APDS-361 Modern Korean History (3)

This course seeks to understand Korea's experience of historical transformation from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century as well as changing interpretations of this past. Throughout tumultuous, humiliating, and very painful experiences, which involved the wrenching transformations from a unified Confucian state, to a colony of Japan, and now as a divided country, Korea still continues to produce its own distinct cultures, identities, and strong nationalism. By highlighting major events in Korea's modern century, including Western imperial incursions into Korea and Korea's responses, the fall of the Yi Dynasty, colonial subjugation, and the turbulent period of post-1945 through the Korean War of the 1950's, the course analyzes and evaluates the major historical themes, concepts, and controversies in Korea's modern transformations.

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