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Denis VovchenkoHi, everyone,
I am happy to be able to participate in another USC workshop! There are few such opportunities online or face-to-face here in Oklahoma where I teach European and world history courses at Northeastern State University. My own specialty is modern European history but I have a Eurasian focus on Christian Orthodox identity politics in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and its successor states (1856-1939). Born and raised in Kazakhstan, I also have some Central Asian expertise.
Denis VovchenkoWestern Hypocrisy?
It seems that there is a slant in the Western coverage of anti-lockdown protests we see in China now. When NPR or BBC commented on anti-lockdown protests in the EU in 2020-2021, they were either neutral or negative towards the demonstrators as selfish unreasonable social deviants. In contrast, the reactions to the anti-shutdown protests in China are shockingly biased in favor of the protesters. While the calls for resignation of various incumbent EU leaders were downplayed, there appears to be an exaggeration of the political nature of the demands put forward by Chinese demonstrators. Last week, from the height of his supreme authority, Clay explained that political demands were minimal and that the 1989 comparison was off target (if I remember correctly). What do you think?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56222942
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-63781250
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/04/1140641522/pooh-china-lockdown-protests
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/China-COVID-protests-mark-biggest-act-of-resistance-in-decades
Denis VovchenkoAre Chinese less Westernized in their beauty standards than Japan and S. Korea? “The Grand Tour: Europe on 1500 yuan a day” (New Yorker, 18 April 2011) mentioned a ten-year-old’s surprise, “Do all foreigners have big noses?” As far as I know, pre-Meiji Japan similarly considered the Whites to be ugly but in the 20th century S. Korea and Japan adopted more Western sensibilities, hence, the popularity of plastic surgery to get rid of the eye fold etc.
Denis VovchenkoIt seemed to me that “Xi Jinping Thought for Children” (Economist, 4 Sept 2021) misrepresented Mao and exaggerated the differences between him and Xi. Mao did not always encourage the young to attack the teachers. Before the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mao embodied the “establishment,” right?
Denis VovchenkoWhat activities or materials might you use to help students understand how the family planning policy was implemented and experienced?
I would introduce ethnicity into the analysis of the family planning policy to have students compare Chinese and American approaches. Correct me if I am wrong, CPC allowed non-Han ethnic minorities to have two or more kids. In the US, in the 1910s through 1970s, there was a concerted state-private effort to reduce African-American population by encouraging or requiring sterilization under various pretexts like hereditary “social deviancy” etc. For the US side, I would assign an excerpt from Edwin Black’s War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. Is there a short article explaining how the one-child policy varied by ethnicity? Would it be appropriate compare those family planning policies in China vs. USA from that angle?
Denis VovchenkoHow might you help students to understand how important economic development has been both to Chinese leaders and to the Chinese people?
I wonder if it would be appropriate to use the limited support for the Tiananmen protesters in 1989 as an example of silent majority’s interest only in economic development at that time. Were most Chinese satisfied with Deng’s “4 modernizations”? Is it possible to gauge how many were interested in democratization in 1989? In other words, how justified were the official statements by Deng and others in the Democracy Wall handout?
Denis VovchenkoHow do you explain to your students the role of the CPC and the significance of the Household Registration System?
I would introduce the basics of both institutions in a lecture or in a short reading like a textbook chapter or an article (homework). That propaganda video about CPC meritocracy might be a helpful A/V aid when contextualized by lecture material or more academic readings. Based on such an introduction, I would divide students into small groups to have them find parallels in the US party system and the federal system (things like lower tuition for state residents etc).
Denis VovchenkoJennifer mentioned the support of shamans for democratization in the 1980s. How organized is that form of religion? Usually, shamanism is not structured. I know they are influential – a recent South Korean leader (Park Geun Hye) consulted a shaman compared to Rasputin (in 2016). Apparently, shamans are still a huge influence. Can they be compared to a state church like in the UK or Scandinavia or Catholic countries?
Denis VovchenkoIs there any pride in S. Korea for N. Korea’s achievements? In teaching world history, we often have to make shortcuts by drawing parallels – I would like to compare N. Korea’s significance in East Asia to Cuba’s appeal to Spanish-speaking Latin American countries (but less in Brazil). Both socialist “holdovers” survived the rigors of the 1990s to exert a surprising amount of soft or hard power.
After all, in the Olympics athletes from both competed as one team. Arguably, N. Korea is less dependent on China than S. Korea is on the US, right? N. Korea’s nuclear and space programs are seemingly more advanced than what Seoul has developed in those two areas. Even President Trump gave credit to Kim Jon Un as “the Rocket man” (tongue-in-cheek).
Denis VovchenkoJennifer mentioned economic success (the Korean “wave”) clouded by mistreatment of immigrant labor. Does it include N. Korean defectors? The world-popular shows (“The Squid Game” and “The Parasites”) suggest the decline of the S. Korean middle class. How true or exaggerated is that kind of portrayal?
Denis VovchenkoWhat do you make of the Vietnam vs. Korean Wars memory gap mentioned by Robinson on p. 115? I remember that difference in two monuments on the National Mall (the Korean War memorial being more modest and not featuring the names of the fallen GI’s).
Denis VovchenkoIn her lecture, Jennifer implied that both sides were prone to escalate tensions leading to the Korean War outbreak. Robinson mentioned that most scholars agree now that Kim Il Sung was from being Stalin’s puppet and took the initiative (115). At the same time, Robinson dismissed as “a conspiracy theory” the argument that Rhee also took the lead in the push to start hostilities (115). On the same page, he mentioned that both Rhee and the US had been confident of the ROK army’s advantage early in 1950. With that confidence, their earlier willingness to escalate makes sense, right? What is your take on the role of the US and ROK in the outbreak of the Korean War?
Denis VovchenkoI enjoyed the excerpt from Robinson! A rare example of a balanced treatment of a Cold War conflict! Some might even have accused him of a being crypto-Communist! He mentioned a lot of examples of mass popular support in the South for the North Korean occupation and land reforms that it introduced (pp. 116-117). At the same time, he did not mention any widespread collaboration with the ROK and US forces during their control of most of N. Korea. Is this difference due to Robinson’s bias or in the lack of scholarship of what happened in the North in the fall of 1950?
Denis VovchenkoTeaching Resources
The Korean 1936 champion reminds me of a recent S. Korean film titled “My Way” (2012) about two runners – one Japanese and one Korean who both competed for Japan. They were then drafted into the Japanese army to invade Mongolia in 1939 where they were captured by the Soviets. To survive captivity, they volunteered into the Red Army when Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941 only to defect to the Nazis and to be fighting the Allies landing in Normandy. The description says that it is based on a true story https://www.amazon.com/My-Way-Jang-Dong-Gun/dp/B007S0DCUU
Some battle scenes are not very convincing but there is a lot of drama and action.
Speaking of how the comfort women were portrayed in film, there is an Australian movie “Paradise Road” (1997) set in Japanese-occupied Indonesia. Interestingly, while it focuses on interned European and American women, it doesn’t portray the Japanese as brutal. Instead of forcible recruitment, we see their attempts to attract women into an officer brothel with promises of better food, clean clothes etc.
The lecture mentioned that the Russians were “less heavy handed” in the immediate post-Japanese period. There is a great article about how the Soviets were more successful in encouraging Korean national culture, which attracted many artists, writers, and performers disappointed by the pro-American regime in the South.
Denis VovchenkoIt seems that “My Name was Keoko” exaggerated the degree of Japanese repression of Korean culture, does it? P. 4 talks about the need to speak Japanese in public for fear of military patrols etc. Based on the lecture, I was surprised that the Japanese did not systematically seek to wipe out Korean culture, at least between 1919 and the Pacific War. The lecture mentioned that 75% of Koreans complied with the 1940 name change law even though the punishment for not doing so was not harsh (“discrimination” was mentioned). Does it mean that most Koreans were prepared to assimilate and become Japanese? Did the Japanese live up to the brotherhood rhetoric and promote Koreans to important positions? The 1936 Olympic winner was probably a poster child of that policy.
Was Kim-Il Sung and other resistance leaders popular or even known in the 1930s Korea?
