Book Review Essay: Nancy Abelmann, Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: a South Korean Social Movement (Berkeley:University of California Press,1996)

Nancy Abelmann (1996) examines the social and political activism of the 1980s in South Korea through the lens of the Koch’ang Tenant Farmers’ minjung Movement as subject of history. In the turbulent “summer of protest” of 1987, North Cholla province farmers organized to protest against the Samyang Corporation’s ownership of tenant plots which should have been distributed in the 1949 Land reform act. According to Eckert (1991), Koch’ang was a hometown of early capitalists Kim Yôn-su and Kim Sông-su, the founders of the Kyôngbang and Samyang companies respectively. Hence, Eckert’s (1991) accounts of the Koch’ang Kim family and their entrepreneurial activities during the colonial period from 1876 to 1945 helps to understand the movement of the Koch’ang tenant farmers that Abelmann (1996) investigates . With the inception of the Land reform, Samyang group failed in delegating land in Koch’ang in the late 1930s resulting in unhappiness amongst the tenant farmers. Motivated by the minjung spirit and the highly politicized atmosphere, the tenant farmers occupied the headquarters of Samyang in Seoul and demanded the company to distribute land in accordance with the land reform. Abelmann (1996) writes about their lives, their labor, protests and discourses of resistance.

The book is composed of 9 chapters in which the discussion moves back and forth between the villages of Koch’ang and Samyang’s headquarters in Seoul, and between past and present. Following the introductory remarks in the Chapter 1, Abelmann (1996) explores the discourse of minjung in Chapter 2, and maintains that the essence of the movement lies in its reinterpretation of the past against hegemonic views of governmental and corporate elites. Chapter 3 describes the farmers’ daily activities during their one month protest in Seoul, including the preparation of food, encounters with the media and the people of Seoul, and their confrontation with the police. Chapters 4 and 5 elaborates how these farmers construct their own version of “history” and the “present”, and provide an excellent comparison between the conflicting historical views of the farmers and the Samyang elite. The farmers accuse the Kim family of having collaborated with both the colonial government and the authoritarian regimes of the post-Liberation era. Chapter 6 deals with the discussions between the farmers and organizers, and presents the decision-making process behind the protests. Chapter 7 depicts the class structure of the village, which functioned as a variable in terms of ideology and participation in the protest. Chapter 8 analyzes rural mobilization and the state’s ideological programs in the post-Liberation period and concludes that “regardless of the vicissitudes and variety of their urban images today, farmers emerge not as passive objects but as subjects who have simultaneously structured by and resisted ideological, political and economic realities.” In the last Chapter, Abelmann (1996) revisits the farmers and other minjung activists several years after the protest, and she presents changes within the minjung movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The constant struggle for hegemony is indeed a popular genre in many historical literatures. Abelmann (1996) has aptly represented the idea in a relation between history and politics, like the relation between the past and present, and therefore an internal one: it is about the politics of history and the historical dimensions of politics.

Based on thorough research and observation, Abelmann’s (1996) discussions show keen analysis and erudition. Moving back and forth from past to present, from periphery to center, and from interpretations based on political and economic structures to those based on Korean culture, she draws a compelling map of the consciousness of the farmers and their supporters. The real importance of Abelmann (1996) works, however, lies in its focus on farmers, who have been neglected in the minjung literature despite their significance in the movement’s discourse. Thus far the great majority of discussions about the minjung and South Korean democratization have focused on organizers, students, industrial workers and the middle class, while farmers have been relegated to the margins. Abelmann (1996) brings farmers back to the center stage of minjung discourse and the movement, especially in Chapter 4 and 5, where she most effectively explores the farmers’ discourse and the challenges it issues to the hegemonic practices of the corporate elite. The Rhetoric Saemaul Undong movement too was incorporated in the book which was centered on the idea that individual effort and sacrifice would solve the economic problems of the rural sector . This could be a triggering point of the protest whereby the tenant farmers started to believe in the community spirit that when the people of the community work together they can do anything. I guess the basic thrust of the Saemaul was to eliminate fatalistic attitudes towards poverty and oppression and replace them with the attitude that “when there is a will, there is a way.” Rural communities needed to change their mindset, use a little elbow grease and cooperate and they will find prosperity. Sameul Undong has indeed wanting to get rid of the five-thousand year old moss towards poverty and transforming the negative society. In addition, the book stresses the role of social struggle in Korea’s transition to modernity which was marked by a high level of social conflicts and by clashes between modernity and tradition and between external and national values. In this process, history and tradition did not simply give way to modernity but have been continuously rediscovered and reappropriated for new social struggles. Korea’s modernity has indeed been woven out of these political, social and cultural materials rather than simply out of the universal fabric of capitalism.

While I enjoyed the book, a few minor points of critique against the idealistic, romantic view of the peasant protestors that Abelmann (1996) cherished come to mind. Firstly, Abelmann’s (1996) conclusion on the use of the past in the politics of the minjung could be expanded. Although she is certainly correct that “dissent is always an engagement with the past” and the past “echoes in the epics of dissent” , as is clear in the minjung’s self-empowering attempts to revive the memory of the Tonghak Peasant Revolution of 1894 and to stress its anti-elite character as seen in Chapter 2, in post-Liberation Korean politics, the “past” has nevertheless been used by not only dissenters but other social groups such as capitalists and the state, to either gain power or deprive others of it. For example, as described in Chapter 4, the Samyang elite, in their conflict with the tenant farmers, stress their role as “national” capitalists who not only competed with Japanese capitalists but also contributed to the enrichment of the nation. Similarly, in their arguments about the rightful ownership of the disputed land, both the farmers and Samyang elites cite nationalist credentials as the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy: the farmers criticize Samyang for its anti-national character in its collaboration with the Japanese colonial authorities , while the Samyang tries to depict itself as a nationalist corporation . Furthermore, farmers had not always cried out as a form of collective discontent in dire situations in past historical narratives. Understandably, in minjung discourse the authoritarian government of South Korea becomes an evil institution much more for its anti-national character as it is dependence on the United States of America than for its undemocratic qualities. Such arguments reflects the position of nationalism as the supreme moral value in Korean culture, and Abelmann (1996) could have explained more fully why nationalist causes became the ultimate determinant for both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces. I felt that the farmers’ outlooks after their culminating experiences of protest are given short shrift. In particular, gender relations could have been analyzed in greater detail, especially because Abelmann (1996) relates the story of a peasant woman in the first chapter as paradigmatic exemplar for her account . Abelmann (1996) describes the dominant role played by women at the protest site in Seoul as “the life of protest was in all ways sustained by women; they were the cooks as well as fearless protesters” merely tantalizing, however since Abelmann (1996) does not elaborate further, even in the final chapter where Abelmann (1996) reflects upon changes in villagers’ world view and lives after the protest. Yet village women might well have had their consciousness raised in regards to their own relationships with men as a result of their political struggle, especially since the protesters met with and defied patriarchal attitudes and rhetoric on the part of the landlords . Certainly, gender relationships are not the author’s main focus in study, but discussion here would have connected this experience with broader societal trends. If no changes occurred in the villagers’ notion of gender relationships after their protest experience, one can affirm the crucial vulnerability of the 1980s minjung movement in general: although pursuing dogmatic nationalism and procedural democracy, they rarely challenged the authoritarian and oppressive cultural foundations of the society, such as the Confucian patriarchy. However, the minjung movement has succeeded in alleviating the oppressive situations, to a greater or lesser extent.

Aside from these minor criticisms, the book with its first-hand observation and through scholarship, offers an excellent account of the discursive politics of the favourable minjung movement through the late 1980s and early 1990s. Anyone seriously interested in modern Korean society, politics, culture and history will find this book highly informative and helpful.

Bibliography

1.Abelmann, Nancy. Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: a South Korean Social Movement Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. HN730.5 Abe
2.Eckert, Carter J. Offspring of Empire: the Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876-1945. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. HC467 Eck