JaHyun Kim Haboush suggests that in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910), a discourse of nation emerged during the Imjin War (1592–98), shifted and intensified after the Manchu invasions (1627 and 1636–37), and persisted through the nineteenth century. The postwar discourse of nation regarding a vision of the land and the people, or more specifically, “the relationship between the individual and the state” (p. 4), argues Haboush, helped sustain and shape Chosŏn, implying that the longevity of the Chosŏn state owed much to it. It is a bold suggestion.

Haboush differentiates the postwar discourse of nation from what both primordialists and modernists tend to portray: the former stress “the antiquity and homogeneity of the Korean race” (p. 11) while the latter hold that “the nationhood of Korea as a narrative of transformation” (p. 11) started from the modern era. Focusing on the middle of the Chosŏn period, Haboush argues that “an assertion of popular sovereignty” (p. 17), which reflected the people's voluntary, open, and participatory action about state affairs, featured the postwar discourse of nation.

In explaining what “historical contingencies” (p. 14) gave rise to, intensified, and articulated—the discourse of nation—Haboush identifies four factors: the trauma caused by the wars that pushed the country to the brink of extinction; the local yangban elites who assumed, in place of the state, the role of guarding the country and culture; a diglossic space of classical Chinese and vernacular Korean that, during the wars, facilitated far-reaching communication among the people across the country; and lingering commemorative memories of the wars that empowered the people with a sense of agency.

At the center of these historical contingencies was the volunteer army, commonly known as ŭibyŏng, who rose in arms against the invaders when the state almost malfunctioned. With an effort to recruit fighters, the leaders of the voluntary army sent out a succession of letters of exhortation and circulars and, in response to these missives that portrayed the Korean land and its inhabitants as being “sacred and inviolable” (p. 39), many people joined the fighting. The role of guerrilla fighters during the Imjin War peaked in 1592. Haboush stresses it as a key factor that helped quash Hideyoshi's evil attempts.

In particular, Haboush highlights that the missives of exhortation, which were disseminated “in a combination of written and oral forms” (p. 53), gave rise to a discourse of nation that “fashioned a vision in which all Koreans, as members of one community, shared the responsibility of defending Korea” (p. 51) and that “were able to turn the people's hearts by reconceptualizing popular sovereignty” (p. 64). The newly emerged idea of popular sovereignty that encouraged civilians “to carry out the functions of the state when nothing else was doing so” (p. 69) during the wars, continues Haboush, further instilled a cultural grammar of the postwar discourse of nation. To explore the multilayered strands of the postwar discourse of the Chosŏn community, Haboush examines, as an example, a genre of literary works called “dream journeys”—commemorative fictional accounts of the war dead.

In The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation, Haboush illuminates how the relationship between the state and the individual was reconfigured in Late Chosŏn. This is a welcome contribution to the study of Chosŏn Korea, which remains lackluster in the English-language scholarship. However, it should be noted that Haboush's key argument—that the postwar vision of the Chosŏn community helped sustain the Chosŏn state for three more centuries—is too narrowly based. Depending on how one evaluates the role of the volunteer army, the politics of memories of the wars, the status system, and the governing structure, the discourse of nation might even be dismissed. The volunteer army that was active in 1592 almost ceased to exist from 1593 to the end of the war in 1598, and its new leader, Kim Tŏngnyŏng, whom King Sŏnjo reluctantly recognized in 1594, was even put to death under the accusation of sedition about two years later. King Sŏnjo tried to ban the volunteer army as the Ming troops began to push the invaders back to the south in 1593.

What about the innumerable civilians helplessly trampled by the invaders? As Haboush points out, Dream Journey of Kanghwa Island reveals, through a female voice, “stinging criticism of the male establishment” (p. 143), which failed to protect the people's lives. The dream journeys, in Haboush's words, “represent the scarred political body of the Chosŏn state and the bankrupt patriarchy” (p. 150). One might wonder how these war memories could unify the people and help “perpetuate the discourse of the nation unto the modern era” (p. 152). We cannot directly hear an answer from Haboush, but the questions she leaves behind for us will certainly galvanize discussion of war, memories, and discourse of nation in Late Chosŏn.