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The Quarterly Changbi 203, Spring 2024

Neutrality Here and Now Is False

Seo Taiji and Boys’ album single “Regret of the Times” was remastered and re-released early this year, 29 years after its first release, accompanied by a new, animated music video. It was a symbolic song that exposed the anachronistic and contradictory review system for performative arts at that time, which imposed restrictions on the freedom of expression. The song led to amplified debates about the situation, and in the end to the removal of those restrictions. From the song’s lyrics, which were known to have been written after witnessing the Sampoong Department Store Collapse in 1995, a phrase that probably stands out in the memory of many people is “The time of honest people has gone.” The Korea Public Performance Ethics Committee, in charge of preliminary reviews, censored three phrases in this song, including the one above, raising a flood of public protests, which in turn triggered political discussions. In the end, the Amendment to the Law About Records and Video Products passed the National Assembly in November 1995. It should go without saying that the freedom of creation expanded in this way was a key factor behind the global phenomenon of K-pop. As “Regret of the Times” is a song that cannot be separated from this historical context, it feels significant that it has reemerged here and now, whether it was intentional or not. 

In fact, the new music video accompanying this song seems to connect it with today and our current context. What stands out in this new release is the way it turns the lyrics into visuals, and then repeatedly projects the graphics, filling the screen. In addition to its punk-rock style, the song seems to be shouting out something visually as well. This combined musical and visual style seems to state that it has something to say in this world here and now, and to ask us to focus on its message. The other two previously censored phrases are “You want to overturn everything and wish that a new world comes” and “I hope you can resolve your deep sorrows—and do it today!” The song declares that “the time of honest people has gone” because of the irresponsibility and arrogance of those in charge in the face of a massive social disaster like the Sampoong Department Store Collapse. But it also says that we are still wishing for a new world, as if to say that hope is something that grows out of this kind of despairing situation, and that this hope is not a promise for a distant future or an object to be waited for, but something that exists in the midst of the present.

In 2024, there are more contradictions that light a fire under our “regret of the times” than we can begin to list. Although so many lives were lost in the October 29 Itaewon Disaster in 2022, no one took responsibility for it. The special law proposed and passed in the National Assembly for the investigation of its causes and the punishment of the people responsible was blocked by the presidential exercise of his ninth veto, despite overnight prayers on the street by the victims’ families during a bitter cold snap. While Colonel Park Jung-hun is being tried for “mutiny” because he disclosed external pressures on his investigation of the Marine Corporal Chae Su-geun Death Incident in 2023, at the same time the former chief justice of the supreme court, tried for a judicial manipulation, and the president of a conglomerate accused of an illegal merger and accounting fraud for the purpose of corporate succession, were both acquitted. Meanwhile, the former president, impeached through the 2016-17 Candlelight Protest, casually says she did nothing shameful and her subordinates continue to be released from prison through the current president’s pardons, even before their sentences become final.

The narrative setting of the aforementioned music video is nightmarish: crowds with faces shaped like monitor screens keep appearing, while monstrous beings in the shape of digital equipment and cables surround the main character threateningly, instilling lies, fear, and terror. Thus, we can perhaps say that the target of the “Regret of the Times” in 2024 is the mainstream media environment, distorted with falsehoods and fabrications. The criticism that the power of the president and first lady is being abused for private gain has been repeated so many times that it almost feels meaningless, and yet mainstream journalism and media are busy hiding behind the formula of disapproving of both sides with mild criticism. Is it really practicing neutrality to place two weights with radically different degrees of fault and responsibility on each side of a scale and balance them? Instead, wouldn’t it be fair for the weight and intensity of criticism to be proportional to the degree of power and responsibility? Beyond just the reactionary media, problems with the media claiming to do fact-checking and remain neutral are more deep-seated, and even the so-called progressive media are not free from these problems. Their neutrality, which buries the report of a serious assassination attempt of an opposition party leader in broad daylight within a report about arguments between the ruling and opposition parties, is already biased. 

Although this reality creates the illusion that everything is back to the pre-Candlelight Revolution era, in fact, there is another, more-important illusion with which mainstream society—politics, economics, the judicial system, or the media—deludes itself. It is the misapprehension that they can lead or teach the thoughts and actions of the people, and that they should. Speaking negatively, it is the delusion that they can manipulate and control ordinary people. 

The 1987 system, which was maintained through the alternation of power between conservatives and progressives, already ended during the Candlelight Revolution. The current disorder, in which unprecedented occurrences happen frequently, is its after-effect. What matters is what to do to achieve what was stated in the phrasing of “Regret of the Times”: “By overturning everything, you want a new world to come.” A judgment on the current government through the general election cannot be our ultimate goal. That would be meaningful only if it is a step in the process of building a new a constitutional order and social system. Nevertheless, it is clear that we should end the current administration, in order to pass through the unprecedented deadlock, and to go forward into the next phase. Whether we end it through resignation, a reduced term, or impeachment—any one of them would not be damaging the constitutional order. Rather, the longer the current government is allowed to continue in power, the greater danger to the constitutional order. In this situation, the stance of neutrality, which produces onlookers minding only their own business, is false.

This chaotic state in our domestic politics is not solely the result of internal factors in South Korean society. The Yoon Suk Yeol government’s extreme pro-US, pro-Japan, and anti-China foreign policy, as well as its antagonistic policy toward North Korea, all of which have promoted various domestic and overseas crises, without a clear benefit, are related to intensified US-China competition and signs of the rapid collapse of the globalization and open-economy ideology that have expanded globally after the end of the Cold War. This is why this issue’s feature is called “Global Narratives: How Should We Write Them?” Through it, corresponding to the feature in the fall 2023 issue, “The Narrative Called Korea,” we examine through what “narratives” we have understood the world and how we will understand and write it from now on.

Based on a diagnosis that the global narrative models that have existed so far no longer work, due to factors like the climate crisis and the crisis in neo-liberal capitalism, Seo Dongjin explores the possibility of a new symbolic narrative that mediates individual experience with the totality of capitalism. I find his argument particularly interesting: that globalization as we have known is not genuine “worldification” (a term of Jean-Luc Nancy) but the state of being “world-less”—a state that erases the world as a horizon where individuals experience and understand outside reality; that is, it becomes a state of non-worldification.

From another angle, Vladimir Tikhonov gives a succinct overview of the sort of deadlock and contradictions that global discourses in Korean society have confronted, by examining their genealogy from Sinocentrism during the Joseon dynasty, through discourses on civilization and enlightenment in the early modern period, to postwar nationalism and Western “universalism.” As a foundational work for the exploration of how historical struggle specific to Korean society can overcome Western centrism, to reach a new and just universality, it offers a useful reference.

Lee Il-young’s article finds a fundamental reason for the crisis the Korean economy is facing in the changing world-system and our lack of the ability to understand and solve it. Based on the framework of what he calls a three-floor economy, that is, the interactions among the world economy, the South and North Korean economies, and the South Korean economy, Lee explores ways in which the division economy can overcome the current crisis of unsustainable development. His theory of a Korean peninsula economy, based on his position of understanding that the basic unit of economy is not national but global, will inspire lively discussions, as it also relates to the agenda of republican innovation under the conditions of world-system transition.

Lee Haejeong offers a dynamic analysis of the US domestic conflict and international relations crises, which the United States is confronting in this era of an absence of hegemony, that is, with no single country controlling the international system. The Biden administration, which is engaged in an internal political civil war with the prospect of Trump’s comeback, and externally in carrying out the Ukraine War and Israel-Hamas War, while at the same time waging a strategic competition with China, openly shows the divisions within the country. While pointing out that the US today is one of the causes of international chaos, as well as its result, Lee looks ahead to the period after the presidential US election in November.

In this issue’s “Dialogue,” moderated by Lee Nam Ju, Kim Yongmin and Baek Eun-jong assess the movement for Yoon Seok Yeol’s steppingdown and discuss the direction for the establishment of a 2nd term Candlelight government. Although public opinion is strong on the argument that we cannot neglect the Yoon administration’s continuing mal-administration and anti-constitutional abuse of power, opposition parties and other social forces have been tepid about discussing Yoon’s ouster. Arguing that unusual circumstances call for unusual solutions, Lee, Kim, and Baek discuss how the movement for Yoon’s ouster needs to be strongly combined with the task of the establishment of a 2nd term Candlelight government. We offer Paik Nak-chung’s article as a companion piece to this dialogue, as it presents the establishment of a 2nd term Candlelight government as our urgent task. While examining the current crisis that we on the Korean peninsula face, Paik urges us to look for a way to establish a new country, after finishing the current state of constitutional suspension as quickly as possible.

In “Focus on Author,” poet Yu Byeong-rok interviews fellow-poet Kim Haeja, who recently published the book Your Time. With stories of their meetings as the backdrop, it persuasively and warmly highlights the relatively less-noticed theme of laughter in Kim’s poetic world. It quietly moves us with the paradox that we cannot achieve laughter without also experiencing the life of tears.

“Literary Criticism” offers articles by Hwang Jung-a and Choi Sunkyo. Analyzing Chinese-American author Ken Liu’s fiction, Hwang examines the achievements and limitations of the arguments for posthumanism that are recently emerging. Together with an interesting analysis of Ken Liu’s works, she offers astute criticism of the sloppy thinking on which the idea of posthumanism is based. Anticipating the 10th anniversary of the Sewol Ferry Disaster on April 16, Choi retraces literary responses to it for the past 10 years, and persuasively argues for the power of language, by paying attention to poetry books by Ju Minhyeon and Byeon Yun-je. Choi’s conclusion is convincing: the importance of stubbornly and repeatedly questioning the forces trying to erase the memory of the disaster.

For “Article,” we begin a series “Searching for K-Discourse,” to promote independent Korean studies and autonomous discourses amid the flood of Western discourses in our society. A project to reflect on our self-understanding as it has changed—as outside recognition and appreciation of Korea have dramatically increased—it intends to examine our ideological resources warranting rediscovery. Baek Min Jung contributes the first article in this series. Beginning with the question of whether or not it is appropriate to consider Dasan Jeong Yak-yong’s thought as Sirhak, or the Realist School Confucianism, a project of independent Confucian response to the Western modern, Baek reilluminates the political character of Confucian ancestral rites in the context of publicness or our duty to perform reciprocal care. As such, it is a sharp criticism of the weakness in the current discussion of Confucian modernity. We hope for your enthusiastic interest and support for this series.

Park Raegun, who has worked tirelessly with the April 16 Movement, contributes an article to “On the Scene” in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Sewol Ferry Disaster. The past decade has been a period when families of victims have been reborn as subjects in a movement, rather than remaining as victims, and a time when they have established an important milestone by reminding us of the importance of remembering. It also leaves us with a chill arising from sadness about the fact that the truth of the disaster has not been discovered even under the administration claiming to be the “Candlelight Government.”

The ninth main character of the essay series “Where I Live,” Gong Sun-ok, is residing in Damyang. Her skillful writing style strings together the history of the region and various lives of her neighbors in leisurely sentences and compositions, befitting the title “A Stroll in Damyang.” It might be called the highlight of a “stroll style.” Yu Hong-june’s My Cultural Heritage Exploration, which created a desire among the public for the exploration of Korean cultural heritage sites as soon as it came out, celebrates the 30th anniversary of its publication this year. Kang In Uk’s essay celebrating this occasion, beginning with the story of his encounter with the author, shows us why we continue to need My Cultural Heritage Exploration as it expands its scope.

Creative writings are also abundant in this issue. We present new poems by 12 thoughtful poets, from Ko Myeong-Jae to Choi Ji Eun, and short stories by Sung Haena, Quan Chunhua, and Choi Min Woo. Each piece offers our readers individual characters with different and moving qualities and sensibilities. Also, Kim Keum Hee finishes the installment of her novel in this issue. We thank our readers for their support during this serialization.

Our restructured “Literary Focus” is comfortably settling in. This issue presents Park Sang-Soo’s article on books of poetry by Hwang Yuwon and Min Gu, Park Yeo Sun’s article on the works of fiction by Kim Choyeop and Kim Hye-jin, and Jeon Gihwa’s article on Kang Soohwan’s book of literary criticism. We also hope you have a special interest in the Book Reviews, where we offer critical introductions of carefully selected new books in every season.

Every spring, we present works by the winners of the Daesan Literary Awards for college students. We heartily congratulate winners Kim Seo-chi (poetry), Kang Su-bin (fiction), Kim Su-ryeo (play), and Lee Won-gi (criticism) and look forward to their future activities. We are also sharing a piece of news about our editorial board: Professor Baek Min Jung joined us as a standing editorial board member. We hope for your hearty support of all of us. 

Although enlivening spring returns every year, it’s a difficult time for all of us this year, as Lee Il-young mentions in the conclusion of his article. Yet there should be a way to make it better. As we have a general election for the National Assembly this spring, we can indeed feel various changes in our situation. It is time for us to remember that the responsibility of turning approaching changes into hope is upon us—and that we should be prepared for it. Hope is not arriving from faraway, but is in the midst of us. Yet, it cannot be like a season of the natural world, which suddenly appears in front of us, while we make no effort. Hope is not free.

Kang Kyung-seok