<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">Dear friends and colleagues,<BR>
<BR>
Sorry to pop up again so soon. But I wanted to draw attention to<BR>
a very fine review by John Feffer in <I>The Nation</I> of some recent<BR>
Korean literary works. See also his own notice, below.<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000ff" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><A HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer">http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer</A><BR>
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I find this excellent on many levels. Not only does he introduce<BR>
modern Korean writing to the wider Western reading public - <BR>
which, as he says, still remains woefully ignorant of these riches.<BR>
But he also conveys the issues, the agonies; why all this matters.<BR>
<BR>
For those who don't know Feffer's work - even within the Korea field, <BR>
I fear there may still be Chinese walls between the academic and<BR>
policy studies milieux - may I recommend as well a richly textured and<BR>
substantial piece that he wrote, while a Pantech fellow at Stanford, on <BR>
Korea's food and agricultural history. Again, I append a taster.<BR>
<BR>
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20815/Globalization_and_Korean_Agriculture_John_Feffer.pdf<BR>
<BR>
He is also the author and editor of books on Korea's politics and <BR>
international relations, which I think have been notified on this List:<BR>
<BR>
http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100925650<BR>
http://www.routledge-ny.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=0415770378<BR>
http://www.johnfeffer.com/<BR>
<BR>
Finally, a happy Labor Day to all in the US!<BR>
<BR>
best wishes<BR>
Aidan<BR>
<BR>
AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER<BR>
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University <BR>
Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK <BR>
tel: +44(0) 1274 588586 (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634 mobile: +44(0) 7970 741307 <BR>
fax: +44(0) 1274 773663 ISDN: +44(0) 1274 589280<BR>
Email: afostercarter@aol.com (alt) afostercarter@yahoo.com website: www.aidanfc.net<BR>
[Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me know, so I can chide AOL]<BR>
<BR>
________________<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Subj: <B>New article on Korean literature: The Nation </B> <BR>
Date: 02/09/2006 18:50:06 GMT Standard Time <BR>
From: <A HREF="mailto:johnfeffer@gmail.com">johnfeffer@gmail.com</A> <BR>
To: <A HREF="mailto:johnfeffer@gmail.com">johnfeffer@gmail.com</A> <BR>
<I>Sent from the Internet (Details)</I> <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Dear friends:<BR>
<BR>
The Nation just published my review of recent Korean literature, including books by Hwang Sok-Yong and Ko Un. You can read it online at <A HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer">http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer </A>.<BR>
<BR>
Here is the beginning:<BR>
<BR>
review | posted August 31, 2006 (September 18, 2006 issue) <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0"><B>Writers From the Other Asia <BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0">John Feffer <BR>
<BR>
According to the official North Korean version, the Americans were the culprits. In October 1950, the first year of the Korean War, American soldiers massacred tens of thousands of innocent people in the North Korean city of Sinchon. In perhaps the most horrifying incident, US soldiers led 900 residents, including 300 women and children, into an air-raid shelter. After the victims passed three days in thirst and fear, the GIs poured gasoline into the dark, confined space and threw in a match. Today in Sinchon, the North Korean authorities have memorialized this slaughter with burial mounds for the victims. The nearby American Imperial Massacre Remembrance Museum holds tours for school groups and the occasional foreign visitor. In September 1998 I visited the Sinchon museum and listened to the guide itemize the many wartime cruelties committed by American troops. She took our delegation to the burned-out shell of the air-raid shelter and, on the basis of survivor accounts, reconstructed the atrocities. It would be another year before the Associated Press published the first revelations of the US killings of civilians in July 1950 under a railway bridge near the South Korean hamlet of Nogun-ri. But based on what historian Bruce Cumings and others had described of US conduct during the Korean War--the saturation bombings, the threatened use of nuclear weapons--the museum guide's well-rehearsed stories seemed plausible, even accounting for the embellishments of North Korean propaganda. <BR>
<BR>
In the 1980s South Korean novelist Hwang Sok-Yong visited the same museum. He subsequently interviewed several survivors of the Sinchon massacre who had immigrated to the United States. Their description of what transpired in the fall of 1950 diverged so radically from the North Korean account that Hwang was driven to write about the incident. His novel <I>The Guest</I> provoked fierce controversy among readers in South Korea, where it was published in 2001. Read the rest <A HREF="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer">here</A><BR>
<BR>
all the best,<BR>
John<BR>
<BR>
-- <BR>
John Feffer<BR>
Co-Director, Foreign Policy In Focus<BR>
Director, Global Affairs program <BR>
International Relations Center<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.fpif.org/">www.fpif.org</A> <BR>
<BR>
_____________________________________<BR>
<BR>
http://aparc.stanford.edu/publications/korean_food_korean_identity_the_impact_of_globalization_on_korean_agriculture/<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=5 PTSIZE=16 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Korean Food, Korean Identity: The Impact of Globalization on Korean Agriculture </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=2 PTSIZE=10 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SERIF" FACE="Times New Roman" LANG="0"><I>Report </I><BR>
<BR>
Author:<BR>
<BR>
<B>John Feffer</B><BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Published by<BR>
<BR>
Shorenstein APARC, 2005<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
One of the few ways to get a taste of North Korea, short of leaping through numerous hoops to get a visa to visit the country, is to eat cold noodles (naengmyen). Most South Korean cities and even a few American ones offer several types of North Korean-style noodle restaurants. The version often prepared in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is mul naengmyen, or cold noodles in broth. It is served in a large metal bowl and looks like a flowering mountain rising up from the sea. Artfully balanced atop the mound of noodles made from buckwheat flour are julienned cucumbers, several slices of beef, half a hardboiled egg, and a few pieces of crisp Korean pear. When prepared Hamhung-style -- named after the industrial city on North Korea's east coast -- noodles are made from sweet potato flour and often topped with raw skate, which has a slightly ammoniac flavor. <BR>
<BR>
The signs in the South advertising Northern-style cold noodles are a reminder of the Korean War and the division of the peninsula. After the Korean War, refugees from the conflict set up stalls in the markets of Seoul to sell the "taste of the north" to those who could no longer travel there. The recipes they brought with them to the south were sometimes the only valuables they carried. In the 1990s, a new wave of North Koreans came to the South and established naengmyen restaurants. Hailing from the North lends a certain authenticity to the preparation of the dish. Whether prepared by the refugees of the 1950s and their descendents, the defectors of the 1990s, or North Koreans themselves in Pyongyang or Hamhung, cold noodles are something that North Koreans are widely credited with doing better than South Koreans. <BR>
<BR>
But the way naengmyen is "consumed" in the South reveals the great disparity between the two countries. There are many jokes in South Korea about the number of North Korean defectors who have only this one marketable skill. Since cooking in Korea is largely a woman's job, the close association of North Koreans with the production and sale of cold noodles subtly feminizes and, according to patriarchal Korean values, devalues them. North Koreans are thus second-class citizens, both those who are unemployed (the majority) and those who are employed only to provide service to the real "breadwinners" of the country. Anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker relates how South Korean textbooks and popular culture often depict North Korea as the younger brother of the more advanced South Korean older brother. Given the cultural associations of naengmyen, wife to husband might be the more appropriate analogy. A recent Joongang Ilbo Photoshop cartoon reinforces this sexist gloss on inter-Korean relations by depicting South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun dressed as a Choson-era husband with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as his bride. <BR>
<BR>
In a divided country, cold noodles serve as an important reminder of a common culture. They also represent a unique contribution that the economically weaker North Korea can bring to the reunification process. But however tasty Pyongyang-style mul naengmyen may be, cold noodles ensure neither a sustainable livelihood for every North Korean defector nor an equal place at the reunification table for North Korea. <BR>
<BR>
Download<BR>
<BR>
PDF: <A HREF="http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20815/Globalization_and_Korean_Agriculture_John_Feffer.pdf">Globalization_and_Korean_Agriculture_John_Feffer.pdf</A> (410Kb)<BR>
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