ON KOREAN UNIFICATION, CRITICAL AWARENESS, AND FINDING OUT WHAT YOU WANT TO STUDY



A DEAN interview with scholar Bruce Cumings

Source: Wikimedia

On February 28th 2014, Bruce Cumings sat down with representatives from the Duke Chronicle and the Duke East Asia Nexus for an interview after the “Paradox of the Post-Cold War in Asia” workshop sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Studies Institute. The event was cosponsored by the Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, the Asian Pacific Studies Institute, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image, the Korea Forum, and the Program in Literature, Humanities Writ Large Emerging Networks on Culture/Conflict in Asia. Attendee's included Duke professors Leo Ching, Guo-Juin Hong,  Nayoung Aimee Kwon and Hwansoo Kim.

After the workshop, Professor Bruce Cumings agreed to sit down for an interview with representatives from the Duke Chronicle and the Duke East Asia Nexus. The interviewers were Tenzing Thondup, Christine Kweon and Iris Kim, and the full transcript of the interview is below. 

IRIS: What do you think about the media's portrayal of North Korean? How influential is the media in diplomatic relations between North Korea and United States?

BRUCE CUMINGS Talk about the American Media! They are, I think, one of the most important forces behind the really negative image of North Korea. First of all, North Korea's main problem is that they're the ones that produce that negative image, but the press also doesn't really pick up stories that aren't negative. Every once in a while there will be a CNN story on some North Korean study group that’s studying in Germany or something like that, which is always seen as a surprise. 

The media has a lot of in influence that regard but no influence on diplomacy. One of the things I've learned is that when the State Department or the National Security Council brings in outside experts, it’s almost always for public relations. In other words, they have a new policy that they want to make us think is the right policy toward China or North Korea; it is very rarely to pick your brain.  And that's because they live in a bureaucratic world where every policy paper has ten to fifteen people signing off on it. They don't want innocent bystanders from outside to come into that process, because then their views get sidelined. [Zbigniew] Brzezinski and [Henry] Kissinger and people like that have influence, because they can go to the president. But if you can only go to middle-level officials in the State Department it’s hard to get yourself heard, and that's true of media people too.

CHRISTINE: We were asking you questions earlier during the round table discussion about why students should study the state of Korea; you said that it might be because North Korea will stick around. In terms of learning about Korea through academia, what is it really that you think Korean studies students should be doing after their education with what they've learned?

BRUCE CUMINGS If Korea were not next to China and Russia, it would be seen as a medium sized country; it’s basically the size of England, and England once ran a global empire. But it gets overlooked because Japan and China are seen as more important. Of the coverage in a paper of record like the New York Times about Korea, 8 out of 10 are about North Korea, [and only] when there's problems with North Korea. There are very few articles on South Korea. But Korea is a fascinating place. It’s one of the oldest countries in the world, and one of the most effective and efficient countries in the world. You people will live through the 21st century with Korea becoming more and more important. 

Either the Wall Street Journal or the Economist said a few months ago that they thought South Korea will rank #1 in the world in per capita income in 2050. They based that on knowledge industries, such as social media and that kind of thing, being so dominant now. South Korea has so many people who are using [social media] and who are well educated. But [back] when I got into the Korean field, people would ask me questions such as, "Why do you want to study Korea?" 

So I think there are all kinds of reasons to study it. But every country in the world has its own interests, particularly ones with long histories. I was just reading about Turkey. They're going crazy about the Ottoman Empire, and there's some soap opera about the Ottoman Empire that's become a great hit. They have a really interesting past, and probably a lot of Turks don't know about it, just like Americans don't know much about the past [chuckles].

The last thing I'd say about that is that if you have an intrinsic interest in a country or a subject, just go ahead and do it, because you're not able to predict whether it will turn out good in the end. So the best thing is when you yourself have a deep interest in the subject, and then you pursue it through graduate school or medical school or whatever it is.

TENZING: In your talk earlier when you were asked about how you got into this field, you talked about how the field has expanded radically from the earlier "Sinologist" tradition. You simultaneously said it has lost what you called a "critical edge," and people now haven't developed a "critical awareness." I was wondering what you really meant by that. 

BRUCE CUMINGS Well, I think that statement is too strong if taken as a blanket statement. Critical studies and critical awareness have been something that has really swamped academia in the last 20-30 years, particularly in the humanities. We have a critical study of almost anything, from Mickey Mouse to James Dean movies to the Korean War, and that's good. What I meant by critical thinking is the kind of consciousness you develop when you're confronting powerful people who want to shut you up and don't like to hear what you're saying, and when you could lose a career over it. 

That was the case of those graduate students that I talked about who opposed the war, who opposed [those against the] support of civil rights, and opposed the role of a lot of academics in prosecuting the Vietnam War.  And boy, that got you in instant trouble with certain professors. It’s things like that, where you actually have to confront the 50 year old professor who would like you to disappear: that was something that really scared me a lot before I ever got involved with it and scared a lot of people so they never did get involved with it. That's what I was talking about - it's more a matter of the kind of consciousness people just develop in street protests, like Occupy Wall Street. You just see a different world when you do things like that.

IRIS: My next question is about reunification: what is the possibility of it happening?

BRUCE CUMINGS From 1998-2008, I think the two presidents had pretty clear ideas about how to achieve reunification, and it meant reconciliation between North and South over a very long time, 25-30 years, so Koreans could get to know each other and understand each other’s history. That was moving along pretty strongly for eight years, and then it got basically stonewalled by first George W. Bush and then Lee Myung-bak, the [then] new President of South Korea. 

But I don't see any path towards reunification now, short of war. In other words, somehow through minor incidents that ratchet up, you get a war on the peninsula. It would be a horrible, brutal war but probably the US and South [Korea] would win. And then in that context you would have a reunification under South Korean auspices, but you would have a lot of trouble in the North governing because of guerrilla groups, dissident groups, and people who don't like the South. I don't see any possibility of North Korea conquering South Korea, but North Korea itself is very hard to conquer because they're so dug in, and they have a huge army.

So as long as the US and Seoul aren't trying to engage with North Korea, then things go backward, and they become stagnant. So you have incidents like we've had in the last couple of years, with [the ROKS] Cheonan [sinking] and you get back to the status quo. A couple people die, maybe 30 people die, and we're no better off than before - we're worse off in fact. And that's why I think the last few years have been very unfortunate because a lot of the momentum that was there until 2008, six years later it has mostly dissipated. 

The one thing - and this is very important - that keeps going no matter what is the Kaesong Export Zone. It was briefly closed last year, but I knew the North Koreans would reopen it, because it’s a cash cow, and 55,000 North Korean workers are working for the factories there. It started in the engagement period, and it continues to go on. It’s represents a hope that through economic exchange, reconciliation will be promoted. 

When you go to meetings where there are South Koreans and North Koreans together, often the South Koreans are quite obnoxious; they're acting like they're wealthy, they've done very well, and here's our poor cousins who don't know what they're doing. My wife in particular really can't stand that stuff, and she's been in a number of meetings like that. Of course the North Koreans hate it. But the idea of living with them, reconciling, moving forward together is I think the only way the peninsula will be reunified peacefully.  

IRIS: You said something about how we should open, [or] North Korea should open up more in the future.

BRUCE CUMINGS Well, we could do a lot to help that. China recognized South Korea in 1992. That's 22 years ago, and Henry Kissinger had a policy that if China recognized the South, we would recognize the North. And here it is in 2014, and we still haven't recognized the North. Meanwhile, China has good relations with both North and South Korea and is increasing its influence in both Koreas. If we had an embassy in Pyongyang, we might actually have influence over that government. Diplomacy arose in the world to deal with enemies short of war, not to deny recognition to someone because you don't like them, which is what we've been doing to North Korea for 70 years. 

CHRISTINE: Earlier, you were citing that one of the ways that Korea can unify peacefully would be to educate the people about each other. In South Korea, the education system is somewhat biased towards having a very negative view on North Korea and a very conservative, rightist overtone; how would it be possible to change Korea's education system?

BRUCE CUMINGS That maybe true today, and before the Cold War ended, it was totally true. I taught in a middle school, and I couldn't believe – I think an hour a day - they had so-called "moral" education which was always anti-Communism. “Does anybody have a watch in North Korea? Do they all wear rubber shoes or does somebody have leather shoes:” this kind of thing in front of middle-school students. It was just virulent anti-Communism to sustain the South Korean regime. 

Then from around 1990 to 2008, you had a complete sea-change in the way South Koreans look at the North: a lot of textbooks started talking about things they weren't allowed to talk about before, to talk about the way North Korea operates. A lot of scholars wrote very good books that are critically unbiased.

But since 2008, the right wing in South Korea want to get back to - they look at young brains like yours as receptacles to be filled with the right ideas, just like you force feed a duck or a goose, so you will look at North Korea as an awful place. And by and large that works [laughs], at least until people are 13 or 14 and begin to have a glimmer of some of their own thoughts. So it's unfortunate because another anti-Communist generation is being produced in the last 6-7 years. O course, North Korea is always worse in this regard in that they just fill the minds of young people with whatever their line is and don't allow anything else.

TENZING: That's a pretty stark characterization of education in North Korea.

BRUCE CUMINGS Yeah, and that's not the half of it either [laughs].

TENZING: How do you feel about PUST - Pyongyang University of Science and Technology? What does it represent?

BRUCE CUMINGS  That's a terrific advancement. It’s maybe not as important as the Kaesong zone. My wife and I knew one of the elder ministers living in Ann Arbor who provided some funding for that school and it seems to be going well. It's a primarily technical and scientific education. A lot of the Americans are teaching there, but it’s just a drop in the bucket. Still, it didn't exist before, so it's a very positive development.

TENZING So is PUST a sign of changes going on under the surface, or is it just a sort of little bubble of hypocrisy?

BRUCE CUMINGS The North Koreans during the Cold War would get their technical journals and technical education from the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, and after those countries collapsed as Communist systems, they had to get it somewhere else, so they've been working with Switzerland, England, Canada and other countries that have recognized them, but also with the US. There's a group of [North Korean] computer science students that have been coming in and out of Syracuse University to no attention, but that has apparently been working well. The North likes technical and scientific education and of course discriminates in the curriculum against anything like the humanities or social sciences.  

TENZING Would that be like your watermark for change?

BRUCE CUMINGS The North Koreans do want to change, but when you talk to them they'll say we can't because the US is the biggest power in the world, and they block us at every point. That's a rationalization on their part, but it’s also true that we've slapped more embargoes on North Korea since 1950 than any country in the world. There was some progress again on taking away some of the embargoes, but the most unfortunate assumption of people in Seoul and Washington who make policy is that if they kick the can down the road and wait a few more years, North Korea will just disappear on their own. Then they won't have to worry about it, and they won't have to put up with it. That would be great, I suppose, from the standpoint of South Korean leaders or American leaders, but it’s highly unlikely to happen.

The German unification was an unfortunate one in that it was great for Germany, and especially West Germany [since it] happened peacefully. But it gave to the South Koreans the idea that all they have to do is wait and sooner or later their system will be extended to the North because West Germany just extended its system to East Germany, and it's a positive example, but a negative one in the case of the two Koreas because it’s unlikely to happen. The Soviet Union had 360,000 troops in East Germany when the Berlin Wall collapsed, they could have mobilized them and we'd still have the Berlin Wall, so...

Alright, so thanks a lot, and I'll go collapse for a half an hour.

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Tenzing Thondup is a fourth year student at Duke University, where he is majoring in Religion, Psychology, and pursuing a certificate in Global Health. He is editor-in-chief for the Duke East Asia Nexus.

Christine Kweon is a sophomore at Duke University. She is a member of DEAN and works on programming.

Iris Kim is a sophomore at Duke University and a writer/blogger with the Duke Chronicle's The Big Blog.

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