The second issue ( 2.1) of Korean Histories is now available with articles on modern Korean historiography, the politics of remembrance in South Korea, a critical essay on historical Buddhist Studies in Korea, a reflection on copyrights, identity and Korean historical dramas in China and an article on Koryŏ historiography. This issue also contains a digitized version of a 1695 Japanese edition of the Chingbirok or Book of Corrections. As always, we welcome your feedback. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )




Articles:
The idea of stagnation in Korean historiography:
From Fukuda Tokuzō to the New Right
Owen Miller



When history is made:
History, memory and the politics of remembrance in contemporary Korea
Koen De Ceuster

Keep your enemies closer:
Protecting Korea’s pop culture in China
Roald Maliangkay

A search for new approaches to research on Korean Buddhist history
Jongmyung Kim

Writing history in Koryŏ:
Some early Koryŏ works reconsidered
Remco E. Breuker

Digital sources:





Kaibara Ekiken’s preface to Chingbirok:
A Japanese edition of the Book of Corrections
W.J. Boot

Download entire issue here.

Leiden University, The Netherlands, 4-8 October 2010

Within the framework of the research project “History as Social Process: unconventional historiographies of Korea,” sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies, the Korean Studies Department of Leiden University, The Netherlands, will organize a one-week intensive course for graduate students on the various ways representations of history are created, maintained or changed through novels, poetry, films, television dramas, etc., which interact in complex patterns with the historiography of professional historians and public opinion.

One part of the research project is the e-journal Korean Histories. Please refer to www.historyassocialprocess.org for the particulars of the research project. Faculty members of the research project are Professor Boudewijn Walraven, Dr Koen De Ceuster, Dr Remco Breuker, and postdoctoral fellow Jungshim Lee.

The theme of this year’s masterclass is forging and forgeries.

The inaugural issue of Korean Histories is now available with articles on the Cheju rebellion of 1901, the Korean involvement in the Vietnamese War, the place of religion in Korean historiography and historical novels by Yi Kwangsu. We welcome your feedback. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )




Articles:

Cheju 1901: Records, memories and current concerns - Boudewijn Walraven


Korea's forgotten war: Appropriating and subverting the Vietnam War in Korean popular imaginings - Remco E. Breuker


The failings of success: The problem of religious meaning in modern Korean historiography - Kenneth M. Wells


History as colonial storytelling: Yi Kwangsu's historical novels on fifteenth-century Chosŏn history  - Jung-shim Lee

Download entire issue here.

Korean Histories is a new on-line peer-reviewed journal that focuses on historiography as a social process in Korea. It is devoted to research that heavily relies on other sources than the conventional written historical sources and highlights the role these unconventional sources play in the formation of historical visions of groups, communities and both non-professional and professional historians. Social representations of Korean histories reveal much about the contents, dynamics and functions of historical narratives in society, in particular when unconventional, easily accessible and non-hegemonic sources such as music, art, religious concepts, the internet, blogs, advertisements or literary texts are used. Korean Histories intends to be a platform for articles that engage these issues and use these and other sources across a range of subjects and time periods. In the realization of its aim to present and to enhance the understanding of both widely accepted and alternative persectives on Korean history, Korean Histories covers a wide range of topics, approaches and periods, unified by the use of unconventional and informal sources and a continuously present awareness of the social functions of historiography.




Korean Histories is part of the 5-year research project History as Social Practice: Unconventional Historiographies of Korea of the Leiden University Centre for Korean Studies. This project is sponsored by a generous Korean Studies Institutional Grant from the Academy of Korean Studies of the Republic of Korea.