The residents of the three northern provinces of Korea have long had cultural and linguistic characteristics that have marked them as distinct from their brethren in the central area near the capital and in the southern provinces. The making and legitimating of centralized Korean nation-states over the centuries, however, have marginalized the northern region and its distinct subjectivities.Contributors to this book address the problem of amnesia regarding this distinct subjectivity of the northern region of Korea in contemporary, historical, and cultural discourses, which have largely been dominated by grand paradigms, such as modernization theory, the positivist perspective, and Marxism. Through the use of storytelling, linguistic analysis, and journal entries from turn-of-the-century missionaries and traveling Russians in addition to many varieties of unconventional primary sources, the authors creatively explore unfamiliar terrain while examining the culture, identity, and regional distinctiveness of the northern region and its people. They investigate how the northern part of the Korean peninsula developed and changed historically from the early Choson to the colonial period and come to a consensus regarding the importance of regionalism as a vital factor in historical transformation, especially in regard to Korea's tumultuous modern era.

Maps, Figures, and Tables AcknowledgmentsEditor's Note Introduction: Thinking Through Region Sun Joo Kim1. Residence and Foreign Relation in the Peninsular Northeast During the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries / Kenneth R. Robinson2. Choson-Qing Relations and the Society of P'yongan Province During the Late Choson Period / Kwon Naehyun3. Regional Identities of Northern Literati: A Comparative Study of P'yongan and Hamgyong Provinces / Jan Yoo-Seung4. The Shadow of Anonymity: The Depiction of Northerners in Eighteenth-Century ?Hearsay Accounts? (kimun) / Jung Min5. P'yongan Dialect and Regional Identity in Choson Korea / Paek Doo-Hyeon6. Dialect, Orthography, and Regional Identity: P'yongan Christians, Korean Spelling Reform, and Orthographic Fundamentalism / Ross King7. From Periphery to a Transnational Frontier: Popular Movements in the Northwestern Provinces, 1896-1904 / Yumi Moon8. Subversive Narratives: Hwang Sunwon's P'yongan Stories / Bruce Fulton9. The Missionary Presence in Northern Korea before WWII: Human Investment, Social Significance, and Historical Legacy / Donald N. Clark10. The Northern Region of Korea as Portrayed in Russian Sources, 1860s-1913 / German King and Ross King11. Images of the North in Occupied Korea, 1905-1945 / Mark E. CaprioGlossaryBibliography Contributors Index Maps, Figures, and TablesMAPSKorea at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 2.1 Road Used by Choson Envoys to Visit the Qing 11.1 Birth Rates 11.2 Literacy Rates FIGURES2.1 Illustration of Choson Envoy to Qing 5.1 Dialect and Regional Identity 9.1 Missionary Compound in P'yongyang TABLES2.1 Qing Embassies to Choson 2.2 Choson Embassy's Sojourn in Days by Region 2.3 Cultivated Land and Land Tax Revenues by Province in 1807 ? 2.4 Silver Presented to Qing Envoys and Interpreters in the Late Eighteenth Century by Province, in Yang2.5 Central and Provincial Government Silver Loans to Choson Embassies, in Yang 2.6 Shenyang P'alp'o Trade Privileges by Province, in Number of P'alp'o Granted 2.7 Products Traded at the Chunggang Market, by Province 5.1 Editions of the Iryun haengsilto 5.2 Word Comparison Among Three Editions 5.3 Comparison Between the Yongyong and Haeyong Editions 5.4 Editions of the Nogoltae 5.5 Editions of the Yombul pogwonmun 5.6 Word Comparison Between the Tonghwa Temple and Yongmun Temple Editions 5.7 Editions of the Kyongminp'yon6.1 Contemporary Standard Korea and P'yongan Dialects 9.1 Korean Christian Mission Statistics (as of June 30) 1908