Kyung Moon Hwang is a professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California. He is the author of A History of Korea: An Episodic Narrative and Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea and coeditor of Contentious Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present.

"[Breaks] new ground... [Hwang has] offered readers an ambitious challenge: one directed to Korean studies, but also one also carrying its implications far beyond." Cross-Currents

• List of Illustrations Preface Note on Romanization and Translations Introduction PART ONE. THE STRUCTURES OF STATE RATIONALIZATION 1 * State Making under Imperialism: Fragmentation and Consolidation in the Central State 2 * Th e Centrality of the Periphery: Developing the Provincial and Local State 3 * Constructing Legitimacy: Symbolic Authority and Ideological Engineering PART TWO. RATIONALIZING SOCIETY 4 * State and Economy: Developmentalism 5 * State and Religion: Secularization and Pluralism 6 * Public Schooling: Cultivating Citizenship Education 7 * Population Management: Registration, Classification, and the Remaking of Society 8 * Public Health and Biopolitics: Discipliningthrough Disease Control Conclusion Appendices Notes Bibliography Index