From State to Community: Rethinking South Korean Modernization.

FROM STATE TO COMMUNITY: RETHINKING SOUTH KOREAN MODERNIZATION by Seung-Jon Ahn (Littleton, Colorado: Aigis Publications, 1994)

Introduced as the unfinished work of a little-known South Korean author-graduate student who died prematurely, editors Jacobson and Chang, not only provide a short and sympathetic portrait of the author but offer a summary of the contents of the book along with some background on the author's intellectual development, finding in the argument, a "scathing attack on the kind of modernization that has been imposed on south Korea" (p.x.)

Thesis-like, this slim work divides into five parts. In an introduction titled, "after industrialization," Ahn announces his project as "a critical examination of the industrial modernization process in south Korea." Ahn offers his views on modernization and progress as "supposed universal benefits" but which, in fact, mask the material and ideological domination of the West. Korea's ecological crisis is just one symptom of the "benefit" thesis. But even the "miracle" has masked various oppressive institutions.

A second chapter, "conscripts of modernization," offers a historical analysis of south Korean modernization based on Western-oriented industrialization. Ahn argues that, even before "official" Japanese colonialism, south Korea was exploited by both Japanese merchant capitalism and Western industrial capitalism destroying Korea self sufficiency in the bargain, but, with Japanese annexation in 1910, Japanese industrial capital broadened its domination. While colonial agricultural policies devastated communal farming arrangements, industrialization in Korea was orchestrated to meet Japanese demands. In other words, Ahn matches material with mental change. But the post-1945 U.S. occupation was no better. Post Korea War aid even through to 1960, Ahn argues, created "a new need structure heavily dependant upon the United States." But, for Ahn, the culture imperialism of English and Christianity was worse. Similarly, export-led development under Park (1962-79) created a new dependence upon foreign capital, especially loans, concentration of wealth as in the chaebols, matched by manipulation of culture including Confucianism. Such "cultural discontinuity" wrought by "modernization" was only matched by the ecological crisis of this age.

In chapter 3 Ahn presents a theoretical discussion of the modern state, as oppressive. This is not a Marxist critique but a critique drawing upon, interalia, Foucault. Ahn devotes particular attention to a critique of Marx's Eurocentrism, especially Marx's concept of nature and his promethean vision of "progress," along with his broad neglect of the "prehistory' of the non-Western world" (p. 40). "At bottom, modernization is a Western category which is not applicable to non-Western society" (p. 31) So, Ahn argues, the class struggles of the radical left in south Korea is misfired as they do not even challenge the assumptions of the category "proletariat" (p. 44).

In chapter 4 Ahn develops an alternative vision to that of the state and what he calls the relentless process of state-formation at the expense of communities. Here, Ahn makes clear his preference for "counter-hegemonic communities" based on economic self-reliance and participatory democracy linked to a new way of relating to nature. To the extent that this work is prescriptive, it calls for "a revolution of everyday life." Such a conceit links with Murray Bookchin's writings on social ecology from the 1950s. The solution, Ahn sees, is a community land trust or nonprofit communal organization of land, especially attractive to the small towns of south Cola region otherwise deeply penetrated by the state. But, in eschewing the framework of nationalization and industrialization, Ahn insists he is not romanticizing an ideal past, as Korean history has its shares of repressions and rebellions, he simply wishes to redirect attention away from nation and class back to people and community.

As attested by the insertion of the author's private letters to his supervisors, this work is the product of a structured and self-conscious education in Japan, the US, and Korea at formative stages. Clearly, the loss of Ahn is Korea's loss and doubtless he would have felt redeemed to some extent if he had witnessed Korea's current crisis of capitalism and modernization.

Living up to its title, Tennant's history could hardly be different, ranging over Korean history in five parts. Chronologically, these are "The three kingdoms," Koryo, Choson, "the empire of the sun," and "the two republics." In musing as to how this 5,000 year sweep of history could or should be told in 300 pages, Tennant offers to give the earlier ages their due, dwelling on the epochal, though offering the trivial where they convey a flavour of the age. Citing Burckhardt's dictum that for the historian all ages are equidistant from eternity, we should not be surprised that Westerners (Ahn's pernicious modernizers!) are absent from the first 200 pages, and that the postwar period is skimmed in thirty odd pages.

Commencing with ruminations on pre-history, Tennant signals the beginnings of rudimentary bureaucracy to Choson (3BC) and its successors controlling trade with Han China, soon to become their overlords, while acquiring a taste for the products of Chinese civilization. The work progresses through the era of Silla in the southeast, Koguryo in the northwest and Paekche (and Kaya) in the southwest, the three contending kingdoms of the sixth century. Buddhism, he explains, was now expanding in China and Korea and from Korea to Japan, and, although the shamanistic traditions remained strong, Sila adopted Buddhism about 520 along with other Indian, Chinese and central Asian features. In 663 a Tang-Sila alliance checked a Japanese invasion, but then Sila asserted its independence over China. In any case, as Tennant explains, this was an era of growing cultural assimilation including Zen and Confucianism just as trade contacts expanded.

Tennant views 936 as a divide with the fall of Paekche and the rise of Koryo, punctuated by the coming of the Mongols in 1215, later forcing a relocation of the court. Detail picks up as to Mongol intrigues over both Sung China and Japan, including the employment of Korean labour and shipyards in the construction of invasion fleets. But in Korea itself, the author explains, Mongolization was superficial, and neo-Confucianism from southern Sung much more powerful, determining the "spiritual formation of the literati who would run the country for the next 600 years." From 1375, with diplomatic relations with Japan long in abeyance after Mongol attacks, raids by Japanese marauders intensified.

Apart from some notes on use of gunpowder, there is little in this dense chronicle of dynastic contests on material culture or everyday life.

The densely packed chronological method only changes tempo with chapter eighteen which pauses - thankfully - to summarize the tenets of a "Confucian kingdom" finding Daoism, shamaism, and Confucianism in eclectic variety. We find that under the Ming, trade became virtually limited to tributary offerings in horses. But, by the early 15th century, the erstwhile "hermit kingdom" also expanded its boundaries south to Tsushima (a tributary) and conduit to Japan, and Ryukyu (Okinawa) thus connecting Korea with the Southeast Asian trade.

The author vainly tries to break out of reign history using inventive chapter titles, but never really succeeds. Thus the Japanese invasion by Hideyoshi commencing in 1592 comes as more relief and here the author enters into narrative mode offering valuable asides on Japanese history and destiny in its complex historical relationship with Korea, a narrative nicely enhanced by the chance arrival of Dutch casteways in Korea in 1628 and 1653, offering the first Western accounts of this little known land.

Tennant again changes tack with chapters on Western influences, offering that the first indigenous Catholics, with thousands of believers by 1795, predated by decades the arrival of the first Western missionaries. In fact, Tennant is better at unravelling the layers of Korea's intellectual history, including the importation and adaptation of ideas and philosophies (Western and Northern learning) than material history.

While Tennant avoids the old cliche, the "hermit kingdom" image of Korea rings truer in the light of its post-Commodore Perry dalliance with the West. Needless to say, Tennant's narrative on gunboat diplomacy picks up in detail, just as the documented record matches the events. Finally, Tennant writes, the Japanese did to Korea what Perry had done to them, just as a reform wing in Korea, mainly looking to Japan for ideas, gained the ascendancy. But Korea was also an arena where Americans and Europeans, and, in their train Protestantists, all contended for influence alongside Japan and, especially China, represented by the young Chinese "Resident" and future warlord Yuan Shikai. As history records, in 1894 Japan went to war with China over Korea, in an engagement which Tennant describes as probably the first naval battle fought with modern weapons. Here, slowing the pace, Tennant deals in a single chapter with the murder of the Queen in 1895 and the Japanese "politics of terror." This is not without reason as the event and its aftermath pretty much signalled the end of the old order, although not the Kingdom, serving as prelude to Japan's historic defeat over the Russian fleet in the Tsushima straits, leaving Japan's position on the Korean peninsula unassailable. In one particularly engaging chapter, "partisans and journalists," Tennant describes how one doggedly engaged Western journalist successfully penetrated the bamboo curtain to the Japanese protectorate, only to be harassed to death by his own government. The story has been told elsewhere, and in much more detail, but within the Japanese-imposed "Asian Co-prosperity," Koreans at home and in the diaspora secretly supported the underground resistance, whether as patriots, liberal Christians or Marxists. Tennant's ruminations on cultural politics, industrialization and assimilation under Japanese rule is well done.

Tennant also adds an element of drama and immediacy when discussing the Russian/Allied postwar divide up of the peninsula. He sees Sygnman Rhee as a tough but necessary saviour of the south from communism. Still, Tennant makes statements that make both sides to this war look vain glorious, e.g., the persistence of the US in bombing civilians in the North (p. 271), to Kim Il Sung's execution of rivals (p. 274). Park Chung Hee's Korea, Tennant advises, was run very much as Japan in the 1930s and with similar results, namely "economic miracle," but his CIA was much more "oriental" in its methods than its American namesake. It is a pity that the political chronology in this book virtually ends with the election of Kim Young Sam to president, albeit with the 1994 death of Kim Il Sung recorded, thus leaving an important four year gap between writing and publication.

More the pity South Korea's "economic miracle" and North Korea's successes and failures are dismissed in a few paragraphs. It is clear that Tennant is more comfortable with a broad intellectual history approach than an attempt to offer history from below. While his tone is scholarly and informed, especially where it appears that the author has incorporated Chinese and Korean language material, the end notes are discrete and more indicative than definitive. But ultimately, the absence of direct notes robs the author of much of his authority. In any case, in a book of such sweep, intellectual debates and controversy surrounding Korean history are simply swept aside. Tennant's success is as a synthesizer of grand themes and a rare ability to connect Korean with Chinese and Japanese history on the run.

Geoffrey C. Gunn, Faculty of Economics, Nagasaki University