On the Ideological Functions of Old Chosŏn in the Modern Koreas Today

Recorded: April 11, 2025
Event: Whither Global Antiquity? Retrospection and Future Directions
Citation: Logie, Andrew. “On the Ideological Functions of Old Chosŏn in the Modern Koreas Today,” Global Antiquity: Whither Global Antiquity (April 11, 2025).

by Andrew Logie (University of Helsinki)

In discourses of early northeast Asia, the polity of Old Chosŏn possesses two distinct yet closely entangled dimensions. One is the fact of an actual (proto-)historical entity attested for the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE and thought to have been located between modern Liaoning Province and northern Korea. The other is a broader ideological understanding that, since the thirteenth century CE through to the present, has elevated and reified Old Chosŏn as the “first state” in Korean history, according to it a mythological foundation projected back between 2333 and 3000 BCE. Today, this ideological aspect of Old Chosŏn functions as the mainstream understanding in which all citizens of Korea—including historians and archaeologists—are socialized. In popular discourse, the tension between Old Chosŏn’s paramount status as national ideology and the narrower historical understanding is exploited by advocates of pseudohistory to discredit professional scholarship, and as a legitimizing gateway to more exaggerated claims of ancient empire. In more nuanced ways, the ideological understanding also influences professional scholarship itself, which looks to the Bronze Age archaeology of Liaoning to understand the “origins” of Korea. This paper outlines the functions and entanglements of Old Chosŏn at the intersection of (proto-)history and ideology across the following spheres: national ideology and public history, scholarship and archaeology, and pseudohistory. I finish with a tentative comparison of the status of Old Chosŏn in Korea with that of Suvarṇabhūmi (the Golden Land) in Thailand. Proposing them as “ideological charters,” I highlight both their enabling and impeding functions to scholarship.

About the Speaker

Andrew Logie is an associate professor in Korean Studies at the University of Helsinki. Exploring narratives of the past, his research encompasses five areas: archaeological analysis of early Korea and Asia from late prehistory to early states; popular discourses of early Korea and Asia focusing on pseudohistory; comparative approaches to early Korea and Mainland Southeast Asia; Korean new religion; and Korean popular music history. Andrew teaches widely on modern and contemporary Korea focusing on social and cultural history.