Colonial Epistemes in Post-Liberation South Korean Thought: Historiography in the Sasanggye Magazine of the 1950s–1960s

Abstract The public sphere burgeoned in Korea with the country’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, but it took South Korean intellectuals almost two decades to begin questioning the vision of Korean history formed under Japanese influence. This article explores the decolonisation of Korean historiography as reflected in the leading intellectual magazine of the time, Sasanggye (1953–1970). The analysis demonstrates a rapid substitution of the Japanese knowledge system with the American one and a more gradual change in Sasanggye contributors’ attitudes toward history, from the unconditional application of Western standards to a desire to write a “subjective history” of Korea from their own perspective. Still, the epistemology remained only partially decolonised as many epistemes of the colonial era persisted in the circumstances of colonial education-induced myopia, overwhelming American influence, national division and rivalry with North Korea, as well as the even more partial decolonisation of politics, economy, and diplomacy.