뉴스레터

The current globalization is a historical phenomenon that facilitates integration of the world as well as interpretation of the past from the present point of view. It is an interesting fact that from a global perspective of history, the Korean peninsula and wider Northeast Asia are not irrelevant to the globalization. In other words, the later 19th to the early 20th century was the time during which the systemization of imperialism and the integration of the world happened in Northeast Asia. Manchu and the Korean peninsula were influenced by the international policies of western imperialist countries and the mechanism for balancing the power worked in these areas. Particularly, the Korean peninsula was an area for competition where powerful countries competed to expand their influence with Russia and Japan fighting each other in the center of the scene and other countries cooperating in the form of alliance.

In another scene in the 21st century, Northeast Asia bordering the Yellow Sea and the East Sea is the place where global powers play a Great New Game while a similar power game is played in Europe near the Mediterranean Sea. Like this, the Northeast Asia surrounding the Korean peninsula has always been at the center of the world history. Therefore, it is important for us to examine the central reason why countries outside Northeast Asia turn their attention to this region and make histories in particular categories.

The urgency of developing a master narrative of history

Among the pictures at the bottom, there are historical arguments crossing the borders of nations on issues like the Northeast Project, Dokdo, war and peace and the diaspora of the Korean nation. For such cases, if a country fails to maintain its social network with surrounding nations, the situation will develop into a state where frictions, conflicts, crashes or even wars may arise depending on the existence of regional/local and national/state interests. The issues relating to history textbooks, which is likened to a history war between Korea, China and Japan, is part of the problems within the broader context. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a master narrative of history covering individual historical issues. The present and future development of researches on Northeast Asia will inevitably come to this end.

However, it has to be kept in mind that tensions may be created by 'invisible players' in this development. It is because, in the globalization process across the boundaries of individual nations, factors like heterogeneity and hybridity may cause identity chaos which will then lead to a new form of crisis and war. For this reason, Dipesh Chakrabarty, who has contributed to the globalization of history by seeking to provincialize Europe, discussed in his criticism on post-modern colonization that this task would perhaps be impossible. In contrast, it may also be impossible to centralize Northeast Asia, particularly centralize the Korean peninsula, in pursuit of globalizing the history.

Need to participate in re-reading and re-writing the history

In spite of this, attempts are currently being made to overcome these obstacles. In fact, a lot of scholars who are talking about globalization of history at present turn their attention to Northeast Asia and participate in reading and writing histories from a new perspective. At the center of the idea, these people demonstrate that a lot more stories about the present and future rather than about the past can become histories. However, the task is not easy at all.

For example, before and after the centenary of the Russo-Japanese War, researches that attracted our attention were those approaching the war from a global perspective. The researches reinterpreted the Russo-Japanese War as 'World War Zero' and expanded the time and space boundaries of the war, which had stayed within the regional context, and attempted to overcome the existing discussions on history centering around Russia, Japan and the Europe. However, I have repeatedly mentioned that they had failed to have an in-depth knowledge about the Korean issues relating to the areas adjoining the Amnok River, which inevitably led to repeating the previously claimed cause of the Russo-Japanese War. However, the incident at the Amnok River has not been brought back to the historical arena that has to be remembered.

Repeating my comment, in 1903 just before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Korea, Russia and Japan competed with each other on how to lease and open the land adjoining the river. This competition was actually a skirmish of the later war. It was a Korean drama of the Russo-Japanese War in which Japan, seeking cooperation with Britain and the US, was on one side while the Empire of Korea expected Russian support on the other side. This was an Asian Morocco Event comparable to the Morocco Incident in Europe, which led to the First World War. This is why the so-called Russo-Japanese War is also named the war of the Korean peninsula or a world war.

As such, rereading of the history is based on the trans-regional position that an even happening in a small space like the Korean peninsula inevitably crosses the country's border and is linked to broader Northeast Asia, Europe and America. And the time frame is extended from the First Sino-Japanese War through the First World War to the Korean War to place individual events in the long change process. This is the historical technology with which the Korean history is placed within the broader context of the world history.

What should be done for this purpose? Researches oriented for globalization of history should be able to see that our history has more elements of globality than those of modernity according to our experience. In addition, the most important part of the task should not just be collection of first-hand historical records, but rather be able to develop and compare ideas based on the first studies of other historians, seeking global correlation proposed by Bruce Mazlish, searching for a large long-term pattern pursued by Fernand Braudel and further looking for ways to understand the changes which will make clear the essence and meaning of the world history. People in this task should understand the greater importance of these.

In this global era, if one asks for a historical method of getting out of the Korean peninsula to look at Northeast Asia and the world, one of the answers could be the globalization of the Northeast Asian history. It will help diagnose and cure the present situation of our history education and hopeless world history education in which imperialist and colonial ideology has deeply penetrated, our discussions have been stained with history separation and social integration arguments, and we have become sick with national/people arguments and regionalization argument. This reflexive alternative will pave the way for putting our history in the context of the world history.