The imperial penetration since the opening of Korea (1876) to its formal absorption to the Japanese empire (1910) provoked differing forms of reaction on the part of the Koreans. It has been a scholarly convention among Korean nationalist historians to classify such Korean reactions into two or three categories of reaction; conservative, progressive, or minjung (mass) reactions, all being viewed as contribution in one way or another to the evolution of Korean national movement ( minjok undong ). Thus, in the current Korean nationalist historiography, all forms of Korean reactions against the imperial penetration gain a national political dimension by virtue of being resistant (cho hang), considered as an essential element in the Korean national movement. However, there were forms of reaction which had little political aspiration to change the existing system, either progressive or conservative directions. Instead, these reactions concerned with maintaining the normal state in everyday life, now perceived in jeopardy due to the growing imperial penetration, or with improving conditions of life by taking advantages of foreign presence. This study empathizes a need to create new categories of reaction, namely, the 'defensive ordinary reaction' and the 'cooperative ordinary reaction' by the ordinary people ( inmin ), to set them apart from the political reactions initiated by either the progressive or conservative elite of contemporary Korea. By treating the ordinary reactions in terms of their own merits, therefore, this study proposes a new typology of Korean reactions, meant to revise the conventional classification, in which the defensive ordinary reaction has been mistakenly appropriated as part of the national political reaction, while the cooperative ordinary reaction as anti-nationalist collaboration by current nationalist historians of Korea.
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