[KS] South Korea's Rollback of Democratic Rights

Tue May 19 20:25:57 EDT 2009

Dear All:

A few thoughts about Scott's very valid point of 
political involvement (in any form, including 
journalistic or academic activities) by 
non-Koreans in Korea:

05/10/2009, J.Scott Burgeson wrote:
>How long must one live within another culture 
>before one is allowed to have an "autonomous" 
>voice that is able to engage within local 
>discourses and debates? Doesn't the South Korean 
>government itself claim to welcome the 
>development of contemporary South Korea as a 
>"multicultural society"? (...) If one is a 
>"white American male" who has lived in Korea for 
>15 or 30 years, does a different set of 
>standards apply when defining what 
>"multicultural Korea" means? Well, let's turn 
>the tables around and ask if a "South Korean 
>male" who has lived in the US for 15 or 30 years 
>is also to be denied a voice there for the very 
>same reasons?

Discussing that question might provide us with 
tracks leading us to the greater picture of 
political culture and globalization in Korea. If 
we follow the argumentative strings of Braudel, 
Wallerstein, Negri and Hardt, and even Richard 
Sennett on this new period of flexible 
capitalism, I think it all comes down to our 
concept of "citizen" and "citizenship." These 
terms seem now to have reached the end of their 
life cycle, as we say in software development: no 
further upgrades or support will be offered. Yet, 
we continue to perform logistical operations with 
such outdated code on our global and local hard 
drives, thereby running into serious 
incompatibility problems. Some argue that it was 
the French Revolution which first transformed 
subjects into citizens. I would even start 
earlier and look at late medieval guilds and city 
states. The difference between these two is of 
course that the "citizenship" as it was created 
by the French Revolution also defined itself 
through cultural nationalism, simply because that 
group of "free citizens" was now far too large to 
find significant other communalities. In any 
case, the concept of citizenship only works 
through inclusion and exclusion; same as in any 
other group valuable privileges are given to 
citizens and denied to non-citizens (e.g. 
benefits and participation in the welfare state, 
nationalist rituals, elections and government). I 
do not tell you anything new when pointing out 
that from the nation-state's point of view 
citizenship became an instrument (and that 
starting right after the French Revolution) for 
obscuring a great variety of conflicts -- class 
conflicts, ethnicity/race conflicts, religious 
struggles, gender issues, etc. -- actually the 
most essential instrument of the nation building 
process! The problem, and here I come back to 
Scott's observation, is who to include into one's 
"citizenship" group and who not, and for what 
reasons. Including *all* will not work: the 
concept itself is build upon inclusion and 
exclusion. Including all would result in the loss 
of privileges for members, and if one extends 
that logic the result is the loss of the 
nation-state concept as such. (Are we there in 
the age of globalization? How does one define 
globalization in Korea?) I would argue that the 
criteria for inclusion and exclusion are mostly 
irrational, arbitrary, and also not following any 
linear historical development (which does not 
mean that they cannot be explained -- they sure 
can).

In between Scott's quoted mail and this reply we 
just got another list thread on "Bullying in ROK 
Public Schools." Is that not a wonderful example 
of this same citizenship conflict? The U.S. and 
Canada have adopted a jus soli policy: be born in 
the country and you have the right to become a 
U.S. or Canadian citizen, but not your parents. 
In this case the parents will likely get 
deported. Exclusion is a necessity to make the 
concept of citizenship work, although it leads to 
many ambiguities and paradoxes -- exactly because 
of the arbitrariness of inclusion criteria. 
Citizenship is one thing, citizen's rights and 
discrimination another. The "affirmative action" 
programs (there comes your Berkeley, Scott) can 
be seen as an attempt to find a (partial) 
institutional solution to undo institutional 
marginalization. Because of the pre-dominant 
liberalism these integration programs worked 
well, better than in any other country I know -- 
of course, only for "citizens." That American 
form of liberalism is essential like a closed 
system with its circular logic and constant 
self-affirmations. But closed systems do work as 
long as their is no interference from without. 
And in Korea? Neither European nor Asian 
countries ever had the momentum to 
institutionalize liberalism. Let's not forget 
that the new American liberalism, the revised 
1968 version of it, is as new and as fragile as 
in most other parts of the world. My all time 
heroine since I was eleven, the stunningly 
elegant Black Jewish dancer and singer Josephine 
Baker, attracted the largest imaginable crowds as 
well as the top intellectuals in Berlin and 
Paris, performing -- stark naked, of course -- in 
her erotic-grotesque dance shows. Yet, visiting 
New York in 1936 she was not even allowed to 
enter her hotel there through the front gate. Not 
even Catholics were granted complete and full 
privileges as citizens, not until the 1950s ... 
you will know even today if you keep your senses 
sharpened while strolling around in certain parts 
of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. And in a 
country like Switzerland, one of the oldest 
picture book democracies of the world, women were 
denied to participate in political elections till 
1971. These are all cases were, in spite of 
citizenship, full privileges were denied -- or, 
if you want to put it differently, were there 
were sub-groups within citizenship. South Korea 
had less than twenty years to build a democracy, 
and there was hardly any middle class until the 
1980s, and other than U.S. Military personal 
there was no significant group of non-Koreans 
living in Korea. To be inclusive towards 
non-Koreans as regards to the group of citizens 
with their political rights while at the same 
time still being busy to catch up in terms of 
nation building and trying to "look globalized" 
is juggling just too many eggs at once. 
Liberalism & citizenship is already a 
conceptional paradox in the so-called old and new 
world democracies. Why should and how could Korea 
have a better solution? (By the way, Sheila 
Miyoshi Jager's book Narratives of Nation 
Building in Korea has some good texts discussing 
such paradoxes.)

Coda:
Two years ago, while in Seoul, Min Paek told me 
about a conference she had just participated in. 
"They all shouted 'segyehwa manse!'" she said, 
"isn't that so ironic?!" "Segyehwa" is then most 
obviously not the same as "globalization." No 
wonder then, this year's conference uses the 
slogan "han'guk ûi segyehwa wa segye ûi 
han'gukhwa." Well, well, ... have to run now, see 
my therapist to explain this.

Frank

-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20090519/c6c4483b/attachment.html>