Anarchism in Korea

A regional and transnational history of anarchism in Korea. This book provides a history of anarchism in Korea and challenges conventional views of Korean anarchism as merely part of nationalist ideology, situating the study within a wider East Asian regional context. Dongyoun Hwang demonstrates that although the anarchist movement in Korea began as part of its struggle for independence from Japan, connections with anarchists and ideas from China and Japan gave the movement a regional and transnational dimension that transcended its initial nationalistic scope. Following the movement after 1945, Hwang shows how anarchism in Korea was deradicalized and evolved into an idea for both social revolution and alternative national development, with emphasis on organizing and educating peasants and developing rural villages. “In contrast to dominant Korean-language scholarship, this book has a dialectical understanding of the relationship between anarchism and nationalism, one that understands the importance of nationalism for revolution in the colonial context, but one that also shows convincingly that as anarchism in Korea grew and deepened, it acquired significantly transnational dimensions.” — Christopher Connery, author of The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China