Modern Korean Historiography: Nationalist, Marxist, and Positivist Schools in Historical Debate

Modern Korean historiography has traditionally been analyzed through the framework of three competing schools that emerged under Japanese colonial rule. Nationalist historiography, exemplified by Sin Ch’ae-ho, arose in the early 20th century to empower anti-colonial struggle by crafting a unifying narrative of the Korean ethnic-nation (minjok). Socioeconomic (Marxist) historiography, pioneered by Paek Nam-un in the 1930s, sought to place Korea within universal historical laws of development, offering a deterministic vision of progress. The positivist school, represented by Yi Pyōng-do, emphasized objective, text-critical scholarship and became institutionalized through organizations like the Chindan hakhoe.

This tripartite typology, while a useful heuristic, inevitably simplifies a more complex intellectual landscape. Many historians' work does not fit neatly into these categories, and significant ideological differences exist within each school. For instance, both nationalist and Marxist historians often distanced themselves from positivism, which they viewed as potentially complicit with state power due to its claimed objectivity. Nevertheless, this framework accurately reflects how most South Korean historians understood their intellectual genealogy and political stance for much of the 20th century.

A significant shift began in the late 1990s with the emergence of postnationalist historiography. Influenced by postcolonial theory, this critique targeted nationalist historiography's totalizing narratives for erasing plurality and difference. Ironically, this postcolonial critique found an ally in South Korea's New Right, which welcomed its focus on the individual as a means to rehabilitate the country's anti-communist legacy. This convergence highlights how, since the 1980s, nationalist historiography had become closely associated with leftist politics.

To understand this evolution, one must examine how 1930s Marxist historiography was reconfigured into 1980s nationalist history. This requires analyzing the affinities and discontinuities in this intellectual genealogy, situating historical writing within specific political contexts. This chapter provides an overview of Korean historiography from the early 20th century to the 21st, focusing on the colonial-era foundations and the 1980s nationalist historiography of the colonial period and the Korean War.

Historiography Under Japanese Colonial Rule (1910-1945). The latter colonial period was formative, as the three schools crystallized into distinct modes of history-writing and political identification. By the 1930s, a climate of intense repression and wartime mobilization pushed many intellectuals toward collaboration or acquiescence. Figures like writer Yi Kwang-su and historian Ch’oe Nam-sŏn supported ‘imperialization’ (kōminka), viewing it as a pragmatic path to equality within the Japanese Empire rather than a betrayal of the Korean nation.

In this divisive context, Paek Nam-un published his seminal works, ‘Chosŏn sahoe kyŏngjesa’ (Social Economic History of Korea, 1933) and ‘Chosŏn ponggŏn sahoe kyŏngjesa’ (Economic History of Korean Feudal Society, 1937). Written in Japanese and published in Japan to evade censorship, these works challenged the prevailing ‘stagnation theory’ in Japanese scholarship, which portrayed pre-colonial Korea as backward and static. Paek argued instead that Korean society developed through universal stages—primitive communal, slave, feudal, and incipient capitalist—driven by internal socioeconomic forces.

Paek also critiqued nationalist historians like Sin Ch’ae-ho for their idealist focus on a unique national spirit (Volksgeist). He argued that such particularism inadvertently reinforced colonialist historiography by placing Korea outside universal world history. For Paek, Korea's particularity was merely a local manifestation of universal historical laws. His treatment of the Tan’gun foundation myth as a source for analyzing primitive social relations, rather than literal history, exemplified his materialist approach.

Employing Marxist theory and historical linguistics, Paek's work aimed to denaturalize social institutions like patriarchy, private property, and the state. He located the origins of class differentiation in the very formation of the Korean nation. While disputing the concept of a distinct ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’, he characterized Korean feudalism as an “Asiatic” variant of a universal form. Paek’s research was cut short in 1938 when he was imprisoned, preventing him from completing his study of ‘sprouts of capitalism’ in late Chosŏn.

Meanwhile, the positivist school, led by Yi Pyŏng-do, gained institutional ground. Trained in Japanese universities and working for the Japanese-compiled ‘Chosŏnsa’ (History of Korea) project, Yi and the Chindan Society emphasized rigorous textual criticism and “pure scholarship.” This school is later criticized for failing to challenge colonial narratives, unlike nationalist historians such as An Chae-hong, who was imprisoned multiple times for his anti-colonial activism and historiography.

An Chae-hong developed a unique nationalist historiography seeking a foundational Korean spirit (chongsin). He identified an ancient communitarian ethos called ‘Tasarijuŭi’ and used historical linguistics to argue that the figure of Kija was not a Chinese colonizer but a Korean feudal vassal, thereby refuting colonial narratives of Korea’s dependent origins. His work represents a strain of nationalist scholarship directly tied to anti-colonial resistance, contrasting with the accommodationist stance of some contemporaries.

This colonial-era dialectic between collaborationist positivism, materialist Marxism, and resistant nationalism established the contentious foundations for post-1945 historical debates. The legacy of these schools, and their subsequent transformations under South Korea’s authoritarian and democratic regimes, continues to shape vigorous scholarly and public debates about Korea’s past and national identity. The emergence of postnationalist critiques and their appropriation by new political forces demonstrates the ongoing, dynamic nature of historiography as a field of ideological contestation.