Review of Vitasta Raina's Novella: Writer’s Block

Amazon Books

Vitasta Raina, urban planner and architect, lives and works in Mumbai, India, where she composed her novella, Writer's Block. The pun on block as "impediment" and block as "city unit" is intentional, and writers living in the block might or might not experience writer's block. Some do, some don't, but for the most part, the writers living there seem sufficiently ruly and productive.

But the city Chalet and its residents, the so-called charlatans, are about to undergo a crisis.

However, I don't want to reveal many plot spoilers. I will therefore offer a few thoughts. The story covers about 64 pages and focuses on the lives of eight writers, who are called "CAST," and distributes them across eight chapters (8x8=64), the last of which is titled, "While the Credits Roll," as if the novella were a motion picture. The first seven chapters are identified as "epiphanies," which would make them divinely inspired insights, and the subtitles read like a continuous poem of free verse style with occasional rhyme, as here on the first page:

I am if I choose to be
But I have no choice
In these million years of evolution
I have finally lost my voice (page 1)

The chapters are prose of native speaker quality, the sentences often of complex length, but nevertheless concise and clear. For example, here is a sentence describing a model of the city:

"Representing a city that in the last decadal cycle of the City Census estimated almost sixty percent of the inhabitants as parasite slum dwellers, the model displayed high rise residential estates, office complexes, shopping arcades, golf courses and a meandering network of transit corridors, flyovers and flyunders connecting the ends, the edges, the fringes and the cores of Chalet." (page 9)

The model is of an idealized Chalet, and mickle are the ways this city could be represented, extremes of poverty and riches, of asceticism and gluttony, of good and bad, of weak and strong, a list that could go on and on.

But the electricity abruptly stops working, and so does everything else, most significantly, the elevators. At that severe inconvenience, Chalet is turned upside down, literally, as the rich pour into the streets and the poor ricochet up to the penthouses. Still, life goes on, for most of the writers, who are stuck in the middle, neither rich nor poor, and Chalet goes on as well. This is all along expected as one reads this slender volume, but the details make for the difference, and for the unexpected.

Five Stars out of Five!

The Problem with Nationalism?

Joseph Roth

Wikipedia

Writing for the New York Times (September 3, 2015), George Prochnik reviews Michael Hofmann's translation of Joseph Roth's long lament over the fall of the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire in "The Hotel Years":

He had a passion for hotels, which he considered remnant microcosms of that multiethnic ideal savaged by the Great War. In an essay titled "Arrival in the Hotel," Roth proudly enumerates the nationalities represented at one establishment: "The waiter is from Upper Austria. The porter is a Frenchman from Provence. The receptionist is from Normandy. The headwaiter is Bavarian. The chambermaid is Swiss. The valet is Dutch. The manager is Levantine; and for years I've suspected the cook of being Czech." Its guests, who included "Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists," found themselves in the hotel "slightly on holiday from the rigidity of love of land," seemingly restored by these precincts to "what they should always be: children of the world."

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was not only multiethnic, it was multicultural in a way that almost worked - having worked for about 1000 years - because it was European and unified by loyalty to the Christian emperor, but the rise of ethnic nationalism put an end to all that and engendered genocidal ethnic cleansing at the 20th-century's beginning that was picked up again in the Balkan wars of the 20th-century's end.

In raising resistance to radical Islamism, then, one should be wary about inflaming ethnic tensions . . .

Happy Ballantine's Day . . . Belated?

Ballantine's Whisky
You Tube

Sorry for missing Valentine's Day, all of you'uns out there, so here's to a Happy Ballantine's Day:

Ballantine's Whisky - Old Commercial

Enjoy the multiculturalism! Or the multiethnicity! Or the Scotch whisky! Or all three!

Cheers!

Adam Garfinkle on Mali . . . and what we fail to learn

Adam Garfinkle

FPRI

In "Mali: Understanding the Chessboard" (E-Notes, January 2013), Adam Garfinkle has some kind words about a prior American counterterrorism policy in Mali formulated by policymakers oblivious to its ethnic complexity and the implications of inadvertently favoring one ethnic group above the others:

Speaking of full-frontal ignorance, . . . the U.S. counterterrorism training mission in Mali made the stupefying mistake of choosing three of four northern unit commanders to train who were ethnic Tuareg . . . [W]hen the Tuareg rebellion in Mali gained steam after the denouement of the Libya caper, greatly stimulated by the return of heavily armed Tuareg brethren from that fight, these three Tuareg commanders defected to the rebels, bringing soldiers, vehicles, ammunition and more to the anti-government side. Anyone who was surprised by this is at the very least a terminal ignoramus. And anyone in the U.S. military who failed to understand the ethnic composition of the country's politico-military cleavages, such that he let U.S. Special Forces training be lavished on Tuareg commanders, was clearly insufficiently trained to do his job. And believe me, that's about as nice a way to put that as I can summon.

See? I told you he was being kind. He put his criticism as nicely as he could manage. He also has some kind words about the American assumption of Enlightenment universalism:

How do things like this (still) happen, after what we should have learned from years of dealing with Iraqis and Afghans and others on their home turf? I happen to know someone who teaches in the U.S. military education system, and this person happens to be a field-experienced Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology. This person tries very hard to clear away the thick fog created by the innocent Enlightenment universalism that pervades the American mind -- the toxic fog that tries to convince us that all people, everywhere, are basically the same, have the same value hierarchies, the same habits of moral and tactical judgment, and mean the same things by roughly comparable translated words.

I think I know the anthropologist he's referring to. Garfinkle's right that our military is still naive, but as he also points out, this merely reflects a larger American ignorance of something that Samuel Huntington tried to drum into our heads, namely, that the world is not as Francis Fukuyama expected at the 'end' of history, a triumph of bourgeois democratic values. Instead, there will be blood -- over clashes of values. But there's hope that we Americans might still learn, for the unnamed anthropologist keeps trying:

Sometimes this person senses success, because the Special Forces officers in class who are still climbing the promotion tree tend to "get it." They "get it" because they have collected personal experience -- whether in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Pakistan, or the Philippines, or even in Mali -- so that what they are learning in class corresponds to the realities they know. I have been to this person's classes on several occasions to guest-teach, and I agree: A lot of the guys (and the few women in the spec ops field) who have been on the ground do "get it." But it seems that a lot of their senior officers don't yet get much of anything at all. It is almost inconceivable that we could screw-up so badly, since understanding basic Malian circumstances isn't rocket science, as they say. So why did this get so thoroughly botched? I'm trying to find out; patience, please.

One thinks that 9/11 should have taught us that some groups don't even come close to sharing out values, but too many people still don't "get it." I'm all for Enlightenment universalism, bourgeois democratic values, and basic human rights, but I'm not naive. I know that a lot of cultural, religious, civilizational groups out there in the world are not for these things.

Some of these groups, such as those represented by the likes of Al-Qaeda, are even violently opposed to anyone anywhere holding to Enlightenment universalism, bourgeois democratic values, and basic human rights.

Cultural Anthropologist Terence Turner on Multiculturalism

Terence Turner

Cornell University

The cultural anthropologist Terence Turner published an article in 1993 from a leftist point of view that explicitly criticized what he called "difference multiculturalism," which sounds almost exactly like what I've called "radical multiculturalism." He favored "critical multiculturalism," of course, which has some aspects in common with what I've termed "moderate multiculturalism" (albeit, again, from a left perspective on his part). The article, "Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What Is Anthropology That Multiculturalists Should Be Mindful of It?" (Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 4. (Nov., 1993), pp. 411-429), deserves to be read in its entirety, for it is a balanced article, but I will focus on his critique of "difference multiculturalism."

Turner acknowledges that the conservatives are largely right -- though with some "distortions" -- about the problems of "difference multiculturalism":

In sharp contrast to critical multiculturalism is the multiculturalism of the cultural nationalists and fetishists of difference, for whom culture reduces to a tag for ethnic identity and a license for political and intellectual separatism. This is the stereotype of multiculturalism that has been touted by neoconservative critics of "political correctness" in academia, who apart from their other distortions have described multiculturalism as if it were a homogeneous set of ideas and attitudes. There is no denying, however, that some participants in the multiculturalist debates have adopted positions approximating this stereotype of difference multiculturalism. (414)

The mere fact that Turner finds necessary a critique of "difference multiculturalism" indicates that this sort of multiculturalist is by no means rare, despite his reference to merely "some" proponents of multiculturalism (and thus raising skepticism about the term "stereotype"). Turner sees risks, threats, dangers in this leftist understanding of multiculturalism, namely, its devolution into crude identity politics:

The term multiculturalism [when it signifies "difference multiculturalism"] has come to be used primarily in connection with demands on behalf of black and other minority groups for separate and equal representation in college curriculums and extra-academic cultural programs and events. It has also assumed more general connotations as an ideological stance towards participation by such minorities in national "cultures" and societies, and the changing nature of national and transnational cultures themselves. As a code word for minority demands for separate recognition in academic and other cultural institutions, multiculturalism tends to become a form of identity politics, in which the concept of culture becomes merged with that of ethnic identity. From an anthropological standpoint, this move, at least in its more simplistic ideological forms, is fraught with dangers both theoretical and practical. It risks essentializing the idea of culture as the property of an ethnic group or race; it risks reifying cultures as separate entities by overemphasizing their boundedness and mutual distinctness; it risks overemphasizing the internal homogeneity of cultures in terms that potentially legitimize repressive demands for communal conformity; and by treating cultures as badges of group identity, it tends to fetishize them in ways that put them beyond the reach of critical analysis -- and thus of anthropology. (411-412)

Turner notes that multiculturalism's "cultural relativism" derives from cultural anthropology, a point that I have also previously made:

Certain aspects of the concept of culture originally developed by anthropologists (such as the distinction of culture and race) are unquestionably relevant to multiculturalist positions, but for the most part these have by now been assimilated into the common sense of Anglo-American culture in the form of vulgar cultural relativism, according to which all cultural traditions are regarded in principle as equally valuable. Apart from making ideological use of this broadly "anthropological" notion of cultural relativism as an ideological weapon against Eurocentrism, however, multiculturalism remains essentially unconcerned with culture in any of its usual anthropological senses. (413)

As we see, he considers this cultural relativism a 'vulgarization,' but he nevertheless acknowledges its derivation from anthropology, and he cites the leftist multiculturalist Todd Gitlin on its flawed consequences for the left:

The academic left has degenerated into a loose aggregation of margins -- often cannibalistic, romancing the varieties of otherness, speaking in tongues. In this new interest-group pluralism, the shopping center of identity politics makes a fetish of the virtues of the minority, which, in the end, is not only intellectually stultifying but also politically suicidal. It creates a kind of parochialism in which one is justified in having every interest in difference and no interest in commonality. One's identification with an interest group comes to be the first and final word that opens and terminates one's intellectual curiosity. As soon as I declare I am a Jew, a black, a Hispanic, a woman, a gay, I have no more need to define my point of view. (188-189; Todd Gitlin, "On the Virtues of a Loose Canon," Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding, Patricia Aufderheide, ed, 185-190. St. Paul, MN: Greywolf Press)

With identity politics and cultural relativism, the central flaws of "difference multiculturalism" becomes salient, namely, "moral relativism" and "ethnic essentialism," on which Turner quotes fellow anthropologist Richard J. Perry:

They [i.e., the "difference multiculturalists] commonly confuse cultural relativism with moral relativism . . . [and] tend to view non-Western cultures as stable, tradition-bound, timeless entities, [which] shifts us dangerously back toward viewing the others as beings who are profoundly and inherently different from ourselves . . . . The sense of the "timeless heritage" of traditional peoples, albeit respectful, is just a short step from ethnic essentialism . . . . At its worst, this romanticism tends to blur the distinction between culture and race -- a distinction that we anthropologists thought we had established several generations ago. (419; Richard J. Perry, "Why Do Multiculturalists Ignore Anthropologists?" Chronicle of Higher Education, March 1992, 4, 52)

Through these quotes from an article by Turner, a scholar on the left who cites other scholars on the left (e.g., Gitlin, Aufderheide, and Perry), we see that my views on much of what goes for multiculturalism were correct, despite my interlocutor's accusations over at the Marmot's Hole (MH) that I was a racist engaged in distorting multiculturalism.

For my summary of that MH debate, go here. For my other Gypsy Scholar posts in support of my views on what I call "radical multiculturalism," go here and here.

Multicultural 'Deceit' in Korea?

Monument to Multiculturalism
Francesco Pirelli
Some cultures would destroy this statue . . .
Wikipedia

I read a disturbing article in yesterday's JoongAng Daily about cases of migrant workers in Korea deceiving Korean women into marriages of convenience. This is the sort of thing one ought to expect, but according to Yim Seung-hye in "Woman recalls deceit in migrant marriage" (February 23, 2012), the women are naively taken advantage of in many 'multicultural' marriages involving a particular subgroup of migrant workers:

As the number of international marriages continues to rise, there is no shortage of stories painting multiculturalism in a positive light. But one such marriage has left a woman fighting for custody of her son in a trend of marital deception that appears to be growing.

The woman, who asked to be identified only as Oh, 38, is part of an Internet group with thousands of members who have suffered as a result of marriages with Pakistani and Bangladeshi men. The Korean women writing there have shared stories of being tricked into marriages with migrant workers from the two countries as well as verbal and physical abuse.

The most disturbing point is that this sort of deceitful marriage has happened to thousands of women. I wish some statistics had been provided, but if the reference to "an Internet group with thousands of members" is accurate, then this may be a huge problem indeed, for this internet group could be just the tip of a very large iceberg. Most of the stories that we read in the papers about so-called 'multicultural' marriages focus on Korean men marrying foreign women, and if those marriages fail to work out, blame often gets placed on the Korean husbands or the Korean in-laws, but the focus in most articles is on successful marriages and on how Koreans need to change and be more open to foreign ways. That message has its downside, as Ms. Oh's case shows:

"There are so many women who have similar stories as mine. Most of us were hesitant to marry a migrant worker, but all of the TV shows and news stories beautifying multiculturalism and the stories of multicultural families living happily in Korea comforted us," Oh said. "But now, all of us are suffering from broken marriages. I just don't want to see any more victims like myself."

My advice to Korean women considering marriage to foreigners is twofold: Get to know the man well first and also get to know the man's culture. Don't depend only on what he says. Read about his home country and the treatment of women there. Find out what his religion teaches about the treatment of women. Don't rely on sources with an interest in painting a rosy picture of other cultures. Look for the dirt that's being swept under the rug. Turn over a few stones and see what turns up. Think hard about the future with a foreigner. For instance, consider what might happen if you did marry a foreigner and had children with him. Could you be certain that on a visit to his home country, your children could not be taken from you by your in-laws? That could happen in some countries where the husband has the legal control over his children.

This advice is sound no matter what the statistics concerning cases such as that of Ms. Oh.

UPDATE: Readers in comments have expressed skepticism about the prevalence of such cases, a point on which I also had questions, but my doubts were very carefully couched, so I've now added a question mark to this blog entry's heading to indicate that I have lingering questions.

Cultural Diversity and European Integration

Ewha Womans University

(Image from Wikipedia)

The photo above shows pretty much what I see nearly every morning after exiting the subway station and heading for the entrance to Ewha campus, and I'll be seeing this scene later on this early Sunday morning, albeit with fewer students milling about, as I head for my duty as judge in a nationwide speech contest sponsored, if I recall correctly, by the JoongAng Daily.

Because of this early morning responsibility, I have little time for a substantive blog entry today, but I can at least note that Ewha's Division of International Studies has asked me to teach its course on European History this coming spring semester since the regular instructor will be on sabbatical. I intend to rework a course that I designed for Yonsei University's Underwood International College. Some of this will sound familiar to long-time readers of Gypsy Scholar:

In the book Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, Robert Kagan proposes that Europeans are "turning away from power . . . [and] moving . . . into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation . . . . a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant's 'perpetual peace'" (page 3). But is this European perception of its role realistic or deluded? European integration has drawn together a collection of distinct nations, each characterized by its own particular culture, forming the EU a truly multicultural organization. These nations, nevertheless, share much the same civilizational identity, as Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) would have agreed and Rémi Brague (Eccentric Civilization) would still attempt to set forth. But as Christopher Caldwell shows in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, the ongoing, extensive immigration from the world to Europe may be introducing a more radical version of multiculturalism, as groups adhering to other than Western identities begin to dominate and to practice, if not explicitly demand, cultural autonomy. Do such groups pose a political threat to the European paradise of peace? Were the Paris riots, for example, a harbinger of cultural -- perhaps even civilizational -- conflict to come? And with the current economic problems reflected in the Euro currency's woes exacerbate these cultural differences and bring the entire process of European integration to a halt, even a collapse? This course will focus upon such questions, broadly conceived.

This is a preliminary draft of the course description, and I intend to rework and reword it as soon as I get beyond finals grading and other editing jobs that have piled up recently.

Meanwhile, wish me energy for today's judging duty. I foresee three grueling hours . . .

"Korean Identity?" in Philosophy and Reality

Korea in Asian Context

(Image from Wikipedia)

At the request of a Korean friend of mine, Yoon Pyung-joong (윤평중), who teaches philosophy at Hanshin University (where I once taught English), I've recently written a somewhat general article on "Korean Identity" ("한국인은 누가 될 것인가?") and had it printed in the quarterly journal Philosophy and Reality (철학과 현실), a publication issued by the Research Institute of Philosophy and Culture (철학문화연구소), which has put out three other articles on Korean identity in the same volume, each of these three having been written by Koreans.

Some will note that the article's title in Korean differs: ("한국인은 누가 될 것인가?" = "What is a Korean to be?" (rather than "Korean Identity"). That was an editorial choice on the part of the journal. Anyone who might go to the trouble to read both the English and the Korean versions of the article itself might also notice that the former is longer. The shortened Korean version is also an 'editorial' decision -- by my wife. In translating, she shortened the parts that would be obvious to Koreans . . . so as to preclude my appearing like a fool (which might or might not have succeeded). I don't expect anyone to be greatly impressed by my views anyway, for I state what is fairly well known and offer no fine-grained analysis.

At any rate, the article follows below, and regular readers will recognize some passages from blog entries in which I worked through my thoughts.


Korean Identity?

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Ewha Womans University


1. Introduction

In his insightful book Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (Europe, la voie romaine), a fascinating analysis of European cultural identity, the French philosopher Rémi Brague relates an anecdote about Ortega y Gasset. The latter had recently returned from America and was asked the reason for his return. He answered with a pun of ambiguity:

"Europa es el único continente que tiene un contenido."

The Spanish word "continente" means both "continent" and "container," permitting either of two translations for Ortega's reply: "Europe is the only continent that has a content" and "Europe is the only container that has a content." He meant both, and one sees what he meant. Europe has a cultural unity that other continents lack.

Perhaps Europe's cultural unity is less impressive as a unique fact when one reflects that this continent is the artifact of an arbitrary line drawn to separate what is considered 'Europe' from what is considered 'Asia.' Looked down upon from above, Europe seems merely an Asian peninsula.

But the imaginary line exists in everyone's mind. To its west, Europe. To its east, Asia. West of the line, we find a civilization that integrated Athens and Jerusalem. East of the line, however, we find many civilizations. To be identified as "Asian" is therefore only a geographical distinction and implies nothing about one's cultural identity. Whereas a German might casually remark, "I am a European," and thereby make a recognizable statement of cultural identity, a Korean would not formulate a corresponding remark in stating, "I am an Asian."

For a Korean to offer a parallel statement of cultural identity, the formulation would have to be, "I am a Korean."

But what does that mean -- what is a Korean?


2. Eccentric Inclusions

Perhaps a contra-Braguean turn can help us approach an answer to this question. Brague begins his analysis of European cultural identity geographically by drawing a pair of cartographical dichotomies, a north-south axis to separate West from East and an east-west axis to separate North from South. These axes have shifted over time -- east or west and north or south -- with the vicissitudes of history, but they are understood as lines of cultural exclusion. Yet, let us initially approach the question of Korean identity in an opposite manner, as a series of inclusions, a procedure that entails surveying some rather familiar territory.

First would perhaps be Buddhism, which arrived on the Korean peninsula as early as the fourth century AD, with the monk Sundo entering the Kingdom of Goguryeo in 372 and the monk Marananta entering the Kingdom of Baekje in 384. Buddhism was slower to enter the Kingdom of Silla, where it was resisted by the upper classes until 527, when the court official Ichadon announced that he had become a Buddhist and was promptly beheaded. Legend says that Ichadon's head flew off into the distance and that milk rather than blood streamed from the body as the earth quaked, the sun grew dark, and glorious flowers rained down from the heavens. Whatever might actually have occurred that day, Ichadon's martyrdom led to acceptance of Buddhism as Silla's official religion. By the sixth century, therefore, Buddhism was well established on the peninsula, and it continued to grow in power and influence during the Unified Silla period (668-918) and the Goryeo period (918-1392). Although Buddhism explicitly encourages its adherents to seek individual enlightenment on a path toward nirvana, which can be characterized as its vertical dimension, it has also an implicitly egalitarian horizontal dimension in which Buddhists are exhorted to identify with all sentient beings, who are suffering in this illusory world of desires, and to instruct all beings in renouncing desire, which is responsible for suffering. As an otherworldly religion with implications for moral action in the temporal world, Buddhism shaped Korean metaphysics and infused Korean ethics with what the writer Lee Gwang-su (이광수) articulates as "the Buddhist philosophy of sacrificial service, treating everyone as likewise benevolent and interconnected" (The Soil). Understood in terms of its cultural influence, Buddhism brought to Korea the ethical-meditative aspect of Indian identity, albeit mediated by its passage through Central Asia and China.

Despite its longstanding power and influence, Buddhism and Buddhist values and ethics were partially eclipsed by a surgent Confucianism pressing its countervailing values and ethics with the rise of a new unified state under the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). This shift may have come suddenly, as Joseon abruptly superceded Goryeo, but Confucianism's presence on the peninsula actually went back several centuries. It seems to have entered by way of Goguryeo, but Baekje more thoroughly integrated Confucianism into its administrative system, thereby ensuring its influence on the culture. As was the case with Buddhism, Silla was last to adopt Confucianism for administrative purposes, and Goryeo inherited its use of Confucianism from Silla, but only in the Joseon period was Confucianism established as an all-encompassing system intended to displace Buddhism. For over 500 years, the Joseon government encouraged Koreans to internalize Confucian teachings on establishing harmonious relationships through the three cardinal principles and the five ethical norms (samgang-oryun). The three cardinal principles (samgang) comprise: 1) loyalty to the ruler, 2) filial piety to parents, and 3) a wife's fidelity to her husband. The five ethical norms (oryun) govern human relationships and may be listed as: 1) love between parents and children, 2) faith between rulers and people, 3) distinction between husband and wife, 4) order between elders and juniors, and 5) trust between friends. Three additional rules informed women on the obedience due to men in their lives (samjongjido): 1) obeying her father before marriage, 2) obeying her husband after marriage, and 3) obeying her sons after her husband's death. All of these principles and rules pertain without exception to relationships. All apply to direct, personal relationships -- except for the limiting case of faith and loyalty to the ruler, which can be distant and abstract. All of these direct, personal relationships are understood in hierarchical terms -- except for the limiting case of close friendships, which can offer the possibility of equality. A society organized by these Confucian duties will thus be strong in vertical obligations but weak in extended horizontal relations. Because strangers in such a society lack personal relationships, they will seek to ascertain their relative status for proper hierarchical interaction, and the at times attendant jostling for position can foster disharmonious relations. Moreover, the explicit emphasis upon maintaining harmony by observing hierarchy does not encourage a culture of open discussion despite Confucianism's admirable emphasis upon education, the latter of which has left its indelible mark upon Korean culture. Understood in terms of its cultural influence, therefore, Confucianism has brought to Korea the hierarchical aspect of Chinese identity, with its emphasis upon learning the Confucian classics and applying them toward governing the state and society.

Both Buddhism and Confucianism have profoundly shaped Korean identity, and despite their obvious differences, both agree upon at least one crucial thing: the intrinsic goodness of the human being. For Buddhism, the goodness is to be uncovered by stripping away desires. For Confucianism, the goodness is to be drawn out by encouraging proper obligations. A third great external influence upon Korean identity has come to Korea with a more negative view of human nature: Christianity. This religion initially entered Korea with the Japanese invasions of the 1590s through the Catholic commander Konishi Yukinaga, but Catholicism had no impact upon Korea at that time because the priests were not allowed to proselytize. In the early 1600s, however, Korean diplomats began returning from China with Jesuit material on Catholic theology that gained the interest of some scholars, and Christian ideas obtained an indigenous foothold without the direct influence of foreign missionaries. By 1784, Catholicism had grown enough for the diplomat Yi Sung-hun, who had been baptized in Beijing, to establish a prayer-house in Pyongyang. But the new religion of Christianity was resisted by most Confucians and even persecuted by the state and thus did not begin to make mass converts until the late nineteenth century when the Korean government began to allow Protestant missionaries into Korea in the hope of gaining Western protection. Christianity in both its Catholic and Protestant forms was associated with Western science and technology, for the early Jesuit treatises also brought the fruits of the scientific revolution and the later Protestant missions brought Western medicine and education. In Korea, therefore, Christianity was perceived as inseparable from Westernization. Not even the 35-year-long period of Japanese colonization diminished this impression despite the fact that the Japanese suppressed Christianity in favor of Shintoism and continued the 'Westernization' of Korea without the attendant Christian ideology. Perhaps Japan's policies even encouraged the opposite result, for in the post-liberation period, Christianity began its truly phenomenal growth and now accounts for roughly one-third or more of the South Korean population. The percentage of Christians in North Korea is not known, but the number is perhaps quite low -- despite the extensive Christian population prior to the Korean War -- because the North's totalitarian government has ruthlessly suppressed Christianity there. The issue of North Korea will have to be returned to later in this discussion, for the Christian influence on Korean identity mostly concerns South Korea. As already noted, Christianity holds to a more negative view of human nature than does Buddhism or Confucianism. But there is nuance here. For Christians, human nature may be fallen, but the individual person is nevertheless formed in God's image and is oriented in a vertical dimension toward God. The horizontal dimension of Christian ethics thus makes high demands but anticipates human failure unless the effort is sustained by God's hand. One particularly steep ethical expectation is that of universal love, what Lee Gwang-su describes in The Soil as the "Christian love for humanity," a love extended even to one's enemies. In social terms, this means that Christianity contributes to a society in which strangers have obligations to one another based upon an ethic of service that treats as equal every person, whether possible enemy or potential friend. The exemplar is Christ, understood as having come to serve others, even his enemies, and draw followers into a community oriented not exclusively upon its members but also outwards toward others, as if they too belonged. Understood in terms of its cultural influence, Christianity has brought to Korea an egalitarian aspect of Western identity, with an emphasis upon the responsibility -- both collective and individual -- to treat as equals the others that one encounters, even if they be strangers.


3. Ethnocentric Exclusions

In the longer run, Christianity tends to reshape society from a shame culture to a guilt culture, for the real value of an individual is found not in what others think but in what God knows. Christian influence in Korea, however, has been of significance for only a very brief time, and Confucian values continue to predominate, maintaining a society where that which matters most of all is one's hierarchical status, undergirded by honor and threatened by shame. Confucianism would thus seem to be the dominate quality in Korean identity, though the long Buddhist presence on the peninsula has left an underlying substratum, and Christianity is growing in its significance. Korean identity would therefore appear to be what Brague calls "eccentric," centered on places that -- to its own geo-cultural sphere -- are external, namely China, India, and the West. But not all is as it appears. Koreans experienced thirty-five years of Japanese colonialism, and the post-liberation period has seen an exponential rise in Korean nationalism, a surge of feeling that pervades society and infuses the political right, left, and middle. Especially North Korea has emphasized Korean nationalism of an extreme form, for what is the North's ideology of juche other than a radically nationalistic elaboration of exclusively Korean identity? Hostility to the US and Japan, and distrust toward Russia and even China characterize the North's ethnically based ideology. The North Korean case is extreme, of course, but South Korea shares some degree of the North's ethnic nationalism and still claims Korean purity of blood as the basis for this nationalism. Koreans therefore appeal to an indigenous Korean identity that would predate Western Christianity, Chinese Confucianism, and Indian Buddhism, thereby centering Korean identity in nativist ethnocentrism.

From a thirteenth-century history book by the Buddhist monk Iryeon, Samgukyusa (삼국유사), comes a story that supposedly pushes the date of Korean origins back to 2333 BC. According to this story, the Emperor of Heaven had a son, Hwanung, who requested the right to rule what would eventually be called the Korean peninsula. The request was granted, and coincident with this request, a tiger and a bear were fasting in a cave not far from where Hwanung had descended from heaven to earth and were praying to become human beings. The tiger gave up too soon, but after 100 days patiently enduring weariness and hunger, the bear became a beautiful woman whom Hwanung made his queen. This royal couple produced the child Dangun, who engendered the Korean 'race' and became the first King of Korea, ruling from his throne in what is now Pyongyang, North Korea. Probably very few modern-day Koreans accept this story literally, but most perhaps take it as figurative of actual events. Anthropologically considered, the story might plausibly be interpreted as relating the invasion of the Korean peninsula by an advanced tribe that made an alliance with a tribe whose totem animal was a bear against a tribe whose totem animal was a tiger. Even if the story is entirely invented and purely mythological, it serves as a foundational myth for the Korean people and has been interpreted by Koreans as justifying an ethnic nationalism based on purity of blood. Understood in this manner, the myth offers a vertical dimension in the descent of all Koreans from Dangun and a horizontal dimension oriented toward exclusive inclusion of all Koreans in a tightly bound society of kin.


4. Excursus: The Guest

This use of the Dangun myth might at times be extended from purity of blood to purity of thought and thereby serve as ideological counter to outside influence. As such, only a pure Korean shamanism would be truly and entirely Korean, all other ideological systems being rejected as foreign. Koreans seldom go quite so far, but an interesting case of radical exclusiveness can be found in Hwang Sok-yong's recent novel The Guest. In this novel, the character Big Grandma holds to Korea's traditional shamanistic beliefs despite her own son's conversion to Christianity, and she demands that her great-grandson accept shamanism along with other indigenous Korean beliefs, explaining:

Our ancestor, the founding father of our race, was Tan'gun. He came down from the heavens a long, long time ago. (page 40)

Concerning her son's conversion to Christianity, Big Grandma angrily explains that smallpox -- which was called "the Guest" by Koreans and was believed to have its home to the west, in the southern part of China -- is a spirit identical with the Holy Spirit of Christianity:

Ever since we were children we have known that the Guest is a western disease. A barbarian disease, they call it, from a country to the west, so it's certain that it came from the land where they believe in the Western Spirit, you see? I had to send away two sons, your grandpa's two older brothers, with the Guest. So would I be overjoyed, would I be ready to believe in the Western Spirit like my one surviving son -- or would I be angry at it -- angry forever? (page 44, changes in translation mine)

Big Grandma refers to the Holy Spirit as the Western Spirit and identifies it as the same spirit from the direction west of Korea that has always been known to bring smallpox. Let us look closely at Big Grandma's reasoning. Note that she calls smallpox a "western disease" (서쪽 병: seojok byeong), indicating the direction west, because it comes from a "country to the west" (서쪽 나라: seojok nara). However, when she refers to the "Western Spirit," she uses the Korean expression yanggushin (양구신 [양 (洋) + 구신]), where yang (양 [洋]) is an abbreviation of seoyang, "The West" (서양) -- and gushin (구신) is dialect for guishin (귀신), meaning "spirit" or "ghost." Thus does Big Grandma succeed in identifying the direction "west" (서쪽) with the place "The West" (서양). In giving such voice to the character Big Grandma, Hwang Sok-yong would seem to be presenting views with which he strongly identifies, for the intense ideological fervor of the Christian characters in this novel expresses itself in cruel massacres during the Korean War, as though the old smallpox spirit had returned with vengeance in a new form to infect the very minds of Koreans.

But Hwang's critique may go even deeper by playing further on the direction "west" (서쪽) and the place "The West" (서양). Anything that had come from a western direction might be understood as suspect because not indigenously Korean. Hence, Catholicism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which like smallpox all arrived in Korea by way of China, the country to the west, would implicitly count as western diseases (서쪽 병: seojok byeong). And Protestantism, which arrived in Korea from the West (서양: seoyang), would therefore be a Western disease. By extension, Westernization itself would amount to a Western disease, whether in the guise of Japan's colonization of Korea, which accelerated Korea's pre-colonial Westernization, or even in the guise of Marxism, another Westernizing ideology. Rather than accepting all these things western (서쪽) and Western (서양), Koreans should "Believe in the God of Chosŏn," as Hwang's non-Christian character Pak Illang exhorts the Christians who are leading him off to his execution (page 195). To believe in the God of Chosŏn (조선으 하나님: chosŏn u hananim, dialect for chosŏn ui hananim) -- the God of Korea -- would apparently mean to believe in Korea's traditional God. The term hananim (하나님) for "God" in Pak's exhortation is also the term used by Protestants, but in Pak's usage, it would seem to mean the same as Big Grandma's reference to hanunim (하느님) in her insistence on remaining faithful to Korean religion:

"Here in our Chosŏn, we say the son of God is Tan'gun." (page 42)

For "son of God," she uses hanunim adeol (하느님 아덜). Both terms, hananim and hanunim, appear to be longstanding Korean expressions for God and have been explained as dialectical variants. At any rate, Hwang seems to have identified them for the purpose of his central theme, the call for a return to what is traditionally, exclusively, and authentically Korean.


5. Mixed-Up Koreans

Most Koreans do not go so far as Pak Illang urges or Big Grandma demands in terms of Korean exclusiveness, though many, perhaps a majority, do still appear to hold to the purity of blood ascribed to the Dangun myth. But does this myth in fact teach 'racial' purity? The assumption seems to be that Koreans have all descended through Dangun from that original pair, Hwanung and his queen, and never mixed with other groups. Yet even if one were to grant that Koreans have not mixed with Chinese, Japanese, Mongolians, or any other non-Korean tribes over Korea's putative 5000-year history, the Dangun story is itself a tale of mixing, as Korean anthropologists have recently begun to acknowledge. Whether one takes it literally or symbolically, mixing is presupposed, for Hwanung and his queen have radically different origins -- either from a divine being and a bear-woman or from the son of an invading tribe and the daughter of an indigenous tribe. As such, Koreans are from the outset implicitly understood as a mixed people.

Broader recognition of this mixed Korean identity implicit in the Dangun story might well be needed these days because of the precipitous rise in the percentage of international marriages or gukjaegyulhon (국제결혼). Already by 2005, international couples accounted for 10 percent of all marriages for that year in South Korea, according to official government statistics, and the numbers have been rising every year due to more foreigners settling in Korea and to many Korean men seeking foreign wives, especially from such countries as China and Vietnam, but also from Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, the United States, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Russia, among others. Foreign men residing in South Korea and marrying Korean women come from such countries as Japan, China, the United States, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, but also from other places. As these mixed marriages bear fruit, a new, undeniably mixed population will begin to emerge, generally differing in appearance from previous generations of Koreans. This process of mixing is often called "multiculturalism" by Koreans. Multiculturalism, however, exists in Korea only as a term, not as a clear and distinct concept, for it is commonly conflated with multiethnicity, as though the two terms meant the same thing. Admittedly, an ethnic group usually does carry its own culture, but no necessary connection binds ethnicity to a particular culture. This is not especially difficult to grasp, and the Korean language does have different terms for multiculturalism, damunhwajui (다문화주의), and multiethnicity, dainjong (다인종), but the latter term rarely gets used in Korea because it sounds pejorative among a people long accustomed to the assumption of Korea's blood-based ethnic superiority. Multiethnicity can hardly be a positive thing in a country that still celebrates the purity of its Korean blood. Koreans therefore prefer to use the term "multiculturalism" even when they are talking about "multiethnicity." The children of international marriages are thus referred to as multicultural children even when these children are growing up in Korea, attending Korean schools, and becoming culturally and linguistically Korean. Such children are not multicultural, but could more accurately be called multiethnic, in the limiting sense of mixed ethnicity. Korea may therefore be developing into a multiethnic society if we mean by this the ethnically mixed children who are becoming ever more numerous, but such a process will not invariably lead to multiculturalism in Korea. For a multicultural Korea to develop, large-scale immigration of entire communities settling into self-isolating enclaves and maintaining their own cultural values would have to take place, and that does not yet seem to be happening. Nor would that be a good thing for Korea if it were to happen, for the result would likely be an unworkable radical multiculturalism of the sort that currently looms in Europe.


6. Conclusion

Perhaps we should now finally return to the question with which we began our inquiry: "What is a Korean?" One is tempted to respond with platitudes. For example: a true Korean combines the universal sympathy of the Buddha and the all-encompassing love of Christ with the solemn dignity of Confucius, the teachings of all three having been grafted onto the ancient trunk of the sandalwood tree under which Dangun sat and taught. Such a nation of eccentrically centered individuals would be an imagined community indeed! Granted, these four great teachers have had profound pedagogical influence in Korea, and Korea is a land that respects teachers, but their teachings do not mutually cohere. Conflict is therefore inescapable, even in a nation that highly extols harmony. Moreover, the teachings of a particular tradition are not always well-learned. We thus too often meet with the indifferent Buddhist, the hateful Christian, the arrogant Confucian, and the exclusivist 'Dangunian'. But whether we encounter the good or the bad, we begin to recognize that for better or for worse, Korea itself is rapidly changing into an even more complex, increasingly multiethnic society that contains the world.

The question is therefore not so much "What is a Korean?" as "What is a Korean to be?"

Dangun Myth: Memory of Mixing?

Dangun Wanggeum

(Image from Myth of Korea: Tangun)

Some readers will recall a recent dispute about the meaning of Korea's Dangun legend in the comments to a blog entry on Gypsy Scholar. In that blog entry, "Priceless Pureblood," I referred to an earlier post:

Over two years ago, on April 24, 2006, I posted a blog entry on "The Very First Half-Korean," in which I noted some of the prejudice encountered here in Korea by my children -- who are half-Korean from their mother's side and various mixed-other-ethnicities-adding-up-to-half from my side.

In that same post, I noted that Koreans generally place great emphasis upon their being a "pure-blooded race" despite the irony of the very first Korean having reputedly been half-divine and half-bear-woman, and I asked, "So . . . what's the big deal about Korean purity of blood, anyway?"

One individual left a number of comments disputing my remark about "the very first Korean" as mixed, including this representative comment:

The story of Dangun has absolutely nothing to do with mixing -- you misunderstand / distort the main elements of the story. Just ask any Korean, they will explain it to you (without any kind of 'mixing'!).

In a response, I wrote (among other things):

I assume that you know the story of the god Hwanung's descent from heaven by way of Mt. Baekdu, the transformation of a female bear into the woman Ungnyeo, and the marriage of these two very different beings, resulting in the fruit [of] their union, Dangun.

Most Koreans, of course, do regard themselves as a "pure" race. That's precisely why I point out that the Dangun myth is, ironically, a myth of mixing.

But the anonymous commenter, in a further response to my points and those of my friend Charles La Shure, would have none of that:

I've never met a single Korean who considers himself mixed, go explain that!! The irony, therefore, is that you desperately distort the myth to make it fit your biased persepective! All Koreans are descendants of that union, according to the myth: therefore they see themselves as all belonging to the same race. So you can't say that Koreans are 'mixed'...

The anonymous commenter was abusively certain that all Koreans consider themselves 'pureblood' descendents of Dangun and that the original story was definitely not about mixing. I wouldn't be bringing this up again except for the appearance of Kang Shin-who's interesting article, "Is Korea Homogeneous Country?," in a recent issue of the Korea Times (12/22/2008). Among its intriguing points are the following remarks by two Koreans:

Some anthropology professors say the saying "pure Korean blood" doesn't make sense at all. "It is crazy to say Koreans are homogeneous people. You are mixed, so am I, all Koreans are mixed," said Chun Kyung-soo, professor of Seoul National University. "The term 'homogenous people' should disappear. It is a superficial term."

Han Kook-yeom, chairwoman of the Korean immigrant women center, also echoed professor Chun's views. "Originally, we were not homogeneous people. The [Dangun] myth of the foundation of Korea also shows that we are a mix of different people," she said.

Taken together, the remarks of this anthropology professor at SNU, Chun Kyung-soo, and this chairwoman for an immigrant center, Han Kook-yeom, tend to confirm something that I also wrote to the anonymous commenter:

From an anthropological perspective, the Dangun myth likely reflects an intermixing of two tribes -- an invading tribe, to which Dangun's father belongs, and a local tribe with the bear as totem animal, to which Dangun's mother belongs.

Perhaps the anonymous commenter will see today's blog entry, read the Korea Times article, and reconsider my point about the Dangun myth.

Michael Burleigh: Weakness of "Global Jihadists"

Michael Burleigh
"reluctant guru"?
(Image by Frank Baron for Guardian)

In searching for articles on problems associated with multiculturalism for my course on European multiculturalism this fall at Yonsei's Underwood College, I came across an interesting if tangential article by the British historian Michael Burleigh, "How To Defeat The Global Jihadists," in the June 2008 issue of the British magazine Standpoint.Online, apparently a conservative publication.

I say "tangential" because although the article does allude to problems with multiculturalism in Europe, for example, in referring to a German islamist terrorist cell "rounded up in late April 2008 from the purlieus of the Multicultural House mosque in Ulm -- an appropriately named monument to that disgraced ideology," Burleigh does not make multiculturalism his focus.

Interestingly, however, the article makes clear that Al Qa'eda has its own 'multicultural' problems:

The multi-ethnic composition of al-Qa'eda is one weak point, since rewards and risks seem to run along ethnic lines. The risks undertaken by Lebanese money-launderers handling conflict diamonds from West Africa are of a different order to those of a Moroccan suicide bomber. Interrogations of detainees reveal much bad blood between ethnic Chechens, Tajiks or Uzbeks and their Arab masters, who despise them. Al-Qa'eda's bid for supremacy extends to its own cohorts.

I write 'multicultural' -- but note the 'scare' quotes (indicating irony) -- where Burleigh writes "multi-ethnic," but neither term is exactly right since an ethnic difference between a Lebanese Arab and a Moroccan Arab might be a matter for dispute. If Arab is an ethnicity, then both are ethnically Arab.

Ironically, Al Qa'eda's problem would seem to be an insufficiently 'multicultural' perspective. The Arab elite who fill the upper echelons of the Al Qa'eda organization look down on the non-Arabs in the lower ranks -- a cultural (or is it ethnic?) arrogance not lost on those non-Arabs, according to Burleigh.

Be that as it may, Burleigh would seem to be a historian to become familiar with, for he's just this year published Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, which he features on his website.

Other than what I've learned today -- and a Guardian article by John Crace, "Michael Burleigh: The reluctant guru" (March 11, 2008), helps introduce him -- I know nothing about the man, so this is my first impression -- though I've previously come across his name in my historical researches.

Expat Living: "Multiculturalism in Korea?"

Multiculturalism in South Korea?

Hanbok Parade at Hi Seoul Festival

(Image from Wikipedia)

My most recent language column for the Korea Herald has posted online but not yet appeared on my doorstoop.

I had to make a few last-minute changes yesterday afternoon to clarify what I meant about Muslims in Europe with respect to my point about radical multiculturalism. I explained to one editor that I was speaking about a form of multiculturalism that had left itself without the intellectual grounds for criticizing even something as problematic as Islamism, which was the term that I was using and which refers to the political use of a radical form of Islam, e.g., the sort promoted by Sayyid Qutb.

The editor suggested that I add another example of radical multiculturalism, so I included a reference to the genital mutilation of young girls, a practice imposed by some cultural groups now present in Europe, and I considered including a reference to the honor killings that also take place among some cultural groups in Europe these days.

Neither genital mutilation nor honor killings are specific to Muslim communities in Europe, for one finds these things also among some Christian groups, as well as among groups that are neither Christian nor Muslim.

That editor was satisfied with my changes, though I see that the editors have attached a note emphasizing that the views expressed are my own. Apparently, I've sailed into treacherous waters. We'll see:

Multiculturalism in Korea?

Back in a youthful decade of innocent wandering about the intellectual landscape of Europe from 1986 to 1995, I reveled in the multicultural world that I believed was being constructed there in that postmodern paradise.

What eventually came to be called the European Union was already a community of nations and therefore of cultures, which seemed like a perfectly good thing since the results for me personally were the enjoyment of delicious, ethnic foods, the challenge of new languages, the nurturing of international friendships, and, of course, the possibility of romantic intrigues across cultures.

What I only came to see clearly over time was that the multiculturalism that I had enjoyed was a moderate sort founded upon Western values and largely characterized by European cultures, a European multiculturalism, albeit with a few scattered communities of non-European cultures. This was largely a multiculturalism of human rights, individual freedoms, democratic values, and enlightened judgment. In short: moderate, constructive multiculturalism.

I have since become aware of another sort of multiculturalism, one founded upon the assumptions of a radical cultural relativism, probably borrowed from cultural anthropology, that takes as indisputable the belief that all cultures are equal and that no culture can legitimately pass judgment upon another since the values that one appeals to in passing judgment are derived from one's own culture rather than from some universal standard that is not culturally bound.

This radical multiculturalism, despite its intrinsic inconsistency -- is cultural relativism absolutely true for every culture? -- has come to exert such a powerful influence upon European thinking that Europeans often find themselves without the intellectual resources to repudiate such a practice as the female genital mutilation imposed by some cultural groups or to vigorously criticize Islamists who would wish to impose a stringent form of Islamic law upon Muslims now living in Europe. Some prominent Europeans actually capitulate to the Islamists. Such a public intellectual as Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, has openly spoken in favor of allowing Islamic courts to be established and given some degree of authority over Europe's Muslims. Such a move would constitute not a moderate, constructive multiculturalism but a step toward a deconstructive, radical multiculturalism instead.

But what does all this have to do with Korea? Not terribly much -- not yet, anyway. Multiculturalism exists in Korea only as a word, not as a clear and distinct concept, for it is usually conflated with multiethnicity, as though the two terms meant the same thing. Admittedly, an ethnic group usually does carry its own culture, but no necessary connection binds ethnicity to culture, so an expat living here might wonder if the Korean language makes no distinction between multiculturalism and multiethnicity.

Not being a Korean-language columnist, I checked with my wife for the Korean terms, and she explained to me that the Korean for multiculturalism is "damunhwajui" (다문화주의), whereas the Korean for multiethnicity is "dainjong" (다인종). After making this distinction, she added that the latter term rarely gets used in Korea because the word sounds too negative. Multiethnicity can hardly be a positive thing in a country that still celebrates the purity of its Korean blood. Koreans therefore prefer to use the term "multiculturalism" even when they are talking about "multiethnicity."

This misuse leads to misunderstanding even in Korea's English-language newspapers. Articles on international marriages -- or "gukjaegyulhon" (국제결혼) -- refer to the children as multicultural children even when the children are growing up in Korea, attending Korean schools, and becoming culturally Korean. Such children are not multicultural, but could more accurately be called multiethnic, in the limiting sense of mixed ethnicity.

Korea may therefore be developing into a multiethnic society if we mean by this the ethnically mixed children who are becoming ever more numerous as international marriages come to account for over 10 percent of the weddings taking place annually in Korea.

Such a process, however, will not lead to Korean multiculturalism, whether moderate or radical. For a multicultural Korea to develop, large-scale immigration of entire communities settling into self-isolating enclaves and maintaining their own cultural values would have to take place, and that does not seem to be happening.

Nor would that be a good thing for Korea if it were to happen, for the result would likely be an unworkable radical multiculturalism of the sort that currently looms in Europe.

Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog Gypsy Scholar at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com. The views expressed here are his own. -- Ed.

Well, there it is. It seems pretty innocuous to me, but I'm probably not the best judge of that since I think that everything that I think is innocuous.

I suppose that I'll soon find out what others think.