The concept of photography in Korea: The genealogy of the Korean conception of sajin from the late Choson dynastic period through Japanese colonialism

The dissertation explores the emergence and transformation of the Korean conception of photography across the crucial social, cultural and political changes that mark Korea's history from the late Chosoˇn Dynastic Period through the era of Japanese Colonialism. It puts aside the notion of photography as a universal medium with its own internal historical evolution. Instead, it conceives of photography not only as a cultural technology and machinery of production but also as a discursive system.;To this end, the dissertation maps out the linguistic shifts and changing discursive frames, shaped by political, cultural and intellectual constraints as well as the intercultural relationship with Japan, that mark the word sajin [special characters ommitted]. The term sajin literally means "transcription of truth." Having been earlier applied to portraiture, it was later adopted as a translation for photography at a time of imperialistic expansionism in the late nineteenth century when Japan and Western powers began to encroach on the territories of Korea. Focusing on linguistic shifts of the term, this study examines how photography was assimilated into a Korean cultural frame and how a specifically Korean discourse on photography took shape. A genealogical study of the term and its extension to photography offers a means to trace the processes by which photographic technologies were not simply imported into Korea but were actively recoded in ways that responded to changing cultural and political conditions affecting Korea and its relations with Japan from the late nineteenth century to the colonial era. The language in which photography was defined and validated opens a window on a complex history of debates and a dense web of reference to Korean intellectual traditions, to intercultural relations between Korea and Japan, and to national projects only just emerging in a crucial historical period of transition. By following the shifts of the meaning of the term closely, this dissertation arrives at a critical analysis of the concept of photography as it developed historically that represents a marked departure from the way in which the history of the medium has been presented in earlier Korean histories of photography.