Korea’s modern historiography is characterized by a series of debates, “history wars,” since the colonial period. One of the central questions that has animated the debates is how to define the subject of Korea’s history. Colonial historiography characterized Koreans as a passive nation lacking an agency of its own, against which the first generation nationalist historians wrote to narrate a history of a nation that has staged a perpetual struggle for independence against foreign invasion and domination throughout time. After 1945, conservative nationalist historians continued a nationalist narrative but confined their historical imaginative space to the capitalist order within which the nation was defined. Critical nationalist historians grew in number and influence from the 1980s as they challenged the conservative historiography’s narrow confinement to expand Korea’s historical space. The critical nationalist historiography began to diversity in the 21st century, leading to a multiplicity of historical narratives, including those critical of nationalist historiography. To understand the history of modern Korean historiography is, therefore, to appreciate the formidable challenges posed by modernity and the indefatigable struggles made by the Korean people, including Korean historians.