[Kim Seong-kon] Would you fight change and be left behind?

This is the National Assembly Hearing season in Korea for Cabinet minister-designates proposed by the new administration. Every day, newspaper reporters thoroughly examine every nook and cranny of the candidate’s past life to find skeletons in his or her closet. Meanwhile, the readers enjoy watching a prominent personality publicly humiliated and feel catharsis as he or she desperately struggles in the quagmire and hopelessly sinks into the pit. Of course, it is necessary to screen our future ministers’ political ideology and moral ethics, and yet it is wrong if the press ruined a person’s reputation, integrity, and honor through a malicious witch-hunt, instead of verifying his qualifications and competence.

Recently we witnessed the resignation of a minister-designate after he was bombarded by the press for his past mistakes. Instead of perceiving what he could do for our country in the future, our reporters went back to the past to expose what he had done wrong. They ruthlessly dug up his past and brutally attacked him with what they found, while sometimes exaggerating and inflating even trivial and insignificant things and other times, distorting what he wrote by deliberate, malicious editing. Such muckraking reports and media trials have seriously damaged his dignity and integrity and he has to live with the trauma and psychological wounds for the rest of his life.

Indeed, our current system of exposing the past of minister-designates by the press poses a serious problem. Everyone knows that such inhumane attacks can violate the target’s privacy, damage his integrity, and even ruin his family’s reputation. That is why our current system is called, “murder by humiliation” or “murder by a kangaroo court.” Moreover, we have no rights to disgrace the candidate’s children. Although the system is necessary to screen incompetent and inappropriate candidates, it may also cause us to lose talented candidates who can contribute to the future of Korea greatly.

Another problem is that because of the ruthless system, decent and able people shun working for the government. Indeed, under the circumstances, who would want to become a Cabinet minister at the risk of his integrity and his family’s reputation? If the system scares off competent men and women, the government will be filled with incompetent people. Then the future of Korea would be bleak.

The problem will be solved if we forget the past and move on toward the future. It would be better for us to scrutinize the visions, plans and abilities of the minister-designates, rather than clinging to their past mistakes. Nobody is perfect and you cannot undo what has been done. It would be cruel and unreasonable if an accidental mistake in your adolescence blocked your path for good. If we are infatuated with the past, we will lose many precious things, including our future.

The same thing happens in the republic of letters in Korea as well. During the 2017 Seoul International Forum for Literature, foreign participants found it hard to understand why Korean writers were obsessed with the past so much. For example, they did not understand why some Korean speakers at the Forum strongly argued that Korean writers should get over Western influence and go back to their past literary tradition.

Perhaps some of our writers do not realize that we now live in a multicultural age when national and cultural boundaries are rapidly and radically collapsing, causing cultures to blend. In fact, had it not been for this phenomenon, Hallyu could not have been so popular in the West. Yet, we are complaining about cultural blending and clinging to our indigenous literature and culture.

Other foreign writers at the Forum were puzzled at Korean writers’ conservative attitude. They asked me, “Why do so many Korean writers on the panel object to globalization and digitalization? Have they not benefited from it?” They continued, “Without globalization and digitalization, Hallyu and Korean technology could not have enjoyed such popularity overseas, could they?” Indeed, you cannot deny or reverse the social change brought about by globalization and digitalization and swim against the current to go back to the past.

History reveals that when we were stuck in the past and did not catch up with the changes in the international community, we lost our sovereignty to a future-oriented, fast-learning country. We tend to perceive social change as chaotic and thus want to return to the past when we think everything was in perfect order. In that sense, many Korean writers still exhibit a modernist tendency that advocates order, unity, and pure literature. However, as the great Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes once said, “Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.” There is no place for pure literature and culture in this age of multiculturalism.

Foreigners point out that Korea is a past-oriented country. If that is true, we will be left behind while others move on. An episode of the American television show “Flash” ends with the following maxim: “You can embrace the changes and move forward, or fight it and be left behind.” The choice is ours.


By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He can be reached at sukim@snu.ac.kr. -- Ed.