Paik Nak-Chung

UC Berkeley GAIA Books Title The Division System in Crisis: Essays on Contemporary Korea Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0n74x461 Author Nak-chung, Paik Publication Date 2011-10-15 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Division System in Crisis Essays on Contemporary Korea Paik Nak-chung Foreword by Bruce Cumings Translated by Kim Myung-hwan, Sol June-Kyu,Song Seung-cheol, and Ryu Young-joo, with the collaboration of the author Published in association with the University of California Press Paik Nak-chung is one of Korea’s most incisive contemporary public intellec- tuals. By training a literary scholar, he is perhaps best known as an eloquent cultural and political critic. This volume represents the first book-length col- lection of his writings in English. Paik’s distinctive theme is the notion of a “division system” on the Korean peninsula, the peculiar geopolitical and cultural logic by which one nation continues to be divided into two states, South and North. Identifying a single structure encompassing both Koreas and placing it within the framework of the contemporary world-system, Paik shows how this reality has insinuated itself into virtually every corner of modern Korean life. “A remarkable combination of scholar, author, critic, and activist, Paik Nak- chung carries forward in our time the ancient Korean ideal of marrying abstract learning to the daily, practical problems of the here and now. In this book he confronts no less than the core problem facing the Korean people since the mid-twentieth century: the era of national division, of two Koreas, an anomaly for a people united across millennia and who formed the basic sinews of their nation long before European nation-states began to develop.” BRUCE CUMINGS, from the foreword PAIK NAK-CHUNG is emeritus professor of English literature at Seoul National University. KIM MYUNG-HWAN is professor of English at Seoul National University. BRUCE CUMINGS is professor and chair of history at the University of Chicago. The Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies, 2 the division system in crisis essays on contemporary Korea paik nak-chung Foreword by Bruce cumings The Division System in Crisis The Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies editors: Noh Tae-Don, Seoul National University; John Lie, University of California, Berkeley advisory board: John Duncan, UCLA; Henry Em, New York University; Roger Janelli, Indiana University; Michael Shin, University of Cambridge; Sem Vermeersch, Seoul National University; Chang Dukjin, Seoul National University The Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies is a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley, and the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University. The series promotes the global dissemination of scholarship on Korea by publishing distinguished research on Korean history, society, art, and culture by scholars from across the world. The Division System in Crisis Essays on Contemporary Korea Paik Nak-chung Translated by Kim Myung-hwan, Sol June-Kyu, Song Seung-cheol, and Ryu Young-joo, with the collaboration of the author Foreword by Bruce Cumings Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the University of California system. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Manufactured in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 – 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Contents Foreword to the English-Language Edition, by Bruce Cumings vii Foreword to the Korean-Language Edition xi Preface to the English-Language Edition xv Part I 1. Making the Movement for Overcoming the Division System a Daily Practice 3 2. The Reunification Project in the “Age of the IMF” 36 Part II 3. National Literature, the Division System, and Overcoming Modernity: Some Fragmentary Thoughts 53 4. The Ecological Imagination in Overcoming the Division System 68 5. The Culture of Reform and the Division System 77 6. Habermas on National Unification in Germany and Korea 92 7. The Possibility and Significance of a Korean Ethnic Community of the Twenty-First Century 100 8. A Rejoinder to Kim Yŏng-ho’s Critique of the Discourse of the Division System 109 9. The Historical Significance of the June Uprising for Democracy and the Meaning of Its Tenth Anniversary 115 10. Song Chŏngsan’s Proposals for State Building as a Doctrine for Reunification 131 Part III 11. Korean-Style Reunification and Civic Participation: South Korea’s Civil Society as the “Third Party” on the Korean Peninsula 147 12. Another Moment of Trial in Implementing the June 15 Joint Declaration 182 13. Reflections on Korea in 2010: Trials and Prospects for Recovering Common Sense in 2011 187 Translators’ Postscript 193 Appendix A: Chronology of Inter-Korean Relations 195 Appendix B: Texts of Major Declarations and Statements Mentioned in This Book 200 Notes 221 Sources 247 Index 249 Foreword to the English-Language Edition Paik Nak-chung (Paek Nak-ch’ŏng) is a remarkable combination of scholar, author, critic, and activist. In our time he carries forward the ancient Korean ideal of marrying abstract learning to the daily, practical problems of the here and now, the real world. In this book he confronts the core problem facing the Korean people for the past sixty-two years: the era of national division, of two Koreas, an anomaly for a people united across millennia of time and who formed the basic sinews of their nation long before European nation-states began to develop. To Americans this may seem like some- one else’s problem, yet another tragic story from a distant country. But Americans first divided Korea, in the immediate aftermath of the atomic obliteration of Nagasaki. A charter member of the postwar “wise men” at the core of American foreign policy, John J. McCloy, instructed Dean Rusk and an Army colonel to go to an anteroom, find a map, and figure out a place to divide Korea. They chose the thirty-eighth parallel because it would put Seoul, the highly centralized capital city, in the American zone. So Dr. Paik’s book is also for Americans, who plunged into an unknown political, social, and cultural thicket in Korea in August 1945 and have yet to find a way out. Nearly 30,000 American troops remain stationed there, constituting a core element of Korea’s division system. Why is it a division system? Paik was the first intellectual to grasp that both Koreas, North and South, participate in a symbiotic relationship designed not to bring about unification but to perpetuate division. These are two divided states within one nation, two highly organized but sepa- rate systems engaged every day in maintaining the status quo and enhanc- ing their own status. Those who most vociferously rail against the other side are the true patriots, the ones most rewarded by the governments in Seoul and Pyongyang. Those who try to bridge the gap between the two vii viii / Bruce Cumings Koreas are the most vulnerable—for decades the surest ticket to jail and personal oblivion in the South was to praise the North, and prison awaits anyone who in the North praises the South, even today. International forces also reinforce the Korean division: Korea is a central nation in the postwar world-system, one of the critical pivots, nodal points, and arenas wherein the structure of world politics was formed and sustained, made and remade. The thirty-eighth parallel, the unsettled Korean War, and the DMZ still retain an imminent power to destroy the system, at least in Northeast Asia if not the world. (Dr. Paik returns frequently to the worst possible result of the division system—war—and its continuing possibility.) Again it is the United States that plays the greatest role here, as the ally, backer, coach, sometime quarterback, and virtual creator of the Republic of Korea. Supporters of U.S. policy in Korea would say that we have been most steadfast and courageous in sticking by the ROK for so long. Paik Nak-chung would say, you have helped to perpetuate the very division that you authored. This is not, however, another anti-American diatribe from an ungrate- ful ally. In truth the United States appears infrequently in this book. This is a complicated account of the myriad ways that national division has insinuated itself systemically into just about every facet of Korean life, and how in spite of so many mountainous obstacles, it might be overcome. It illustrates how so much that happens in Seoul and Pyongyang is oriented toward or caused by the other side, often unconsciously, as both states find themselves caught up in an interdependent—or, one might say, co- dependent—relationship. This book is a humble and self-critical excursion into theorizing how and why a division that Koreans say they hate, one that had no original rationale apart from the dictates of the Cold War and was supposed to be temporary, could not only last so long but become the structuring armature around which so much else is organized.

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