Korean Studies最新文献

Abstract:

The South Korean religion of Chŭngsando places pronounced emphasis on women by teaching that their emancipation is a precondition for surviving an apocalyptic transition, whereafter gender inequities will end. It further highlights the role of historical personage and mother, Ko P'allye (1880–1935), in the early history of the Chŭngsan movement as having been an active subject and the religious successor to male founder, Chŭngsan Kang Ilsun (1871–1909). This doctrine, and Chŭngsando's scriptual portrayal of Ko are explicitly challenging to traditional and contemporary patriarchy, yet it is Chŭngsando's current male leader, An Kyŏngjŏn, who has elevated these elements to a greater degree than any other sect. This article examines representations of womanhood and motherhood within Chŭngsando's current scripture through a close reading of the gendered aspects of the doctrine and portrayal of Ko P'allye. While addressing the textual history, it approaches the scripture as a cultural text for which the most recent version offers the richest elaboration. It analogizes to popular culture to interpret a core characteristic of the text: interplay of the mundane (historical reality) and the extraordinary (religious content). It meanwhile historicizes the tensions with structural patriarchy by situating the Chŭngsan religion as a subaltern salvationist movement. I argue the doctrine and portrayal are neither invention nor contradictory to the movement but trace to two historical forces: emancipatory discourse(s) of women, and Ko's own lived reality as a subaltern.

Abstract:

In the last decade, South Korean webtoons have joined television dramas (K-dramas) and K-pop as an important element of the Korean Wave abroad. Domestically, the South Korean public can idly browse or religiously follow thousands of free or subscription webtoons on their smartphones. Webtoon artists may dream of achieving broader success by having their works adapted transmedially, as a web drama (online TV drama) or even better, as a network, cable or Netflix series that achieves mainstream success. Two significant subgenres of webtoons are "lifestyle webtoons" (saenghwarwept'un) and "family webtoons" (kajogwept'un) and these two subgenres are combined in what I am calling "childcare webtoons" (yugawept'un). While South Korea also follows global media trends of "mom blogs" and Instagram microcelebrities or Youtubers sharing their parenting journeys ("sharenting"), "childcare webtoons" are a particularly rich space for observing changing mothering ideologies and parenting norms. This article examines "mom humor" and other stories mothers tell across the South Korean Internet, paying particular attention to what kinds of emotional expression are sanctioned and what is taboo. I analyze webtoons such as "I'm a Mom (Nanŭn ŏmmada)" and "The Birth of a Married Woman(Yubunyŏŭi t'ansaeng)," suggesting that even as the tedium of everyday motherhood is increasingly critiqued through media, the still somewhat rigid gender roles and maternal expectations in South Korea translate into an overall more muted and subtle "mom humor" alongside the still more socially expected stories of maternal gratitude and fulfillment.

Abstract:

The present study focuses on the 1990s as a pivotal era in the mnemonic landscape of post-authoritarian South Korea, and bridges the gap between the ample literature on the revolutionary 1980s and the "history wars" of the 2000s–2010s. Through a case study of the cultural memory of Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) and his role in the division of the Korean peninsula, this mnemohistorical account investigates how his memory became pivotal to South Korean mnemonic disputes in the 1990s. Contestations over the memory of Rhee during this period are dissected using critical discourse analysis, beginning with the "re-discovery" of Syngman Rhee in the early 1990s by conservative journalists and intellectuals. The article then explores how Chosun Ilbo and Joongang Ilbo, two of South Korea's largest newspapers, led extensive Syngman Rhee "re-evaluation" efforts in 1995 to revise South Korean cultural memory, before addressing how such efforts were met by fierce opposition from progressives. Although ultimately unsuccessful, these conservative re-evaluation efforts and the opposition that ensued veritably mapped the mnemonic coordinates for South Korea's later "history wars." As such, the present study provides an insight into the origins of the mnemonic polarization that characterized South Korea in the mid-2000s. As a first historical dispute initiated by conservatives post-democratization, this "re-discovery" and "re-evaluation" of Syngman Rhee as South Korea's "founding father" arguably provided conservatives with a historical narrative for the post-Cold War era, cementing a pillar of conservative functional memory that would eventually merge into a "foundation"-centered narrative after the late 1990s.

Abstract:

Under the banner of civilization and enlightenment, new-intellectuals of the early twentieth century sought to challenge damaging past traditions and social practices to give rise to a new era for the people of Korea. Coinciding with this push toward modern progress, the theater simultaneously arose as a new feature of the urban landscape. Writers like Yi Kwang-su stressed the communicative potential of new literary trends. He was one of the earliest to turn to drama as a means of shaping a future Korea; he utilized the palpable realism fostered by stage space as a means to channel his progressive ideas to society. Published in Hakjigwang in 1917, Kyuhan (Sorrows of the Inner Room), potentially Korea's first modern play, is a work that frankly portrays the damages of dated Confucian moralities and traditions. In penning a drama that brings the modern Chosŏn intellectual of Yi's urban audience into a uniquely female space of domesticity, pain and subalternity, the audience becomes privy to the bitter realities of Chosŏn women and the importance of autonomy, education and true love. Through discussions on heterotopic space, spectatorship and the relationship between actor and audience, this study will explore Kyuhan and the birth of the modern stage. In this, we come understand Yi's vision of theater as a new site for enlightenment progress that could shock and provoke the public into action.

Abstract:

This article is an account of the changing conceptualization of Confucianism by Protestant missionaries and Korean Protestant believers at the turn of the twentieth century. The Koreans and Anglo-American missionaries each identified different moral and political reasons for religious conversion. Key to the missionary notion was a proper religion. A religion proper is premised in the Revelation in the Scripture and verifiable in history and is distinct from a set of abstract ethical precepts. To this end, the missionaries deployed various catechisms with reference to comparative chronology and the rational basis of souls. On the other hand, the converts were attracted to the political possibilities of Protestant religion. The converting Koreans saw potential in reforming and regenerating public and private morality, arguing that Confucianism had exhausted its ethical resources. However, the closure of the political possibilities by the 1900s prompted the missionaries to explore other avenues such as Christian moral psychology. This reflected the missionaries' emphasis on post-mortem individual salvation, leading to a renewed conceptual focus on inner conscience rooted in Christian moral and natural science.

• Introduction to Special SectionPortrayals of Motherhood in South Korean Popular and Practiced Culture
• Bonnie Tilland (bio)

In recent years, approaches to the study of motherhood in Korea have diversified, in line with both an evolving gender equality movement in South Korea and an increasingly globalized field of gender studies. Anthropologists and gender studies scholars of South Korea have analyzed changes in motherhood ideology (Taek-rim Yoon, for example), along with changing expectations and norms for engagement with children's education (particularly Nancy Abelmann on "the education mother" and So Jin Park on "education management mothers"). The spread of South Korean culture abroad has also led to more analyses of representations of mothers in film, television, and literature, and scholars increasingly examine mothers' use of social media and online communities. This special section of Korean Studies grew out of an organized panel at the Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) conference in La Rochelle, France, in 2021, also called "Portrayals of Motherhood in South Korean Popular and Practiced Culture." In the intervening years since the conference panel, new scholars joined the special section and others had to defer or depart. It is our hope that this special section will lead to continued academic discussion of South Korean motherhood, mothers, mothering, [End Page 166] and parenting. We wish to thank Soo Hyun Jackelen, who was part of the initial conference panel, for her significant contributions to the planning of the project.

The contributors to this special section approach Korean studies from different disciplinary backgrounds, and it follows that each author also engages differently with South Korean motherhood, with the commonality that all are examining motherhood through "popular and practiced culture." An underlying motivation of the special section is to illuminate mothering and motherhood through the South Korean context and, in turn, to illuminate aspects of South Korean society and culture to which a focus on mothering and motherhood will bring new perspective. While the Korean Wave of popular culture has meant that there is a wealth of new scholarship on various themes, tropes, and social issues as seen through the lens of K-pop and Korean television, this special section emerged out of our collective commitment to making connections between popular culture and practiced culture to better understand historical and contemporary South Korean motherhood. Considered together, the articles in this special section examine the spaces between media or written texts and their consumers, furthering an understanding of South Korean motherhood beyond popular culture or practiced culture. In the space between audi

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• Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ by Eleana Kim
• June Hee Kwon

Reminders of the Korean peninsula's division have not always been visible or obvious, but they are ubiquitous in the everyday lives of South Koreans. Morning and evening news programs frequently present stories about North Korea's latest missile launches or nuclear experiments, expressing grave concern that the North may attack South Korea and defeat the US military stationed there. Tenacious investigations of those suspected of having pro-North Korean sentiments can be seen as an ongoing political project, regardless of the government's stated political orientation, to consolidate South Korean anti-communist nationalism. Tragic stories about families separated by the Korean War are circulated in the form of documentaries, TV shows, and emotional video clips of government-arranged family reunions. All of these "division reminders" have directed the teleological desire for ethnonational unification "someday" in South Korea. Yet, as the ambiguous temporality of division, which is temporary but permanent, and hopeful but unpredictable, has diversified the vision of a national future among young South Koreans, the necessity of ethnonational unification has been gradually replaced with a new political rhetoric of "peace"—a more universal aspiration beyond national constraints.

Of the divided landscape, there is no better marker than the DMZ (demilitarized zone) that materializes and visualizes the ongoing inter-Korean conflict and the temporary peace (or ceasefire) that resulted from the Korean War. The DMZ has played a key role in buffering possible military confrontations (demilitarization) as well as restricting human encroachment with the threat of indiscriminately buried landmines (militarization). Eleana Kim's new book on the highly "de/militarized" zone, as the Epilogue title aptly puts it, Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ is a breakthrough ethnography that thoroughly investigates how the untouchable and untouched border zone, has become an exceptional "nature" space that generates new knowledge production about inter-species interactions and opens up new possibilities to envision peace with nature.

Kim's book stages the DMZ's exceptionality through the intersection of militarism and capitalist desire. As vividly presented in Chapter 4, the South Korean government in the 1960s encouraged poor Koreans to [End Page 486] move near the DMZ, which normally had very limited civilian access. The purpose was for them to farm rice the

• Editor's Note
• Cheehyung Harrison Kim

Two interconnected Special Sections are at the core of this volume. The first is titled "A Transnational Reading of the Invention of Korea's Confucian Traditions," exceptionally guest edited by Daham Chong (Sangmyung University). The second is guest editor Bonnie Tilland's (Leiden University) superb "Portrayals of Motherhood in South Korean Popular and Practiced Culture." Confucianism and motherhood are notions and practices tied to the ideological perception of constancy, on the one hand, and the shifting epistemological norms based on cultural and historical exigencies, on the other. The authors of the two Special Sections question and explore various historical and cultural predicaments of Confucianism and motherhood in modern and contemporary Korea.

The Special Section on the invention of Confucian traditions begins with Daham Chong's meticulous account of the influence Max Weber had on modern Korean historians' comprehension of Confucianism-derived systems in late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn, namely the civil service examination. Young-chan Choi (University of Oxford) adroitly investigates the epistemological changes distinctly occurring in late nineteenth century Korea, in which Confucianism comes to be seen as inferior to the modernist understandings of the world stemming from Protestantism. The postliberation space is Kim Hunjoo's (Hanbat National University) research area, where the process of remaking Confucianism as a new tradition is carefully scrutinized in relation to the nation building process. The final piece in this Special Section is on literary culture. Owen [End Page v] Stampton's (University of British Columbia) sophisticated article probes into the tension between tradition and modern life as experienced by women characters in Yi Kwang-su's 1917 play Kyuhan, as well as discussing the birth of the modern stage in Korea.

South Korea's variegated cultural expressions of motherhood is the theme of the second Special Section. It starts with Ji-yoon An's (University of British Columbia) keen multilayered comparison of the notion of motherhood between Kore-eda Hirokazu's Broker (2022) and South Korean films from the 1990s and 2000s about the absurd aspects of marriage and family, films such as My Wife Got Married (2008). Turning to television, Young A. Jung's (George Mason University) engrossing article approaches motherhood as a totalizing system, as represented in South Korea's recent—and popular—television dramas such as Sky Castle (2018–2019). The incongruent surge of feminism is at the center of Barbara Wall's (University of Copenhagen) astute discussion of motherhood and mothering, as evoked by South Korea's 2019 television drama When the Camellia Blooms