Typographic Hegemony and Bibliographical Monoculture: The Ascendancy of Mechanical Print in Modern Korea.

This article examines the pivotal role of Western mechanical printing technologies in advancing imperialist agendas in Korea around the turn of the twentieth century, highlighting how these technologies reshaped Korean literary culture and epistemology. It details how Christian missionaries, Japanese colonizers, and Korean intellectuals collectively promoted typographic printing, which expanded literacy beyond elites by popularizing the Korean alphabet and mass-produced texts, including newspapers and Bible translations. The article also explores how Japanese colonial collectors redefined Korean antiquarian books by prioritizing physical typographic features over traditional content, often fragmenting and altering original texts to fit Western bibliographic standards, reflecting broader colonial power dynamics. This typographic dominance not only facilitated imperial control but also became entrenched in postcolonial Korean bibliography, resulting in a monocultural focus that marginalizes the diversity of Korea's pre-modern textual heritage.