Kim Myung-Hee
Institute of Humanities for Unification, Konkuk University

Received December 31 2015; Revised version received January 31 2016; Accepted February 15 2016

Abstract

Discourses around Korean familism emphasize traditional factors or remain in the realm of how Korean familism corresponds with mobilization strategy of a developmental state and functions in a transformative manner; therefore, the discourses are unable to break from the normative argument of public vs. private and egoistic vs. moral. This study explores the possibility of prospective interpretation by revisiting competing hypotheses on factors and characteristics of contemporary Korean familism. Major findings of this research are as follow.
First, existing discussions can be generally categorized as follows: Cultural causation (Confucian familism theory), industrialization causation, historical structure approach and politico-sociological approach. By critically reconstituting achievements and limits of preceding studies, it is possible to better understand the familism of divided Korea as a political construct via historic experiences of the colonial modernity and war state as outcome of ‘the invention of tradition’ insisted by Eric Hobsbawm. This study conceptualizes institutional condition of familism into "family status system," a unique mechanism of the civil right of the divided state, which is a combined result of the National Security Act, implicative system, and patriarchal Family Law, all of three are twins of the 1948 Constitution of the Republic of Korea.
Second, when complexity and multi-meanings of ‘family’ which is a space of reproduction where gender, generation, class and state come together, are applied to the level of historical experiences of cold war and post-cold war in the East Asia, ‘family’ in the war system plays the function of ambivalent medium in the sense that it becomes a compensating space of lost public space and that it is also a socialization space in which traumas related to colony, war, division are reproduced.
In this context, this study proposes the potential of ‘political familism’ innate in family-centeredness of divided Koreans to be considered in intimate public sphere that is neither public nor private. In conclusion, this study shows that Korean familism needs to be understood comprehensively in conjunction with structural and institutional conditions around families, the legitimacy of the state, and the historical experiences as well as political consciousness of family members interacting with such environment. This research also calls for an interpretation which focuses on agency and political potentials of familism as historical product of colonial modernity.

Key Words : Divided Koreans, family status system, political familism, invention of tradition, intimate public sphere