An Experiment in Simultaneity and Immediacy in 1919 Colonial Korea - Boduerae Kwon

“Self-determination” and “Representation” in the March 1st Movement: An Experiment in Simultaneity and Immediacy in 1919 Colonial Korea
(followed by a conversation with Professor Hosam Aboul-Ela)

CEAS Lecture Series
April 29, 2019
Joseph Regenstein Library
Room 122
1100 E 57th St
Chicago, IL 60637

To commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the March First Movement in Korea, Professor Kwon will discuss the historical implications of the event in relation to the notions of “self-determination” and “representation.” The 1919 movement gave rise to a new sense of time among Koreans, one in which they felt that catastrophe and utopia were simultaneously imminent. It was with this newfound feeling of immediacy that the people of colonial Korea experimented with “self-determination” and “representation” on both the individual and national level. With a focus on the case of the “33 national representatives”—the individuals at the center of the movement who signed a proclamation of Korea’s independence—this talk examines Korean experimentation with a “democracy without parliamentarianism” under the influence of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of ‘national self-determination,’ arguing that the movement served at once to dismantle and revitalize the very concept of “representation.”

Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the University of Chicago Library.