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--></style><title>[KS] KSR 2004-19: _Stone Mirror: Reflections on
Contem</title></head><body>
<div><font color="#000000">_Stone Mirror: Reflections on Contemporary
Korea_, by David I. Steinberg,</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">2002. Norwalk, CT: East Bridge. 298
pages. (ISBN 1-891936-12-3), US $14.95.<br>
<br>
reviewed by Bernhard Seliger<br>
Hanns Seidel Stiftung<br>
<u>bjseliger@yahoo.de</u></font><br>
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<div><font
color="#000000"><i><x-tab>
</x-tab>Stone Mirror</i> contains a collection of over 100 short
essays on a wide range of topics relating to Korea: current affairs,
culture, society, and political relations. Drawn from David
Steinberg's more than 230 columns for the<i> Korea Times</i> (and,
occasionally, other newspapers), the essays are grouped into such
fields as "Korean Mores and Customs", "Ceremonies and
Traditions", "Food and Hospitality", "Landscapes
and Aesthetics" and so on, and appeared originally between 1995
and 2002. (Some bear the date of 1966, but this appears to be a
printing error.)<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The author, of course, needs
little introduction to the Korean Studies community. As a long time
resident of Korea (1963-68 and 1994-98) and Director of Asian Studies
at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Steinberg has
profound insight into Korean culture and society, and this insight
makes his essays entertaining and often enlightening.<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Steinberg's long interest and
experience in Korean affairs also allows him to detach his reflections
from the background noise that so often surrounds political and
societal discussion in Korea<b>.</b> While South Korea's economy and
political system have developed at breathtaking speed, lasting
elements of its unique traditional culture and society remain. Rarely
are these elements so clearly illuminated as in these small pieces of
Steinberg. Understanding Korea's development, however, also requires
recognition that these traditional remnants are crucial and
Steinberg's perceptiveness is one of the reasons this volume is so
valuable. His comparisons of then and now are therefore my favourite
pieces in the collection, as when he discusses "ritual
retribution," and reflects on the "blame game" that
followed the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis of 1997.
While the last pieces collected in this book were written in early
2002, many of them equally apply to the current political situation:
his comments on the confrontation of government and the media under
Kim Dae-Jung in 2000 also fit the current confrontation between Roh
Moo-Hyun and the media, and his 1998 remarks on elites and
universities are at least as appropriate in the current dispute about
the universities' autonomy to select students.<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>While often reflecting on ongoing
political discussion in Korea, most of Steinberg's pieces tend to
focus on underlying aspects of Korea's culture and society. His
advice, on topics as diverse as Anti-Americanism, gender equality or
food culture, is always amiable, never bullying. This attitude
reflects Steinberg's large experience, not only of Korean history and
politics, culture and language, but also of Korean interaction with
the outside world and Korean ways of incorporating foreign
viewpoints.<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Steinberg's
experience of South Korea and its transformations is, however,
paradoxically also a limitation. On some topics (most obviously, on
North Korea and inter-Korean relations since the summit of June 2000,
but also on trends towards political and economic integration in
Northeast Asia and China's resurgent role in the region), Steinberg
has few things to say. Evidently, as the back cover of the book
suggests, with its rather modest talk of an "iconoclastic yet
sympathetic series of vignettes on the cultural, socioeconomic, and
political life of Korea," he did not intend to give a complete
overview of contemporary Korea.</font><br>
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<div><font
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>This collection's vignettes fill a gap in bridging popular and
academic writing on contemporary Korea, and will be a most welcome
addition for readers interested in looking at Korean affairs not as a
discrete series of events, but as embedded within and shaped by a
unique culture and political economy.</font></div>
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color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab> </font
></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Citation:</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Seliger, Bernhard 2004</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">_Stone Mirror: Reflections on Contemporary
Korea_, by David I. Steinberg, (2002)</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">_Korean Studies Review_ 2004, no.
19</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Electronic file:
http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr04-19.htm</font></div>
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