Roundtable Panel Information 

1. Yi Ch'ŏngwŏn (李淸源,1914-?) and his Korean History Research: Understanding North Korean Historiography's Roots

Presented by Dr. Vladimir Tikhonov  

This talk will deal with Yi Ch'ŏngwŏn (1914-?), an autodidact of humble origins who combined underground Communist activities with Korean history research and popularization in the 1930's and emerged in the late 1940's as the central figure in nascent North Korean historiography. His influential Research on Modern Korean History (朝鮮近代史硏究, 1947), translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian, was the first-ever attempted to outline the contours of Korea's modern transition by a North Korean historian. In this presentation, Dr. Vladimir Tikhonov will attempt to demonstrate how Yi's revolutionary and later state commitments influenced his Marxist approach to the issues of tradition of modernity in Korean history. Of particular interest is Yi's powerful critique of Korea's traditional legacy, as well as his complex engagement with Marxist - and inherently Eurocentric - idea of 'Asiatic mode of production' and his reluctance to search for any 'capitalist sprouts' in early modern Korean past. It is to be hoped that this exploration of Yi's historiographic contributions will be helpful in understanding the dilemmas and conundrums which Korean revolutionaries encountered when they first attempted to apply Marxism to the study of Korean history. 

2. North Korean Sources and Korean Intellectual History 

Presented by Dr. Vladimir Glomb

The talk will offer an insight into North Korean regime strategies and infrastructures related to the research and publications concerning pre-modern Korean thought from 1945 until nowadays. Even though a large part of Korean intellectual heritage was quickly purged as "old thought" right after the beginning of the DPRK regime, premodern thought and religion have continued to be studied within the first Marxist-Leninist, and later Juche ideology framework of the Korean national heritage. This talk will document DPRK archival practices, the canon of famous thinkers and intellectual currents, the theoretical and methodological concepts underlying both academic and popular perception of classical works and critical issues concerning our access to and possible modes of research on these sources. 

Discussion

Joined by Profs. Sixiang Wang and Namhee Lee, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA 

Dr. Vladimir Tikhonov is a professor of Koran and East Asian studies at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Oslo University. Previously, he taught at Kyunghee University (Seoul, 1997-2000). His research focusses on the history of modern ideas in Kora and currently on Korean Communist movement. He published Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: Beginnings (Brill, 2010) as well as Modern Korea and its Others: Perceptions of the Neighbouring Countries and Korean Modernity (Routledge, 2015).He also recently co-authored Intellectuals in Between: Korean s in a Changing World, 1850 to 1945 (Peter Lang, 2022) and co-edited Buddhist Modernitites - Re-inventing Tradition in the Globalizing Modern World (Routledge, 2017) and Military Chaplaincy in an Era of Religious Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2017). his most recent book is The Red Decades: Communism as movement and Culture in Kora, 1919-1945 (University of Hawai'i Press. 2023).   

Dr. Vladimir Glomb is a guest professor in the Institute of Korean Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and a researcher in Korean philosophy, Confucianism in general, North Kora, and Korean language and thought. He co-edited Confucian Academies in East Asia (Brill, 2020), The Lives and Legacy of Kim Sisŭp (1435-1493): Dissent and Creativity in Chosŏn Korea (Brill, 2023) and Beyond the State Examinations: Evaluations of Knowledge in Premodern Korea (Harrassowitz, 2024). His current book projects include a manuscript on Korean Confucian genealogies and a collected volume on North Korean humanities.     

This is part of the “Koreans in the World” project hosted by UCLA’s Center for Korean Studies. The event is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS Award Number: AKS-2023-SRI-2200001) as part of its Strategic Research Institute Program for Korean Studies.

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies, Academy of Korean Studies