Yi Kwangsu and Korean Nationalism

Yi Kwangsu (Photo from here.)

Last week Andre Lankov wrote an interesting piece in the Korea Times about the life of Yi Kwangsu, which got me interested in him, not because of his novels or literary criticism, but more because I'd been reading Gi-wook Shin's Ethnic Nationalism in Korea, which discusses his influence on Korean nationalism. The way the Korean nation is perceived today has been influenced especially by two people: Shin Chae-ho and Yi Kwangsu.

As described in Andre Schmid's book Korea Between Empires 1895-1919 (and also in Henry Em's essay "Minjok as a Modern and Democratic Construct: Shin Ch'ae-ho's Historiography" in Colonial Modernity in Korea), Shin Chae-ho's most influential work was the essay "Toksa Sillon," or "A New Reading of History," which was first published in 1908. In it Shin was the first to take the relatively new concept of 'minjok' (see Henry Em's essay) and combine it with Dangun, the mythological precursor of the Korean people via the Jokpo, or family genealogical record. Ignoring court-based histories and the previous attention paid to Kija (the Chinese sage who founded an early Korean kingdom and provided a link to China when it was the center of the east Asian world), Shin made the minjok, the ethnic nation, the subject of his history, which allowed him to connect Korea to the greatness of Goguryeo (and a time when 'Korea' included a great deal of Manchuria) and Dangun. Shin's essay was incredibly influential, though it should be noted that though his use of genealogical concepts made a 'bloodline' implicit, Schmid makes no mention of Shin explicitly utilizing that idea. To be sure, Shin saw the nation in an organic manner, with his worldview influenced by Social Darwinism. It was Yi Kwangsu, however, who would contribute (or at least popularize) other ideas to fine-tune Shin's concept into one that endures up to the present.

As Lankov notes, "Yi was born in 1892, in what is now North Korea. He was 10 years old when his parents died, but the village community took care of him as he had already become viewed by his fellow villagers as a local prodigy."

Beongcheon Yu's book Han Yong-un & Yi Kwang-su: Two Pioneers of Modern Korean Literature says that Yi was taken in by the Dongak movement, while Lankov describes it as the Cheondogyo sect. At any rate, "It was sect leaders who provided Yi with a scholarship to study in Japan where he went in 1905. In Tokyo, he acquired a native fluency in Japanese. Indeed, Japanese, not Korean, was the language he used in his first fiction writings." Yi also learned English there, and in the 1930s was described as being able to speak 'beautiful English.'

There he became acquainted with western writers, and especially respected Tolstoy. According to Yu, in 1910 he returned to Korea, to his hometown of Osan (in northern Korea), and became a teacher (and also got married). He later had a falling out with the religious officials who took over the school, and wandered around northeast Asia for several years, visiting Shanghai, Vladivostok, Manchuria, and Chiba in Siberia. His planned trip to San Francisco was made impossible by World War 1, and he moved back to Japan and enrolled in Waseda University. There he wrote many essays, especially about literature, and became famous when his book Mujeong ('heartlessness') was serialized in 1917 in the Maeil Sinbo (formerly Ernest Bethell's Daehan Maeil Sinbo, which was secretly bought by the Japanese and published from 1910-1944, and the only vernacular Korean newspaper published by the Japanese authorities from 1910 to 1920, and 1940 to 1944). Mujeong is considered the first modern Korean novel, and made Yi a celebrity (and hated by some critics) overnight (it's reviewed here). He also caused a scandal when the woman about to become Korea's first doctor, Heo Yeong-suk, nursed him back to health after his first bout with tuberculosis and he divorced his wife to elope with Heo to Peking. [Yu, 88-91]

Yi's non-fiction writing focused on the purpose of literature in Korea and its relationship with the Korean nation, making it clear that nationalism influenced his way of seeing the world. Michael D. Shin's essay "Interior Landscapes and Modern Literature," from Colonial Modernity in Korea, discusses and quotes from some of his essays, especially "What is Literature?" (1916), Korea's first example of modern literary criticism. In it he views munhak, or literature, in a different way than in the past because of jeong "which he uses to describe a wide range of emotions." Shin notes Yi's assertion that "in the past emotion had been ignored because "humanity did not have a clear conception of individuality (gaeseong)." Shin describes Yi writing that 'although the human mind consists of three factors - knowledge (chi) emotion (jeong) and will (eui) - people in the past "regarded jeong as lowly and considered only knowledge and will important." [...] "The thoughts and emotions of the Choson people were restricted by an intolerant moral code for around five hundred years after the founding of the Yi dynasty." [p. 256]

Sheila Miyoshi Jager's Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism also quotes from Yi, making clear in the same essay where he thought the source of Chosun's literature's backwardness lay :

Korean thoughts and emotions were suppressed by the narrowminded morality during the 500 years of the Chosun Dynasty, not to mention the pre-Chosun periods, and thus did not have the opportunity to develop freely. Only if this sort of suppression and obstruction had not existed, then the flower of [Korean] literature [munhak] could have bloomed brilliantly during Chosun’s past 500 years and provided nourishment for the minds of its people and become the source for their pleasure.[…]

While lamenting the fact that our idle Chosun dynasty ancestors have not left us anything of tangible value, I am also deeply vexed that they have not left behind anything of spiritual worth due to their incompetence. However, this situation cannot be blamed only on our ancestors. As a result of the intrusion of Chinese culture, Chosun culture became extinct. Underneath the overarching dominance of China, Korean culture withered and died. Our careless and idle Korean Confucian literati (sonin) foolishly allowed themselves to become slaves to Chinese culture and as a result, our own nation’s culture was eradicated. [p. 23]

On the one hand, it's hard to miss the xenophobic thrust of the above passage, but on the other, he also criticizes Korea's past and seems to find little usable in it. Still, rejecting the Confucian past did not mean that he wasn't nationalistic, tying as he does the meaning of literature to the fate of the nation, or minjok. As Shin notes, Yi also wrote that "the thoughts, emotions, and way of life of a generation were the result of the study, cultivation and training of earlier people (minjok) and a crystalization of their innumerable sufferings and efforts." 'Believing that this legacy constitutes the "spiritual civilization of a people and the basis of its nationness (minjokseong)," he argued that "the most effective way to transmit this valuable spiritual civilization [to future generations] is the literature of the people [minjok ui munhak]." [p. 258]

In a 1917 essay titled "Our Ideals," he wrote that literature is the most important part of culture because "the spirit of the nation that has been transmitted from the time of our ancestors ... will be the center of literature." [p. 255]

Yi took his writing about the nation to the next level when he left Peking after being together for three months with his lover, returned to Seoul, and then made his way to Tokyo where he wrote the February 8 Declaration of Independence by Korean Students in Tokyo (something I’ve argued was possible only because of the more relaxed political environment in Japan after the 1918 Rice Riots). This statement was an important precursor to the March 1 movement three weeks later. After writing the declaration he went to Shanghai to take part in the formation of the government in exile, working with An Chang-ho and taking charge of the newspaper Independence News. After two years his wife-to-be returned to claim him and they returned to Seoul, where he was seen by some as a turncoat for having abandoned the cause in Shanghai and having not been investigated by the Japanese on his return. [Shin's essay says he was arrested for a short time.] In February 1922, Yi organized the Suyang Tong'uhoe, a version of the Heongsadan (Society for the Fostering of Activisists) founded by An Chang-ho in LA in 1913. He also helped found (in 1924) and edited the literary journal Joseon Mundan. Yi would write essays and serialized novels for the Donga Ilbo for much of the next decade.

Gi-wook Shin's Ethnic Nationalism in Korea examines Yi's writings and influence, and describes him as being aligned more with the cultural nationalist movement in the early 1920s. Cultural nationalists of the 1920s 'criticized their own historical heritage, especially Confucian heritage, as backward and sought to reconstruct Korean nationality largely based on modern liberal Western thought.'

In Yi Kwangsu’s "Minjok Kaejoron" (A theory of national reconstruction) 'Yi stressed the necessity of creating a "new person," or a new national character. […] For him, nationality was not enduring, but could be readily reconstructed with individual cultivation and mass education. […] The [national reconstruction] movement would have to be moral and spiritual, rather than political, as the reconstruction of nationality was more important than political independence, at least for the time being.'

According to Shin Gi-wook, Yi saw tradition (and Neo-Confucianism) as an obstacle to progress, 'championed Western liberalism and free will,' and seemed 'more cosmopolitan than nationalist in outlook.'[46-47] This can also be seen in his embrace of western ideas of personal freedom and individuality (such as the argument against arranged marriage that was presented in Mujeong).

According to Yu, Yi's suggestion in "Minjok kaejoron" that there would need to be a 30-year-long maturation period before pursuing independence (quite similar to An Chang-ho’s ideas) was not popular with some, and the magazine it was published in was stormed by an angry crowd. Though he was invited to write by the Donga Ilbo, he had to write under pseudonyms until 1925. It's interesting the essay caused such a reaction, considering Mujeong, the novel that made him famous, had similar notions near the end when a character suggested, "Let's devote ourselves to seeing a much better Chosun by the time we grow old and die." [Michael Shin, p. 284]

As Shin Gi-wook points out, by the late 1920s and early 1930s, Yi had changed his outlook. This had a great deal to do with changes in the nationalist movement in general, he argues, due to nationalist reaction to both colonial racism by the Japanese Government General and the internationalism of the socialist movement. Though Japanese rule in the 1920s was nowhere near as harsh as the military rule of the first decade after annexation, the Japanese attempted to rewrite history and take over the administration of historical objects or monuments, for example, in order to control their meaning. While the work of ethnographer Murayama Chijun is noted for its contribution to the understanding of shamanism in Korea (see his photos of Korea in the 1920s and 1930s here), the main goal of his research - at least on the part of the colonial government - was to find connections between shamanism and Shinto, so as to show an ancient link between Korea and Japan and thus justification for Japanese colonial rule. As for international socialism, Korean socialists had allied themselves with left wing nationalists in the late 1920s, but in 1930 the Comintern called for this alliance to cease, and this pushed left and right wing nationalists closer together as they sought to combat the idea that international class affiliation was more important than national ties. In both cases, Shin argues, in trying to deflate nationalism, international socialism and the Government General instead engendered a more nationalist reaction.

Thus, by the early 1930s, Yi had changed his outlook, stressing, as Shin puts it, 'pride in Korean heritage' and 'a highly racialized view of nation,' and he 'championed collectivism over individualism.' In "Three Basic Tasks for Korean National Movements," published in 1932, Yi defined nation as "eternal being," something immutable and unchangeable. This is quite a change from his argument ten years later that 'nationality was not enduring, but could be readily reconstructed with individual cultivation and mass education.' 'In "Basic Morality of Old Koreans", published four months later, he lashed out at individualism and liberalism calling for we-ism (uri juui), groupism (danche juui), and totalitarianism (jeonche juui). Clearly departing from his earlier view that championed western individualism and free will, he now charged these with destroying Korea’s tradition of we-ism and group-ism,' and said 'that the import of Anglo-Saxonian individualism and liberalism weakened Korea’s traditional "spirit of sacrifice and service," and he called for restoring collectivism based on the "communal spirit of villages of old Joseon."'[p. 48, 69] This is clearly quite a change from his comments lashing out at Neo-Confucianism and the pro-Chinese attitudes of the Chosun Dynasty in the late 1910s.

In his Theory of the Korean Nation, published in 1933, 'he compared the idea of nation to the notion of "fate," claiming that "Koreans cannot but be Koreans…even when they use the language of a foreign nation, wear its clothes and follow its customs in order to become non-Korean." In his view, nation cannot change because of hyeoltong (bloodline), seonggyeok (personality), and munhwa ( culture) constitute a nation. Here, he defined nation in ethnic and racial terms, departing from his earlier view. […] Yi concluded, "Koreans have been without a doubt a unitary ethnic nation (danil han minjok) in blood and culture for thousands of years." [p. 48-49] As Michael Shin notes, in 1933 he wrote that "language is the soul of the nation." He also argued that "anyone who insults the nation must be denounced as a sinner against the nation." [p. 56] Yi probably came to regret that particular statement.

Worth noting is that Yi, while reacting to Japanese colonial policy, was at the same time influenced by Japanese ultra-nationalism, facism, and campaigns in Japan for ‘Japanization’ rather than ‘westernization.’ [p. 56] And much as we saw an anti-foreign streak in his lashing out at Korea's Confucianists becoming "slaves to Chinese thought," we see that in his view of history, "He blamed Silla for breaking Korea’s national unity by inviting foreign forces into the boundaries of the nation and praised Koryo for recovering those boundaries." This sounds rather similar to North Korea's justification for the last (and perhaps a future) Korean War.[p. 48]

Speaking of history, as the Japanese appeared to show great interest in Korean history, but were actually looking for ways to assimilate Koreans and prove a common ancestral origin of Koreans, Manchurians, and Japanese, the Korean nationalist response grew. As Shin writes, '[c]ampaigns to preserve sites of "National heroes," such as Yi Sunsin, Gwonyul, Dangun, and Euljimundeok, were another effort to demonstrate the uniqueness and greatness of the Korean nation and to preserve the national spirit. When national hero General Yi Sunsin’s tomb was on the auction block to pay off debts in 1931, in May of that year Yi Kwangsu published fourteen articles on his heroism in the newspaper Donga Ilbo. The next month, he began publishing a serialized novel called Yi Sunsin in the same newspaper. […] Within a year, forty six organizations and 21,543 individuals were reported to donate a total of 16,021 won.' [49-50] Similar campaigns also took place. From 1922 to 1937, he wrote numerous novels that were serialized in the Donga Ilbo and later the Chosun Ilbo, with quite a few of them dealing with Korean history. In 1934 he became Buddhist.

To personal anecdote from around 1936, from Agnes Davis Kim's "I Married A Korean," describes a visit with Yi at her house:

One very interesting visitor was Mr. Lee Kwang-Soo, the famous author of Korean novels and stories whose pen name is Choon Won, which means "Spring Garden." He had been David's teacher in O-Sang [Osan] High School, and was very much interested in us. David unfortunately was not home when he came, but he spoke beautiful English and I did my best to entertain him. A short while before, I had illuminated and framed as a gift to David a little poem about my feelings for him. Mr. Lee picked it up, and after reading it asked to make a copy of it. A few days later an article he had written of his impressions of our home appeared in the daily newspaper along with a Korean translation of my poetical efforts [.][...] A short time later we were invited to the home of Mr. Lee Kwang-soo for dinner and an evening of wonderful conversation about Korea and Korean traditions. [p. 151-153]

During the 1920s and 1930s, he was ill with tuberculosis on several occasions and attempted to retreat from the world in places like Geumgangsan. This illness, the death of a son, and the arrest of his mentor, An Chang-ho paved the way for a crisis of faith, and as time went on his interest in Buddhism grew. In 1937 he met with An after his release, but they – and many of the remaining nationalist leaders in the Suyang Tong'uhoe – were soon arrested.

The ideas he presented up to this point have been quite influential. Shin Gi-wook sums up Yi Kwangsu's main concepts of the nation as an organic sense of nation, eternity of nation, and primacy of nation over other collective identities. [p. 108]

Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea, was obviously influenced by Yi's ideas when he advocated Ilmin Juui, (One people-ism) which essentially called for a northern advance to reunify the country before the Korean War. As he wrote, "As a unitary nation [danil minjok] that has a long history, we are always one and not two. As one nation, we have to be one always." An Hosang, Rhee's first minister of education, further articulated this, writing, "We are one people. One people has the same bloodline, same fate, and the same ideology," further showing a debt to Yi with words like "fate" and "bloodline." [p. 101-2] Park Chung-hee later proclaimed “Ideology changes, but the nation stays the same,” just as Rhee and Yi Kwangsu had [p. 99].

This should also sound familiar:

How have we come to have such sentiments? The reason is that the idea that we are a single people sharing the same bloodline has been passed down to us in our shared racial consciousness. Today, while the many races on the earth live within their different, respective environments and histories, they are all struggling for sake of their respective race’s development and prosperity. A race/group shares the same blood and uses a common language, while sharing a history and culture. Based on that, the communal consciousness embodied in the word “we” constitutes the meaning of the group. A race/group can share a common name, race, or area, and in the same way, because we share the same bloodline as our ancestors, we can sometimes even call race "a big family." [...] In a family, even if one member moves far away, one cannot say that that person is no longer part of the family. In the same way, if a person born as a member of our race/group lives in another country, and even acquires citizenship there, one cannot come to the conclusion that the person is no longer a member of our race.

Compare the last two sentences to Yi's assertion that "Koreans cannot but be Koreans…even when they use the language of a foreign nation, wear its clothes and follow its customs in order to become non-Korean." The source of the above passage is the 1994 middle school morals textbook, via the Metropolitician (see also here). Note its similarity to this:

The Korean nation is a homogeneous nation that has inherited the same blood and lived in the same territory speaking the same language for thousands of years. All Koreans in the north, south and abroad belong to the same nation with the blood and soul of the Korean nation and are linked inseparably with the same national interests and a common historical psychology and sentiment.

The source of this quote? A 1998 speech by Kim Jong-il titled “Let us unify the country independently and peacefully through the great unity of the entire nation.” [Ethnic Nationalism in Korea, p.93]

Yi Kwangsu and Shin Chae-ho's ideas have influenced the leaders of both Koreas, but what is interesting about Shin is that he later abandoned the minjok as the subject of history and focused on the minjung (less-fortunate masses) instead, writing the "Manifesto of the Korean Revolution" and later becoming an anarchist. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1928, and died in prison in 1936.

Yi, on the other hand, spent only a short time in a Japanese prison before becoming the opposite of Shin - an enthusiastic collaborator.

It is worth noting, however, that the first person to articulate key modern Korean nationalist concepts - which greatly influence how Koreans perceive themselves and their nation's place in the world - later became an anarchist, and the second-most important person eventually became, for all intents and purposes, a Japanese nationalist. Needless to say, those facts are left out of morals textbooks.

Yi seems to me a fascinating person, and it's the pro-Japanese writings I was most interested in finding, but they'll have to wait until the next post.

Shanghai crackdown

The Chosun Ilbo writes:

Shanghai is well known among movie fans as a paradise for buying contraband copies of the latest films, but in recent days it has become difficult to find pirated movies or music on the streets. This is because the Chinese government has been sweeping the streets to prevent potential embarrassments in preparation for the Shanghai World Expo, which opens May 1 and is expected to attract 70 million visitors from around the world.

The Korean language article has one of my favourite formulations - "불법 복제품의 천국," translated above as "a paradise for buying contraband copies of the latest films," though actually the above quote says nothing specifically about films. China in general is described in the Korean media as a "paradise for fake items," something a Korean studies professor told me years ago he was researching, and supported by conversations with adult students over the years. The "___의 천국" ("___'s paradise") has been used several times in the past to describe how foreign teachers perceive Korea (such as the 2005 episode of SBS's 그것이 알고싶다 about English Teachers, titled "Is Korea their Paradise? Report on the Real Conditions of Blond-haired, Blue-eyed Teachers," (which I looked at here)), while in 1984 (and later) during the French teacher 'scandal' Korea was referred to as a "paradise for foreign wanderers." It would be interesting to see when else the formulation "___ is a paradise for ____" appears in the media.

Of course, it's amusing to see China being described as a paradise for fake dvds in a Korean newspaper considering how prevalent the practice is in Korea as well (see here, though keep in mind the vendors are back in more permanent structures).

You also have to admire this photo as well. Long live racial/national stereotypes!


Note that the English-language article does not have the writing on the dvds seen above, which makes it more difficult to understand. The top one says 'Avatar,' the bottom one says 'fake.'

"Respectfully pay tribute the souls of the deceased..."
From the April 16 issue of Focus.

The Korea Herald has an article about the funeral held for the sailors lost in the attack on the Cheonan, which did not have anything about 'vowing revenge' when I read it last night.

The televised funeral was held at a memorial park within the premises of the Navy’s Second Fleet Command in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, where a South Korean Navy vessel sunken during the deadly skirmish with North Korea in 2002 is displayed. Six South Korean soldiers were killed during the naval clashes with the North near the NLL in 1999 and 2002.

I didn't realize that ship was on display. Of course, considering how the previous administration(s) tried to sweep that incident under the rug, that's not surprising. The Joongang Ilbo also relates this story related to the 2002 naval clash:

Yoon Doo-ho, father of the late Cmdr. Yoon Young-ha, also visited the Pyeongtaek altar. Commander Yoon was killed in action during the Second Naval Battle near Yeonpyeong Island between South and North Korea in 2002.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Park Gyeong-soo, one of the six missing sailors from the Cheonan, fought in the Yeonpyeong battle with Yoon. Park was so distraught after the battle that he didn’t go near the sea for almost six years before boarding the Cheonan.

How very unlucky - and tragic - for Senior Chief Petty Officer Park Gyeong-soo to have been involved in both battles. Hopefully the memory of the sailors who died on April is treated more respectfully than the memory of those who died in 2002 has been.

The language of diplomacy

I've posted writing by James Wade before (here, here and here) from his book One Man's Korea (Hollym, 1967). Here's a rather interesting essay from 1964 which has some relevance today.

"Seoul Wind"

The French foreign language teacher scandal of 1984

Prelude 1: The 1983 Law "Limiting Aliens' Residence Period" and banning "unqualified" foreigners from working.

Part 1: Le Monde and what came before
Part 2: Korea is "Ali Baba's" Cave
Part 3: Seoul Should not be a Workplace for Parisians
Part 4: In private foreign language classes, there are a lot of ‘fraud teachers’
Part 5: Jibberish
Part 6: 'I Want to Strike it Rich in Seoul Too' - Continuous Job Inquiries by the French
Part 7: Foreigners Enjoy Better Life With Mother Tongues
Part 8: Foreigners and Foreign Languages
Part 9: Sickening Face
Part 10: Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Part 11: The First Sanctions on Foreigners Working Illegally
Part 12: All Private Lessons by Foreigners Prohibited
Part 13: Institutes Asked to Hire Eligible Foreign Teachers
Part 14: "Seoul Wind"
Part 15: Foreign Language Teacher Shortage
Part 16: Troublemaking vagabond foreigner story finally airs

Part 14: "Seoul Wind"

수사반장 (Susa Banjang, or 'Chief Investigator') was, as this site at MBC explains, Korea's Columbo, a detective show focusing on 5 detectives that ran from 1971 to 1989. Here's the opening:



Another video can be seen here. If you have an MBC membership (ie if you are a Korean citizen) you can watch the 33 episodes that MBC still has in its possession at the website, which also hosts photos like this:


On September 27, 1984, in its TV section, the Joongang Ilbo listed the description of that night's episode of Susa Banjang:

Foreign Vagabond Attacked

MBC-TV “Chief Investigator 84” (8:05 p.m. on the 27th) = "Seoul Wind." Korea is a heaven for foreign vagabonds. French youth "Pierre" is injured after an attack in a dark alley. Two months earlier, he entered Korea as a penniless wanderer and used fake documents to con his way into teaching French conversation at a private school.

The investigation squad discovers the truth about the quarrel between Pierre and In-gyu, the boyfriend of university student Sun-young, who gave Pierre a ring.

On the same day, the Kyunghyang Shinmun added this:

Based on a report the investigators received, they begin an investigation to discover the truth behind an argument Pierre had with a young woman who was introducing students to him in return for sharing his earnings. Also, the investigators notice a woman’s ring on Pierre’s hand…

Here, with the story of 'Pierre' (the name taken from the teacher in the Le Monde article who married a Korean maiden) entering Korea as a "penniless wanderer" (a reference to Luc in the Le Monde article), we have at last a crystallization of the Korean media's attitude towards the spectre of unqualified foreign teachers who are treated too well, make too much money and marry Korean maidens. What is one to make of the fact that the teacher in this story is beaten in an alley?

That same day, another Kyunghyang Shinmun article appeared titled:

Two foreigners appear in "Chief Investigator"

Two foreigners without acting experience will appear on MBCTV’s ‘”Chief Investigator” episode “Seoul Wind”. The performances of German Cultural Center teacher Bernhardt Kubant (?) [Bernhard Quandt; thanks Liancourt] and US Air Force pilot MacMillan will be seen in the drama.

Director Kim Seung-su commented that, "I’ve tried to bring to light the problem that has arisen regarding Koreans’ blind, reckless kindness" and said that the two foreigners’ performances were as good as those of established actors.

Interesting that in trying to bring attention to "Koreans’ blind, reckless kindness" towards foreigners, the producers used two 'unqualified' foreign actors. This story has an unexpected ending, however, as a Joongang Ilbo article in its TV section the next day, September 28, revealed:

MBC’s “Chief Investigator” suddenly canceled without notice

On the 27th, the MBC-TV broadcast of the “Chief Investigator” episode "Seoul Wind," was suddenly cancelled without prior notice.

"Seoul Wind" was about the social problem that has recently come to light of the illegal employment of unqualified foreigners on temporary stays, and featured French youth ‘Pierre’, who is attacked in a dark alley at night after entering Korea on a tourist visa, conning his way into working as a French language teacher in a private school, and becoming part of a love triangle between a female university student who blindly follows him, and her boyfriend.

During production, continual protests by and pressure from a French association and the French Cultural Center were received, and suddenly on the morning of the 27th, the day the program was to be televised, the production director said it was to be replaced with the episode “Love Ward” for the reason that “It will be released after a preview”.

However, it is not common practice for "Chief Investigator" to go through a preview each week and sudden cancellation without warning is a “measure that doesn’t make sense,” according to talk within the broadcasting industry.

It's fascinating that French pressure managed to get the show canceled. As far as is known, it was never broadcast. I would have loved to have seen the show, but Benjamin Wagner checked with MBC and there are no copies of the episode or scripts left. In fact, the only episodes said to be left from the series 18 year run are the 33 up on MBC's website.

Note also the description of the program as being "about the social problem that has recently come to light of the illegal employment of unqualified foreigners on temporary stays." It doesn't sound like this at all, does it? Note also the fact that the female university student "blindly" follows him, much as the director wanted to highlight Koreans' "blind, reckless kindness" towards foreigners. Obviously, we need less blind following of and kindness toward such foreigners, and more beatings in dark alleys.

In case one is wondering if perhaps organizations representing certain nationalities had more influence back then, it might be worth noting that another episode of Susa Banjang, from almost ten months earlier, seems to have aired without a problem.

On December 8, 1983, the Donga Ilbo, Kyunghyang Shinmun, and Maeil Gyeongje all had descriptions of that night's episode of Chief Investigator.

Chief Investigator (MBC, 7:55 pm) "American Dream"

"Richard, a young American in his twenties, ends up staying in Korea working as a teacher at an English hagwon after entering the country on a tourist visa. Hwa-suk, who dreams of marrying a foreigner, learns English conversation from Richard and late one night on his way to her house he is murdered in an alley. Trying to pinpoint a suspect, the investigation team learns the fact that at the time of the murder Hwa-suk's ex-boyfriend Seok-gi was waiting for her at a nearby tea house."

The Kyunghyang Shinmun's article, shown above, also had the title "In love with a young American," and noted that it was Richard specifically who Hwa-suk wanted to marry. Note that this episode was broadcast less than a month after the bill was passed 'banning' foreigners from working in hagwons (as translated in the second half of this post), much as the later (unaired) episode was to come out a week after the new laws banning foreigners from teaching private lessons were announced (and a month after the scandal first blew up).

One wonders if other episodes of Susa Banjang dealt with foreigners, and if such episodes featured the 'bad' foreigners being beaten or murdered in dark alleys like the foreign teachers in these two episodes. I don't think it's too difficult to understand why foreign teachers were featured (and not, say, US military personnel), as they are - then and now - easy (media) targets.

After providing a classic article and especially a 'foreigner' graphic depicting foreigners partaking of escort services advertising on Craig's List, the Segye Ilbo has a follow up article about arrests that have been made, all translated at the Marmot's Hole. I think the word for the day should be 'projection.'

President and students celebrate victory over Yellow Sea

Photo from here.

President Lee went down to Gunsan to celebrate the opening of he Saemangeum Seawall, the longest in the world (which likely explains the flags, not that you need an excuse to wrap yourself in a flag, mind you). I've covered this white elephant before here and here, and as Birds Korea's site notes, the tidal flats were once an important feeding area for migratory birds (some endangered) and complaints by environmentalists managed to stall the project (to some degree) for five years (they weren't allowed to lengthen the walls, but could widen them). The original plan was to reclaim land for farming (this was spoken of even a few years ago - even that the food could be sent to North Korea) but it has since changed to creating a 'tourism hub' and other soju-bender- influenced ideas. Anything to justify the 2.9 trillion won handed out to construction companies to build something that's essentially useless (other than for getting rid of foreign birds and connecting Gunsan and Buan), I suppose.

The Korea Times communicates some of the newest propaganda surrounding the wall in an article titled "33km Saemangeum Seawall to Fuel North Jeolla’s Tourism Growth," Where the wall is described as

the centerpiece of the monumental Saemangeum reclamation project, the world's biggest landfill located in North Jeolla Province, which is currently being developed as a tourism and industrial complex by 2020.

I can think of another failed industrial complex the government has poured millions into - but at least this one isn't in a hostile country.

The local press has been calling it the "Great Wall on the Sea," ahead of its eagerly anticipated opening to tourists. It will be recorded in the Guinness Book of Records this month as the world's longest seawall.

As another Korea Times article points out,

While foreign reclamation projects typically take place in shallow waters, the Saemangeum sea dike was installed in a relatively deep sea - its average height is 34 meters with the deepest point reaching 54 meters, the farm ministry said.

No wonder it took so long and cost so much. The first article continues:

North Jeolla Province expects the Saemangeum Seawall to transform the nation's West Coast region into a tourism hub.

The number of foreign tourists has been on the rise lately, according to regional authorities. Tourists from the United States, New Zealand and China have been flooding to the region ahead of the opening. "Following the seawall inauguration, we expect around 5 million visitors annually," a regional official said. In 2009, around 3 million people came to see the seawall.

I have my doubts they're going to get 5 million foreign visitors annually to the seawall - and they're likely conflating the Jeollabuk-do area with Saemangeum to embiggen their figures. One imagines the foreign tourists peak in April or May - the time of the Jeonju Film Festival.

We're also told that Korea will get 401 extra square kilometers of land (so that's why its being done - it's a peninsula enlargement operation!), that the area will house "an international business complex called the Saemangeum-Gunsan Free Economic Zone," and that "Resorts and theme parks will be added to Saemangeum in the coming years." Hopefully it will include a museum showing how horrible the area was before, including a recreation of downtown Buan where everything, from cars to phone booths, is covered in guano and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds plays on screens in the background. To see existing 'It'll be good for the birds!' propaganda, have a look here.


This is slightly different than the images presented at Birds Korea's site:


Then the Times article ends by pointing its finger at foreigners for hindering Jeollabuk-do's development:

Often considered one of Korea's most underdeveloped regions, North Jeolla is the only province in the country without an international airport. Rather than building a new one, regional authorities have been trying to expand runways at Gunsan Airport to allow international flights, but objections from the resident U.S. Air Force has hampered the province's plans.

Not just foreign birds, but foreign airplanes are getting in the way! Aigo!


The Joongang Ilbo also paints the efforts to build Saemangeum in a poetic way:

Korea’s attempt to wrest 28,300-hectares of new land from the Yellow Sea has reached a major milestone 40 years after it was first proposed by former President Park Chung Hee.

"Wrest" - awesome. Of course, Korea has been struggling with the Yellow Sea for years, but not as much as it's been struggling with the Sea of Japan. Points for mentioning General Park as well!

The dike construction was also a battle of men against nature, with the tides sometimes exceeding seven meters, compared to less than 3 meters in the Netherlands. Waves, which can be as high as 11 meters and travel at a speed of more than 7 meters per second, were strong enough to make two- or three-ton rocks "dance like crazy"[.]

Sounds like quite a sight. I can't help thinking a more honest article would have been about the attempts of construction company execs and vote-hungry politicians to 'wrest' a positive spin from a pointless waste of trillions of dollars, but I guess that's why I'm not a newspaper editor.

“Samamgeum is one of the biggest state-led development projects in modern Korea,” Park Jae-keun, deputy public relations director at Korea Rural Community Corp., said[.][...]The much-delayed project has cost the government 2.9 trillion won ($2.6 billion) already, and it’s planning to spend a further 21 trillion from the state budget and private sector investments to reclaim land and build basic infrastructure.

Cha-ching!

This coastal area... is home to several previous reclamation projects. A few areas at the mouth of the Yeongsan River, the lifeblood of the fertile southwestern region, were reclaimed since the 1970s, when the country went through rapid industrialization. With more and more paddy fields lost to urbanization, the government worried about a shortage of arable land for rice production and planned the ambitious Seamangeum, which is far bigger than the 11,730 hectares reclaimed at the Yeongsan River, previously Korea’s biggest reclamation.

Unfortunately, it didn't progress quickly:

“The dike construction was going pretty much nowhere from 1999 to the early 2000s, with environmentalists rallying in front of our sites all the time,” said Oh Jin-hyu, a director of Saemangeum Project Office who has been on the job since 1991. Oh himself had to link arms with other Saemangeum workers to block environmentalists from invading the site. The clashes often turned violent with some people ending up in nearby hospitals. “Things were very ugly,” he said, “but the project eventually survived.”

I'm not sure, but I think this article is being told from the point of view of the developers. I think.

Final construction ended earlier this month. And the environmentalists’ input eventually improved the project, said Oh. “Their oppositions prompted the government to invest more to ensure the environmental health of the upper river areas and other neighborhoods,” he said. “They eventually helped our projects a lot.”

Nice job co-opting the environmentalist position. But hey, it's understandable considering Saemangeum "mirror[s] Korea’s own relentless, enduring spirit." As noted above, President Lee was at the opening ceremony yesterday, and Joongang Ilbo reported on what he had to say:

“Domestic investments are not enough to get the best use out of this enormous piece of land, so I have laid out plans to develop it as a global area that will draw visitors and investments from across the world,” Lee said.

This apparently will involve the Netherlands, which "ranks as the third-largest investor in Korea after the United States and Japan," something I didn't realize (the Dutch prime minister seems keen to have the Netherlands play a part in the development). Lee also plans to complete the first phase by 2020 instead of 2030, which fits in with his previous developments such as Cheonggyecheon, which was completed in two years. As he put it,

“Because this state project has been delayed, precious taxpayers’ money has been wasted, and the program has lost its momentum,” Lee said.

Damned environmentalists! Of course, no one's going to say that it was a useless project to begin with, and once billions of won in "precious taxpayer's money" was thrown into it it simply would have been embarrassing to stop it and make clear how much money had been wasted. Better to waste more, complete the damn thing, and push its failure off into the far future. And as the article points out, it was the Lee government who decided to change the outcome of the project into a plan to "develop a world-class international conference, tourism and leisure destination".

Lee said yesterday that the government will invest in transportation systems to make Saemangeum a hub of production and shipping on the Yellow Sea coast. “By improving its link with the bullet train network in the Jeolla region, of which construction began at the end of last year, the Saemangeum area will be equipped with the necessary transportation infrastructure including airports, harbors, railways and highways,” Lee said.

Gee, you'd think there's an election coming up or something. Lee was also sure to link Saemangeum to another pet project of his:

Lee also promised to spend 3 trillion won by 2020 to improve the water quality of the rivers near the area to be clean enough to develop tourism and leisure businesses in the region.

I can't help wondering if this will end up like Korea's ghost airports, which ROK Drop has chronicled here, here and here.

1984 newspaper ads

As I mentioned yesterday, I've come across quite a few old advertisements in newspapers from 1984 or so. Here are a few. This is for the Midopa department store in Myeongdong:


I hadn't heard of Inkel stereos before:


I have heard of Lemona...


Daewoo had computers available back then...


He looks healthy...


Stop means stop!


I hope she's not going to knock that back...


He looks happy.


Health mansei!


I think styles have changed a bit since the 80s...


Shiny hair... lucky Yunina!

One Spring Day

One of these days I'll put up some of the ads I've come across from the 1980s while researching the 1984 French 'Scandal.' The above one seems appropriate for today's post. I went up Gaehwasan the other day and took a few photos.


There was lots of forsythia to be seen.



I'm not sure what the above flowers are, but there were quite a few of them poking out of the leaves covering the forest floor. There were lots of azaleas as well.


This particular bush, overlooking a tomb, had forsythia and azaleas combined together.


Nuts and gum forsythia and cherry blossoms - together at last!


The cherry blossom trees below weren't there a year and a half ago. The other trees that were there were unceremoniously torn out, cut into pieces and trucked away and replaced with the ones below:


They're quite a bit smaller than the trees that were there before, and I imagine the old ones will be missed in the sauna-esque days of summer when much less shade is available. The new trees are pretty, sure, (for two weeks of the year) but are still quite small, and don't really compare to these trees (which are likely 15 years old):



There were lots of birds up on Gaehwasan as well, but without my video camera and its zoom, I wasn't able to take photos of any of them.

The number of foreign criminals defiling Korea is skyrocketing!

I came across this Wikipedia page on the Chosun Ilbo and discovered that under "Criticism" this was written:

The Chosun Ilbo is strongly criticized for its past history of collaboration with the Japanese military government, and later with the authoritarian governments of Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan. The Chosun Ilbo and Chosun Sports (along with the left wing Kyunghyang Sinmun) have also run stories on foreign English teachers that have been criticized as sensationalist and xenophobic [1 2].

Or rather, that's what it said up until 4 days ago. There's been a slight change since then.

The Chosun Ilbo and Chosun Sports (along with the left wing Kyunghyang Sinmun) have also run story on crimes of foreign English teachers. This news relate to increasing of foreign English teachers in Korea since 2000. In 2007, 32.7% of foreign English teachers in Korea are unqualified instructors. This is illegal activity in any country. They often entering Korea by Tourist Visa. The unqualified instructors often fake their degree. Sometimes they did drug, murder, crimes.[Link to this story, translated here]. Increasing of illegal English teachers making trouble in Korea. Several crimes of foreign English teachers who fake their degree making them under the microscope [Unrelated link here].

You can see the changes made to this entry here, as well as all the other changes made by this (obviously) Korean user here. The changes were made to entries about the Korean-American relationship, Anti-Americanism in Korea, and 'Fucking USA.' I'm sure it'll take hours of research before we are able to conclusively determine where he stands on these issues.

On the one hand, this goes to show how these articles affect the perceptions of those who read them, and we see just how terms like 'unqualified' are misused and then misunderstood by readers. ("This is illegal activity in any country." Uh, okay.) At the same time, I don't know if it was really necessary to add the sentence about the Chosun's articles about English teachers in the first place. While yes, the Chosun has run some of the most sensationalist stories about foreign English teachers (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8), it's not like it's alone in that regard. Almost every paper in Korea has published sensationalist stories about foreign English teachers and given space to Anti-English Spectrum to air their views (with perhaps the exception of the Hankyoreh).

Moving on, there are some useful links in that diatribe against foreign teachers, including the final link, to this Korea Times article from March that I missed at the time titled "Foreigners' Crimes Rise Significantly." It looks at statistics regarding five major crimes, but oddly leaves out drugs (which may well be the crime by foreigners that gets the most media attention).

The National Police Agency (NPA) said Wednesday a total of 7,812 foreigners were arrested last year for involvement in the five major crimes - homicide, robbery, burglary, rape and physical assault. - an increase of nearly 18 percent from 6,615 in 2008.

Police said a total of 260 foreigners were caught for robbery last year, up 95 percent from 133 in 2008, making it the fastest growing serious crime. Burglary came next with a 45 percent increase, followed by homicide at 21 percent, rape at 11 percent and physical assault at 8 percent.

An estimated 1.2 million foreigners, including those overstaying their visas, are living in Korea, accounting for 2.4 percent of the country's population of 50 million.

A total of 543,812 major crimes - including violations by foreigners, were reported in Korea in 2008, according to recent statistics from Rep. Shim Jae-chul of the ruling Grand National Party - a dramatic increase from 454,550 cases in 2004. This means the number of crimes has risen by about 5 percent annually during the four-year period.

Of course, the article goes on to talk more about foreigners and ignore the 'dramatic increase' in crime by Koreans. It's also interesting that though we have crime stats lined up to illustrate a veritable crime wave by foreigners, there didn't seem to be enough time to call up immigration and get something more exact than "an estimated 1.2 million" for the foreign population. Not that it really matters, of course, because the Times clearly has no interest in viewing those figures into the context of the foreign population.

Using stats I posted here, (and this Korean population statistic), let's look at the estimated crime rate for serious crime among the foreign and Korean populations.

The number of such crimes in total for 2009 was 543,812; if we subtract 7812 (the number of foreign crimes) we're left with 536000 out of a total estimated population of 48607000. If we subtract the number of foreign residents (in 2008, 854,007) we're left with around 47753000, and a crime rate for serious crimes of 1.12%

In 2008 there were 6,615 such crimes by foreigners out of a population of 1,158,866, which results in a crime rate of 0.57 (or 50.8% of the above Korean crime rate). For 2009, 7,812 crimes out of an estimated foreign population of 1.2million results in a crime rate for serious crime of
0.65 (or 57.9% of Korean crime rate). To be sure, the rate is rising. At the same time, when put in context, the foreign crime rate (for serious crime) is still significantly lower than the Korean crime rate.

We're also told that

The number of incarcerated foreigners has increased nearly four times in nine years. There were some 1,000 foreign inmates as of August, the Ministry of Justice said - in 2001, there were only 251 foreign inmates, but the number jumped to 562 in 2007.

According to the statistics I posted here for 2000, the population in October that year was 500,591, making it clear that the foreign population has increased 2.4 times during those nine years, making for an foreign inmate increase of 1.67 times if this population growth is taken into account.

The article also looks at other crime:

According to the NPA and the Ministry of Justice, a total of 28,126 foreigners were caught for minor breaches of the law in 2008. The figure stood at some 10,000 in 2005, indicating the crime rate showed a nearly three-fold increase in just three years. Traffic violations were the most frequent crime with 7,298 cases in 2008, followed by fraud with 3,390 and violation of foreign currency laws at 1,557.

Good lord! Minor breaches of law have increased three times in just three years! I look forward to a media blitz about the dangers of foreign drivers. (Apparently, the Gyeonggi Police's foreigner crime prevention classes begun this month do indeed include driving lessons (and these classes have come into being across the country)). The Times article ends by mentioning Korea's foreigner-only prison.


In truth, however, the Korean press barely picked up on this. Yonhap contributed the graphic above (the foreigner graphic isn't quite as good as this one), YTN made a very brief mention, and the Munhwa Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, Newsis and Financial News posted short articles. The Korea Times spent the most amount of time on it. No surprise there.

More crime statistics can be seen here, which reveal that in the five months from October 27 last year to March 31, 1354 foreign criminals had been uncovered in 9 different police districts, and out of these 157 of them were arrested and 92 were set to be deported. Of the 1354, 227 were arrested for serious crimes [as above], 211 for drugs, 209 for forging documents, and 56 were arrested for economic crimes. 50% of those caught were Chinese. Here's a more complete breakdown:


Here are crime statistics for Koreans and foreigners, as well as foreign population stats from 2003 to 2008:


Now, if you calculate the crime rates there, They do actually double among foreigners between 2003 and 2008. At the same time, even after doubling, B/A shows the percentage of total crimes that are committed by foreigners, revealing that in 2008, 98.75 %* of crimes were committed by Koreans. Obviously, this is not a fact you'll see in the press very often (if ever). What's odd is that these figures give us crime rates for 2008 of 5.65% for Koreans and 2.94% for foreigners, much higher than the ones suggested here, for example, which say that in 2007, according to the Korean Institute of Criminology, "[w]hile the crime rate among Koreans is 3.5 percent, it is 1.4 percent among foreigners." Also, if you add the National Police Agency stats in the Times article for violent and non violent crime, you end up with a total of 35,938 crimes for 2009, which is a very small increase from the 34,108 crimes for 2008 in the statistics above. I wonder what the Ministry of Justice's statistics for last year are; it may be that each agency/ministry offers differing statistics.

Of course, not mentioned in the Times article or elsewhere when discussing the Korean crime rate was this (from 2007):

A rising number of sex crimes among teenagers is becoming a serious problem in Korea. The number of reported sex crimes including rape, indecent assault, and attempted rape more than tripled in eight years, from 567 cases in 1999 to 1,810 cases last year.

Or this (from 2009):

Sexual crimes against children under 13 has jumped 59 percent in recent years, going from 721 cases in 2004, 738 in 2005, 1,081 in 2007 and 1,220 last year.

Or this:

Violent crime like murder, robbery, rape and arson has more than doubled since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, but arrests and indictments have gradually declined. The rise in violent crime far outpaced the increase in population [...] In 1997, when the number of violent crimes shot up, population growth had stagnated, yet the number of such crimes committed for every 100,000 Koreans rose from 25.1 in 1997 to 43.2 in 2007.

Now, of course the media examines these things - they're the source for the above quotes! But when it comes time to discuss foreign crime, it's treated as something separate, unrelated and more threatening - which sums up media and government discourse surrounding foreigners. Searching at Naver finds that most recent articles about foreign crime have focused on banning sex criminals and the new fingerprinting initiative. As Brian notes, every foreign visitor will be fingerprinted and photographed from August (because if the cool kids (who we sometimes hate!) like Japan and the US are doing it, so will we!). One reason this is being done is to keep banned foreign criminals from re-entering Korea. You know, like this:


You can always count on the Donga Ilbo! Hell, it's even the same column that this came from. If someone could just explain the musical note...

*typo fixed.