UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Hangukinron: The Shape of Korean National Ideology Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7nz4n3n7 Author Hurt, Michael William Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California HANGUKINRON: THE SHAPE OF KOREAN NATIONAL IDEOLOGY BY MICHAEL WILLIAM HURT A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL SATISFACTION OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COMPARATIVE ETHNIC STUDIES IN THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY FALL 2014 COMMITTEE IN CHARGE: PROFESSOR PATRICIA PENN HILDEN, CHAIR PROFESSOR TABITHA KANOGO PROFESSOR KHATHARYA UM DEDICATION: I would like to thank all those who offered their moral support while the dissertation writing process lagged due to my investment of time and energy in other worthy endeavors and ways of exploring Korea. Special thanks must go to Mama Hurt – Hyunsup Song Hurt, who never flagged in her mental and material support of this present, scholarly Endeavor, even as many around me were becoming more sure that I was destined to forever be a “professional student.” Thanks are also due to those friends who lent their ears and eyes towards the honing of many ideas and words into this dissertation. Steven Lee, Yong Ha Jeong, Donna Kwon, Ann Kwon, and Albert Lee and Albert Hahn were part of many conversations about myriad issues I’ve been working out over the years and deserve thanks for sticking around as friends. Special thanks are also in order to Grace Kim, who has kept it and me intellectually real for years now. In additions, Jason and Juliann Ryan were extremely helpful in the final stretch towards the finish line as I tried to wrangle this manuscript, the first I’ve ever handled of this size. Rijeong Hyun and Yoojeong Lee, both former undergraduate students of mine, stood by their former professor and helped in the trenches during the final hours to find any remaining typos and formatting errors I had time to fix, along with Yong Ha. Still, in the end, all responsibility for errors of any kind are completely my own. And finally, a thanks to those who supported the supporters, especially those around Mom, who could not have stuck by me alone. i A note on Korean romanization: With the exception of certain proper names and conventional/traditional spellings of some Korean proper nouns, words from Korean are romanized according to the 2000 Revised Romanization of Korean (국어의 로마자 표기법 ) system, which is the official one in use by Korean government bodies and makes Korean words easier for non-speakers of Korean to both pronounce and remember. Those not familiar with Korean pronunciation should note that singular romanized vowels are long, rendering a pronunciation of minjok as “Min Joke” or Hanguk as “Han Gook.” Other romanized Korean vowels should be pronounced in the following way: eo = “uh” as in the English word “ton” eu = “oo” as in the English word “wood” Accordingly, hujinguk would be pronounced “hoo-jin-gook.” I rarely use dashes or separate the Korean into separate words except as where it seems necessary for the sake of clarity or pronunciation. Use of the McCune-Reischauer system, which is officially outdated in terms of policy and political regimes, not to mention downright confusing with its use of diacritical marks and special symbols, would be as confusing to the non-specialist, non- Korean-speaking reader as it would be an exercise in self-serving, esoteric exotification. Not using McCune-Reischauer also eliminates myriad font/typography problems between writer-printer-reader. And readers already familiar with the Korean language, who will make up the vast majority of the few people on Earth who will actually read this work in its entirety, will know what the revised romanization means, anyway. ii UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ABSTRACT HANGUKINRON: THE SHAPE OF KOREAN NATIONAL IDEOLOGY BY MICHAEL HURT DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COMPARATIVE ETHNIC STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY PROFESSOR PATRICIA PENN HILDEN, CHAIR In my dissertation, entitled “Hangukinron: The Shape of Korean National Ideology,” I identify the key socio-historical factors in the formation of a particular, phenomenological form in modern Korean national ideology, outlining the character and mechanics of a specific type of ideological production that typifies the Korean national mode of thought, which peaked in South Korea between the years 1987-1997, from the time right before the 1988 Seoul Olympics and up to the near-collapse of the Korean economy in 1997. This period was the fullest flowering of an ideology called hangukinron: a popular discourse that posits a logical and obvious relationship between the purity of the Korean race/nation/culture (minjok) and that country’s high level of economic success, vestiges of which remain quite viable and visible in the present day. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................................. 1 KOREANNESS AND ITS CONSTITUENT GLOBAL PARTS ............................................................................................ 2 PREEMPTIVE ENGAGEMENT ......................................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN ................................................................................................................................................. 7 CHAPTER 1: HANGUKINRON: THE SHAPE OF KOREAN NATIONAL IDEOLOGY .................. 9 THE NATION AS EXEMPLAR ....................................................................................................................................... 11 JUSTIFYING THE NATION ............................................................................................................................................ 13 JUSTIFICATION AND THE EXEMPLARY NATION ...................................................................................................... 16 NIHONJINRON/HANGUKINRON .................................................................................................................................. 26 A SHORT PRIMER ON RACE IN KOREA ..................................................................................................................... 28 A FUTURIST DISCOURSE ............................................................................................................................................. 31 DISCOURSE OF LOSS .................................................................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 2: FRAMING THE COLLECTIVE SELF .......................................................................... 34 NEW BUZZWORDS AND COGNITIVE FRAMEWORKS .............................................................................................. 36 OTHERIZING WITHOUT AN OTHER .......................................................................................................................... 39 A MORE CONFIDENT NATIONALISM ........................................................................................................................ 41 CHAPTER 3: OFFICIAL IDEOLOGY: SCHOOL, ETHICS, AND IDENTITY ................................ 43 IDEOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................................................... 45 THE CHINESE TRADITION .......................................................................................................................................... 61 TWO DIFFERENT INSTRUMENTS, SAME TUNE ....................................................................................................... 68 JAPAN ............................................................................................................................................................................. 69 KOREA AND THE WORLD ........................................................................................................................................... 82 CHAPTER 4: PARSING THE OFFICIAL VIEW: PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL AND POP CULTURE INTERMEDIARIES ............................................................................................................ 88 LEE O-RYEONG STARTS WITH THE CHILDREN ....................................................................................................... 88 SONG BYEONG-NAK’S RACIAL TAKE ON THE ECONOMY ...................................................................................... 90 IT’S ALL ABOUT JEONG ................................................................................................................................................ 93 EXISTENTIAL ANGST ................................................................................................................................................... 95 SOPYONJE ....................................................................................................................................................................... 96 i THE IMPORTANCE OF HAN ...................................................................................................................................... 102 CHAPTER 5: TRANSMITTING THE MONUMENTAL STYLE: TRANSNATIONAL KOREAN AMERICAN IDENTITY .....................................................................................................................