Authorship, Co-Production, Plagiarism: Issues of Origin and Provenance in the Korean Studies Community

The long controversy and struggle over Charles Armstrong’s Tyranny of the Weak may have, for the Korean Studies community felt uniquely transgressive and offensive, but the malfeasance and academic corruption of the episode is not by far the only instance of productive difficulty in the recent history of the academic field. This paper not only attempts to think through questions of authenticity and intellectual ownership in Korean Studies’ difficulties with the writer formerly known as Professor Charles Armstrong, but also to explore other moments of complexity, both historical and contemporary, in the discipline.