In Populist Collaborators, Yumi Moon shows impressively that the notorious Ilchinhoe (Advance in Unity Society) was significant, but not necessarily for the reason for which it is conventionally known. Roundly condemned in Korea as a conniving group of traitors who loudly campaigned for Japan's 1910 annexation of the country, the Ilchinhoe, as Moon demonstrates, actually was much more than that, but also far from coherent. And as a hodgepodge, somewhat open-ended repository of ideals, interests, and powers circulating at the time of the Japanese protectorate (1905–10), it reflected well this period's rapid transitions and unstable politics.
Most of the book’s coverage is from 1904, the year of the Ilchinhoe's founding, to 1907, when the Japanese protectorate, with the help of native collaborators, orchestrated the effective takeover of the Korean government, which paved the way toward Japan's formal colonization of Korea three years later. The book begins, however, with a review of developments that spawned an atmosphere of instability and resistance from the nineteenth century to the opening years of the twentieth, particularly in the northwestern provinces of P'yŏngan and Hwanghae. These trends accelerated with two major events in 1894 that would later provide the basis for the Ilchinhoe's formation: the Tonghak peasant uprising and the Kabo Reforms. The former unleashed explosive anger over local corruption and, despite its suppression, later provided the critical mass of support for the Ilchinhoe, whose members might have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The Kabo Reforms, on the other hand, constituted the elite reformist efforts for bureaucratic centralization and republicanism that were subsequently further developed by the Independence Club and its newspaper, The Independent. As Moon shows, these two strands, along with inspiration from pan-Asianism and splits within the reconstituting Tonghak movement, coalesced into the Ilchinhoe organization and program led by Song Pyŏng-jun and Yi Yong-gu. The Ilchinhoe's collaboration with Japanese imperialism began through its provision of labor and supplies for Japan's war against Russia in 1904, even as the group's leaders stressed loyalty to the Korean crown in their original proclamations.
As it turned out, soon the Ilchinhoe’s local branches were venturing far beyond the original focus on populist enlightenment, as they engaged in extensive resistance activities against local elites and eventually even the monarchical state. Here they drew from both the Tonghak legacy and the tactics of the Independence Club by publicly calling out individual officials, sending petitions and otherwise litigating for their demands, and rousing peasants and merchants into action over their economic grievances. They appear largely to have succeeded, at least according to the numerous reports from local officials complaining of Ilchinhoe members refusing to pay their tenant rents, appropriating leasing rights to public hands, attacking tax inspectors and collectors, or outright confiscating the agricultural yields. The Ilchinhoe activists seem to have done all this with little more than the rallying cries of fairness and opposition to corruption, particularly that perpetrated by agents of the monarchy. How this all led to an embrace of annexationism is taken up in the concluding chapter, which argues that the Ilchinhoe's core thrust of grassroots mobilization lacked a systematically durable and concrete plan in the face of withering hostility, and then was abandoned by Ilchinhoe leaders bought off by the Japanese, who prioritized administrative stability once annexation became the goal.
Such a thorough treatment of this group’s expansive impact is welcome, but there remain some expository holes, particularly concerning agency surrounding the Ilchinhoe's tax resistance. Again and again there are accounts of members appropriating land and materiel, taxation authority, supervisory positions, and even official posts but with little indication of how this could have happened. It appears that the local state, or at least its coercive capacity, was in retreat; but this still does not explain why and how local actors, including officials, yielded to the Ilchinhoe. Could the disputes have been instigated or intensified, for example, by the nationwide cadastral survey of 1898–1904, the growing presence of Japanese soldiers in the northwest, or the scramble to survive by the traditional hereditary clerks, the hyangni? There are only hints. The voluminous detail of the many case studies, which makes this book a challenging read, shows myriad disruptions in local society, but the narratives of such episodes do not necessarily amount to clear statements regarding underlying dynamics, such as the shifting configuration of local actors or the competing components of state authority.
Nevertheless, this masterfully researched book, which highlights the significance of certain archival sources, makes extremely valuable contributions to a reconsideration of this period by demonstrating the role of Ilchinhoe activity and idealism in the processes of internal reform and Japanese takeover.
