The Korean of Quality and the Real Meat Extract: Thoughts on the ways of Korea From Orientalist imaginings to scholarly imagination

1. Let us feast our eyes on the picture a little. The freshness of lavender blue, marshmallow pink, almond green; these distant fuzziness à la Vinci from where emerge the enigmatic square towers of a fortified castle; the Art Nouveau dividing line that echoes a fortifying dry broth; the daring cut of the frills and flounces under a bobble hat reflecting the curve of the patched-up roofs under the tuft of persimmon trees. Let us give in to its stunning effect a little before the initial words of the caption stand out.

2. « In Korea – Seoul. Seoul, in Chinese Hang-Tching, which is situated at the bottom of a valley, is the capital of Korea since 1392. The city stretches over 5 kilometers in length and 4.5 kilometers in width; like the Chinese cities it is surrounded by a wall with 4 to 8 meters high, with four big and 4 small gates set in it. With the exception of the two main roads, Seoul has only narrow and dirty lanes, we don’t see any remarkable construction, except maybe the imperial castle and the ruins of an old pagoda ».

3. One could regret that the female « Korean of quality» flashing so strongly on this Liebig card dating back to 1904 still seems to defy the explanation. In a six-card series, it takes, indeed, another one on ’women’s sport’ (sic) to turn the dark continent even darker: « The favorite game of the Korean women who usually lead a secluded life, is the pogo-stick jump […] During popular feasts and other occasions, passionate fights take place during pogo-stick jump, followed by the prize distribution for the winning women ». Amazing.

4. Founded in Germany in the initial days of food chemistry, Liebig, who edits this Korean series in five languages, has branches in the Americas. Today, in addition to referring this product of a global commercial epic to the socio-cultural history of a genre (the chromo-advertisements and their frantic collectors) , it has become common practice and almost expected to relate this kind of picture to imaginings at best orientalizing, at worst orientalist.

5. All the expected features of an unbranded exoticism condensing and displacing some credible realistic elements (well-informed even accurate) can therefore be found there effortlessly in order to put up, in the name of an aesthetic of the Diverse, the Other’s scene assigned to the « fantasy rural» genre: hussies of quality, queer sorcerers of the street corners, unpronounceable exotic names, rural settings with folk celebrations. In short, all this pretty « folklore » that Michel de Certeau* had very rightly named: « the beauty of the dead» .

6. And likewise a constitutive matrix of a European imagination specifically addressing Korea can be found in it, which consists of two very simple proposals. The first relentlessly harps on the back of the six chromos: Korea is China « to a lesser extent »: less imposing, less stunning, less better. So much so that, to fulfill the exotic contract due, we must in fact « lay it on thick» with paint, gaily coloured people, frills and flounces. Hence these « passionate fights» of jumping women straight out of the gynaeceum (read: harem).

7. The second proposal, that is implicit, is in the minds of all the people of 1904 who are getting a fortifying broth ready. It is indeed in Korea that the fate of a world caught in the bloody fights between White Russia and Yellow Japan is hanging in balance. Beyond the pastel tones, the first act of the famous Clash of the civilizations rages. It can be inferred from it that the Korean peninsula is essentially a geopolitical animal. The picture has two variants: Bridge-State here (that takes everything from China to give it to Japan) ; Buffer-State there (Poor Korea, so far away from God, so close to China and Japan). And always: a major burning place of global security.

8. It would be wrong to mock; to believe that we are, ordinary French people and Westerners from all walks of life, intellectually more refined and morally wiser than our barbarian great-grandfathers starved of meat extract. Because one mustn’t wait for a very longtime, at the TV 2006 bar-room, for [South] Korea to be henceforth reduced to exist like Japan « to a lesser extent » : less modern, less sophisticated, less better; when [North] Korea cannot be anything other than a terrifying armada, a disturbing « rogue state » to Captain-Storm at the earliest.

9. Thanks to Korea, however, some stability of the fundamental matrix, far from forcing us into a post-modern lament (the hopeless western orientalism) – and a tendency to repeat in interpretations – offers us precisely to better perceive what has so clearly changed in our imagination of the world. A grayish and monotonous imagery without appeal and even vaguely disturbing has substituted for a colored and heterogeneous, mysterious and attractive exoticism: Metropolis against the chromos.

10. Fascination and nostalgia of a world of pink and green childhood freshness buried for ever under the adult dullness of Sweatshop-State, sprawling cities, military dictatorship, teargases, spectacular suicides, novels on social suffering, violent films, thundering nationalist speeches: pathos and morbidesse that distance us and separate us from Korea that is real, full of life, and lived by substituting the mnemonic tragedies of the 21st century for the ethnographical fantasy of the 19th century. Darker exoticism.

11. It would be advisable to write the history of this decisive transformation, not so much from the point of view of its setting, as of its tone. To locate in it moments of inflexion and vectors. We would not therefore consider it insignificant that the Koreans were always nothing but the passive subject of Liebig commercial cards that were neither designed nor distributed in the country. To advance the interpretative work, they must be related to postal cards – those of Kisan ** – for example – sold in 1900 at Seoul to western travelers. And to infer a new major feature from it: in 2006, Korea and the Koreans project and manipulate their own picture(s) on the world screens. Self-orientalism is now being offered.

12. Of what use then is Korea? And the pictures of Korea ? Perhaps, in the field of research on Asia, to reopen our minds that are shut away too naturally and too early, while being too comfortably reassured by the languages-nations of our works and « departments ». Without suffering from drying out, the limitations of our scientific imagination cannot remain lagging behind a region, where goods and ideas, tourists and fashions have made the national borders more porous since a decade already. In the overhyped terms of a North-East Asian « Hub », Bridge-Korea and Buffer-Korea turn into Crossroads-Korea. Where resides Hermes.

13. And now sinologists discover Korea late in life. And experts on Japan put their foot in it. And a new generation of students stands out as « Asian bilingual». Not so much for discovering in Seoul a less palatable version of their academic field, nor for, as in 1904, allocating places and giving good points on the steep line of social Darwinism as for discovering a point of view (a space for breathing, a distance) from which their « object » takes a curiously renewed meaning. Comparative studies, for a very longtime so clumsy, so badly rigged out for having joined up East and West end to end without a common measure, find again intellectual efficiency in it. Virtues of discrepancy***.

And what if North-East Asia (to begin with) could thus become more meaningful that in its center lies a country as ambitious as it does not lay claim to hegemony? Korea.

* Michel de Certeau (with Dominique Julia and Jacques Revel), « La beauté du mort », pp. 45-72 in La Culture au pluriel, Paris, Seuil, Points, 1993 [1974].

**See the collections of Kisan of the Guimet museum and the exhibition currently on at the Royal Ontario Museum (and its catalogue : Christina Hee-Yeon Han, Korea Around 1900: The Paintings of Gisan, Toronto, ROM Reproductions, 2005.)

***Cf, the enlightening contribution by Jocelyne Dakhlia, « The « cultural nebula» or Islam comparison-proof», Annales, Histoire Sciences Sociales, 56, n°6, nov-dec 2001