Lee Hong Yung - Colonial rule and social change in korea, 1910-1945; ed. by yong-chool ha

This book has had an unusually long history from its inception to its publication. Scholarly attention has long been directed at Japan's experiences with rapid economic development; in the 1990s, increasing evidence of South Korea's remarkable economic success, combined with widespread scholarly interest in Japan's colonization of Korea, resulted in a trend towards attributing South Korea's economic development to Japan's colonial legacy. This scholarly trend led Hong Yung Lee to write a paper on and organize a panel around the subject of appraising the Japanese colonial legacy in Korea at the Association of Asian Studies annual meeting.

Meanwhile, Yong chool Ha was working a paper that examined the origins of high school ties in Korea. Finding no materials on the topic, Ha felt the need to do further research into the colonial era, the period when high schools first opened in Korea. Realizing that our research interests dovetailed into one another, we agreed about the need to study the social legacy of the colonial era, not only in terms of the Korean economy, but also in terms of Korean institutions and modernization as a whole. One glaring absence in U.S. and European scholarly debates about the Japanese colonial legacy has been the perspective of Korean scholars from Korea; as such, we decided to launch a project that would introduce non-Korean audiences to research being done by Korean scholars on these issues. Unfortunately, the difficulty of accessing the work of Korean scholars on Korea persists to this dayso while late in coming, this publication is still very much worthwhile.

For making this project possible, we would like to acknowledge the late Jong Woon Kim, former President of the Korea Research Foundation. Mr.Kim understood the importance of this project from the outset and was extremely generous in providing support for it. Without his understanding and encouragement, this book would never have taken shape. We would thus like to dedicate this volume to him.

Funding provided by the Korea Research Foundation enabled Ha to organize a research group consisting of ten scholars, most of whom have authored chapters in this volume. A series of regular discussion sessions were held at Seoul National University between 1996 through 1999, and the first international workshop was held on July 15, 1997, with Korean scholars presenting their first drafts at the University of California, Berkeley. The second international workshop was held in Seoul in 2001 for which Clark W. Sorensen served as discussant, and who agreed to add his contribution and to bring the papers to publication.

On the Korea side, Myung Gyu Park has for many years been instrumental in not only organizing the group, but also in coordinating its discussions. The contributions that he has made to this project are greatly appreciated. At UC Berkeley, the Center for Korean Studies has provided generous support in accommodating various workshops associated with this project over the years. Many of the scholars who participated in those workshops have made numerous valuable contributions over the years. Among them are: Ken Jowitt, Peter Duus, and Lowell Dittmer. Their kind but critical comments and questions have been extremely helpful in honing and polishing these papers.

Over the years, the editors of this volume have accumulated quite a debt of gratitude to the numerous students, administrators, and editors who have worked on it. Yumi Moon, now an assistant professor at Stanford, worked as the initial coordinator for this project, and Sunil Kim, JeongWhan Lee, and Kyung Jun Choi have all helped us at different stages. Without their tireless support, this project would never have come to fruition.

The Center for Korea Studies at the University of Washington took over the task of polishing and editing the papers for publication under the direction of Clark W. Sorensen. The complicated origin of this manuscript has made this final editing task unusually laborious. We have spent much time smoothing out differences between Korean and American world processing systems, and citation practices. Thanks go to the Korea Librarian of the University of Washington, Hyokyoung Lee, for helping us track down illusive Korean and Japanese language citations. To make the articles from Korean contributorsmore accessible to English-speaking audiences, we have endeavored to reorganize articles to conform to American academic writing expectations and smooth the English into as natural-sounding a form as possible. Josh Van Lieu, Cindi Textor, and Hyokyoung Lee at the University of Washington provided