Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation

JaHyun Kim Haboush (1940-2011) was the King Sejong Professor of Korean Studies at Columbia University. Her Columbia University Press publications include A Korean War Captive in Japan, 1597-1600: The Writings of Kang Hang (2013); Epistolary Korea: Letters in the Communicative Space of the Choson, 1392-1910 (2009); The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yongjo and the Politics of Sagacity (2001); and A Heritage of Kings: One Man's Monarchy in the Confucian World (1988). William J. Haboush is professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jisoo M. Kim is the Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

• Foreword, by William J. Haboush Introduction 1. The Volunteer Army and the Discourse of Nation 2. The Volunteer Army and the Emergence of Imagined Community 3. War of Words: The Changing Nature of Literary Chinese in the Japanese Occupation 4. Language Strategy: The Emergence of a Vernacular National Space 5. The Aftermath: Dream Journeys and the Culture of Commemoration Publications by JaHyun Kim Haboush Notes Bibliography Index

As the first work to thoroughly examine the formation of the Korean nation before the modern era, The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation is an enormous contribution to scholarship on Korean and East Asian history and to the study of nations and nationalism throughout the world. It is certain to cement JaHyun Kim Haboush's legacy as one of the most brilliant scholars of her era. -- Jungwon Kim, Columbia University, co-translator of Wrongful Death: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth Century Korea This singular book can be savored on many levels. The lover of fiction will find high dramas of alien invasions and sacked homes, replete with blood and valor worthy of Hollywood. The scholar-of East Asia or elsewhere-will be challenged to rethink the relationship between the nation, language, and modernity. It saddens me that there will be no more books by the incomparable JaHyun Kim Haboush after this one. -- Dorothy Ko, Barnard College, coeditor of The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory A welcome addition to recent scholarship... Haboush's manuscript leaves readers with much to ponder about the Imjin War, literature, and nationhood in the premodern world... Highly recommended. Choice Required reading for anyone interested in the discourse of a nation more generally and in this particular war. The Sixteenth Century Journal A welcome contribution to the study of Choson Korea. -- Nam-Lin Hur Journal of Asian Studies