[KS] Only Correct: Margaret Drabble licks her Red Queen wounds in the TLS

[David Mason]

Thanks, Prof. Foster-Carter, that article from the 
Times Literary Supplement by Margaret Drabble was 
very interesting.  Are things really that bad...?

I'm sure I was not the only member of this List who
was particularly struck by this paragraph:

> > > > > > > > > >
American academe, appearing to speak on behalf of 
and in defence of Korea, declared that The Red Queen
was full of crimes, the least of which was a 
reference to Korea in the eighteenth century as a 
frozen land and, by implication, a "hermit kingdom".
This latter phrase has been used by Koreans and 
Westerners for centuries, referring to the Chosun
dynasty's undisputed policy of isolationism, but it 
is, I was told, no longer correct. We are now to
believe that the Koreans never were and are not now
hermits. They welcome cultural interchange and 
debate. Nevertheless, the phrase "hermit kingdom" 
was not to be used, and the publication of my novel 
could not be approved. The position seemed to me to 
be paradoxical. (When I commented recently on the 
fact that the much praised exhibition entitled 
Encounters: The meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800,
at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004, contained
only one Korean artefact amid a profusion of images
from China, Japan and India, I was informed by the 
curators that this was because there were so few
encounters. However, it is incorrect to refer to the
"hermit kingdom".) 
< < < < < < < < < < < <

Could anybody tell us whether this is indeed true,
that in the American academic world that term for 
a historical period of Korea and certain aspects 
of its modern reality (particularly the North) is
no longer used, considered incorrect and offensive?
If so, on what sort of grounds?

And what then has replaced that term for describing
this distinctive characteristic...  do we say that 
the Koreans of 1640-1880 or the Pyongyang regime &
Southern government officials today were/are just 
"highly selective of the types of interactions with
foreign people/ideas that they desired"...?  

Or does anyone really proclaim that the Koreans are
all and always have been people that "welcome 
cultural interchange and debate"...  Early and 
true-hearted multi-cultural globalists?

If this is really true of Korean studies in America
and Europe, my own understandings certainly have a
lot of catching up to do...

Best wishes to all,
David Mason
(who just finished teaching a one-month course on
Korean Cultural History for Konkuk University's
International Summer Program, and is guilty of 
having taught the therm "Hermit Kingdom", more 
than once in fact)



David A. Mason  
Director of Communications, UNWTO ST-EP Foundation 
Special Assistant to South Korea's Ambassador of Tourism and Sports 
WEBSITE:  http://www.san-shin.org

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