Carving Out Space for Korean History: Contributions of Korean Scholars in East Asian Studies in the United States, 1955–1965

Abstract: During the formative years of Korean Studies in the United States (1955–1965), many scholars from South Korea went to the United States and participated in establishing Korean Studies as an academic field and produced the initial knowledge of Korean history. With high linguistic competency in Japanese, Korean, Classical Chinese, and English and relatively easier access to historical sources in multiple academia, they produced the knowledge of Korean history in U.S. academia, where there were not otherwise enough scholarly sources and people to carry out the research. This paper examines the dissertations written by these U.S.-based Korean scholars and discusses their contribution to the early scholarship and the historical narratives and themes they produced. It points out how their works were influenced by their attempts to secure a space for Korean Studies within the United States, the larger East Asian narrative framework informed by modernization theory, and the use of South Korean positivist scholarship and Japanese colonial scholarship. This paper attempts to expand the understanding of Korean Studies by locating it in a more transnational and global context.