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| Photo by Michael Hurt |
By Michael Hurt
I'm going to do something writers aren't supposed to do ― lose the reader immediately. Well, that's not actually my goal, since I'm doing this deliberately with the goal of making a point. And the first line of this piece, along with the gob-stopping opening image, should be enough to attract sufficient attention.
However, opening a piece for general audiences with something written in the Morse code academics tend to speak in, using dense theoretical concepts ("jargon") that don't have to be explained to people in the same field tends to be off-putting, but in the present case, it can frame the terms of the discussion. So, let's get right down to it:
Abstract:
My working contention is that despite efforts to the contrary, and despite the bases of identity in areas other than the ethnonationalist center slowly eroding and shifting, the "firmware update" of putative "multiculturalism" has failed to take, mostly because the original ideological software of hangukinron was so well written and firmly installed that very little has changed on the terrain of who is "Korean" and what constitutes Koreanness.
Considering the fact that so-called "multiculturalism" policy is little more than an assimilation support policy to bring non-Korean bodies into the Korean center, it is little surprise to see Koreanness staying stubbornly rigid even as epic battles are being waged for the definition of gender, sexual orientation, and even the basis of national allegiance itself ― yet the notion of a hangukinron-based ethnonationality remains stubbornly unchanged by the myriad, powerful forces of a consumption-based identity forged in the fire of South Korean hypermodernity that has completely changed the cultural landscape of Korea.
Although these changing notions of identity and how it is argued and instilled have made it more difficult to present the old hangukinron ideology nearly as strongly or overtly, its basic tenets are still apparent. This is especially obvious in visual culture, in which aspects of Koreanness are presented quite clearly ― and in the old-fashioned ways ― in visual effluvia such as K-pop videos and the construction of their groups, advertisements ranging from makeup to soju, and popular cinema in which difference is actively represented in relation to semiotically argued Koreanness.
Takaki's "Iron Cages"
This is the logical place to start, where ideology meets the road. I'm going to re-use my own words from elsewhere, in a piece I wrote called "K-pop is Neo-Confucian Pornography." I've lifted this section from that essay.
I like to talk about Weber's "Iron Cages" in my social science classes. It has most famously and popularly been talked about in recent decades through Ronald Takaki's landmark book of the same name. Basically, Takaki takes Weber's term stahlhartes Gehause ("iron cage") and runs with it, talking about the three iron cages of ideology that focus real social action in American history.
Takaki talks about the republican, corporate, and the technological iron cages that are used to separate people from their humanity, in terms of modes of thought that justify all kinds of dehumanizing of others, as well as the self. I'm not going to go into that in any more depth, but simply move right on to looking at this in the Korean context. I prefer a slightly honed-down and simplified definition of Takaki's model of the "iron cage," defining it simply as a framework of thought that is used to focus certain kinds of social action, one that is often understood in a simplistic way and used as a blunt ideological tool for social control ― of course, in the service of capital, that is, for making the economy go.
In this sense, "(neo-)Confucianism" understood as an iron cage in a Korea that is definitely too modern to have any real utility here is a real thing. If you think about it, "Confucianism" in the practical, concrete and everyday sense of a life-philosophy uninterrupted from the time of the Joseon era, as a real thing Koreans understand themselves in terms of, is dead as a doornail in Korea, since you don't see traffic laws designed around age or status ranking ― you go by the light, first come, first served. You don't queue at the bank in order of age, sex, or occupation ― that would seem ridiculous while being enormously impractical.
Since the formal end of the neo-Confucian Joseon state in 1910, the new logic of capitalism ― the "firmware" that was needed to run on the hardware of a modern nation-state, the ideology explaining the need for such things as the mandatory education of girls, the voting booths of a participatory democracy much later, and the imperatives of "multiculturalism" in a society that needs foreign bodies to make the economy go, are all things that have reordered the nature of everyday life. Of course, older patterns of thought and out-of-date customs live on. Old habits die hard, since humans get socialized into acting in certain ways and don't want to change ways of thinking that makes the world make sense. And yes, Korean society no longer does a lot of esoteric "Confucian" things, and even eschews many of the basic ones: children are no longer separated at age 7; girls are now required to attend school; women's bodies are no longer basically legal property, and women are allowed to walk around outside unattended. So, when one hears that Korea is a "Confucian culture," you better reach for your metaphorical guns, because someone is trying to sell you something.
Korean iron cages
But as an iron cage, "Confucianism" and putatively "Confucian" patterns of thinking certainly ain't dead. In fact, if one takes the feminist interpretation that the Iron Cage of Confucianism in modern Korean society continues to be used to place women back into the subordinate positions that original Confucianism had them squarely situated, then the Confucian Iron Cage is still in FULL EFFECT, and in fact is even more necessary in a Korea that nominally does not discriminate against women, yet still has to have unofficial and covert ways to keep them in their "place." If society doesn't have an entire framework of thinking about women ― the Confucian "iron cage" of objectified womanhood, let's call it ― the society can't produce Korean women who eagerly consume makeup and fashion culture, who make capital investments of time and money to improve their appearance and who rationalize that dancing in K-pop music videos in a life of culture industry indentured servitude is a beneficial life choice. It makes sense to many women. And it makes many women's lives make sense. This is the "iron cage of Confucian womanhood" (or whatever you want to call it) that focuses social action in Korea. It makes women make sense of their world and also makes the world make sense of women, all to the benefit of everyone who is not women, i.e. men.
Just for the sake of discussion ― and to clarify what we're talking about here ― other iron cages (frames of thought that focus social action) in modern Korea are the anti-Communist iron cage that justifies anything done by the state in the name of putting down the bogeyman of communists living among us and conspiring against us, or the developmental iron cage that justified any and everything done for the sake of the much-vaunted raising of the GDP during the '60s', '70s, and '80s. Surely, there are/were others. But regarding certain social subjects, societal actions were focused through certain frames of thought that benefitted state projects. Regarding women, there was/is a neo-Confucian iron cage that focuses state/societal thinking and action around them.
The iron cage of Korean "multiculturalism" ― Hangukinron
In Korea, "multiculturalism" doesn't exist, even though this is the name of the official state policy regarding racial/ethnic/cultural difference, which I talked about in my doctoral dissertation as hangukinron ("theory of Koreanness"), or alternately put, the ideology of Korean racial/ethnic/cultural purity.
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| When looking at problematic ideologies, there aren't many times when you encounter it written down in black and white, clear as day, like in this mid-1990s ministry-approved middle school textbook called Doduk ("ethics"), a subject that really would have been more aptly named "How to Be a Good and Proper Korean." |
Iain Wilson of Ajou University stated in an article called "Paradoxical Multiculturalism in South Korea" "that exclusivist racial and ethnic beliefs are paradoxically reinforced by the multicultural policies that are being adopted. Race, ethnicity, and culture as well as nationality and citizenship, are indistinguishable for Koreans. In Korean society, 'race is understood as a collectivity defined by innate and immutable phenotypic and genotype characteristics' and while ethnicity is usually defined as culture, 'Koreans have not historically differentiated between the two' (Shin, 2006, p. 4). From this perspective, race and ethnicity inextricably influence beliefs about Korean culture. Yet the South Korean government has institutionally and conceptually separated these terms by focusing on the issue of culture and multiculturalism.
This has two implications. First, by separating culture from beliefs in race and ethnicity, the underlying assumptions of Korean exclusiveness are obscured even as they continue to influence that culture. I argue that exclusivist racial and ethnic beliefs are paradoxically reinforced by the multicultural policies that are being adopted. This has two implications. First, by separating culture from beliefs in race and ethnicity, the underlying assumptions of Korean exclusiveness are obscured even as they continue to influence that culture. Second, if race, ethnicity, and culture are linked, then it would be reasonable to suggest that multiculturalism may become a transformative force with intended or unintended changes to the underlying racial and ethnic beliefs and their relationship."
While that's indeed a lot to chew on, Wilson is making a couple of important points. Given that thoughts about, theory on, and the history of race/ethnicity are separated from the idea of "culture," it leaves the very state-constructed and ideologically loaded notion of "culture" unquestioned; "culture" as a concept in Korean society and popular discourse gets off the hook, even if the notion of a putatively "pure" Korean ethnorace gets put on the chopping block as the bad guy. And secondly, by missing the chance to look critically at the construction of "Korean culture" as a process with a real and often shady history, you miss the chance to fundamentally redefine who and what is Korean, what gets to be called "Korean" and on what basis, i.e. the rules of the game itself.
This is the overt and purposefully written, deeply ingrained, cultural firmware of the nation that was emphasized for generations in the 20th century. The iron cage of hangukinron (Korean ethnorace nationalism) was used to focus state action throughout Korea's modern history. In the Southern version of Koreanness, it urged workers to accept labor exploitation for the sake of the nation's development and eventual success and made "complaining," such as the formation of labor unions or even going on strike, tantamount to traitorous behavior.
For women, this was reinforced by the overlapping iron cage of Confucian womanhood. If you were mad about working as a nigh slave in a textile factory in the Cheonggyecheon area, you were not only an ethnorace traitor, you were a?bad, selfish woman. The psychological and physical damage caused by these iron cages of Korean ideology is what sparked ur-patriot Jeon Tae-il to immolate in protest at Korean labor practices in 1970, at the unripe young age of 22.
But it's a bit harder to get at the kernel of why questioning the nature and utility of the category of the Korean ethnorace itself. Isn't there an inherent and timeless aspect of a common Koreanness that unites us as Korean people, that certain something special that makes us indeed us What's wrong with that? Isn't that true of many peoples across the earth?"
The problem is that actually, it isn't.
The problem lies in the fact that even the most extreme ends of the logical spectrum of this "What Makes a People" question ― Japan and the United States ― are so seemingly obvious in either their constructedness or ridiculousness that people don't give them much serious thought, and most importantly, credence in the argument about who "we" are.
As many readers here will surely know, the Japanese myth of peoplehood has it that the sun goddess Ameterasu begat descendants who became the Japanese people, with the Emperor as the most direct line to divinity. Of course, few Japanese believe in this literally nowadays, although this sort of creation myth is one way that rationalizes the Japanese people as sharing the same "blood" that makes them a singular family/race/ethnicity/people and hence culture.
By contrast, Americans of the United States have the creation myth of the much-revered Constitution, a triumph of rationality and the enlightenment in which freedom-loving God patriots sat down and hammered out a nation forged in the fire of democracy-hungry revolution. This is why "America" sees itself as a nation of laws, a place where everyone is equal not before custom, blood, or even a single God, but before the Law. (Well, until recently, of course.) But that's how the story goes, anyway. But in either case, the mythical origins of the people isn't something people tend to seriously think on much, as something to actively teach the other about in tourism brochures, cultural programs, or moments of ethnorace pride such as permeates the conversation about the "Korean wave."
Few people find it politic to talk about the Korean ethnorace much anymore, but conversations eagerly abound about "Korean culture" and its myriad virtues as a pure and laudable thing. That's not inherently bad, of course, but the point here is that these concepts don't exist for no reason; they exist as tools with which to do something.
Korean "multiculturalism" is really Windows 95 calling itself Mac OS X
If it is understandable to assert that the iron cage of hangukinron existed to accomplish state goals, as part of the national firmware to keep the national computer running smoothly, the next assertion in this argument is that the nation is in the middle of a heavy firmware upgrade. But the problem is that the programmers are trying to retool the firmware without doing a fundamental rewrite of the source code; it's just an incremental and lazy firmware update that's being touted as a fundamentally new system. It's being talked about as the difference between Microsoft DOS and Windows, but it's more like the difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, which means that it is mostly cosmetic and that while it looks great and feels a lot better to use, it has its own set of major bugs.
The problem with Korean "multiculturalism" is that, as a policy, it is actually cultural assimilation by another name, in the Milton Gordon, old-school sociological sense of the word. It is about expecting/encouraging/forcing new, outside members of the host culture to adopt values of that host culture. The multiculturalism idea that the Korean version invokes seems to target cultural inclusion and tolerance as an ideal but there is still a Korean, ethnoraced center.
The majority of the time one hears "multiculturalism" in popular discourse, it is in reference to helping non-Korean wives marrying Korean men and their mixed-race children fitting into Korean society. Scholar Choong Soon Kim, who literally wrote the book ("Voices of Foreign Brides: The Roots and Development of Multiculturalism in Korea") on the subject, puts it quite simply: "Most programs are designed to turn foreign brides into properly assimilated Korean women ― meek and polite homemakers who are good cooks."
Just the next, new iron cage of control
And there it is. When understanding Korean multiculturalism as a new iron cage to focus certain socially useful actions ― that of churning non-Korean, othered bodies into good, Korean subjects ― Korean "multiculturalism" as a supposed policy of inclusion and open-mindedness is actually a fancy cover word, a mask, for a cultural assimilation policy when it comes to foreign bodies, and a consumption-oriented mode of treating foreign cultures (especially food, costume and festivals) as a mere source of sensual entertainment for Koreans.
One way I have tried to explore whether there has actually been a broadening of the definition of Koreanness while I wasn't looking over the past nearly two decades is through my photo project of putting non-Korean othered bodies into the ur-symbol of Korean culture, the hanbok. I like to believe that the effort to differently picture Koreanness will provoke a conversation and a questioning about the concept of Koreanness, but the reality of the situation is still that, visually, people still balk at the idea of seeing a non-Korean in hanbok, as a piece of clothing that is not on the "right" body, as a contrast, as something instinctively, intuitively off.
This tendency in thinking is best exemplified in last April's well-intentioned but unfortunate April Fool's Day campaign by CGV, which perfectly channeled the Korean "multiculturalism" frame of thinking about otherness, especially as it is expressed visually and sartorially.
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| From left, the captions read: "You really think I'm gonna have Mongolian clothes in my house? Hee hee," and "If you got 'em (the clothes), wear 'em!" The alien, of course, is naked. What is interesting is that Korean hanbok are "costumized" in the multicultural discourse even as they remain culturally centered as normal for Koreans. |
The word/concept that got pulled out and used first from what is obviously a limited Ethnic Studies toolbox over at Korea Expose ― was "cultural appropriation." It's about equating all these things into otherness. It's about working their assumptions to their unfortunate conclusions. "Cultural appropriation" isn't the problem here. It's problematic semiotics.
1. All visual indications of ethnicity, of otherness, are equated to alienness. It should be problematic that Korean traditional dress is included here, if you think about it. It's all become costumized. Traditional Korean dress, brown skin, white skin, alien grey.
2. It is clear who the center here is, marked as it is by the outline of otherness. It is the modern, young, creamy skin-toned, black-haired Korean. Cuz white guy, socially weird. Brown couple, socially weird. Koreans in hanbok not on a national holiday, socially weird. Mongolian, socially weird. The racial markers are as important as the sartorial ones. It's not just what's on the bodies― it's the bodies themselves.
3. The term "cultural appropriation" in the Korean context is problematic. Because that's not the problem here. Generally, the term refers to when an (over)culture takes and commercializes a cultural form/practice that would have likely been seen as inferior/undesirable and suddenly heralding it as one's own, usually for commercial profit. This kinda looks like that, as in it has a similar set of points, similar elements. But kinda like "Star Wars" and "Star Trek," both have spaceships, evil villains with delusions of planetary dominion, and lotsa lasers, but they ain't the same thing.
4. What's sad here is that the marketing intern who most likely had the idea that the superior then stole will now bear the full brunt of the blame.
I could write endless academic articles about this subject, criticizing the obvious, until I am blue in the face. Or I could enter the societal fray semiotically, with my own repositioning of people, symbols, and other social signifiers that can provoke an internal bit of monologue that becomes thinking about what it means to dress, signify, and then occupy the space of Koreanness itself.
I hope that my ongoing hanbok project can be a visual counter to the kind of semiotic othering that the "multiculturalism" discourse continues to engender. My argument is that a truly inclusive, fundamentally different imagining of the Korean identity could and would have a place for pictured imaginings like the one that starts off this article, but it does not. The time for a new kind of pictured imagining for Koreanness is nigh.
Credits
EDITORIAL MODEL
Fama Ndiaye ― Instagram @Famaworldmusic
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Michael W. Hurt (@kuraeji on Instagram) is a photographer and professor living in Seoul. He received his doctorate from UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies and started Korea's first street fashion blog in 2006. He researches youth, subcultures and street fashion as a research professor at the University of Seoul and also writes on visual sociology and cultural studies at his blog and book development site Deconstructing Korea. His PR/image curation company Iconology Korea also engages in an effort to positively shape images of social others in Korea, construct a positive face for Korea-based or Korea-interested clients, and positive images of Korea in the world. (Instagram @IconologyKorea)
