Is a cure always desirable? In Curative Violence, Eunjung Kim problematizes blind faith in remedial transformation through an analysis of major filmic and literary expressions in modern Korea. Inasmuch as illness takes multiple forms, such as chronic, incurable, infectious, or acute, so do the means of being cured. The complicated process of curative transformation involves multiple agents and state regulations, together with the evolving desires and despair of the disabled individuals. Hence a complete transformation from an “abnormal” to a perfectly “normal” body exists more in fantasy than in reality. Through a careful examination of characters, plots, and images in cultural products, Kim shows how curative urgency has constituted assaultive benevolence and argues that the root of such violence lies in the familial obsession to achieve socio-culturally constructed normalcy by any means. More specifically, the state-led discourse equating disabled bodies with national weakness has accelerated the collective exhortation toward heterosexual and able-minded normality. The unquestioning yearning for the “normal” as a collective mandate thus has negated the presence of the disabled as family members, neighbors, or signifiers. Such a denial of their lives on their own terms, according to Kim, testifies to the routinized violence against difference in the name of cure, improvement, or even humanism.
In chapter 1, Kim analyzes what she calls “hereditary drama,” arguing that the violence in literary and filmic texts resides in ignoring the reproductive desires of aberrant bodies and controlling their future by eliminating reproductive possibilities. Disabled women's yearnings for marriage and childbirth are recognized positively only when they conform to the ideal of heterosexual “motherhood” through self-sacrifice.
In chapter 2, Kim argues that this violence hinges on the longing for the family to achieve morally sanctioned normality. Elaborating on the idea of “proxy,” Kim underlines that the curative dependence of the disabled on nondisabled members of a family solidifies the imperative of cure imposed as a collective moral goal. The familial bond that drives the overcoming of disability tends to negate any individual agency in critically pondering over rehabilitation or therapy. Given the future-centered urgency, the lives of the disabled here and now become unsustainable.
Chapter 3 condemns the portrayal of violence as a caring act. Analyzing well-known novels and films, such as the prominent conservative writer Yi Mun-yŏl's Aga (The Song of Songs, 2000), Kim Ki-duk's Such'wiin Pulmyŏng (Address Unknown, 2001), Im Kwon-taek's Adada (1987), and Jang Sun-woo's Kkonnip (The Petal, 1994—a film based on the 1988 novel There a Petal Silently Falls by Choe Yun), Kim uncovers the conceptual blind spot embedded in progressive and humanitarian messages. The shared insensitivity regarding violence against disabled women as a literary and filmic device demonstrates the cruel ignorance domesticated by South Korean directors and writers in the name of creativity and progressivism. The flagrant utilization of violence, according to Kim, has silenced the ethics of nonviolence, intense vulnerability, and self-reflection, and has suspended “life with disability and without violence” (p. 165).
By analyzing the cultural production around Hansen's disease in chapter 4, Kim rightly points out that biomedical intervention alone does not automatically rectify socio-cultural trauma.
Chapter 5 is also intriguing, as Kim examines the latest media depictions that define and resolve the sexual desire of disabled people as a social problem. The heterosexual, phallocentric, Western-centered, and sensational identification of the “problem” often ends with another traumatic solution, such as a father's rape of his own daughter, masquerading as a cure.
Kim fleshes out diachronic changes as well by providing statistics and details of legal developments in the past. She rightly problematizes the way in which scholars, writers, and directors have idealized the premodern treatment of the disabled as an antidote to modern abuse and isolation. Given that sensibility changes over time, Curative Violence invites more historical analysis and comparisons to other settings, such as that studied by Wei Yu Wayne Tan, who persuasively elucidates the impaired yet not disabled living conditions of the blind in Tokugawa Japan.Footnote 1
Indeed, an even greater focus on the different types and degrees of disability could have enriched Kim's analysis of chronological divergence and enhanced her critique of biomedical intervention in remedying trauma. As the latest dialogue between the history of medicine and disability studies has demonstrated, the tension between medical and socio-cultural approaches to disability requires a creative balance. Given Kim's examples of eugenics and leprosy, further elaboration on biomedical possibilities and the problems caused by each impaired condition can better demonstrate the complicated role of “science” in curative urgency.
More comparisons with other Asian experiences would have strengthened another of Kim's arguments. She rightly criticizes the tendency to idealize the West in many Korean filmic narratives as a means of highlighting Korean backwardness. It might have been better, then, to examine the manifestations of curative imperatives in East Asian or other colonial or postcolonial settings. To what degree is modern Korea unique in tenaciously clinging to remedial urgency as a way to achieve morally sanctioned normalcy?
The merits of Curative Violence, however, are far greater, and they primarily lie in the book's rich and nuanced analyses of the Korean literary and filmic imagination. From the well-known folktale Sim Ch'ŏng to the latest independent documentaries, the monograph crisscrosses genres and chronologies to dissect the persistent framework of othering the disabled. Kim presents intelligent, rigorous, and intriguing scholarship that sheds new light on our understanding of modern Korea. Her theoretical refinement also goes beyond academic concerns, as she writes reflectively on her own experience in activism, particularly via Changae Yŏsŏng Konggam (Women with Disabilities Empathy). Upon finishing the book, readers will not only be impressed by Kim's persuasive and well-documented argument, but also inspired by her call to make the lives of the disabled livable.
Reading Curative Violence provided a delightful and liberating experience for this reviewer. The monograph presents a critical framework through which I was able to revisit the moments of embarrassment I felt while reading and watching those texts and films. I wonder, though, whether it would have the same appeal to readers who are not as familiar with them. In any case, this book is an exceptional accomplishment in Korean studies, disability studies, and the history of East Asian medicine. It also stands out as a product of sincere dedication by those who have struggled to achieve sustainable and nonviolent living conditions for everyone in Korean society.
