Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism

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Summary: Cutting edge study of Nationalism and Korea
Review: This book will appeal to anyone who is interested in cutting edge scholarship on the history of modern South Korea and more broadly, on Nationalism and Nation-building. Jager succinctly and brilliantly pulls together the dispersed and disparate strands of how a nation develops a modern conception of its identity. In the case of South Korea the focus is on the gendered aspect of that identity, which is not only rooted in tradition but also in new narrative conceptions of that tradition. By taking a long and broad view of the dispersed development of these parallel and gendered narratives of modern identity (long because Jager's account covers the whole of the 20th century, and broad because she delves into literature, politics, historiography, economic development, and monuments and museums), Jager is able to show why South Koreans are who they are today with the kind of social structure that comprises its modern nation. Although this book is invaluable in the insights it provides to South Korean national identity, the true value of the book lies in providing a new approach to the study of national identity that can be applied to just about any other modern nation. This book is a must for the specialist and the generalist, the particularist and the theorist, in all fields of the humanities and the social sciences.