Detailed View and Coordination of Discourse on Korean Modern and Contemporary History

In this issue of Journal of History , modern and contemporary Korean history research trends published in 2020-2021 were reviewed. During this period, researches on Korean history covering the modern and contemporary period increased quantitatively by 11.5% of papers and 24.8% of books compared to the previous two years. The keywords of the research trends for each period focused on Complex space-time, colonial society, and resisting subjects of modern society. Among them, I pointed out the mass-production of personal biographies of the King Gojong period, criticism on the March 1 Revolution theory, the origins of modern social science, and the current state of oral research on the victims of the Korean War.BR Regarding historiographic discourses, criticism of the modern long-term continuity theory in Korea and new issues on the division between North and South Korea were reviewed. Here, I pointed out that the conflict between landlords and farmers in the late Joseon Dynasty and the task of modern land reform should be included. In addition, I argued that the provision of an alternative system for the division of North and South Korea and understanding of the separation of the Korean people should be regarded as “today’s problems.” In the conclusion, I emphasized the responsibility of historians to recognize the problems of digital history concerning the outlook of history and to set the coordinates of discourse in advance for the establishment of a significant discourse in human history.