If you think of all the computer
keyboards you have ever known,
and compress them into that single word 'keyboard', then most
folk who use such things -- from the Congo to Murmansk, from
Vancouver to Terra del Fuego -- won't disagree that your
definition is pretty much like everyone else's.
Now consider words like 'god', 'democracy'
and 'nation'. George W. Bush
has God on his side, and so does Osama bin Laden.
The first article of the Chinese constitution says that China
is a 'democratic dictatorship', and nobody in Beijing smiles
at it. Depending upon the flavour you favour, between 160 and
244 collections of people on the planet Earth are known as
'nations'. These collections of people will happily kill each
other in arguments over the meaning of 'nation'. I for one
often don't know what they are talking about.
At this moment in life's journey,
I am particularly uncertain about the meaning of the nation
coded as 'Korea'. For most of the last 57 years this hasn't
mattered too much. It was one of those names you see on maps,
and it occasionally turned up in news stories about strikes and
riots. Now though, I've been dumped in the locale of 48 million
people who call themselves 'South Koreans', so this word 'Korea'
has suddenly sprouted a humongous hairy growth of extra meanings,
from tiny pet dogs dyed purple, to the ice on the road outside,
to those funny bows that my students make to me all the time.
Sometimes I meet other foreign mercenaries, and for them
the 'Korea' thing has indelible overtones of hard liquor, late
night parties and a certain sub-species of good-time girls. For
most of these mercenaries, the meaning of 'Korea' began yesterday,
and will be freeze dried in their brains when they go home to
become wage slaves in another ant heap called 'America', or wherever.
For those of us who like to find
some system connecting the purple
dogs, the hard liquor and the labour strikes, it can help
to read a few books. That is, books, like any chance conversation,
can crystallize the myths we live by. I guess I've read
around sixteen books on Korea over the last couple of years.
The mist swirling around that word 'Korea' is still rather
opaque, but from time to time I do see the hint of an outline.
"Click into the Hermit Kingdom"
is a good place to look for such outlines of 'nation' in the Korean
style. Korea happens to have the most complete set of official
historical national records in East Asia. Yang Sun-jin and Lee
Nam-hee have combed a CD ROM compilation of these records covering
500 years of the Choson Dynasty, to produce an eclectic but revealing
collage of reports on many subjects. In researching this review
I was a bit taken aback to discover that the text of the volume
is in fact available on the Internet at http://english.gija.com/elist.htm,
so if you don't mind staring at an electron gun, you can read
the whole thing for free.
The Choson Dynasty extended from
1398 to 1910 (when Korea was
absorbed forcibly into the Japanese empire until 1945).
Choson Korea was consciously
allowed to exist by the Chinese as a
buffer state against the outer barbarians. It was an existence
conditional upon formal annual homage to the Chinese emperor,
but for all practical purposes the Choson court was master
of its own affairs. There seems to have been a somewhat schizophrenic
vacillation between asserting indigenous Korean habits
and hyper-imitating the Chinese world view (maybe paralleled
by the current ambivalent reaction to Western cultural influence).
The records upon which Yang &
Lee's book draws were made possible by a uniquely independent
class of scholars called Sagwan
(historians). The Sagwan,
who were civil servants appointed by examination, tirelessly recorded
matters great and small, including Kingly indiscretions. There
were times when the Choson kings would have happily canned the
Sagwan,
but dared not. This was a dynastic rule hedged around with limitations
: the limitations imposed
by regional power politics, the limitations imposed by a constant
search for legitimacy, and the limitations of precedent. The Sagwan
were the keepers of precedent, and were not above reminding the
king that his behaviour would and should set a model for all who
were to follow. Chinese dynastic records and histories are famous
(or infamous) for rewriting the past to glorify the present. Their
provincial cousins, the Sagwan,
seem to have maintained a more detached tradition.
With relatively honest record keeping,
a clearly defined moral universe
and political adventurism contained by regional realpolitik,
the Choson Koreans should have had the making of a
highly successful society. Some would argue that they were indeed
successful, despite the depredations of the Hideoshi invasion
in the 16th Century. Certainly there were some notable
successes in administration, and occasional technical innovation.
However the code by which this culture was defined also
set its boundaries. In particular, its rigid hierarchical caste
system, unbending patriarchal values, ideological extremism,
and the institutional disparagement of technical and commercial
activity, all combined to generate a system that was incapable
of real change and competition. By the end of the 19th
Century these structural weaknesses had reduced Choson Korea
to the mere shell of a nation. That it survived so long
was probably a product of the
dynasty's carefully preserved isolation
from international political activity.
The material in "Click Into
The Hermit Kingdom" was compiled
for a series of newspaper articles in the English language
Korea Herald.
This in turn was made possible by the revolutionary
transcription to searchable CD ROM of ancient writings,
so that, as one historian observed, it had become possible to
research in three hours what had previously taken three years.
The authors of this book have undertaken to put a populist
face on the normally dry facts of historical record. That
is, perhaps because the genesis of Yang & Lee's book is journalistic,
they make brave attempts to match doings of ancient
Koreans with the shenanigans of the modern variety. Sometimes
their sense of deja vu
is legitimate. The Choson bureaucrats
were quick to defend their class interests, often like today's
descendants, and more than one King tried to go over their
heads to exploit public opinion. In 1403 King Sejong had all
social classes polled on a proposed new tax system. 98,557 people
approved, and 74,149 disapproved, but Sejong noticed clear
regional divisions and decided to scrap the proposal. This
has a very modern flavour about it. Again in 1750 King Yongjo,
reflecting public opinion, pressed for tax reform
against the stiff opposition
of officialdom.
People everywhere, and from every
period, exhibit similar appetites
and try similar escapades. There will always be adulterers,
thieves, opportunists, the loyal, the kindly and the gullible.
Different cultures however attach rather different values
to those behaviours. In terms of my own peculiar code, I
often find Korean and American notions of virtue and sinfulness
equally puzzling. The Choson Annals are certain to tickle
our recognition with accounts of such human quirks, but I'm a
little uneasy when Yang & Lee find unchanging benchmarks for
'the Korean character' in this sort of thing. Koreans, like
any tribal collection of folk, will have certain popular
tendencies at a certain time
in their history, but if we measure
those tendencies against a whole population, every time we will
come up with a bell curve. Most of the sample will cluster
around one (or two) positions, and minorities will trail off
at either extreme. It is the outsiders who are often most interesting
in such groups, for some of them are already leading
where the herd will follow. For example, let's take, sexual
behaviour and 'the Korean character'.
Koreans of the Koryo period frequently
had polygamous marriages. This generated certain problems, but
eased others. The Choson court decided that polygamy was an outrage
to Confucian values and outlawed it. Did this change men's sexual
behaviour? No. A system of concubinage crept in at the margins,
then became general, together with a whole class of kisaeng
girls, 'fallen women' with
the special status of 'entertainers'. What did happen was that
widows, who had often been supported within the system of polygamy,
became wretched social outcastes with no means of support. Divorce
became economically and socially almost impossible. And modern
Korea? Everyone, Korean or foreigner, will offer a vocal opinion
on 'the Korean character', qua sex, and find ready examples to
support this stereotype or that. The truth of course is that sexual
values, like so many other values, are in extreme flux. This is
a culture which within living memory has been beaten to a pulp,
stood on its head, battered by international exposure, and crucified
by a 40 year industrial revolution -- an agrarian society
which finds its children living in eighteen-story apartment blocks
and working by the clock in factories or offices. So you pays
your penny and picks your prejudice ....
One of the more pleasing tidbits
in "Click into the Hermit Kingdom"
is its sober treatment of the national hero, Admiral Yi
Sun-shin, and his 'turtle ships'. Recall that Admiral Yi was
the fellow who turned Hideoshi's invading Japanese Armada into
flaming wrecks in 1593, saving Korea's pride if not its economy.
The picture of the Choson court we get at this time is
of a decadent, incompetent, bickering ruling class with no respect
for or understanding of practical skills. Whatever Yi
achieved was in the teeth of their opposition. President Park
Chung Hee, the autocratic author of Korea's industrial transformation
in the 1970's, wisely promoted Admiral Yi as a hero
figure. It is fair to say though that most Koreans (yes,
most people everywhere) have
an idea of their history which owes
more to cinematic invention than what might (or might not)
have really happened and why. In Admiral Yi's case, a model of
his kobukson (turtle
ships) at Hyonch'ungsa shrine, Asan,
has shaped the popular imagination but might not have a lot to
do with reality. Countless references laud the kobukson
as the first iron clad battleships,
and an invention of Admiral Yi
himself. However, there is simply no evidence that the kobukson
were iron clad. There are historical mentions of these
boats going back before Yi's time to 1413, and perhaps earlier.
They are known to have been clad with wooden blocks, with
pikes and swords jammed between the blocks and the whole covered
with a disguise of hemp cloth. This made it deadly for Japanese
soldiers or pirates to jump aboard for hand to hand combat.
Admiral Yi's kobukson werefast, maneuverable, and deployed
to ram enemy ships, but iron battleships they weren't. He
may have only had about three of the things ...
Choson Korea, unlike its Japanese
neighbour, was not a militaristic
state. Armies were known to be necessary, but were poorly
funded. Officer training was a possible career path for a
gentleman, but it was unpopular. Some kings, like Sejong, took
a keen interest in military technology. However the whole tenor
of the Yangban upper caste was towards dabbling in poetry,
talking airily about moral proprieties, and scrambling for
social status. In other words, they were not an especially fine
advertisement for a pacifist society. Yang and Lee make the
reasonable point that the rich & famous, then and now, are
always the first to avoid conscription to military service.
Choson men were expected to do two to three month's military
service every five years, until the age of sixty, as well as
being available for national campaigns. From the earliest times,
the Yangban contrived to avoid this obligation, and even
to evade military taxes.
Indeed, the Yangban as a group did
their best to evade citizen obligations
and paying taxes altogether. As a consequence, over
the centuries crafty families by the thousand, then by the
tens of thousands, found ways to forge, bribe or otherwise
invent a Yangban genealogy for themselves. It is no accident
that the bulk of modern Koreans share only a handful of surnames
-- originally the handles of upper class families. Genuine
members of the lower classes did not actually have surnames
at all. Again, it is easy to seize on these behaviour patterns
as keys to the 'Korean character'. What makes the outcome
special though is not any strange Korean personality trait,
but the rigid social scaffolding of Neo-Confucianism which acted
as a cookie-cutter template for certain common results.
I sometimes meet Korean university staff who boast that their
children were born in America (and hence have the right to American
passports). This is the same kind of cop-out mentality
that drove the Choson Yangban, but nowadays you will find
not just Koreans, but privileged families from Hong Kong to
Lagos who also angle for foreign passport escape hatches.
'Click into the Hermit Kingdom',
like all good journalism, is
easy to read, to the point, and rich with examples. Only a few
of its topics have been touched upon here. You will come out
of it with a whole bunch of new hairy meanings to fit to your
mental lexical mystery called 'Korea'. Probably though you
will still not have figured the origin of those miniature purple
dogs.
"The Hermit Kingdom - A Book
Review"... copyrighted to Thor May 2003; all rights reserved
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