South Korea

To Kill a Tiger: A Memoir of Korea

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Spanning five generations, this memoir explores the author’s upbringing and the sociopolitical climate of Korea during the last century through the anecdotes and interpretations of her family. The tales come mainly from her father as told to her mother. (Fathers, we learn, would only discuss such matters with their sons and sometimes their wives, but never with their "unworthy" daughters).

Historical lessons such as these are strewn throughout the text, interspersed with details from Lee’s day-to-day life as a child and teenager and anecdotes told to her by her family members (although most are the author’s own). These are all enhanced by the inclusion of black and white photographs of her family and community placed in nearly every chapter.

Lee presents us with analyses and divergent points of view regarding the Korean War, the Japanese-American-Korean triangle, and what’s gone on in South and North Korea for the last century. Lee also presents us with a brief history of the Korean Feminist movement, which was a joy to read about.

To Kill a Tiger is heavy on Confucian family structure and dynamics. We learn that Lee always came last after her brothers: her Big Brother and Less Big Brother, along with her Father, always got the best foods and the biggest portions, whereas Big Sister, the author, Little Sister, Mother, and Grandmother got the least nourishing foods and the smallest portions—especially Mother and Grandmother. Lee's upbringing is a stifling way of life, so oppressive and palpably rendered by the author that it floated off the page and painted my experience of the memoir, sometimes making me shake with disdain. This is particularly true in the passages told from the viewpoint of the author, a vehemently feminist child who argued and fought for her equality in repeated bursts of frustration and anger, way before she ever knew what feminism was or that anyone might agree with her.

Despite many entertaining sections, the book becomes very tiresome to read after one realizes that the drawn-out conversations between Lee and her family members (her mother in particular) do not appear in just a chapter or two, but consistently throughout. We continually receive a one-sided view of decades of Korean history and politics, often unofficial because the facts have ostensibly been covered up by the government. These portions discuss Korea’s strained relationships with Japan and the United States, the torture of political prisoners and women systematically raped in wars, and other tremendously delicate matters. Not only are these dialogues interminable, but they are also unreliable.

We also read redundant arguments between the author and her misogynist father regarding her worth as a female. I understand that Lee wants to make clear the derisive and poisonous attitude of her male family members towards her and women in general, but it quickly becomes like a broken record.

I had to skip entire pages in order to get through this memoir, which I lament because the premise of this book is promising and intriguing. Alas, it sorely disappoints.

What I applaud is this: It is a story of a tough, feminist kid who goes through hell and emerges victorious against everyone’s expectations. Lee triumphantly gives patriarchy the finger and fulfills her dreams, giving women everywhere—and especially those languishing in a sexist society more oppressive than that of Western culture—hope for everything they wish to accomplish.

Written by: Natalia Real, February 13th 2010

South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:04:00 +0000

By Jesook Song

Duke University Press

Having recently read Marxist scholar David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism, I was eager to dig into Jesook Song's explanation of how her own nation became a case study for the neoliberal state. Amid a worldwide economic crisis, now seems a fine time to explore the assumptions underpinning global capitalism. Harvey argues that neoliberalism, disguised as the liberation of populations and markets, is actually a reassertion of class power that redistributes wealth into the hands of an elite few. Yet how elites could perpetrate such a coup in the class war, with so little opposition, is difficult to demonstrate at a global level. Enter Song, an ethnographer who explicates the unique culture of South Korea, showing how neoliberalism took hold and developed in one exemplary country.

Neoliberalism took root in the late 1970s as a response to stagnant economies. In contrast to planned economies controlled by (often despotic) states, liberalization encouraged deregulation and the growth of financial rather than industrial capital, while discouraging collective activities like labor unions through a cult of personal choice and identity politics. As Song explains, South Korea first experienced government liberalization after thirty years of military dictatorship, and then economic liberalization through International Monetary Fund (IMF)-mandated restructuring and break-up of large conglomerates. After the Asian Debt Crisis of 1997, Song explores how neoliberal, free-market ideology combined with existing Korean concepts of family and gender as well as civil society movements. Strange bedfellows—activists, scholars, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—cooperated with the new liberal government in the delineation of deserving (those willing and able to sell their labor) from undeserving (those who cannot or do not), in the new welfare state. Song focuses primarily on the treatment of two demographics: unemployed youth and the homeless.

In Seoul in the wake of the debt crisis, Song worked in a public works program to assist shaping unemployment policy; there she was able to meet and interview city officials, scholars, NGO members, activists, and homeless and unemployed people themselves. These interviews are often illuminating. One city official clearly differentiated two categories: "IMF homeless are people who came to be homeless due to layoffs after the IMF crisis. They are normal people, not 'rootless vagabonds.' They have the intention to rehabilitate and the desire to work." One type of homeless person was normalized—a worker laid-off from the break-up of the conglomerates that had once provided job security and benefits—while others were marginalized. Women, not considered breadwinners, typically became homeless for reasons like domestic violence, not unemployment. Homeless women and their advocates either had to fit them into the script of a work-ready neoliberal subject, or give up even temporary assistance. Similarly, unemployed youth who received assistance were expected to be (paradoxically) self-sufficient and self-governing entrepreneurs. In the new economy based on finance and technology rather than industry, educated youth became commodities themselves, expected to sell their flexible labor and technical know-how.

Combining Marxist class theory and Michael Foucault's concept of governance, Song's analysis in South Koreans in the Debt Crisis_ _is densely academic; she wisely reviews key points at the beginning and end of each chapter. A larger weakness is the presentation of data. Much of the supporting evidence feels idiosyncratic—interviews, the summary of novels and popular movies, officials' speeches. While no doubt all of these are vehicles for ideology, they are not enough bricks to lay a solid foundation for Song's thesis of how NGOs, activists, and scholars were co-opted into the neoliberal project. This is disappointing, as her arguments make intuitive sense, and her critique of (neo)liberalism is timely, particularly for those of us who make activism and scholarship our lives.

Written by: Charlotte Malerich, December 14th 2009

The Old Garden

admin — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:45:00 +0000

By Hwang Sok-Yong

Seven Stories Press

A garden is a metaphor for revolution. When painstakingly cared for, dry and barren ground can eventually yield the most beautiful of things. A garden can change an unruly landscape to an ordered plot, produce food and purpose, and forever capture the energy of a gardener with loyalty, conviction, and a love of what it could become. It can be simple in activity, process, and outcome, yet incredibly intricate and an entity all its own.

Many of us will never live this metaphor and will never have to face the difficulties the characters in The Old Garden must confront. After eighteen years of political imprisonment, South Korean Hyun Woo is freed only to find that the Seoul he once knew is gone and the woman he loves is dead. In this beautifully written book, the author uses her diaries and letters, woven with the Hyun Woo’s attempts to narrate his own past and present, to chronicle a man trying to find footing on the soil he fought to change, and face his choices and regret.

The novel’s world renowned and accomplished author, Hwang Sok-Yong has confronted these issues in his own life. Born in 1943, Sok-Yong has been imprisoned and exiled in the name of writing about his country, and his characters emanate a dedication and love of their home that is undoubtedly autobiographical. The author’s vivid imagery and veridical descriptions of the activists hiding “underground,” the aftermath of the Kwangju Massacre ,and torture at the hand of prison guards is affecting. Chills ran down my entire body when I read the main character Hyun Woo reflect, “Was it really possible for us—and there was not even a handful of us, and we were so young—to change the world with nothing but our noble intentions?” This was not just a story; this was something the author had truly lived.

But a garden can also be a symbol of more than revolution, and _The Old Garden__ _is first and foremost an incredible tale of a tragic love that grew despite all odds. While hiding in the town of Kalmae, Hyun Woo falls in love with a beautiful art teacher and ally of the movement. Beyond the already complex life of a political fugitive, he must now battle issues without a clear right or wrong, oppressed or oppressor, power or people. Must a revolutionary sacrifice their own bliss for the greater purpose? How can a revolutionary reconcile that he or she will most likely never experience what they fought to win? During one of the most poignant and meaningful moments in the story, he reads his lover’s diary entry about a day they washed laundry and fished in the sun. She writes, “What seems so insignificant, the everyday tasks of a simple life, is in fact the most important part, isn’t it?” The answer is yes, but for the revolutionary, it is anything but simple.

To survive the unfathomable emptiness in prison, Hyun Woo manages to grow a small garden beneath his crumbling cell wall with seeds gathered from rare trips outside of solitary confinement. Despite the lack of sun, of good water, and of real soil he is able to keep the small plants alive, relishing their growth and nurturing them constantly, until the winter comes and frost covers his walls. And while the conditions may have killed each flower and destroyed any lasting life, it was in the gardening itself that he found meaning.

Written by: Melissa Ablett, September 2nd 2009