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KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW

 

Hyung Il Pai and Timothy R. Tangherlini, edd. Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1998. Korean Research Monograph No. 26. ISBN: 1-55729-062-8.

Reviewed by Sallie Yea
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

 

An enormous amount of scholarship has been devoted to unpacking the interrelations between concepts of identity, nationalism and their respective constructions in recent years. The profusion of generalist literature on the subject has been almost as conspicuous as its absence for the Korean context. Pai and Tangherlini's edited volume represents the first major attempt in English to critically examine some of the multitudinous expressions and engagements of Koreans with national identity and nationalism (notwithstanding such valuable, but more specifically focused, volumes by Chungmoo Choi and Elaine Kim's Dangerous Women and Gi-Wook Shin's Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea).

Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity follows a 1995 conference on the same theme. The aim of the book is, "to expose national narratives and their position as postcolonial constructions originally inspired by intellectuals and historians who were part of the anti-Japanese resistance efforts in the colonial period" (p. 4). The focus is, in other words, on identifying - and in some instances challenging - these narratives of Korean identity formation.

The volume is ambitious in its coverage of narratives of national identity and the agents responsible for their construction. It includes chapters on language, religion (Buddhism and Christianity), music, literature, archaeological discoveries, shamanism and modern political discourses of "nation". The narratives analysed emanate in particular from scholars, intellectuals, students and writers of fiction.

To my mind the chapters in the volume can be divided into three types of studies, depending on their subject. First are those that focus on the achievement of national identity through resistance, particularly against foreign influences (superpowers). Narratives of national identity drawing on this premise of "identity through opposition" include Fulton's chapter on kijich'on (camptown) fiction and Tangherlini's discussion of shamanism. Fulton's excellent and well-researched chapter explores the ambiguous status of Koreans who live and work in US military camptowns as expressed in literature. Tangherlini's chapter analyses the concept of cultural resistance, expressed through the re-working of indigenous Korean cultural
forms.

The second type of study includes those chapters that examine constructions of national identity through asserting or imagining a common ethnicity, race, language and/or religion. Chapters that fall under this heading include Pai's chapter on the construction of a narrative of national identity through historical/ archaeological evidence, King's chapter on the meaning(s) of han'gul, Buswell's chapter on Buddhism and Baker's chapter on Christianity. In these last two cases the focus is on the ways in which foreign religious ideologies became indigenised and Koreanised. Shin's chapter discusses the ways former President Park Chung Hee used national heroes and minjok narratives as a means of legitimizing his own political power. Both this chapter and Pai's are interesting because they make explicit how different interests can invoke and rework nationalist histories, events and objects for their own purposes.

Finally, a more eclectic combination of chapters focuses on the tensions between discourses and icons of national identity and the changing, competing ways and contexts in which these are expressed. The main contribution here is Dilling's chapter on the evolving (and increasingly globalised/ capitalist) contexts in which Korean music is being performed. Tangherlini's chapter on shamanism also contains elements of this thread of analysis since shamanism, as an important component of traditional Korean culture, has been reworked in the context of democratic-nationalist discourses offered up by the student movement since the 1980s.

There are two weaknesses in the volume, to my mind. First is a failure to deal adequately with the generalist literature on nationalism, identity and (social/ cultural) construction. I found most chapters' analyses to lack a theoretical sophistication, which could have been useful in further extending the conclusions of their own studies. References in the volume's introduction to such a body of literature are scant and this pattern is repeated through all but two of the chapters (Tangherlini and Shin's contributions demonstrate an engagement with the relevant generalist literature that is largely lacking elsewhere). Repeated references by contributors to Anderson's seminal work, 'Imagined Communities' do not represent satisfactory engagement with this literature given the prominence of "nationalism" in the title of the volume.

A second weakness is the failure to embrace a fuller range of manifestations of how Korean identity is constructed. Here one can think of multiple examples and processes that could have been taken into account. One of the first to spring to mind is the commodification of select elements of Korean culture through tourism, for both local and global consumers. Another is the anti-imperialistic nationalist discourses emerging as a result of the "IMF Era", the economic crisis that began in late 1997 (although the volume's publication not long after the onset of the crisis perhaps makes it unrealistic to expect it to be discussed at length in the volume). Yet another is the diverging (and competing) discourses of historically significant populist movements and uprisings (Tonghak, Cheju, and 1980 Kwangju for example). The uprisings in both Kwangju and Cheju have been subject to multiple interpretations in recent years that draw on different understandings of the nation. Finally, one might think of the implications for national identity brought about by South Korea's"new minorities", of whom migrant workers and North Korean defectors represent just two examples. Indeed, Fulton (p. 201) remarks that, "such contact offers a fascinating area of study precisely because of the cultural differences it exposes". This weakness of the volume is certainly not one individual contributors are beholden to mention, but it should have been at least alluded to by the editors of the volume in their introduction. I should also add that these suggestions are meant less as a criticism of the volume than an invitation to initiate another. Globalisation has presented a context and focus by which some of these new questions of national identity are begging to be addressed.

In sum, the contributors to the volume should be congratulated on their informative and generally well-researched studies, and the editors commended for conceiving of a project that fills an important gap in English language discussions of Korean identity. The volume is useful for Koreanists, East Asian historians and anthropologists (perhaps more than other disciplines) and would be a valuable inclusion on senior level undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists for both Korean studies and the disciplines mentioned. Importantly, the volume opens the way for further explorations of the nexus between Korea and national identity in the future.

 

Citation:
Yea, Sallie 2001
Review of Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity, edd. by Hyung Il Pai and Timothy R. Tangherlini (1998)
Korean Studies Review 2001, no. 14
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr01-14.htm


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