Why South Korea is "Unique": A Critical Perspective on South Korean Cultural Characterizations

This paper examines the modern discourse of South Korean culture and its history to illustrate how methodological challenges and the use of ambiguous cultural terms have contributed to the development of dominant, essentializing narratives of South Korean cultural identity. In so doing, I scrutinize a variety of influences that have caused South Korean cultural characterizations to be othering, focusing on themes of cultural determinism, assumptions of homogeneity, cultural engineering, and concepts of “uniqueness.” Finally, I show how the dual nature of important cultural concepts such as han, hŭng, and chŏng—as emotions yet also as signals of Koreanness as a distinct and unified social category—contributes to (re-)generating culturally essentializing narratives of South Korea. By revealing how the essentialization of cultural terms diminishes their ability to fully and faithfully convey the nuances of a vast, intricate, and deeply historied people, this paper prompts renewed interest in the meanings and relevance of these terms in contemporary discourses.