Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul
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Contesting Collective Representations of the Past: The Politics of Memory in South Korea By Thomas Vink Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Development Studies School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University of Wellington Aotearoa New Zealand March 2010 Acknowledgements I am indebted to all those that I met during my time in Korea. Your hospitality always amazed me. A big thank you to Sung-soo and Young-nan, for getting me started in Korea, and for helping me whenever I was in need along the way. To my two host families, I am particularly grateful. Thank you for accepting me so easily in to your lives and sharing your homes, food and culture with me. A special thanks to all those who had the patience to listen to my (often badly worded) questions and, especially, for giving me so much in reply. You are this thesis and I hope that I have done your words justice. Above all, I would like to thank Suyeong, Hyeong-Bok, Jin-Hwan and Beomhwi, not only for being great friends, but also for your translation skills. I don’t know what I would have done without you. To Stephen, you are all I could have asked for in a supervisor and more. I thoroughly enjoyed working with and learning from you. Thanks for your always-swift replies, your scrupulous editing and, most of all, for always being there. Throughout the whole process you were like a massive trampoline underneath me as I blindly stumbled along the thesis tightrope. You gave me the confidence to keep going and even take a few leaps every now and then. To your wife, Mi-Young, my amazing Korean teacher, thank you for welcoming me into your home and putting up with me all those weeks! I am grateful to all the office staff, lecturers and fellow students within the school. You made university a very supportive environment to work in. I’d particularly like to thank Sara Kindon. The courses I took with you inspired this research and my plans for the future. At times you have even been a second supervisor to me, a privilege that I know most students do not receive. For financial support, I am very thankful to Victoria University and Education New Zealand. ii Finally, I would like to thank all my friends and family. You know who you are (if you have the patience to read this, you are most likely one of them!). My brothers, flat- mates, office buddies, friends around the globe; all those who’ve written me emails, given me phone calls, shared your stories – your lives – with me; those who have laughed with me, encouraged me, criticised me; every one of you is in here somewhere, it may not resemble you very much, but you’re there nonetheless! A special thanks to Mum and Dad. You may be on the other side of the world, but you’ve never felt far away to me. Thanks for always being there to talk things over, for reading through all the bits and pieces I sent to you over the months, and most importantly for your unconditional support, not only during my masters, but throughout my whole life at university. iii Abstract Because monuments, memorials and other ‘sites of memory’ privilege particular collective interpretations of the past over others, they represent inherently contentious and political spaces. Contention over representing the past is particularly resonant in Korea, where sites of memory are imbued with strong, often polarised meanings. By focusing on two such sites in Korea, this thesis seeks to discuss the wider implications of the ongoing conflict over what representations of the past should be privileged. In Gwangju, the area surrounding the former provincial hall (docheong) is being redeveloped, part of the city’s attempts to become ‘reborn’ as a capital city of human rights and democracy in Asia. However, to many citizens in Gwangju, this new image ignores the meaning that the city’s dissident past holds for local communal understandings of identity. Conflict arose as citizens protested to keep the symbolism of the docheong intact, thus, helping to maintain local narratives of the past. In Seoul, Myeongdong Cathedral, a key symbol of protest and democracy in the 1970s and 1980s, is now having its meaning re-interpreted, as the Catholic Church de-couples religion from socio-political concerns. The conflicting meanings of Myeongdong Cathedral are representative of a wider divergence in Korean society, as apathy towards Korea’s past grows among society at large while other segments appropriate the past to protest contemporary socio-political concerns. Ultimately, these Korean case studies emphasise that the meanings sites of memory convey are not fixed, and that groups are often able to appropriate sites to affirm their own narratives of the past and to emphasise their own collective voice. Therefore, sites that represent particular understandings of the past, while contentious, also provide a space for debate and, thus, help to understand ongoing concerns within wider society. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................ii Table of Contents.................................................................................................................v List of Figures....................................................................................................................vii Glossary: Acronyms, Abbreviations and Frequently Used Korean Terms......................viii Chapter One – Introduction: Contextual, Theoretical and Personal Background...............1 Overview .........................................................................................................................1 Historical Overview.........................................................................................................5 Literature Review ..........................................................................................................10 Introduction................................................................................................................10 History and Memory..................................................................................................11 Landscapes of Memory .............................................................................................16 Invisible Monuments and the Sanitisation of History................................................19 Contesting the Past in the Present: Global Concerns with Memory..........................21 Summary ...................................................................................................................24 Reflections on the Research Process..............................................................................25 Outline of Thesis............................................................................................................33 Chapter Two – Case Study One: The Provincial Hall (docheong) of Jeolla, in Gwangju 34 Memory in Gwangju: City of Darkness versus City of Light........................................36 Gwangju Economy.........................................................................................................39 The Conflict...................................................................................................................46 Impurity and Fatigue......................................................................................................50 Symbolism: What’s In a Name? ...................................................................................55 Contradictions and Misunderstandings: The Bigger Picture.........................................56 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................58 Chapter Three – Case Study Two: Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul................................60 Changing Identities: Painting a Picture of Myeongdong Cathedral..............................62 Following Democracy: Changes Afoot.........................................................................67 “The Best Time We’ve Ever Had” ...............................................................................69 “The Deterioration of Democracy” ...............................................................................71 The Conflicting Role of the Catholic Church in Social and Political Movements in South Korea ..................................................................................................................74 Kim Sou-Hwan: The “Conscience of Korea” ..............................................................77 Impurity and Corruption ...............................................................................................79 Apathy............................................................................................................................81 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................83 Chapter Four – The docheong and Myeongdong Cathedral: Comparison........................85 Generational and Regional Discrepancies ....................................................................87 Shifting Representations ...............................................................................................90 Interpreting Place and Space .........................................................................................94 Conclusion: “The past is never dead; it’s not even past” ..............................................99 Chapter Five