This is a much-awaited textbook for college courses about contemporary South Korea (henceforth, the Republic of Korea, or ROK). Students of Korea have been in search of a good introductory textbook on the ROK since Hagen Koo's edited volume State and Society in Contemporary Korea (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press) was published in 1993. This new book not only updates Koo's book, but also offers coverage of a wider range of topics, including economic development, democratization, the North–South Korean conflict and possible reunification, changes in the family, social stratification, class reproduction, and urbanization. The authors are also very well-known scholars in their respective fields, with a record of accomplishments in theoretical and empirical research.
This book's strengths are many, but let me focus on three. First, the analysis contained in the chapters strikes an appropriate balance between detailing the unique aspects of ROK society and placing the ROK in comparative context with the West. The book provides a rich dialogue between the ROK and the West through theoretical discourse as well as comparative analysis. In doing so, it succeeds in engaging the readers who may have little previous knowledge about the ROK.
Second, the book deals with a wide range of topics under the broad umbrella of “modern society,” as mentioned earlier. To the authors' credit, many of the chapters utilize firsthand empirical research to tell the stories of ROK society's change over the four decades of rapid economic development that have taken place since the 1960s.
Third, many chapters in this book introduce Korean terminology to more accurately describe contemporary ROK society. For example, in the chapter discussing the social stratification system, Hagen Koo uses concepts such as yangban (nobility), chung'in (the middle stratum), sang'in or yang'in (commoners), and ch'ŏnmin (base people) during the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) to discuss how the traditional class system was destroyed and did not reemerge after revolutionary change, unlike in the West. In her chapter “Family, Gender, and Sexual Inequality,” Seung-Kyung Kim introduces terminology such as kisaeng (women entertainers), sinyŏsŏng (new woman), minjung movement (broad-based social movement), and simin movement (civil society movement) to show how women have gone through tremendous changes and how they have engaged with other civil society movements. Through the usage of Korean terms, the authors are conveying a strong message that it is worthwhile to learn a few Korean words in order to understand Korea in its own right.
The first chapter, written by Hyuk-Rae Kim, a co-editor of this volume, is an excellent account of the different “national projects of South Korea,” which he identifies as economic development, political democratization, and national reunification. He then goes on to explain the dynamic social change in South Korea as revolving around three axes: regionalism, occupational mobility, and class formation. This is one of the better-written introductions of an edited volume and provides a broader context for understanding the different pieces that make up the rest of this volume.
The chapters are a bit uneven in terms of the quality of writing and the adoption of a consistent theoretical framework that creates an interconnectedness with the other chapters. Some chapters are grounded more in theories and comparative analysis, which helps to engage non-Korean readers, while others are less grounded in theory and thus are at risk of losing readers in the myriad of descriptive details about the ROK.
Another weakness of this volume stems from the fact that the ROK is a constantly and rapidly moving target. It is nearly impossible to give an accurate account of “contemporary” Korean society. Although no book can provide up-to-the-minute analysis of any given society, some of the chapters that promise to deal with one of the most significant shocks in ROK society since rapid industrialization and democratization—that is, the Asian financial crisis of 1997—fail to do so. For instance, the fifth chapter by Hyuk-Rae Kim (“Economic Governance: Its Historical Development and Future Prospects”) and the sixth chapter by Karl J. Fields (“From Take-off to Drop-off? Postwar Economic Development and Industrialization”) both hint in their introductions that they will critically assess the ROK's developmental experience and whether it has finally reached an endpoint. However, neither of these chapters offers an in-depth, empirically based treatment of the Asian financial crisis or its aftermath. This is somewhat surprising, given that the book was published in 2006, nearly a decade after the Asian financial crisis hit the ROK. It is particularly problematic in these two chapters because they claim that they will explicate the issue of the ROK's economic governance and industrialization surrounding the financial crisis. In addition, Fields's decision to utilize W. W. Rostow's five stages of economic growth from his seminal work, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), is problematic because Fields proposes the use of new institutionalism as an alternative to market-, state-, or culture-based theories of economic development to explain Korean industrial development. Rostow's five stages model has been heavily criticized for its rigid unilinear model of economic growth based primarily on the experiences of the United States and Western Europe and its insensitivity to other society's trajectories of growth.
Bruce Cumings's chapter on “Division, War, and Reunification,” and “Social Grievances and Social Protests against the Oppressive State” by Dong-No Kim provide relatively progressive, and somewhat controversial, explanations about the ROK–DPRK division, and how social protests in historical and contemporary Korea have evolved around the state.
In sum, this is a very good book about the changing contours of Korea that is focused primarily on the ROK and much less on North Korea. One important characteristic of South Korean society—rapid and compressed social change—may distract readers from getting an accurate grasp of Korea in 2009, but this book provides a richly nuanced analysis of Korea as it stood at the turn of the new millennium and will help us understand what has changed to date. As South Koreans would say, “ppalli ppalli” (quick, quick) is the mantra of ROK society. As everything changes so rapidly, we need to take stock of what it was like in 2000 in order to understand what it is now; this is why we must continue to engage in further research, and not let it lapse for too long before other volumes on South Korean society are published.
