Coloniality in Korea And A South Korean Project For Overcoming Modernity

Abstract

Coloniality in East Asia is very much a part of the modern world system and should be understood in the context of modernity, Eurocentrism (including Americanism), racism and ethnicism. The 'division system' in Korea, which is itself the aftermath of Japanese colonialism, encompasses the entire peninsula with the vested interests of the two Koreas in collusion as well as hostile confrontation, and is a sui generis subsystem of the world system with considerable powers of self-reproduction. For all its touted instability and potential explosiveness, this division system in actuality serves as a faithful component of the modern world system, not only by legitimizing the continuing hegemonic role of the United States but by reproducing coloniality in still another form and so reinforcing the ideologies of statism, nationalism, developmentalism and racism as well as sexism. Therefore, the unification of the Korean peninsula has to be conceptualized not so much as national reunification per se as the abolition of the division system as a crucial subset of the world system. This kind of unification will need to effect interconnections between the immediate 'reformist' struggles for fuller citizenship rights on each side of the dividing line, the middle-range task of reunification based on and further enlarging these rights, and the long-term endeavour to change the world system and create a new civilization based on wisdom and profound life-competency.

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