ABSTRACT
In the Korean traditional calendar, which is based on the Chinese 60-year cycle, the name of each year is composed of two Chinese characters. The year 1905, which happened to be the forty-second year of the cycle, is called úlsa, and in that year Japan coerced Korea into signing the Protectorate Treaty in the aftermath of its victory over Russia. Decades later, with the completion of a full cycle, historian C.I. Eugene Kim pondered over the 1965 normalization treaty with Japan and asked, “Was 1965 to be another 1905 for Korea?” “It is, indeed, paradoxical,” he observed, “that, in this age when the concepts of progress and modernization have held such sway over the minds of Koreans, this cyclic notion from the cultural past still receives major attention.”1
