{"id":405,"date":"2021-07-20T13:39:47","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T05:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caarchives.org\/?p=405"},"modified":"2021-07-22T14:17:53","modified_gmt":"2021-07-22T06:17:53","slug":"a-koreanizing-world-ux-of-contemporary-korean-literature-and-asias-calling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caarchives.org\/a-koreanizing-world-ux-of-contemporary-korean-literature-and-asias-calling\/","title":{"rendered":"A Koreanizing World? UX of Contemporary Korean Literature and Asia\u2019s Calling | Ho Duk Hwang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u3010<\/strong>by<\/em> Ho Duk Hwang, June 2021\u3011<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. A Koreanizing World? 82ny\u014fnsaeng Kim Chiy\u014fng <\/em>(Kim Ji-young, Born 1982) and Asian Values<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is widely known that throughout the 20th<\/sup> century, under the turbulent experience of colonialism, developmental dictatorship, and democratization, modern Korean literature supplemented or acted as a surrogate for politics. While, in the past, the anti-regime stance of national literature (minjok munhak<\/em>) and the non-regime stance of liberal literature (chayuju\u016di munhak<\/em>) both intensely opposed the authoritarian regime, Korea\u2019s rapid economic development, progress of democratic practices, and the global hegemony of neoliberalism have left the unique path of Korean literature increasingly uncertain. Perhaps it is due to this that in Kindai bungaku no owari <\/em>(2005)(The End of Modern Literature), Karatani Kojin wrote that since modern literature has come to an end even in Korea, now the task of modern literature has also ended worldwide. However, after 2016, with Korea\u2019s \u2018Feminism Reboot\u2019 and the worldwide \u2018Me Too\u2019 movement, a new user manual for Korean literature has once again come to the fore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, as of 2021, 82ny\u014fnsaeng Kim Chiy\u014fng <\/em>(Kim Ji-young, Born 1982) was translated into 11 different languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, English, Spanish, German, etc., and international publishing rights more than twice that number have been sold (currently, 26 countries). While the worldwide fervor of feminism and the presale of film rights in 37 countries contributed to the phenomenon, the attention the novel has received in Asia is noteworthy. In Japan, 82ny\u014fnsaeng Kim Chiy\u014fng <\/em>holds the record time for a Korean novel reaching number one bestseller, having sold over 200,000 copies, and, in China, it ranked first among bestselling novels in the largest online bookstore, Dang Dang. In China, apparently, the novel was read as relating to the life crises of women born after the 1980s (80\u540e balinghou<\/em>), crises brought on by the pressures of both professional achievements and child birth\/child rearing; however, the suffering of women brought on by the double standard of \u201cindependence and tradition\u201d was raised even earlier in Taiwan (Jiang Yunfei, \u848b\u4e91\u98de). Even in Germany, the novel ranked 3rd<\/sup> in the bestsellers list of Berlin\u2019s Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus within a month of publication, and in America, it was selected by Time <\/em>magazine for \u201cThe 100 Must-Read Books of 2020.\u201d Considering Korean literature\u2019s position in world literature, this phenomenon may appear unusual; however, considering the phenomenon of Feminism Reboot, a universal rapport of \u201ceven so, what has changed?\u201d appears to be playing a role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the 66,000 book reviews on Douban (\u8c46\u74e3\u7f51) and the 1000 reviews on both Japan and US Amazon, one feels that there is no longer a globalization of Korea but a Koreanization of the globe, namely that the ubiquity of Korean contradictions may constitute a common sensibility. Has it not already been shown by the woman \u2018shaman\u2019 that the contradiction of \u201cAsian values\u201d is in fact a world-historical contradiction? With late capitalism\u2019s false promises of gender equality and women\u2019s achievement, democratic society\u2019s false rationality of meritocracy, the evaporation of society and the masses\u2019 forced assumption of personal responsibility under neoliberalism\u2014now, the southern part of the Korean peninsula is at once a place that exists everywhere and an \u2018exceptional example\u2019 of the extremes existing in every place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The UX of the Literature Interface and Inaesthetic Reading\u2014From Asian Slut to Korean <\/strong>A<\/strong>b-beauty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, in Korea, this novel and movie has become the target of so-called \u2018backlash\u2019, getting review-bombed among other things. In all this, its weaknesses as a novel, its aesthetic deficiency, became a large topic of debate among literary critics. So, how should we interpret this \u2018deficiency\u2019? How does this so-called \u2018deficiency\u2019 relate to the new political dimension of the Korean novel and its worldwide proliferation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the engine of neoliberalism that is Korea, the public\u2019s feminist readers are the subjects continuing to produce impassioned theses concerning the distinction between ally and foe and new forms of community. A Korean woman critic wrote, \u201cAmidst the strengthened reactionary current, feminism operates as the strongest vector dividing the self and the enemy.\u201d So, does reading 82ny\u014fnsaeng Kim Chiy\u014fng <\/em>require one to be aesthetically blind as some fierce proponents of literature-ism suggest? No. \u201cOne reads not because one is ignorant of the aesthetic weakness, but in spite of it. This is also the case for 82ny\u014fnsaeng Kim Chiy\u014fng<\/em>. Women readers \u2018let themselves be deceived\u2019 because they want to be recognized as an innocent victim like Kim Chiy\u014fng.\u201d (H\u014f Yun) Between the Korean readers\u2019 strategic reading of \u2018letting oneself be deceived\u2019, and the critics\u2019 inattentive reading of \u2018not being deceived\u2019, which is truly aesthetic? Whose side is aesthetic politics on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is not the \u2018Kim Chiy\u014fng sensation\u2019 \u2018a type of performative femininity as a mask, adopted by the reading practice of Korean, Asian, and global feminists\u2019? I want to call this the 21st<\/sup> century \u2018User Experience\u2019 of the \u2018Literature Interface\u2019. Instead of being deceived first by literature only to cry again at the hands of politics, right now Korea, Asia, and the world is experimenting with a new \u2018how-to\u2019\u2014the reading technique of \u2018letting oneself be deceived\u2019 by the inaesthetic to gain truth, politics included.  Though paradoxical, are we not to apprehend the Kim Chiy\u014fng phenomenon as the inaesthetic politics of literature? At this moment, Korean literature appears to no longer perform its unique aesthetics, as Karatani Kojin once remarked, of acting as a surrogate for politics, but rather is experimenting with the universality of inaesthetics within \u2018the possibility of translation\u2019 (Alain Badiou). A young Korean woman writer Pak Minch\u014fng, resisting against the compulsive obsession of \u2018Korean beauty\u2019, wrote, \u201cI am a general citizen. I am not an Asian Slut.\u201d (Pak Minch\u014fng, \u201cSesil, Chuh\u016di\u201d<\/em> [Cecil, Juhee], Pabi\u016di punwigi<\/em> [Barbie\u2019s vibes], 2020)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Korean literature is performing the politics of the inaesthetic or ab-beauty, even within this \u2018Koreanization of the world\u2019, there is still hope because Korea is also the society that has subversive power\u2014a force of resistance stemming from the depths of contradiction\u2014to expel its most powerful politicians and influential literary personalities from the public forum. I cannot forget the sea of post-its pasted all over exit 10 of Gangnam station in spring of 2016 that read \u201cThe women who survived [we] will make a better world,\u201d nor how the fierce protests of a women\u2019s university that summer ignited the candlelight revolution of the winter of 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1960s Korea\u2014a land of poverty and dictatorship, a Korean theologian wrote the following on the world historical calling of Korea: as the \u201csewage of world history,\u201d \u201cthe consequence of the world\u2019s injustices has been placed on our shoulders, so if we cannot cleanly wash it off then there is no one else to do it.\u201d (Ham S\u014fkh\u014fn) If the world has been Koreanized, then that sewer is everywhere. In this sense, Korea and Asia continue to carry a world historical calling. Is it not that the world (Koreanized) is now aware that it must follow Asia\u2019s calling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Translated by Ezra Tandela \/ UCLA M.A. Candidate) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

AUTHOR<\/strong>
Ho Duk Hwang, Sungkyungkwan University, South Korea<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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