The Logic of Compressed Modernity. Chang Kyung-Sup
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at the University of Lyon, who has extensively researched Chinese social affairs and intensively interacted with key Chinese scholars and intellectuals, for enlightening me about various specific conditions of post-socialist compressed modernity as manifested in contemporary China. She even edited a special issue of Temporalités in 2017, on “‘Compressed modernity’ and Chinese temporalities,” to which I contributed an article that appraises China as a post-socialist complex risk society. My inquisition to reflect such collaboration with Laurence Roulleau-Berger will continue in the coming years in terms of comparatively analyzing late capitalist versus post-socialist instances of compressed modernity.
I also wish to express my gratitude to many overseas as well as domestic colleagues who have offered encouraging responses and constructive inputs after examining various parts of my work on compressed modernity over many years. Among other overseas colleagues, Takehiko Kariya, D. Hugh Whittaker, Roger Goodman, Sébastien Lechevalier, Lynn Jamieson, Chua Beng Huat, Anthony Woodiwiss, Eui-Hang Shin, Hagen Koo, Seung-Sook Moon, Erik Mobrand, Alvin So, Yong-Chool Ha, Youna Kim, Charles Armstrong, Angie Chung, Gi-Wook Shin, Pieter Boele Van Hensbroek, Kiyomitsu Yui, Brian Yecies, Bruce Cumings, Hiroshi Kojima, Haruka Shibata, Paget Henry, Shirley Hsiao-Li Sun, Teo Youyenn, Raymond Chan, Pei-Chia Lan, Hsiu-hua Shen, Yunxiang Yan, Piao Kuangxing, Do-Young Kim, Rajni Palriwala, and Boris Zizek are warmly acknowledged. It may be impractical to similarly thank all Korean colleagues in the same respect, but I should acknowledge at least the scholarly support and encouragement kindly offered to me by Kwon Hyunji, Kim Baek Yung, Kim Seok-ho, Park Keong-Suk, Bae Eun-Kyung, Suh Yi-Jong, Yee Jaeyeol, Im Dong-Kyun, Chang Dukjin, Jung Keun-Sik, Jeong Il-Gyun, Choo Jihyun, Park Myoung-Kyu, Song Ho-Keun, Chung Chin-Sung, Kim Hong-Jung, Kim Sang-Jun, Eun Ki-Soo, Hong Chan-Sook, Kim Hwan-Suk, Chung Soo-Bok, Lee Cheol-Sung, Kim Kwang-Ki, Lee Seung-Yoon Sophia, Kim Hyun Mee, Han Joon, Chung Moo-Kwoon, Kim Dong-Choon, Chin Meejung, Lee Jae-Rim, Sung Mi-Ai, Lee Chul-Woo, Yoon In-Jin, Kim Tae-Kyoon, Lee Hyun-Ok, Chang Dae-Oup, Shim Doo-Bo, Kong Sukki, Lee Joonkoo, Seol Dong-Hoon, Song Yoo-Jean, Lee Yun-Suk, Eom Han-Jin, Kim Chul-Kyoo, Kim Hung-Ju, Song In-Ha, and many others.
The final stage in completing this book manuscript was generously supported by the University of Cambridge, where I was a visiting fellow of Clare Hall (college) in 2019 and later became the college’s life member. Both Clare Hall and the Department of Sociology at the university kindly arranged my seminars, in which I presented key materials from the current book. I am particularly thankful to Sarah Franklin, the head of Cambridge’s sociology department, for considerately arranging my visit and seminar and even offering keen interest in my work. John B. Thompson, now an emeritus professor of sociology there (and the director of Polity Press), also offered great enthusiasm for this book. During this period, I was also invited by Hubert Knoblauch to Technische Universität Berlin for a special seminar on some key issues of this book. A lengthy discussion with Knoblauch and his colleagues in Berlin was extremely useful in polishing up many parts of the book manuscript. Shortly after my visit to Cambridge, I was invited by the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco for a special lecture on South Korean modernization, in which I reflected on the book’s main substances by discussing South Korea’s compressed modernity, both as achievement and risk. El Mostafa Rezrazi at the Academy kindly arranged my visit and even offered to publish an Arabic version of this book.
These activities and relationships have resulted in numerous publications, some of which are partially incorporated in the current book after revision and updating as follows: Chapter 2 draws on a few sections of my chapter, “Compressed Modernity in South Korea: Constitutive Dimensions, Historical Conditions, and Systemic Mechanisms” in The Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society: A Global Approach, edited by Youna Kim, Routledge (2016). Chapter 3 is revised and updated from parts of my article “The Second Modern Condition? Compressed Modernity as Internalized Reflexive Cosmopolitisation” in the British Journal of Sociology, volume 61, number 3 (2010). Chapter 5 is revised and updated from parts of my chapter, “Transformative Modernity and Citizenship Politics: The South Korean Aperture” in South Korea in Transition: Politics and Culture of Citizenship, edited by Chang Kyung-Sup, Routledge (2014). Chapter 9 draws on a few sections of my article, “From Developmental to Post-Developmental Demographic Changes: A Perspectival Recount on South Korea” in the Korean Journal of Sociology, volume 49, number 6 (2015).
Given the abundant scholarly cooperation, interests, and assistance offered by so many supportive colleagues and institutions from across the world, I am deeply concerned about whether the quality of this arduously completed, though long overdue, book is meaningfully satisfactory to them. In a sense, all such scholarly interactions themselves have been a huge blessing to me, so I feel already rewarded much more than I deserve. The only excuse I can make now is that I am determined to work further on all remaining limits and defects. Since I am also preparing a companion book on “The Risk of Compressed Modernity,” I hope this could help make up for the existing short-comings of the current book.
Finally, I wish to express my sincere gratitude for devoted research assistance by Xu Xuehua and Kim Hee Yun at Seoul National University, and also for considerate and careful editorial support by Susan Beer, Julia Davies, and many other staff at Polity Press.
The research and writing for this book have been supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant (NRF2013S1A6A4016337). Also, Hanmaeum International Medical Foundation kindly offered a generous financial support to help cover some publishing expenses of this book.
1 INTRODUCTION Purpose, Debates, and Subjects
1.1 Purpose
South Korean society is marked by quite a curious mix of extreme social traits and tendencies.1 With a per capita GDP of more than thirty thousand U.S. dollars, many of the world’s leading industries, and the world’s highest level of tertiary education completion, South Koreans may certainly boast, to both foreigners and themselves, of their “miracle” economic and social achievements, which were built upon the debris from a total civil war, besides decades of colonial exploitation. By contrast, a long series of social problems at internationally scandalous levels keep afflicting and embarrassing South Koreans, such as household indebtedness, elderly poverty, suicide, and even tuberculosis infection at some of the worst levels among all industrialized nations. On the other hand, South Korean workers still work more than two thousand hours annually along with just a few other countries, South Korean students study far more hours than all their foreign counterparts in the world, and South Korean elderly keep extending their laboring years beyond any known level in the world. Demographically, South Korea’s fertility, which is at the world’s lowest level (e.g. a total fertility rate of 0.84 in 2020), and its life expectancy, which is rising at the world’s fastest pace, are predicted to make its population to age more rapidly than that of any other society.2 What I have viewed for many years as the country’s compressed modernity is full of extreme social traits and tendencies that often appear mutually contradictory. Given contemporary South Korea’s seemingly incomparable intensities, velocities, complexities, and contradictions in all aspects of social order and personal life, it is hard to imagine that this society used to be called a “hermit kingdom” after it was first exposed to Westerners.
How can social sciences deal with this miraculous yet simultaneously obstinate and hystericalized society? South Korea’s global prominence in developmental, sociopolitical, and cultural affairs has not only impressed overseas media and public but also motivated numerous internationally respectable scholars to analyze its experiences as a potential basis of new patterns or possibilities in postcolonial modernization and development.3 Despite their persuasive accounts of diverse aspects of South Korean modernity, its general social scientific implications and influences have been relatively limited. Their findings and interpretations, despite various substantive contributions, have failed to develop