[KS] Korean bloggers writing in English / Fluidity of Identity Construction

[David Kosofsky]

The postings on this thread by John Frankl and Stephen Epstein, and the latter's effort to "unpack some of the assumptions that may underlie this discussion" have reawakened some thoughts I had while reading, a few days ago, a book called "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism." 
 
Publisher's Weekly describes the book as a "polemic about the shortcomings of neoliberal economic theory's belief in unlimited free-market competition and its effect on the developing world."  And the blurb says that the author  "has taught at the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, since 1990. He has consulted for numerous international organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. He has published eleven books, including Kicking Away the Ladder, winner of the 2003 Myrdal Prize."
 
And now to entangle that book in this thread on the fluidity of identity construction, let me give the author's name: Ha-Joon Chang
 
Noticing the book on the "New Non-Fiction" shelf in a public library in suburban New Orleans, and seeing the author's name,  I made mental note (as would any member of the Korean Studies list, I'd guess) of his probable ethnicity.  The subject greatly interests me, so I probably would have checked out the book anyway, but I was also motivated by curiosity about to what extent and in what ways it might prove to be a "Korean book" or to take a "Korean position".   In retrospect, it strikes me  that I probably didn't even form a clear idea of  how a writer's "Korean identity" might play itself out in a critique of neoliberal economic theory.  
 
As it happens, the introductory chapter to the book is a very clear and explicit answer to exactly that question: In what way is this book an outgrowth of the writer's experience growing up in South Korea during the period of that country's historically unprecedented economic development?  Chang uses a very personal, impressionistic, annecdotal, evocative style to convey a sense of what "historically unprecedented economic development" actually felt like for those living through it. But he's more careful than that: he describes what it felt like to HIM, given the particular circumstances of HIS family, and cautiously invites generalization and extention to the experience of other Koreans of that era.   His goal (again, explictly stated) is to give readers a feeling for the psychological texture of the actual experience of rapid economic development, and to that end he sees an account of his own experience as useful.  (I don't know how other readers
 have responded, but having lived in Korea during more than half of the period he describes, I was dazzled by the power of his evocations.)
 
>From there-- still in the introduction, and still in a completely personal style-- Chang explains how his perspective on economics has been shaped by his personal experience of hyper-rapid economic development in Korea.  He relates how he came to learn more about the policies the Korean government had employed in the course of achieving that development, and how he then became curious about, and studied, the governmental policies behind the economic development of other countries.  He says that he came to realize that the policies advocated by wealthy countries were very different from the ones they had pursued in achieving their own wealth.  From there, the outline of his critique becomes clear.  
 
The rest of the book is filled with examples from several different periods in the economic development of several different countries. Many are from South Korea; most are not.
 
So, how does Chang's "Korean identity" figure in the book?  Clearly his experiences growing up in Korea when he did (he was born in 1963) gave him a particularly rich personal sense of economic development, and clearly they informed his later academic concern with therories and policies related to economic development. I say `clearly' because Chang describes the experiences vividly and explains how they informed his interests and views. And clearly his later involvement with economic planning in Korea has given him a particular perspective on development-policy issues. Again, he describes the involvement so the reader can take note of any Korea-specific slants, biases, or priorities in Chang's views.  In short, plenty of "Korean identity," all explained to the reader in terms of one specific writer's personal experiences growing up in Korea and being involved in Korean policy-making and think-tanking.
 
But actually more interesting to me is the kind of "Korean identity" elements that don't appear.  Specifically, there is no mention or invocation of being "Korean" in any sense of blood or deep underlying ethos.  Chang's "Korean identity" is offered up in terms of clear and specific (and it's maybe appropriate to use an economic term) `inputs'  he experienced.  
 
The second element of "Korean identity" that never appears is any claim to speak for or represent all Koreans. Chang certainly invites the reader to generalize and extend from the autobiographical examples he provides, but nowhere does he claim that it is necessary, or even necessarily valid to do so. In fact I have a brother-in-law, born in Korea at the same time as Chang, who grew up there, also studied economics, and also was (and still is) involved in economic development policy-making. Every bit as Korean as Chang, my brother-in-law nonetheless views neoliberalism through a completely different lens. It's a tirbute to the way "Korean identity" is (and more importantly, isn't) constructed in Chang's book that the non-congruence of the views of those two early-sixties-born, SNU-graduated Korean development economics specialists presents no surprise or problem.
 
So, is "Bad Samaritans" a "Korean book"?  The answer I'd give is that the pointlessness of the question appears in sharp relief against the wonderful clarity and functionality of the writer's presentation of how the "input" of his Korean experience contributed to the views he presents in the book.  The idea of any essentialist construction of "Korean identity" appears absurdly uninformative and unhelpful in comparison.
 
Given all that, the question of Chang's nationality (in the passport-carrying sense of the word) is clearly of little or no importance in a reader's engagement with the book.  I don't believe it's answered in the book itself.  I confess to having taken the trouble of visiting Chang's Cambridge faculty webpage to find out (falling that far short of my own cosmopolitan ideal) and the answer leaves me feeling no differently, one way or the other, about the quality of the book or its arguments.
 
Which brings me back to Stephen Epstein's remark about Choe Sang Hun and questions about his "Korean perspective" : "Are these questions even relevant, or is what  makes his work noteworthy simply the fact that he is a damn fine journalist?"  After reading Chang Ha-Joon's "Bad Samaritans," I felt I had engaged with a damn fine writer, and been enriched by his views, insights, and analyses.   No, Chang's "Korean identity" isn't  irrelevant to the book.  Rather, the book itself presents an explicit, functional account of the actual "inputs" he attributes to his lived Korean experience. That sophistication and fluidity (to use Stephen's words) exposes just how pointless, distracting, and confusing is the standard, unexamined, uncritical, sangshik-laden discourse about Korean (or any other national) identity.

 
 David Kosofsky
New Orleans, LA
 
  
 


      
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