The Making of a New Rural Order in South China, Volume II: Merchants, Markets, and Lineages, 1500–1700 by Joseph P. McDermott (review)

Abstract

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 82.1 (2022): 174–181 other words, one wonders whether the term “aristocracy” here connotes more than simply a measurable income difference and superior working conditions. Moreover, one might also ask how other distinctions affect relations between HCI workers and non-HCI workers, as well as between HCI workers and other identifiable groupings in South Korean society, middle class or otherwise. Such lingering wishes and questions aside, I think that this book is splendid—deeply researched, brimming with interesting and useful historical information, and full of insight. It is, implicitly throughout and explicitly in its final paragraphs, a cri de coeur for “radical reform” (p. 154). Through her study of the HCI workers, Kim exposes one of the many ugly truths about neoliberalism in South Korea. As in so many other parts of the world, the worship of market forces and unconstrained capitalism have left a staggering winner-take-all inequality in their path, a sobering truth also told brilliantly by South Korean director Bong Joon Ho 奉俊昊 in his 2019 Oscar-winning masterpiece Para­ site (Kisaengch’ung 寄生蟲).