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Using media texts from a Korean newspaper archive, this article describes the process through which the state took up the ideology of linguistic nationalism during the period of Japanese colonisation of Korea (1910–1945). This was particularly aimed at a modernisation project in order for the legacy of the Joseon dynasty, which had ruled Korea for five centuries to the end of the nineteenth century, to transform itself into a ‘modernized’ nation state. The ways in which Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was socially produced as the legitimate national writing system from one vernacular variety under the colonial regime are examined. The article contends that while the production of the national writing system functioned as a means for anti-colonial movements, it also naturalized differential socioeconomic resource distribution among Joseon people according to literacy skills in Joseon’s transformation into the modern Korean nation state. The article discusses the limitations of mobilizing linguistic nationalism as a means of political emancipation.
