ABSTRACT
During the Asia-Pacific War, the spread of wartime discourses provided new political spaces for colonial intellectuals, Korean intellectuals in particular. While some Korean intellectuals chose to fully commit to the Japanese empire by being completely assimilated into “Japanese,” a converted Marxist intellectual and activist In Jeong Sik (1907- ?) and like-minded Korean figures grappled with the question of how the construction of an East Asian community would end up creating a new subjectivity in colonial Korea. Based on these observations, In Jeong Sik endorsed Japanese imperialism and was deeply involved in actual wartime economic projects in colonial Korea such as national land planning and he rationalized his collaboration as an endeavor to promote the status of colonial Korea. In Jeong Sik’s search for a new subjectivity continued in postcolonial Korea as he once again accepted Marxism. This chapter pays special attention to the question of how the notion of subjectivity dominated (post)colonial intellectuals’ thinking process. By taking a close look at In Jeong Sik’s wartime and postcolonial writings, this study aims to trace the trajectories of subjectivity formation in the intellectual history of (colonial) empire.
