Grafting justice : crime and the politics of punishment in Korea, 1875-1938

Abstract

This dissertation examines changing forms, functions, and meanings of punishment in Korea from the late nineteenth century through the late 1930s. In particular, it seeks to understand how various and often competing political and economic interests, conceptions of crime and proper punishment, and penal technologies and practices interacted in Korea to shape the emergence of a system of confinement-based punishment. While this process coincided with and was clearly affected by Korea's colonization by Japan, it is argued that punishment in Korea during these years should not be reduced to the simple function of political instrumentality, but can better be understood as a complex social institution. The various forms, functions, and meanings it displayed over time can only be understood in light of the complex and contradictory forces shaping them. Specifically, this study examines the process by which penal authority in Korea was gradually usurped by the Japanese and subsequently contributed to Korea's formal colonization; how Japanese claims to a penal civilizing mission were constructed, contested, and qualified; how principles of rehabilitative punishment were put into practice and affected by new theories of criminality; and the ways in which colonial punishment was experienced, contested, and negotiated at the human level in colonial Korea.