• CONCEPT AND COMMUNICATION
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• no.24
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• pp.165-191
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• 2019

Since July 2019, South Korea and Japan have been engaged in a cultural and economic conflict which originated in the differing stances of the two governments on the issues of sexual slavery and forced mobilization of Korean laborers before and during World War II. This ongoing dispute is a reminder that the fact of colonialism and the question of how it should be interpreted have not gone away: these are still present tense issues. The book's subtitle The Origin of the Korean Elite, What Did They Do When They Came back to Korea? makes clear that the elite class which held power and influence in the newly born Republic of Korea were actually educated in Japan, at the Japanese Imperial University. This book examines evidence which sheds light on the motives of Korean students attending the Imperial University, describing their academic studies and their lives after the liberation. By revealing this enduring substratum of "Japanese origins" at the heart of the South Korean establishment, a current which is not generally realized by Koreans today, the book allows us to re-examine our origins and thus to better understand our present-day identity and situation. It also addresses the question of how to confront these difficult questions, proposing a "historicization of what happened during the colonial period," which is not about hiding or minimizing the importance of our origins, but about facing up to reality as it actually happened.