In December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced the largest bailout package in its... more In December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced the largest bailout package in its history, aimed at stabilizing the South Korean economy in response to a credit and currency crisis of the same year. Vicious Circuits examines what it terms "Korea's IMF Cinema," the decade of cinema following that crisis, in order to think through the transformations of global political economy at the end of the American century. It argues that one of the most dominant traits of the cinema that emerged after the worst economic crisis in the history of South Korea was its preoccupation with economic phenomena. As the quintessentially corporate art form—made as much in the boardroom as in the studio—film in this context became an ideal site for thinking through the global political economy in the transitional moment of American decline and Chinese ascension. With an explicit focus of state economic policy, IMF cinema did not just depict the economy; it also was this economy's material embodiment. That is, it both represented economic developments and was itself an important sector in which the same pressures and changes affecting the economy at large were at work. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon's window on Korea provides a peripheral but crucial perspective on the operations of late US hegemony and the contradictions that ultimately corrode it.
This article considers the position of Netflix Korea within Netflix's global business and in rela... more This article considers the position of Netflix Korea within Netflix's global business and in relation to South Korea's place within a transitioning world system in the early 21st century. The article will first discuss prospects for growth at corporate and geopolitical levels, with an emphasis on leadership principles. Netflix culture implies a useful strategy for stamping out weaker competition amid crisis conditions but is not one that solves the crisis itself, a fact that becomes apparent when Netflix assumes its position as an industry leader rather than a scrappy upstart. Second, this article will track the way in which Kingdom, Netflix Korea's first original scripted show, encompasses the contradictions of imperialist logics that ramp up precisely as the foundation for that power erodes. Kingdom and Netflix more broadly imagine a world that bypasses this fundamental requirement, and in so doing they risk building castles in the sand susceptible to shifting tides as hallyu waves begin to recede.
Both set in the South Korean city of Paju, Park Chan-ok's Paju (P'aju, 2009) and Lee Chang-dong's... more Both set in the South Korean city of Paju, Park Chan-ok's Paju (P'aju, 2009) and Lee Chang-dong's Burning (Pŏning, 2018) document the troubles of late developmentalism as the frustrated emotional development of young people who come to realize that they are part of a growing surplus population that no longer have a place in the economic world they inhabit. This article suggests that a crucial backdrop for the fires within each film's diegesis is another kind of fire, namely the FIRE economy. This is the acronym for a groups of capital accumulation strategies that prioritize Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, all of which are business sectors that have typically emerged in the wake of manufacturing decline, providing opportunities for capitalists facing declining industrial revenue as part of what David Harvey has termed a capital switching strategy. Although the pun in the acronym does not of course work in Hangul, the industries became particularly prominent in South Korea after the IMF Crisis as part of broader wave of financialization. In both films, the determining power of this socioeconomic backdrop is displaced within a melodramatic frame that prioritizes emotional over economic attachments, but nevertheless abides in material traces.
Ghostbusters, inflatable art, and the natural rate of unemployment. Also, a reading of the Korean... more Ghostbusters, inflatable art, and the natural rate of unemployment. Also, a reading of the Korean film, The Scam.
Born roughly three decades apart, Younghill Kang (c. 1903–72) and Richard Eun-kook Kim (1932–2009... more Born roughly three decades apart, Younghill Kang (c. 1903–72) and Richard Eun-kook Kim (1932–2009) were the two most prominent early Korean/American writers, if by “early” we mean before the Asian American movement in the late 1960s and the emergence of Asian American literature as an explicit category. Both lived as children through Japanese colonization in what today is known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea (not to be confused with the Republic of Korea or South Korea). Both immigrated as young men to the United States where they pursued university educations and advanced degrees. As writers and professors in U.S. academic institutions, both also achieved a fair amount of success. Their works, mostly autobiographical fiction, gained a good deal of initial recognition in the United States in part because they offered an insider's view of a Korean culture in tumultuous times to an audience that could only view it from afar. In addition, they share similar career trajectories: both made an immediate splash in American public culture but soon vanished from public life after a decade or so of high visibility (Kang in the 1930s and Kim in the 1960s) with their books going out of print. Both also gained new audiences for their earlier work either posthumously or late in life: Kaya Press, a publisher specializing in Asian/American diasporic writing, republished Kang's East Goes West in 1997 and Penguin republished Kim's The Martyred in 2011 as part of their Penguin Classics series.
Although Kang wrote his most visible work before the Korean War and Kim produced his afterward, their commonalities might encourage us to read these writers as witnesses to a larger historical continuum that encompasses Korea's cultural, political, and economic emergence into global modernity, initially under the protection of and later in partnership with the United States, and also one that overlaps an even broader geopolitical recalibration, as the growth of Asian economies in the second half of the twentieth century increasingly!demands a revision of earlier models of east-west relations. As diasporic writers, Kang and Kim do not simply represent exilic Asian figures grappling with new Western environs. They also figure early transnational engagements across national, aesthetic, political, and racial lines, within the context of the gradual transformation of Korea from the so-called Hermit Kingdom, as it was known during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), into the international power that it is today.
In December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced the largest bailout package in its... more In December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund announced the largest bailout package in its history, aimed at stabilizing the South Korean economy in response to a credit and currency crisis of the same year. Vicious Circuits examines what it terms "Korea's IMF Cinema," the decade of cinema following that crisis, in order to think through the transformations of global political economy at the end of the American century. It argues that one of the most dominant traits of the cinema that emerged after the worst economic crisis in the history of South Korea was its preoccupation with economic phenomena. As the quintessentially corporate art form—made as much in the boardroom as in the studio—film in this context became an ideal site for thinking through the global political economy in the transitional moment of American decline and Chinese ascension. With an explicit focus of state economic policy, IMF cinema did not just depict the economy; it also was this economy's material embodiment. That is, it both represented economic developments and was itself an important sector in which the same pressures and changes affecting the economy at large were at work. Joseph Jonghyun Jeon's window on Korea provides a peripheral but crucial perspective on the operations of late US hegemony and the contradictions that ultimately corrode it.
This article considers the position of Netflix Korea within Netflix's global business and in rela... more This article considers the position of Netflix Korea within Netflix's global business and in relation to South Korea's place within a transitioning world system in the early 21st century. The article will first discuss prospects for growth at corporate and geopolitical levels, with an emphasis on leadership principles. Netflix culture implies a useful strategy for stamping out weaker competition amid crisis conditions but is not one that solves the crisis itself, a fact that becomes apparent when Netflix assumes its position as an industry leader rather than a scrappy upstart. Second, this article will track the way in which Kingdom, Netflix Korea's first original scripted show, encompasses the contradictions of imperialist logics that ramp up precisely as the foundation for that power erodes. Kingdom and Netflix more broadly imagine a world that bypasses this fundamental requirement, and in so doing they risk building castles in the sand susceptible to shifting tides as hallyu waves begin to recede.
Both set in the South Korean city of Paju, Park Chan-ok's Paju (P'aju, 2009) and Lee Chang-dong's... more Both set in the South Korean city of Paju, Park Chan-ok's Paju (P'aju, 2009) and Lee Chang-dong's Burning (Pŏning, 2018) document the troubles of late developmentalism as the frustrated emotional development of young people who come to realize that they are part of a growing surplus population that no longer have a place in the economic world they inhabit. This article suggests that a crucial backdrop for the fires within each film's diegesis is another kind of fire, namely the FIRE economy. This is the acronym for a groups of capital accumulation strategies that prioritize Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, all of which are business sectors that have typically emerged in the wake of manufacturing decline, providing opportunities for capitalists facing declining industrial revenue as part of what David Harvey has termed a capital switching strategy. Although the pun in the acronym does not of course work in Hangul, the industries became particularly prominent in South Korea after the IMF Crisis as part of broader wave of financialization. In both films, the determining power of this socioeconomic backdrop is displaced within a melodramatic frame that prioritizes emotional over economic attachments, but nevertheless abides in material traces.
Ghostbusters, inflatable art, and the natural rate of unemployment. Also, a reading of the Korean... more Ghostbusters, inflatable art, and the natural rate of unemployment. Also, a reading of the Korean film, The Scam.
Born roughly three decades apart, Younghill Kang (c. 1903–72) and Richard Eun-kook Kim (1932–2009... more Born roughly three decades apart, Younghill Kang (c. 1903–72) and Richard Eun-kook Kim (1932–2009) were the two most prominent early Korean/American writers, if by “early” we mean before the Asian American movement in the late 1960s and the emergence of Asian American literature as an explicit category. Both lived as children through Japanese colonization in what today is known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea (not to be confused with the Republic of Korea or South Korea). Both immigrated as young men to the United States where they pursued university educations and advanced degrees. As writers and professors in U.S. academic institutions, both also achieved a fair amount of success. Their works, mostly autobiographical fiction, gained a good deal of initial recognition in the United States in part because they offered an insider's view of a Korean culture in tumultuous times to an audience that could only view it from afar. In addition, they share similar career trajectories: both made an immediate splash in American public culture but soon vanished from public life after a decade or so of high visibility (Kang in the 1930s and Kim in the 1960s) with their books going out of print. Both also gained new audiences for their earlier work either posthumously or late in life: Kaya Press, a publisher specializing in Asian/American diasporic writing, republished Kang's East Goes West in 1997 and Penguin republished Kim's The Martyred in 2011 as part of their Penguin Classics series.
Although Kang wrote his most visible work before the Korean War and Kim produced his afterward, their commonalities might encourage us to read these writers as witnesses to a larger historical continuum that encompasses Korea's cultural, political, and economic emergence into global modernity, initially under the protection of and later in partnership with the United States, and also one that overlaps an even broader geopolitical recalibration, as the growth of Asian economies in the second half of the twentieth century increasingly!demands a revision of earlier models of east-west relations. As diasporic writers, Kang and Kim do not simply represent exilic Asian figures grappling with new Western environs. They also figure early transnational engagements across national, aesthetic, political, and racial lines, within the context of the gradual transformation of Korea from the so-called Hermit Kingdom, as it was known during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), into the international power that it is today.
Uploads
Books by Joseph Jeon
Papers by Joseph Jeon
Although Kang wrote his most visible work before the Korean War and Kim produced his afterward, their commonalities might encourage us to read these writers as witnesses to a larger historical continuum that encompasses Korea's cultural, political, and economic emergence into global modernity, initially under the protection of and later in partnership with the United States, and also one that overlaps an even broader geopolitical recalibration, as the growth of Asian economies in the second half of the twentieth century increasingly!demands a revision of earlier models of east-west relations. As diasporic writers, Kang and Kim do not simply represent exilic Asian figures grappling with new Western environs. They also figure early transnational engagements across national, aesthetic, political, and racial lines, within the context of the gradual transformation of Korea from the so-called Hermit Kingdom, as it was known during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), into the international power that it is today.
Book Reviews by Joseph Jeon
Although Kang wrote his most visible work before the Korean War and Kim produced his afterward, their commonalities might encourage us to read these writers as witnesses to a larger historical continuum that encompasses Korea's cultural, political, and economic emergence into global modernity, initially under the protection of and later in partnership with the United States, and also one that overlaps an even broader geopolitical recalibration, as the growth of Asian economies in the second half of the twentieth century increasingly!demands a revision of earlier models of east-west relations. As diasporic writers, Kang and Kim do not simply represent exilic Asian figures grappling with new Western environs. They also figure early transnational engagements across national, aesthetic, political, and racial lines, within the context of the gradual transformation of Korea from the so-called Hermit Kingdom, as it was known during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), into the international power that it is today.