During the Japanese colonial era (1910-45), biology was the scientific field in which the largest number of Korean researchers was active. Korean biologists trod diverse paths of academic growth, encompassing both those who had majored in the discipline at universities and those who had developed as biologists while working as apprentices of Japanese researchers. This presentation will track how several researchers who had graduated from universities during the colonial period and were active as key figures in South Korean biological circles after the Liberation (1945) remembered and used their experiences related to biological research during the colonial era. Especially, it will elucidate how plant physiologist Lee Min-Jai (1917-91), ichthyologist Jeong Mun-Gi (1898-1995), and entomologist Kim Chang-Whan (1920-2013) assessed and understood the legacy of colonialism by examining the different ways in which these figures reflected their respective careers and research data during and from the colonial period in their post-Liberation research activities. As such, this will be both an approach to the analysis of the formation of modern biology in South Korea and one of the specific attempts to evaluate the colonial period in the overall history of science in Korea.
