Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria, by Hyun Ok Park. Asia-Pacific series. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2005. xix, 314 pp. $84.95 US (cloth); $23.95 US (paper).

Koreans from both northern and southern

Korea began to move to Manchuria in the late nineteenth century. By the mid-1920s, there were about one million Koreans living in Manchuria, and the number would continue to grow during the Manchukuo period. Most Koreans lived in Kando (Jiandao in Chinese) in eastern Manchuria (today it is known as Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture) and the Tongbyondo area in southern Manchuria. Before the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the local Chinese warlord government adopted different policies toward the Koreans in the two areas. After the Manchurian Incident, Japan became the dominant power in Manchuria, and policies toward the Koreans were the result of negotiations between and among several different colonial institutions, namely the Manchukuo government, the Governor General of Korea, and the Kwantung Army. These policies are meticulously described and analyzed in chapters two through five in Park's book.

The major theme of the book is the interplay between nationalism and colonial capitalism and its impact on Koreans in colonial Manchuria. Capitalism is the bed, and nationalism and colonialism are the two bedfellows that tend to have different dreams. The Japanese colonialists, along with their Chinese and Korean subjects shared the same goal of developing capitalism in Manchuria; however, the international nature of the capitalist system often meddled or clashed with the nationalistic ambitions of the various ethnic groups. Park argues that global capitalism was the most important factor determining social relations in Manchuria, and it sometimes inhibited the growth of nation-states. For example, the local Chinese government in Manchuria sought to prevent the Koreans from becoming Chinese citizens and possessing landownership in southern Manchuria before 1931. This nationalistic policy, however, was sabotaged by the Chinese leaders' desire to develop capitalist farming, which caused them to allow the Koreans to stay and work as tenants and low-wage workers because of the latter's skills at rice farming. For the same reason, in Kando, many unnaturalized Koreans were permitted to stay as agricultural labourers and short-term tenants, and they could even own land under the names of naturalized Koreans, although the stated policy was to encourage the Koreans to naturalize and to expel all unnaturalized Koreans. Such discrepancies between legal and customary practices made the formation of the Chinese nation in Manchuria incomplete. The colonial system also made the national identity of the Koreans in Manchuria ambiguous and fragmented. They were, at once, the colonized and the colonizers, torn between China and Japan. Before 1931, many Koreans were forced to choose between keeping their Korean national identity and attaining landownership by adopting Chinese citizenship. After 1931, many of them took dual citizenship (Manchukuo and Korea). During the Manchukuo period, whereas agrarian communitarianism helped homogenize a diverse population and nurture the growth of the Manchukuo nation state, the colonial capitalist system caused continuous ethnic and class differentiation and replacement of the Chinese and Korean peasants, thus hampering the process of nation formation.

Conversely, nationalism can have negative impacts on the development of capitalism. On various occasions, both Chinese and Japanese governments tried to set restrictions on the movement of the Korean labour out of nationalistic concerns, which had adverse effects on capitalist production. In Manchukuo, agrarian co-operatives were organized along ethnic lines and administered by three different institutions representing three different nation-states. Members of the co-operatives received different treatments based on their national identities. The nation-state system and power structure thus determined the forms of capitalism and mitigated the effectiveness of the capitalist system. Park presents the cooperative system as an alternative form of capitalism adopted by the colonial government, but readers might wonder if the creation of the co-operative system also reflected the influence of the socialist ideology embraced by many Japanese leftist intellectuals working in the Japanese colonial system in Manchuria.

National differences not only restrained the development of capitalism in Manchuria, but also hindered the growth of the communist movement there. The colonial hierarchical system based on national differences and the competition and conflicts between Korean and Chinese peasants made it difficult for them to embrace communist internationalism and form a class alliance that transcended national boundaries. In fact, both the Korean Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party adopted nationalistic approaches in Manchuria, each taking Manchuria as the extension of the Korean and Chinese nation-state respectively. In chapter six, Park analyzes the conflicts between Chinese nationalism and Korean nationalism within the Manchurian Communist movement, which resulted in the purge of the Korean Communists by their Chinese comrades in the 1930s and the rise of a nationalistic North Korean communist state after World War Two. Colonial capitalism was another obstacle for the communists, who eventually failed to win the support of the peasants in Manchuria partly because the peasants developed close ties with the Japanese colonizers and were attracted to Japanese promises for private ownership of land, low-interest loans, and other capitalist interests. For many peasants, national liberation and class struggle were not priorities.

The book is based on solid research, and the author uses archives in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. It represents a significant contribution to the revisionist historiography in South Korea and the growing literature on colonial Manchuria in the West. Whereas recent works by Louise Young and Prasenjit Duara provide insights into Japan-China relations in Manchuria in the first half of the twentieth century, Park's work offers a unique perspective of the triangular relationships of Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese in Manchuria, with a focus on the experiences of the Koreans in colonial Manchuria.

Xiaorong Han

Butler University