[KS] Fine review by John Feffer in The Nation of some recent Korean literary works

Afostercarter at aol.com Afostercarter at aol.com
Sun Sep 3 03:48:02 EDT 2006


Dear friends and colleagues,

Sorry to pop up again so soon. But I wanted to draw attention to
a very fine review by John Feffer in The Nation of some recent
Korean literary works. See also his own notice, below.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer

I find this excellent on many levels. Not only does he introduce
modern Korean writing to the wider Western reading public - 
which, as he says, still remains woefully ignorant of these riches.
But he also conveys the issues, the agonies; why all this matters.

For those who don't know Feffer's work - even within the Korea field, 
I fear there may still be Chinese walls between the academic and
policy studies milieux - may I recommend as well a richly textured and
substantial piece that he wrote, while a Pantech fellow at Stanford, on 
Korea's food and agricultural history. Again, I append a taster.

http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20815/Globalization_and_Korean_Agriculture_Joh
n_Feffer.pdf

He is also the author and editor of books on Korea's politics and 
international relations, which I think have been notified on this List:

http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100925650
http://www.routledge-ny.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&
isbn=0415770378
http://www.johnfeffer.com/

Finally, a happy Labor Day to all in the US!

best wishes
Aidan

AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University 

Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK 
tel: +44(0)  1274  588586         (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634          mobile:  
+44(0)  7970  741307 
fax: +44(0)  1274  773663         ISDN:   +44(0)   1274 589280
Email: afostercarter at aol.com     (alt) afostercarter at yahoo.com      website: 
www.aidanfc.net
[Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me 
know, so I can chide AOL]

________________


Subj:   New article on Korean literature: The Nation    
Date:   02/09/2006 18:50:06 GMT Standard Time   
From:   johnfeffer at gmail.com    
To: johnfeffer at gmail.com    
Sent from the Internet (Details)    


Dear friends:

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 
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060918/feffer .

Here is the beginning:

review | posted August 31, 2006 (September 18, 2006 issue) 
    
Writers From the Other Asia 

    
John Feffer 

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. 

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 The Guest provoked fierce 
controversy among readers in South Korea, where it was published in 2001. Read the 
rest here

all the best,
John

-- 
John Feffer
Co-Director, Foreign Policy In Focus
Director, Global Affairs program 
International Relations Center
www.fpif.org 

_____________________________________

http://aparc.stanford.edu/publications/korean_food_korean_identity_the_impact_
of_globalization_on_korean_agriculture/

Korean Food, Korean Identity: The Impact of Globalization on Korean 
Agriculture 
Report 

Author:

John Feffer


Published by

Shorenstein APARC,  2005


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 s
weet potato flour and often topped with raw skate, which has a slightly 
ammoniac flavor. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Download

PDF: Globalization_and_Korean_Agriculture_John_Feffer.pdf (410Kb)


[ends]






-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20060903/59998488/attachment.html>


More information about the Koreanstudies mailing list