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REVIEW
Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social
Movement, by Nancy Abelmann. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1996. 306 pp. (ISBN 0-520-08590-6 cloth; ISBN 0-520-20418-2 paper).
Reviewed by Changzoo
Song
University of Hawaii at Manoa
This book is about the discursive politics of the minjung (the
non-elite mass
as subject of history) as practiced by the farmers of Koch'ang
and their supporters, including students and organizers. Koch'ang is a
remote rural county in North Chôlla Province, but Carter Eckert's
eloquent
book, Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origin
of
Korean Capitalism, 1876-1945
(University of Washington Press, 1991) has made it known to many
Koreanists
as the hometown of early capitalists Kim Yôn-su and Kim
Sông-su, the
founders of the Kyôngbang and Samyang companies. Though Abelmann
and
Eckert deal with very different issues in their books, Eckert's accounts
of
the Koch'ang Kim family and their entrepreneurial activities during the
colonial period help us to understand the movement of the Koch'ang
tenant
farmers that Abelmann investigates.
The Samyang group reclaimed land in Koch'ang in the late 1930s, and many
villagers of the region worked on the newly created rice fields as
tenant farmers. While these fields could later have been allocated to
the
tenant
farmers as a result of the Land Reform Act of 1949, they remained exempt
from
distribution because of the company's claim that the land was not ready
for
rice cultivation at that time. The farmers, nevertheless, believe that
it
was not distributed because of the political influence of Kim
Sông-su, the
brother of Samyang's chairman Kim Yôn-su. Motivated by the
minjung spirit
and the highly politicized atmosphere of 1987, the tenant farmers
occupied
the headquarters of
Samyang in Seoul and demanded the company cede the land to them.
Abelmann, who stayed several months in villages with the farmers and
participated in their protest in Seoul, writes about their lives, their
labor, protests, and discourses of resistance.
This book is composed of nine chapters in which discussion moves back
and forth between the villages of Koch'ang and Samyang's headquarters in
Seoul, and between past and present. Following introductory remarks in
the
first chapter, Abelmann explores the discourse of the minjung in
Chapter 2,
and maintains that the essence of the movement lies in its
reinterpretation
of the past against the hegemonic views of governmental and corporate
elites. Chapter 3 describes the farmers' daily activities during their
one-month protest in Seoul, including the preparation of food,
encounters with
the media and the people of Seoul, and their confrontation with the
police.
Chapters 4 and 5 show how these farmers construct their own version of
"history" and the "present," and provide an excellent comparison between
the
conflicting historical views of the farmers and the Samyang elite. The
farmers accuse the Kim family of having collaborated with both the
colonial
government and the authoritarian regimes of the post-Liberation era.
Chapter 6 deals with the discussions between the farmers and organizers,
and presents the decision-making process behind the protests. Chapter 7
depicts the class structure of the villages, which functioned as a
variable
in terms of ideology and participation
in the protest. Chapter 8 analyzes rural mobilization and the state's
ideological programs in the post-Liberation period, and concludes that
"regardless of the vicissitudes and variety of their urban images today,
farmers emerge not as passive objects but as subjects who have been
simultaneously structured by and resisted ideological, political, and
economic realities" (p.225). In the last chapter, Abelmann revisits the
farmers and other minjung activists several years after the
protest, and
she presents changes within the minjung movement during the
late 1980s and early 1990s.
Based on thorough research and observation, Abelmann's discussion
shows keen analysis and erudition. Moving back and forth from past to
present, from periphery to center, and from interpretations based on
political and economic structures to those based on Korean culture, she
draws a compelling
map of the consciousness of the farmers and their supporters. The real
importance of Abelmann's
work, however, lies in its focus on farmers, who have been neglected in
the
minjung literature despite their significance in the movement's
discourse. Thus far the great majority of discussions about the
minjung and
South Korean democratization have focused on organizers, students,
industrial workers
and the middle class, while farmers have been relegated to the margins.
Abelmann brings
farmers back to the center stage of minjung discourse and the
movement,
especially in Chapters 4 and 5, where she most effectively explores the
farmers' discourse and the challenge it issues to the hegemonic
practices
of the corporate elite.
While I enjoyed this book, a few minor points of criticism come to
mind. First of all, Abelmann's conclusion on the use of the past in the
politics of the minjung could be expanded. Although she is
certainly
correct that "dissent is always an engagement with the past" and that
the past "echoes in the epics of dissent" (p.248), as is clear in the
minjung's self-empowering attempts to revive the memory of the
Tonghak
Peasant Revolution and to stress its anti-elite character (Chapter 2),
in
post-Liberation Korean politics, the "past" has nevertheless been used
by
not only dissenters but other social groups such as capitalists and the
state, to either gain power or deprive others of it. For example, as
described in Chapter 4, the Samyang elite, in their conflict with the
tenant farmers, stress their role as "national" capitalists who not only
competed with Japanese capital but also
contributed to the enrichment of the nation. Similarly, in their
arguments
about the
rightful ownership of the disputed land, both the farmers and Samyang
cite
nationalist credentials as the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy: the
farmers
criticize Samyang for
its anti-national character in its collaboration with the Japanese
colonial authorities (p.86), while Samyang tries to depict itself as a
nationalist corporation (pp.78-9). Understandably, in minjung
discourse
the authoritarian government of South Korea becomes an evil institution
much more for its anti-national character (such as its dependence on the
US) than for its
undemocratic qualities. Such arguments reflect the position of
nationalism
as the supreme moral value in Korean culture, and Abelmann could have
explained
more fully why nationalist causes became the ultimate determinant for
both
hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces.
Readers may also feel that some changes in the farmers' outlook after
their
culminating experiences of protest are given short shrift. In
particular,
gender relations could have been analyzed in greater detail, especially
because the author relates the story of a peasant woman in the first
chapter as a paradigmatic exemplar for her account (pp. 16-18). Her
later
descriptions of the dominant role played by women at the protest site in
Seoul ("the life of protest was in all ways sustained by women; they
were
the cooks as well as fearless protesters," p.64) merely tantalize,
however,
since she does not elaborate further, even in the final chapter where
she
reflects upon changes in the villagers' world view and lives after the
protest. Yet village women might well have had their consciousness
raised
in regard to their own relationships with men as a result of their
political struggles, especially since the protesters met with and defied
patriarchal attitudes and rhetoric on the part of the landlords (p.123).
Certainly, gender relationships are not the author's main focus in the
study, but discussion here would have connected this experience with
broader societal trends. If no changes occurred in the villagers'
notion
of gender
relationships after their protest experience, one can affirm the crucial
vulnerability of the 1980s minjung movements in general: although
pursuing
dogmatic nationalism and procedural democracy, they rarely challenged
the
authoritarian and oppressive cultural foundations of the society, such
as
the Confucian patriarchy.
Aside from these few minor criticisms, this book, with its first-hand
observation and thorough scholarship, offers an excellent account of the
discursive politics of the minjung movement through the late
1980s and early
1990s. Anyone seriously interested in modern Korean society, politics,
culture and history will find this book highly informative and
helpful.
Citation:
Song, Changzoo 1998
Review of Nancy Abelmann, Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A
South Korean Social Movement (1996)
Korean Studies Review 1998, no. 7
Electronic file:
http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr98-07.htm
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