Dr. Lankov gives English-speaking readers a taste of “progressive” South Korean discourse about the United States and North Korea in his latest column in the Asia Times. This is a MUST READ by any definition of the word:
One only has to read Korean to discover that Seoul bookshops are well stocked with books whose authors go to great lengths to persuade their readers that the North is not a brutal dictatorship with particularly inept economic system, but rather a misunderstood society that has its own manifold merits. This is seen as “progressive” these days, while references to North Korean human rights or the incurable inefficiency of Stalinist economy are usually rejected as signs of conservatism and inability to follow the spirit of times.
Looking at one South Korean history book targeting high-school students, Lankov looks at what you might learn about those evil Yanks:
The first part deals with the history of the South. From the beginning, there are things that raise eyebrows. For example, the authors do not mention the US decision to dispatch troops to Korea after the North Korean invasion in June 1950, and they describe the Seoul takeover in September 1950 thusly: “The South Korean Army, which had retreated to the Namgang River under the ferocious attacks of the North Korean forces, reversed the situation through the Incheon landing on September 15.” US forces comprised the overwhelming majority of the troops during this amphibious operation, but their participation in Incheon is not mentioned.
The American soldiers are not quite absent from the book, however. A large drawing shows an evening near an entrance to a US military club about 1955 - grinning US soldiers accompanied by desperate and helpless Korean women who are obviously driven to prostitution by despair. Somewhere in the background a particularly sinister American is dragging an under-age Korean girl, with implication of a possible rape. The coffee-table format allows for wonderful richness of details on a double-page illustration.
Well, what might you learn about North Korea? Lankov explains at great detail; this is just some of it:
The happy inhabitants of North Korea are free not only from worries about being evicted by their landlords. They also enjoy other enviable benefits, such as early retirement. The pension system is explained at some length, but the authors forget to tell their readers that even in the best of times older people were entitled to merely 300 grams of grain a day. Although the public distribution system is mentioned, many sentences create a false impression of what a North Korean can actually buy in the state-run shops. The book states that in their spare time Pyongyang residents can drop into a cafe where they can sample “bread, yoghurt, cheese and other Western food”. (They can if they have access to foreign currency and are ready to spend about a half of the average worker’s monthly salary on a meal.)
Thus a South Korean teenager will understand that North Korean life has a somewhat idyllic quality: job security, free housing, an iron-proof system of old-age pensions and, of course, the omnipresent collective spirit that is extolled at great length. No wonder all illustrations in the “North Korean pages” depict smiling faces that present such a dramatic contrast with depressed, angry or outraged Southerners shown in pictures in previous chapters.
The good professor also explains the historical and political background to this school of historiography and the lasting effects such views may have on the relationship between Washington and Seoul.
Like I said, read it. Read it all.
24 Comments
ALL RIGHT! Thats it! I’m PISSED!
I’m going to cover myself in bees and jump onto the South Korean flag while cutting off my pinky and lighting myself on fire!
WHO’S WITH ME!?!?!?
Marmot, thanks for the link.
There was a very long and excellent article on this strain of “minjung” historiography published a while back…maybe you posted a link to it on your blog? I can’t remember the title or author now, and am having trouble finding it in Google.
I could understand SK progressives who are critical of their own past governments, if it stopped at that. But those who are simultaneously praising NK? Are they that deluded? Are they merely “useful idiots” or outright fifth columnists?
Andy Jackson, here’s what LINK is up against in Korea. Lankov didn’t say what bookstore this was in or what the press run was, so we can’t say if the book will have a big influence. It’s troubling just that it exists at all.
Also, it exposes the hypocrisy in Korea of critizing Japan for its “textbook distortions.”
What I don’t get is why these “progressives” don’t all pack up and head to the Workers’ Paradise(tm) if it’s so great up there.
I wish Dr. Lankov would mention just which publishers are printing this stack of lies and half-truths. I will have to get some friends to look up some of this.
Someone should be going to jail for subversion.
I’m with Wedge - why not open the gates and let ‘em head up North? Hell, once they get there, they could even turn out a Steinbeck-like saga on the challenges they had to face before they made it to that wonderland waiting in Gaesong.
LANKOV: In a decade or so the readers of this and many other similar books will begin to vote, and it is not too difficult to imagine what they will think about the United States and its role in Korea.
He addresses my worries exactly: Future generations of South Koreans may well be MORE xenophobic and ethnocentric after exposure to KCTU brainwashing and “progressive” media groupthink. One can understand perhaps why China and especially Japan do not relish the idea of a united Korea.
Regarding the absent roll of U.S. troops in South Korean historiography, I think its fair to say the South Koreans are just reciprocating.
Standard U.S. Public schools almost single mindedly focus on U.S. contributions to various war efforts. Students may know that over 30,000 U.S. soldiers died on the Korean peninsula but are clueless to the sacrifice of over 800,000 RoK soldiers.
I’m reminded of one of Lirelous comments about one particular chapter of the Vietnam war. The battle at Hue is cannonized in American military mythology but in reality it was ARVN troops that did most of the fighting.
“but are clueless to the sacrifice of over 800,000 RoK soldiers”
This is hardly equivalent, Jing. Of course ROK soldiers will sacrifice for their own country, but US soldiers were sacrificed for someone else’s country. The US doesn’t have the experience of soldiers from other countries coming to America to sacrifice themselves for America. US soldiers have done this many times for other countries.
And Mr. Lankov, thank you for yet another extremely interesing article. Can the US troops leave now?
Erm… huh? So I take it you don’t count the American Revolution, since America wasn’t an actual country back then? The outcome of the American Revolution was at least partly determined through the actions of foreign troops on America’s behalf. Now, I’m not going to say ‘if not for the French, America wouldn’t exist as a country’, but they certainly were of some help, and some of them definitely sacrificed themselves for America. If anything, the United States should be more acutely sympathetic than most countries to the experience of foreign soldiers coming over and helping out. After all, foreign soldiers helped along the birth of the United States.
J: Standard U.S. Public schools almost single mindedly focus on U.S. contributions to various war efforts.
For the simple reason that without US involvement, there would have been no victory. In Korea, the ROK was on its last legs at Pusan, when the cavalry came riding to the rescue. In South Vietnam, the US crushed the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops who saddled up to fight. Three years after it left, North Vietnamese troops overran the South.
As usual, Jing’s commentary is a little ironic, since Chinese textbooks would lead the reader to believe that the PLA defeated Japan during WWII, despite the fact that China was mostly trying hard not to get annihilated, and the Kuomintang, not the PLA, did most of the fighting against Japan. But then again, the Chinese have had a lot of practice making up history - 5,000 years of it.
Zonath: If anything, the United States should be more acutely sympathetic than most countries to the experience of foreign soldiers coming over and helping out. After all, foreign soldiers helped along the birth of the United States.
That makes no sense whatsoever. The fact that the French engaged in a token effort against British forces should make Americans more sympathetic than the fact that Americans lost 40,000 dead against NKPA forces should make South Koreans sympathetic? Or the fact that the US lost 100,000 dead in WWI and 400,000 dead in WWII against German forces should make the French sympathetic? The fact is that the scale of the effort is much more significant than whether it has to do with the birth or the continued existence of a nation, both of which are anyhow equivalent.
Obviously, I wasn’t meaning to start comparing the sizes of respective countries’ sacrifices. After all, that would be silly. I was merely pointing out that it’s simply wrong to claim that America has never had the experience of soldiers from foreign countries coming over to defend it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08.....amp;emc=th
with movies like this about american army bases and korean children making movie history, it seems that xenophobia is definitely a coming attraction.
I would like to ad a note of caution here. Most of us interesting in Korea have read some Bruce Cumings. Most of us who have read his stuff pretty quickly moved beyond him.
So I am not ready to hit the panic button unless someone tells me that there are few books with alternative views available.
Andy, I’ pretty confident in what you say regarding readers of Cummings IF those readers are non-Koreans. But, what is your sense of the readership in Korea by Koreans? In spite of all the evidence against him I’ve been dismayed that people I come in contact with there in academia and politics still worship Cummings as a great historian. I don’t think there can be any dissuading them as long as ideology determines their historical interpratation. Most conservative Koreans on the other hand won’t even read Cummings if they have heard anything about him.
Ah Zhang Fei, my irony detector must be broken. I don’t recall this discussion having anything to do with regards to China. It’s good to know we can always rely on you for entertaining non-sequitors.
J: Ah Zhang Fei, my irony detector must be broken. I don’t recall this discussion having anything to do with regards to China. It’s good to know we can always rely on you for entertaining non-sequitors.
Actually, this started out being a comment on how South Korea distorts history. Then Jing suggested - erroneously - that the US also distorts history and is thus the major exponent in this kind of thing. Upon which I pointed out the king of historical distortion is China. Point being that historical distortion is not only not the American norm, as Jing suggests, it is nowhere practised as unself-consciously as in China. I understand why Jing would like to avoid having to defend China’s sorry record, but since we’re talking about norms, I think it’s quite germane to talk about what other countries do, especially Jing’s “5000-year-old” motherland.
Cumings - there was an opinion piece by a columnist for the Joongang Daily a couple of weeks ago that mentioned talking to his nephew or something like that - a school-aged kid, and the boy had asked if the North really started the war. It seems the boy mentioned Cumings and the South starting the war. The writer explained Cumings’ idea in the only book he wrote being worth the title “academic” of 3 possible ways the war started.
But the main line was — the boy said he believed the North started the war, but if he said that at school, he would get “bullied.”
Books - On the 1st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I was back in Korea. My wife (Korean) and I were at Kyobo Bookstore in Seoul. While she was eye-shopping, I was bored, but I happened to notice a book display that was on the attacks for the anniversary. I had noticed the same display at the entrance. After looking at it, I walked around the whole store, and I found the same display in about 5 or 6 locations - both entrances and around the corners at the openings of the different sections.
I wandered around to count how many displays there were, because I found the books they chose to commemorate the attacks fascinating.
There was a translation of the French book that said it was a hoax and CIA blackbag job. There was a translation of a Japanese book that seemed to be about the same idea. I believe Gangster America was there. There were a couple of other similar books about US foriegn policy as the cause of the trouble. And there were 3 translations of books by Noam Chompsky - written before 9/11.
I wish I had had my camera to take a picture.
And this was no hole in the wall bookstore for the intelligentsia. This was one of the biggest in the nation and a mecca for foreigeners too boot.
And lastly - an article from last year said the Korea Teachers Union has the largest monetary war chest of any union in Korea. That was hard to believe, but if it is true, it is a jaw dropper. And I think you can look at it as an effort by the North and those sympathetic to it. Historically speaking, these types have paid great attention to the value of propaganda and targeted it at the youth and the working class.
“So I take it you don’t count the American Revolution, since America wasn’t an actual country back then?”
Good point, Zonath. I don’t know enough about the history, but are there are more recent examples?
Not especially, possibly due to the fact that defensive wars on US soil have been few and far between since the inception of the Republic (the Indian wars were basically wars of conquest, which is why I use ‘defensive wars’). There were some Native American tribes that participated in the War of 1812 on the American side, but that’s about it, as far as I remember from history class. Much of the Civil War was spent trying to convince England and France not to intercede on the side of the CSA, leaving that pretty much as a USA-CSA affair the whole way. I suppose you could also call the Vermont Republic’s intercession on behalf of the rest of the colonies during the Revolutionary war an intercession by a ‘foreign state’, even if Vermont was made the 14th state in 1791. But if we’re looking for more recent examples, then I guess there really aren’t any.
This stuff was illegal until a few years ago. For good reason, too. That said, I think that it is time South Korean students began to defect to the North in droves. They might actually have to do something other than squandering Daddy’s money on overpriced ESL schools here in Vancouver and $25 bottles (yes, I am not making this up, the Korean restraunts in Robson St charge and get $25 a bottle for Cham soju) of soju here in Canada, all while living in the most expensive flats in Canada while talking on the newest cellphone. Instead of the return flight landing in Inch’on, it can, with all patriot love, land in Pyonyyang.
Ahhhh the state of Korean ESL in Vancouver!
For citizens of any country, the “if you don’t like, leave” argument is insulting. It is only natural that citizens of a country want to make their country better (as they see it). Of course, you (and I) can disagree with the progressives or conservatives or whomever but I find this “love it or leave it” attitude offensive. I mean, isn’t this the attitude the government of Sudan has towards those in the southern areas that don’t agree with their “politics”. If you don’t like our wonderful Islamic theocratic Arabic speaking Sudan then leave it. Isn’t this the type of attitude (in its extreme) that leads to refugee crises and ethnic cleansing.
I’m not defending the opinions of those who sympathize with the North or want to make South Korean society more like the North but it is certainly their right do so.
Agreed, Agadan. And, for citizens of any country, having the ‘if you like North Korea, go there’ argument being misconstrued as ‘if you don’t like South Korea, leave’ argument is tedious.