Vladimir Tikhonov, Korean in the world: International solidarity and Korean modernity

Korean in the world: International solidarity and Korean modernity

Korean in the world: International solidarity and Korean modernity

While Korea’s 20th century is often discussed in terms of national movements and nationalism, it is hard to overlook the embeddedness of diverse articulations of Korean nation-hood in a variety of more global visions.



From its early 20th century beginnings, Korean nationalism was always international. It envisioned Korea either joining the ranks of the world’s dominant states or contributing to the struggles against the global system of domination. Even in the former case, however, narratives dealing with the weaker nations crushed by imperialist juggernaut were to be studied in order to avoid falling into the same trap. Most systems of Korean national(ist) thought used to exhibit keen interest in the fate of world’s weak and downtrodden.
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This presentation will deal with cases when this interest was strongly tinged by sympathy and willingness to solidarize with the victims of imperialist predations abroad. It will start with pre-1910 manifestations of sympathy with Vietnam’s and Egypt’s causes. It will also focus on largely forgotten colonial-age personalities such as Yi Yǒsǒng (1901-?), a polymath who wrote on the anticolonial struggles in places such as Egypt, the Philippines, Palestine, Vietnam, and on the anti-racist movements among the US Blacks. Additionally, it will dwell on both North Korea’s long-term and financially costly exercises in aiding the Cuban, Vietnamese, Palestinian, Zimbabwean and Black Panthers’ causes and South Korean engagement with Third World literature and thought in the 1960s-80s. The presentation will provide a general overview of global anti-colonialism’s place in shaping Korea’s long 20th century.

Professor Vladimir Tikhonov

Professor of Korean and East Asian Studies, Oslo University

Vladimir Tikhonov is a professor of Korean 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 focuses on the history of modern ideas in Korea. He recently published Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: the 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-edited Buddhist Modernities: Reinventing Tradition in the Globalizing Modern World (Routledge, 2017) and Military Chaplaincy in an Era of Religious Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2017).