Brian over at Cathartidae and Scott over at hardyandtiny in seoul comment on this Chosun Ilbo piece on the “Hot Patriotic Wind” that is sweeping Korea in the wake of two blockbuster films and the Lee Seung-yeon travesty. Frankly, I found it a little disturbing, because the Chosun has been running quite a few articles on the growing popularity of Korean pop culture in Asian markets (a.k.a. “The Korean Wave”). With Korean pop culture making a name for itself in the Japanese market, the LAST thing Korea needs is to prompt a backlash, and given the way in which Korea had pulled ahead of Japan in things like movie making and TV (or so says the papers I read), such a backlash (assisted by the relevant government ministries and cultural industries in Japan) is not out of the question. Japan is a proud nation, too, after all, and it can’t help Korean cultural exports if crap like what got printed in that Chosun piece gets into the Japanese papers. Overall, I don’t think the “Hot Patriotic Wind” is anything to get overly excited about, but one hopes that it doesn’t go beyond the college kids-having-fun phase. Besides, Korea has been opening up more and more to Japanese cultural imports — that NYT piece from Feb.23 is a good reference — so I doubt this sudden shunning of Japanese culture is a long term trend.
One other note on the Chosun piece. It starts off like this:
A “Hot Patriotic Wind” is sweeping across Korea. That wind is the aftermath of the success of films like “Silmido” (which drew over 10 million viewers) and “Taegukgi,” as well as the “Lee Seung-yeon Comfort Women Nude” controversy that enraged the entire nation. This series of incidents, which have become the hot issues of the day, have awakened young Koreans to our history and the pain our race has endured, and is instilling racial consciousness in the minds of youth.
Over in Cathartidae’s comment section, our blogosphere hunjangnim writes:
And… it surely must have not been Mr Marmot who translated that article, or then he has been told to use “race” for the Korean “minjok.” (Or then he did it on purpose to make Koreans look bad, no?)
Damn, those anthropology folk can be jumpy, can’t they 
Anyway, yes, I’m the one who translated the piece for the Chosun (so if there are spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, or the style just plain sucks, you know who to blame). Not only that, but I actually chose the piece for translation because a) it was the most hit piece at the Chosun that morning (and it was still getting a lot of hits the next day, too) and b) I thought it was kind of interesting. So, if you thought that piece had no business in the English-language edition of the Chosun Ilbo, I’m the man you want to bitch to. Now, as far as the use of the English “race” for the Korean term “minjok,” that was my decision, too, and I can understand arguments that a better term could have been applied. Frankly, the term “minjok” is a rather difficult word to translate into English properly, mostly on account that like its Japanese equivalent, “minzoku,” it comes with a ton and a half of political, historical, and emotional baggage. Basically, “minjok” means ethnic group, although I’ve read some scholars equate it with the German term “volk,” with its mystical connotations. Some prefer to use the term “nation,” and others “race” (like in the Korean race, the Japanese race, etc.). In the piece above, I used the term “race” because a) I felt that given the tone of the piece, the more emotionally-loaded term would fit better, and b) I’ve seen quite a few Korean, Japanese, and Western translators use the term, so I figured there was enough precedent for it. I certainly didn’t use it to make Koreans look bad, although I do admit that the term “minjok” (and its Japanese equivalent) leaves a really, really bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, just in case anyone thought the word choice could have been better, I’m just giving you my explanation here and if you’d like to take me task, my comments section is all yours. As the Oranckay can tell you, I have a lot to learn, and if you’ve got something to teach me, I’d me most appreciative
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The Chinese word is min2zu2. It uses the same characters as the Japanese and I assume if you go back in Korean it probably uses the same characters there too. It carries the same baggage in Chinese as in Korean and Japanese. Often I see it translated as nationalities or nation. I do not think these are very good though for modern English translation as you would often see sentences like “The 56 nationalities of the Chinese Nation…” Earlier in the last century it was sometimes translated as minority but then many people pointed out that calling the “Han4zu2″ (China’s largest ethnic group) a minority was ridiculous. I often use “ethnicity” but agree that in an emotionally charged piece like you wrote race is probably a better term.
Well you make me look so smart I can’t resist…
We Americans are super duper hyper sensitive about any utterance that includes the word “race.” I think there’s nothing wrong with the term and nothing incorrect about translating minjok as race. The only risk you run by using that word is that many speakers of American English will cease to pay attention to what you’re saying.
I get that Americans think “race” is a subcategory of human and that “ethnic group”/”ethnicity” is a subcategory of race. That table of categorization is only a recent development, however, and anyone who has read their way through older material knows as much. Even now, do any internet search of “the jewish race,” “the scottish race,” “the french race,” or “the finnish race” and you’ll easily see that the word is also used to mean what Americans mean by ethnicity, and with innocent enough intentions.
If there weren’t any other options I’d insist on using the word race for minjok, but I think that for most contexts there are other options. After all, if even Antti doesn’t like the term, then it wouldn’t hurt to avoid it where possible.
I think I most often translate “Hanminjok” as “the Korean nation.” I imagine one reason I feel comfortable with that term is because I used to be a little familiar with a little bit of Native American tribal politics and recall that many tribes refer to themselves as “nations,” as in “Apache nation,” Canada officially calls its native tribal groups “first nations.” Your average younger American will at first think that “nation” means “state” (another confusing word for Americans, but as in something that has “statehood”), but in this case as well, anyone who has done enough reading outside their time and space knows that “nation” spoke first of ethnic, tribal, or other “sub-racial” group.
“The Korean people” would work in a lot of cases, but it could, depending on context, be taken to mean (for example) the South Korean public, and when I need to emphasize the Koreans as One Big Tribe (an in a manner of speaking they still are something like a large collection of thoroughly intertwined clans) I think I usually go with “Korean nation.” It might make me sound like the Old Testament, but if that’s the tone of the Korean text being translated, there’s usually little way around it.
While I’m at it, I should mention that it seems My Fellow Americans have a hard time understanding how nistorically many Koreans feel more alegience to the Korean nation (minjok) than they do to the Korean state/s (either of them, N or S), but the problem they have with this speaks more of the nature of the American state than anything else. Another reason why one is going to run into trouble just touching the subject.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. What a wonder contemporary higher education works on us….
Do we really have to torture ourselves about using the word “race” when it comes to a Korean society that places so much emphasis on blood?
Like my students thinking it was weird I didn’t know my blood type? Or foreigners who get turned down for donating blood?
Or how about if I had a thousand won for every time I heard or read Koreans explaining how Korea is a “homogeneous” nation and that is one of their proudest claims to fame?
So, by the very definition Koreans are so fond of telling us, if you translated the word as “the Korean nation” you would be meaning the Korean “race” too…
It seems to me clear that they mean an ethnic group instead of a nation — which in our mind would be a heterogeneous mix of people — which is not what they have in mind.
Do we have to go to such lengths to protect Koreans by desensitizing the word for the non-Korean reader?
My wife would translate the word as “race”. She has a long story she will tell you about her college professor in tourism English reading an English guide book on Korea and how when he came to the spiel on the “homogenity” of the Korean people, he explained how he had a top notch student once, a student who had won the scholarship as the top student (just as my wife had) and how he disappointed him greatly when she asked him to speak at her wedding, because she was marrying a white guy (just as my wife had) and how he kept telling her “no” and he kept saying no because she was helping erase one of the proudest things for the Korean people — their homogenity.
I see no problem with translating the word as the Korean race. I think that is an honest translation of what Korea has in mind when it uses the word. Koreans as an ethnic group, not as simply a nation-state.
Doesn’t Korea want to give overseas ethnic Koreans voting rights?
As I already replied in Cathartidae’s site, the translation to ‘race’ does fit the Korean mindset. All this has also made me reflect my earliest reaction; one doesn’t need to be an anthro in an academic environment but it surely helps in developing wariness towards the race-word, with all the baggage of the European recent history. (For a personal note, English is largely a non-spoken language to me, and I end up approaching the English terms through my own language, so take my words from that point.)
Having earlier done some tourist guiding, I’ve often talked about this nationality thing with Koreans, and also in Korea with the neighborhood people I’ve been seeing. “Is there a separate ????????쑩?징짹?” is a common question, and I start explaining all the prehistorical migrations and “mixtures of blood”, kind of having the idea of challenging the Korean notion of a nation, without actually thinking what my own idea is.
(What about translating “racism” as ??쩌?징짹?째짢?쨀???쩌???…)
Just a short note extra. I wanted to point out that I don’t particularly mind the Korean use of race and for that matter in Japan either.
It has its negative aspects, but even though I think Korea stresses its purity in blood (homogenity) beyond the bounds of reality (if you look at the history of the northern areas of Korea and the nomatic tribes of Manchuria), Korea is a more homogeneous society than we are used to in Europe or the US…
….and maybe that is why when you ask Koreans about racism in Korea, they say there is none.
I think they are ultimately wrong, but I have to admit that given the relative lack of ethnic diversity, they haven’t had the same level of problems Europe and Western societies have experienced.
So, I don’t think they have the same baggage when using the word race that especially Americans have when they start talking about race.
In short, when Koreans mention race, I barely raise an eyebrow, but if I hear some Americans talking about it, red flags get ready to wave….
Does anyone know where to find the original Korean text of this article (”Koreans Reject Japanese Culture As ‘Patriotic Wind’ Sweeps Nation”)? I searched on chosun.com for several key words that I thought would be in the Korean text, but it didn’t turn up anything. Thanks.