Emergence of "the Social" in Modern Korea: The Concept and Reality of "Society"

This paper examines how the new concept of "society" was accepted in the Korean historical context, dating from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, and attempts to explain how "the social" came to appear and was connected to the change in discourses. Four specific categories of people and media contributed to the acceptance and expansion of the concept of society: the Dongnip Hyeophoe and Dongnip Sinmun; Cheondogyo and the Mansebo; the patriotic enlightenment intellectuals and the Daehan maeil sinbo; and the Ministry of Education and textbooks. This paper first argues that there were three interrelated yet distinct meanings that coexisted within the concept of society: the social contract of individuals, the publicness of social associations, and the morality of integration. This concept was often used in order to express the subjectivity of individuals and/or newly emerging social associations as the foundation of the new publicness. In some cases, society was considered an organic unity integrated by morality. The paper then explains the tensions and confrontation that surrounded the notion of society during the 1920s. Such conceptual disagreements are interpreted via historical changes in the period, characterized by media development, socialism's influence on discourses and practices, and the development of individualism and social groups. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]