Comment by creakingstairs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by creakingstairs | Hacker News Reader

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> Do you know of good english/french resources to follow Korean politics from an intersectional perspective?

I don't know any atm which unfortunate because our political history is super interesting as we've gone through so much in the last 60 years. I'm sure there are some good articles around.

- Because of North Korea, most of our early political history was dominated by anti-communist ideology and strong nationalism.

- Also anti-japanese sentiment is one of the best way to gain politicial good will, so both the right wing and left wing accuse each other of being pro-japanese. There is even a dictionary that supposedly tracks of all the "pro-japanese" families/ people.

- You can see these two main sentiments in play whenever Koreans talk about Park Chung-hee, probably the most controversial dictator in Korea. He is idolised by right wingers as the person who lead the economic development; and demonised by left wingers as a ruthless dictator and as a pro-japanese.

This two themes have been the main themes of political conflict in Korea before 2000 (and they still are). But for younger generation, the main conficts now are inequality (house prices, labour rights, corruption) and gender (abysmal birthrate, marriage rate, just lots of hate in all internet forums).

My understanding —which is a little dated now, was that older gens cared about the Japan question, however most people who are in or have gone through university in the last 20 or 30 years don’t care about that question. They may carry some vestiges of it and recite some WWII atrocity, but don’t hold it against current living people.

It used to be Koreans wouldn’t date Japanese out of hate but with few exceptions not many would refuse to date someone because they are Japanese (as business people or exchange students of each other and so on)

In any case, it doesn’t make sense to be anti Japanese since they’re basically on the same team these days: democracies who aim to keep their economies vital in the face of competition as well as declining fertility rates and also who must contend with a regional hegemon.

Maybe the old shintoburi is still going strong though.

There is also regionalism in play, though it is not as strong as it used to be, especially amongst younger generations.

In particular, the southeast region (Gyungsangdo - GSD) is the core of the right-wing, and the southwest region (Jeollado - JLD) is the core of the left-wing. I really cringe at using the words "right" and "left" here because South Korean politics doesn't neatly align with what many Westerners would think of when hearing those terms. But for lack of better terminology...

In any case, the earlier presidents (or quasi-dictators) hailed from GSD and overtly favoritized their home provinces in terms of economic development, etc. while leaving JLD less developed. This has led to resentments that reflect in politics that persist to this day.

Some would argue the rivalry goes back even further. Historical texts exist that describe animosity between the GSD and JLD regions back into the Joseon dynasty. Going back even further, the GSD and JLD regions were the rival and enemy kingdoms of Shilla and Baekje respectively, the former which eventually conquered the latter.

It used to be that it was even taboo to marry across GSD-JLD lines, but again, this mainly affects the older generations. Personally - while I am Korean-American, my family comes from GSD. My wife is from JLD. My dad is on the conservative spectrum in terms of Korean politics and I was initially worried what he would think when I introduced my then-girlfriend to my parents for the first time. Thankfully it was a total nothingburger and my now-wife and my parents get along absolutely fine.

I once saw a TV clip where they challenged viewers to tell the difference between per-province election results and the response to Sejong's tax system at the beginnings of the Joseon dynasty -- they both had the same GSD/JLD split.

Unfortunately I can't find it now though; it was very insightful.

It's still common in popular media, there was a 2021 KDrama series ( Beyond Evil ) where they reveal who are all the bad guys early with one tell, they were the only ones who ate Japanese food. A 2018 series Mr Sunshine about the lead up to the Japanese occupation generated a bit of controversy because one character that adopted Japanese customs was portrayed sympathetically and they changed the story as the episodes aired to respond.

I am actually surprised there is a small (tiny?) but still surprising number of people that feel Japan is a real, direct, short-to-medium term military threat to Korea, as in the shooting war kind. This is a sentiment I see a lot in the Korea subreddit, but that might just be overly "nationalistic" "Koreaboos" - who may even be mostly Korean-Americans that have rarely set foot in Korea, or not even ethnically Korean.

The sentiment is not non-existent in Korea itself too though. In fact, in some discussions of recent military developments by the RoK (plans for a aircraft carrier, SLBMs, F-35 and/or KF-X fighters, etc.) it's often touted by these folks that they are just as meant to be pointed towards Japan as they are to North Korea or China.

> There is even a dictionary that supposedly tracks of all the "pro-japanese" families/ people.

This needs some quantification. The world chinil (친일), while literally "pro-Japanese", has a very specific meaning: it means Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese government during Japan's colonial rule over Korea.

That is, the dictionary in question doesn't enumerate those who liked Japan: it's a dictionary of Koreans who served or otherwise helped Japan's rule over Korea. Perhaps "dictionary of national traitors" would be a better translation. Also it's a civilian project and your name (or your grandparent's name) being in the dictionary won't block you from anything, including getting elected/hired in government positions. The only thing it does is to record history and remind some people of the crimes of their ancestors.

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