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Kimberly de BerzunzaI teach middle school Social Studies, so Ancient and Medieval World History and US History from the founding to 1914. Therefore I do teach about Korea (added in CA in 2016) but not about 20th Century. I really took this course for my own learning and to gain more depth to bring to my teaching, even if it's a time period I don't teach. The reason I think this is important is because the modern contexts help us have both a starting and ending point to the study of ancient and medieval history.
I usually start any unit or section with a KWL type activity, and students sometimes know that Korea is divided in two parts, and that's about it. They might also know something about K-pop and Korean food. This past year I was able to add a little bit more with some books and brochures I got at the Korean Cultural Center during the seminar I did last summer, so we were able to look at temples, clothing, writing, and landscapes. As I mentioned in a different post, I showed a video clip from South Korea and one from North Korea- with a questionable video coming up when I wasn't adequately prepared. Students also did a jigsaw study of women, art, and religious practices. I am hoping to add better resources now for this next year, including contrasting scenes from Crash Landing on You. I also want to look up the documentaries mentioned and take some clips. I have the added challenge of teaching in Spanish, so I look first for videos in Spanish or in Korean with subtitles I can put in Spanish. This tends to seriously limit my results.
When I teach medieval history to 7th graders, one of my main goals is to give students a sense of the richness and depth of the cultures and histories we study, and the interconnectedness of the world, even hundreds of years ago. I want them to see Korean culture as unique, rich, and special, and to know that women in ancient Korea were powerful, and that Korea had several powerful queens who ruled in their own right. I want them to see how Korea developed its own phonetic writing system, that is different from both Chinese and Japanese, although it does have aspects of both. I want them to see how both China and Japan influenced Korean culture and history, but how Korea adopted apsects of those cultures either through force or desire, or maybe just through soft-power and exposure, yet made them their own. These points are important on their own, but also to give understanding to the conflicts of the 20th century and beyond, where they will learn about the opressive practices of China, Japan, and the US on the peninsula, and hopefully be able to appreciate why this was and is so devastating to the Korean people. I hope my students will see Korea as a real place with real people, not just a place where a war happened, a place that was occupied, a place that was divided, and/or a place where the "good guys" live in the south and the "bad guys" are in the north. Although my time to teach about Korea is limited, I believe my own understanding goes a long way toward bringing the curriculum to life and toward humanizing the content in a way that is more meaningful and relevant to 12-year-olds.
I really enjoyed this course and have learned a lot, and am motivated to continue exploring the topics we have discussed.
Kimberly de BerzunzaI finished Crash Landing last night and will say I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how I would use it with students. I teach Middle School and it's totally appropriate for the age, but I teach Medieval World and early US History, so it's not appropriate to my curriculum. I do usually allow 8th graders to come to my room for movie lunches, where we watch "Jamestown," "Turn," and "Mercy Street," but I think this could be more challenging because of the subtitles. But when I teach about the past, I always connect it to the present, so I think I could show scenes from North and South to show the modern contrasts to give modern context to the past.
What I liked about the show besides the story line was seeing the contrasts between North and South Korea, but even more I appreciated the humanization of North Koreans as regular people, even though the situation they live in is bizarre. There are definitely some cheesy aspects, especially some of the weird special effects, and some soap-opera-typical impossible aspects that were over the top. There was a fair balance of humor, drama, and suspense, but the episodes are ridiculously long and have strange organization and pacing. My husband found it confusing the way it jumps around in time, but I like how it goes back to show things from a different perspective, or give more background on something that happened previously. I especially like the different perspectives that come from the additional characters- the guys that work under Ri, and the women of the village.
Crash Landing was fun, but I think I'm going to try some of the other films also.
Kimberly de BerzunzaLaura, this is a really great post. I was thinking the same thing about sourcing, but would not have said it as well as you did here! Studying North Korea is not so different from what we do with much older time periods and limited information.
I was reminded of something else as I read your post that I have been thinking about while watching "Crash Landing on You," and that is in terms of the cosmetic surgery- now I am looking at the actors' eyes, noses, and jawlines. I'm wondering what work they've had done, and how this correlates with the roles they play, specifically your mention of Hyun Bin playing a similarly sympathetic character in another film.
Overall I am strongly in favor of the use of fiction to help my students understand History- I teach Middle School and I'm so grateful to our English teacher for teaching "The Giver," for example. I see so many parallels that I can use as connections to various civilizations and political systems we study, and I see many parallels with North Korea. It would be interesting to do some kind of comparison using a North Korean film or maybe a short story, and something like "The Giver" or "Hunger Games" or "Divergent."
Finally, I am struck by the recurring thought that everywhere in the world, people are just people. Cultures are different and political systems are different, but at our core we want to live a good life, be happy and secure, love and be loved, and feel like we belong. I appreciate seeing that depicted in scenes from North Korea, so that we avoid that "Single Story" trap as well as our own propaganda tropes depicting North Koreans as evil automotons marching to honor the Great Leader, when in reality they are pretty much like us.
Kimberly de BerzunzaLast year I fell into a trap. I found a couple of video clips about North Korea that I shared with my class. But then they disappeared or were blocked or for some reason I couldn't find them again, and so under pressure I looked up something on the fly and what I found was TERRIBLE. It was super biased, "Evil and Backward North Korea" kind of fare. I was embarrassed as a teacher to have shown something so bad, and tried to spin it as how we evaluate the quality of media... I'm really glad to now have some better options. I teach Medieval World History, but I still like to make connections to modern day. As I said above, I look forward to exploring more of these films. I am currently watching "Crash Landing on You" and really enjoy it, but I'd like to see "Ode to my Father" and "Under the Sun." I saw that PBS documentary before. Are all of these easily available, or how can we find them?
Kimberly de BerzunzaI really appreciate any films that are appropriate and accurate for classroom use. Visual media is an incredibly powerful tool, and fictional accounts can still help us understand the humanity of many situations. It's always hard to make time for full-length movies, but when it's worth it, it's worth it. I always wish we could read this or that novel- at least a movie can be watched in maybe 3 class periods. I look forward to exploring some of these.
Kimberly de BerzunzaThat is a great Ted Talk and so relevant to almost any discussion these days! OFF topic- if you have not read Adichie's novels, both Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun are great.
Kimberly de BerzunzaIt seems like we have looked a lot at what life is like in Seoul or other cities, but what about in the rural areas? Jennifer touched on this the other day but I was thinking about the "super-fast WiFi" she mentioned and wondered if that is true everywhere or only in cities? Are the rural areas still much more traditional, like in most places? Is there a huge rural/urban dichotomy like in the US and most places?
Kimberly de BerzunzaThank you, Jennifer, for mentioning the Korean punk groups! However, I only wrote down Crying Nut- I love it! What was the other group you mentioned? Also, how popular are these groups in and outside of Korea?
Everyone- you need to check this out- I far prefer it to K-pop.
Kimberly de BerzunzaYes, Jonathan- I had a middle school student a few years ago who I believe is non-binary but was not completely open (yet) having one Korean grandma and one Puerto Rican grandma they were extremely reluctant to disappoint...
Kimberly de BerzunzaWhat are society and culture like in South Korea today?
Well, yes, this is broad...
It's difficult and dangerous to pass judgement on another society from my outsider's point of view. It would be easy to categorize modern South Korea as patriarchal, sexist, overly-concerned with physical appearance and conspicous consumption, with weakening social norms and constructs as evidenced by the Big Bang and Nth Room scandals or the 43% poverty rate among the elderly.
On the other hand, are we really so different? We have horrible sexual predatation, exploitation, and human trafficking scandals all the time. Our elderly are frequently abandoned in nursing homes that can't care for them properly. Our society continues to discriminate against people based on gender, age, weight, overall appearance, race, sexual orientation... the pay gap may not be as large in the US as in South Korea, but there are many factors.
Looking at the cosmetic surgery topic, it seems very extreme in SK, and whether it is to achieve a perceived Korean or Western standard, the real issue as I see it is the desperate need to conform to an ideal. On the one hand, choosing cosmetic surgery could be empowering, but on the other it is still conformist and could be seen as oppressive. It is far more common in SK than in the US- a quick Google search turned up data that the US is 6th in the world in per-capita cosmetic surgeries. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/plastic-surgery-worldwide-which-countries-nip-and-tuck-the-most.aspx Even this strikes me as high- the only people I know personally who have had cosmetic surgery are Latin Americans. I did read that it is on the rise in the US, and I wonder how much has to do with social media.
I am interested in the influence of K-pop around the world in connection to the #MeToo and other political movements, and the darker side of the hyper-sexualized girl groups and the horrific scandals that exploded this past year connected to some of the boy bands. I found particularly interesting the article that discussed how this could affect the national GDP- that's huge. Imagine if the Jonas Brothers were implicated in something similar to Big Bang, and this were to affect the US' GDP! I hope that the K-pop groups can mobilize in a positive way to combat sexual predation and gender-based discrimination and stereotyping. It looks like they have the global reach and power to do something big, if they choose.
I also find the "Escape the corset" movement really interesting and I wonder to what degree this pushback on gender-normative attitudes will create real change in South Korean society. Could it open the door to more tolerance and open-mindedness? Or will it spark a backlash from the majority? And how much is any of this connected to the economy? Will COVID-19 change the picture again?
Kimberly de BerzunzaHaving now read the articles, I must revise my previous speculation with regard to economic concerns, as the articles explain that the economy was of great concern to Kim Jong Il and he opened up the markets much as China had done. I was surprised by this because it is so contrary to communist ideology, but it makes more sense as a way to rebuild the country’s economy and establish his role as a new kind of leader. It also fits with the changed world he was living in in the 1990s, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Therefore, he ensured regime survival by shifting from juche to the son-gun military first ideology, but also by opening the economic system so they could produce sufficient goods and increase the standard of living in order to gain or keep the support of the majority.
Now that I’m watching Crash Landing on You, I begin to understand things like the market where Captain Ri buys the South Korean products, the access to the Jaguar and the South Korean soap operas.
I also understand better the broader impact of the Sunshine Policy as a way of opening the economy for growth and development and improved international relations, especially with China, which in turn would keep the population better off but also open up the society as a whole to new ideas.
Kimberly de BerzunzaThe article on illegal media infiltration and semi-legal markets selling foreign goods illustrates the cracks in the system, and the discussion of young people’s access to these goods and feelings of betrayal and frustration make me wonder if that will be enough to spur revolutionary change there, or if it will only serve to cause depression, since the power to organize is so limited. There are many instances throughout history where people have shown tremendous bravery running underground resistance against ruthless dictators- could this happen again there?
Several of the articles confirm our early thoughts that Kim’s main goal is to establish a presence and legitimacy on the world stage, and that staging meetings with President Moon and President Trump work to both Kim’s and Trump’s favor, regardless of the outcome. It keeps Trump in the narrative, and makes Kim look important, meeting with such powerful countries. This is a good strategy for establishing or defining himself as a leader, and as one who will forge a different path for his country. Even if in reality, it might not be as different as he’d like to paint it.
After all I’ve read, the video lecture, the online session, and what I’ve seen so far of Crash Landing on You, I feel like North Korea is almost as mysterious to me as before. It’s the artificiality of the totalitarian state with total media control that I find bizarre and intriguing. The lack of reliable information, the ease with which erroneous and unchecked news reports of Kim’s death spread- it’s all part of the oddity that North Korea is in my estimation. It is also part of the danger. I hope that the cracks will allow in the light, but I worry that even with that light, people will be too fearful to force change. And with two unpredictable world leaders, I find that danger to be, well, more dangerous.
Kimberly de BerzunzaThank you for sharing this article, Maria! It is indeed very interesting. I wonder what the real statistics are for the virus, but also if they are truly closed down I suppose it's possible they've mostly kept it at bay?
Kimberly de BerzunzaHow has Kim Jong Un forged his own path for the Kim dynasty? How worried should we be about North Korea?
First, how did he actually become successor and keep that position? By murdering his uncle and his brother… On the one hand, Kim Jong Un comes with a slightly more worldly perspective than his predecessors, while on the other, he has shown himself to be at least as ruthless and unpredictable as his father and grandfather. He appears inclined to emulate his grandfather in many ways, including his image, using the Korean Workers’ flag, meeting with the people at their workplaces- could he be going for the nostalgia factor and hoping to appeal to young and old alike? Because at the same time, he is intent on continuing to build up military force, which seems more in line with his father’s regime. So in many ways “his own path” seems to be a mixing of elements of his father’s path and his grandfather’s path.
One thing that is different is Kim Jong Un’s in-person meetings with the US, but this was only possible because Trump is the first US president willing to meet with a North Korean leader.
I think we should be pretty worried. Kim Jong Un is unpredictable, saying one thing and doing another. He may not have the power he pretends, but he does have significant ability to do real damage to neighboring countries and his own people, if he wishes. And in North Korea, his power is absolute and unquestioned. With limited Russian or Chinese support, North Korea becomes more independent, and this is scarier because there are fewer opportunities to limit its power through diplomatic or economic influence. However, he does want legitimacy in the eyes of the world, and some knowledge of the outside world is also seeping in to North Korea, so he also has reasons to hold back. Although I don’t see North Korea as seeking world domination, the unpredictability is a danger.
Kimberly de BerzunzaI love Madam Secretary! Finished it recently.
You are so right about the "outlasted" comment- that is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Thank you for mentioning this!
