and making a conclusion, is not the one and only possible format of a paper. This kind of standard research model will inevitably lead to disciplined writing regardless of the author's intention. With these problems in mind, researchers are required to make an effort to overcome the cycle of production and consumption in a research group itself. We should mention the ideologies and biases, as well as our research objectives in the paper in order to identify ourselves as much as possible. We also need to relativize our own argument and to be critical in using academic terms.