This volume contains translations--many appearing for the first time in the English language--of major literary, critical, and historical essays from the colonial period (1910-1945) in Korea. Considered representative of the debates among and between Korean and Japanese thinkers of the colonial period, these texts shed light on relatively unexplored aspects of intellectual life and take part in current conversations around the nature of the colonial experience and its effects on post-liberation Korean society and culture.

The essays, each preceded by a scholarly introduction giving...