Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century

[논둑길맨발로]

Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century

by George Katsiaficas

Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century SKU: 9781604864571

Using social movements as a prism to illuminate the oft-hidden history of 20th century Korea, this book provides detailed analysis of major uprisings that have patterned that country’s politics and society. From the 1894 Tonghak Uprising through the March 1, 1919, independence movement and anti-Japanese resistance, a direct line is traced to the popular opposition to U.S. division of Korea after World War Two. The overthrow of Syngman Rhee in 1960, resistance to Park Chung-hee, the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, as well as student, labor, and feminist movements are all recounted with attention to their economic and political contexts. South Korean opposition to neoliberalism is portrayed in detail, as is an analysis of neoliberalism’s rise and effects. With a central focus on the Gwangju Uprising (that ultimately proved decisive in South Korea’s democratization), the author uses Korean experiences as a baseboard to extrapolate into the possibilities of global social movements in the 21st century.

Previous English language sources have emphasized leaders—whether Korean, Japanese, or American. This book emphasizes grassroots crystallization of counter-elite dynamics and notes how the intelligence of ordinary people surpasses that of political and economic leaders holding the reins of power. It is the first volume in a two-part study that concludes by analyzing in rich detail uprisings in nine other places: the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia. Richly illustrated, with tables, charts, graphs, index, and footnotes.

Praise:

"George Katsiaficas has written a majestic account of political uprisings and social movements in Asia—an important contribution to the literature on both Asian studies and social change that is highly-recommended reading for anyone concerned with these fields of interest. The work is well-researched, clearly-argued, and beautifully written, accessible to both academic and general readers."  —Prof. Carl Boggs, author of The Crimes of Empire: The History and Politics of an Outlaw Nation

“This book makes a unique contribution to Korean Studies because of its social movements’ prism. It will resonate well in Korea and will also serve as a good introduction to Korea for outsiders. By providing details on 20th century uprisings, Katsiaficas provides insights into the trajectory of social movements in the future.”  —Na Kahn-chae, Director, May 18 Institute, Gwangju, South Korea

“In Asia's Unknown Uprisings, Katsiaficas continues to develop his unique perspective on social movements that he first enunciated in books on the global insurgency of 1968 and autonomous movements in Europe in the 1970s and 80s. Finally, for the first time in English, we now have a comprehensive overview of the remarkable waves of popular uprisings that have taken place in South Korea in the 20th century. With this volume, Katsiaficas challenges the Eurocentrism of social movement scholarship and provides a radical reappraisal of the role of mass popular uprisings in contemporary history.”  —Eddie Yuen, co-editor of Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement

About the Author:

George Katsiaficas is author or editor of eleven books, including The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968, the first book to place sixties movements in their worldwide context. Together with Kathleen Cleaver, he co-edited Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party. His book, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life, was co-winner of the 1998 Michael Harrington Award for best new book in political science. In 2010, the May Mothers’ House—widows and mothers of men killed in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising—awarded his service and commitment. A longtime activist for peace and justice, he was a student of Herbert Marcuse and twice granted Fulbright fellowships. Currently, he is based at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA.

Product Details:

Author: George Katsiaficas
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-457-1
Published: March 2012
Format: Paperback
Size: 9 by 6
Page count: 480 Pages
Subjects: History-Asia, Politics

See and hear author interviews, book reviews, and other news on the Author's Page HERE

Click here for one-page information sheet on this product

https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=375

Asia’s Unknown Uprisings Volume 1 by George Katsiaficas [Book Review]

opinion | July 11, 2012 by Alex | 4 Comments

Katsiaficas starts off this work with a preface that both explains his political background and personal experiences and interest in Korea.  It annoyed me a bit, especially when he wrote “My overwhelming sense is that Korea is simultaneously the most civil society I have ever experienced and the most Americanized Asian country I have ever visited.”  (xxiv)  But I appreciated his being upfront, and felt that it helped put his perspective into place, and as I got into the main part of the work, his personal narrative dropped off for the most part.

Also, as the developer “of the concept of the eros effect to explain the rapid spread of revolutionary aspirations and actions during the strikes of May 1968 in France and May 1970 in the United States as well as the proliferation of the global movement in this same period of time”, (xxvii) he also puts his theoretical perspectives out front, then repeatedly returns to this concept through out the book, as people’s actions back his theories.

Katsiaficas interviewed over 50 members of the Gwangju Citizen’s Army, one of the personal steps that make this such a critical historical work.  As with many such works, he had to go back before the 20th Century to help create the proper historical framework for understanding the events of the century, and meticulously chronicles both the foreign intervention in Korea in general, and Western intervention in particular.  He also writes about how colonialism, then neo-liberalism was effecting other Asian nations at any given time of the book, showing an Internationalist perspective that helped make the context of the various eras clear.

Katsiaficas also makes a point of chronicling cultural changes, and tries to show their political connotations, but the core of the work, true to its subtitle “South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century” is a record of revolutionary struggle against Japanese then United States Imperialism and local collaborators, class struggle against both foreign and domestic exploitation and domination, and struggles within the working class against sexism and other forms of discrimination and oppression.

To me, stories of  the Internationalism of Koreans who fought against the Japanese in China was some of the most exciting material in the book, possibly upwards of 160,000 in the border area alone!  (49)

With the end of World War II, the replacement of Japan as the colonial power dominating Korea with the United States is clearly outlined, as the northern half of Korea started to be run by People’s Committees which had sprung up all over the country, (68) and possibly 100,000 south Koreans were killed while resisting the occupation and division of the country before the start of the Korean War (60).

The overthrow of various US backed military governments in 1960 and 1987, and the mass student and labor organizing while under threat of heavy prison sentences and police, military and/or vigilante violence, and the journalism during heavy censorship that was behind these struggles and the conflicts to come against neo-liberalism are all throughly documented, with plenty of sources cited for further study.

In my opinion, the only weak part is the 13th and final chapter of the book, The Democratic Dilemma.  As I read its accounting of democratically elected, right-wing governments’ regressive policies and sell out liberals doing much of the same, it left me wondering how exactly it was a dilemma until just shy of the end.  Katsiaficas, correctly in my opinion, points out, “The hundreds of middle and high school girls who led the first protests in Seoul [in 2008] revealed this dilemma of democracy.  They embodied a ‘collective intelligence’ superior to their country’s elite” (415) though after plenty of theorizing and editorializing through out the book, writing like a lion for the first 12 chapters closes out the book as a lamb leaving me wondering, and what?  Since the future is still to be written, and he is from the States it makes sense that he would do so, and I applaud his stepping back and not asserting himself as some sort of great visionary who can direct a radical Korean future, as far too many white North Americans have been doing for far too long.  It just seemed to trail off, but has been a wealth of information very worth reading and following up on.

This is an excellent radio interview with the author that inspired me to read the book.

http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/analysis/opinion/asias-unknown-uprisings-volume-1-george-katsiaficas-book-review/

Weekend Edition October 12-14, 2012

The Scholarship and Pen of George Katsiaficas

Lessons From Korea

by RON JACOBS

The history of the Korean people is one that includes decades of colonial oppression and subterfuge, war, and untold savageries in the execution of both. Some of the most brutal of said savagery was employed against the Korean people in the name of the United States and its fight against the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, Korea’s history is also filled with a legacy of resistance that makes most other such histories pale in comparison. Unfortunately, very little is known of this history in the west. Blame it on western arrogance or chalk it up as another symptom of the Orientalist discourse that determines too much intellectual and political opinion in the western hemisphere, the ignorance of this history is to the west’s detriment.

A recent book hopes to render some of that ignorance moot. Part of a two volume set, the first volume of George Katisaficas’ Asia’s Unknown Uprisings covers the social movements of southern Korea in the twentieth century. Katsiaficas, who has spent a good deal of time in Korea, is also the author and editor of several books on social movements, including The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 and The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Utilizing Marxist analysis, anarcho-syndicalist sympathies, and an on-the-ground understanding of how revolutionary social movements develop and flourish, Katsiaficas seems to have made his life’s work one of explaining these phenomenon so that others can apply the lessons he patiently explains. His latest work only adds to this endeavor.

For those unfamiliar with Korean history, Katsiaficas provides a quick overview. After discussing his historiographical approach that emphasizes the role social movements play in making history (as opposed to so-called great men), he guides the reader through the various Japanese occupations and colonization of the Korean peninsula. He provides a look at the opposition to that presence and how that opposition was either repressed or co-opted. The latter is a theme Katsiaficas returns to later in the text; especially when discussing the ability of modern capitalism to adapt to the demands of liberation movements without acceding control. This latter scenario should be all too familiar to US readers, given the

historical role played by US mainstream political parties in doing exactly that.

After setting the context, Katsiaficas begins detailing the history of the Koreas after World War Two. Like the history of many colonized nations after that war, Korea’s is a history replete with betrayal and the domination of the nation by the very same forces the citizens thought they had thrown out when the Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Just like in the case of the Vietnamese, the defeat of Japan did not bring the end of outside rule or colonial oppression. Instead, the United States moved its forces into Korea and made the same right-wing Koreans that had collaborated with the Japanese oppressors the overseers of the US occupation. Despite this, the existence of citizen’s committees that had formed during the war to fight against Japanese colonialism were able to maintain a fair amount of control in the early years after the war. As time went on, however, these forces were arrested, attacked, co-opted or exiled to northern Korea where the Soviet Union let them exist–even encouraged them. Then the Korean War erupted, which turned out to be one of humanity’s bloodiest conflicts, especially for the Korean people. It is estimated five million Koreans died, many of them in US air raids and massacres by US and southern Korean forces fighting with the US. The nation of Korea would never be the same. After three years of conflict, the hostilities ended with nothing truly settled. The southern half of the nation was ruled by a government that was essentially fascist. Koreans on either side of the 35th parallel (the line of separation determined by the UN Security Council at the request of Washington) could no longer visit relatives or friends on the other side. In short, the Korean people were in worse straits than before the bloodshed.

This is when Katsiaficas story truly begins. The story is a history full of people’s uprisings and protests; repression and successes. Told in a manner quite readable, Katisaficas spreads the history of Korea’s social movements across the pages of his text. The story told is not just a fascinating history. It is also full of lessons for those who fight for social change in their own countries. Foremost among these lessons is that change does not come overnight. Indeed, it might not come in the course of a generation. Yet, if a people continue to struggle for social and economic justice, the fruits of their efforts will eventually become real. This is crucial, especially in today’s world where people from all walks of life expect resolutions to happen as quickly as they do on television.

The first volume of Asia’s Unknown Uprisings is an important book. For too long, western historians, activists and students of history have focused mostly on their own histories. This has created a myopic vision and understanding that has limited historians’ ability to analyze their world and social justice activists’ ability to change it. This study has been a long time coming. The scholarship and pen of George Katsiaficas has made it worth the wait.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night is now available and his new novel is The Co-Conspirator’s Tale. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press.  He can be reached at: ronj1955@gmail.com.

Clearance Sale of Vintage
CounterPunch T-Shirts!

We’ve marked down some of CounterPunch’s most popular t-shirts to only $8.00, including the CP shirt featuring Alexander Cockburn’s own scrawl.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/12/lessons-from-korea/