An Affair with Korea: Memories of South Korea in the 1960s by Vincent S. R. Brandt (review)

The memoir, An Affair with Korea: Memories of South Korea in the 1960s, offers an enjoyable read with many insights into the life of the author in Sŏkp’o, a remote fishing village in rural Korea. In the 1960s, the village was not connected to the road system and one had to walk two hours on mountain footpaths to reach it. There was no electricity or running water and the economic life of villagers was mainly self-reliant. The book lists the changes that this research field had undergone through the 1990s and, especially, reflects on research experiences of Vincent S. R. Brandt. The book is written in lively, descriptive language and chooses a very personal and confessional tone. Such extensive reflexivity is missing from the first book by the author, the ethnography A Korean Village: Between Farm and Sea, published in 1971.¹ The early book was written without professed personal perspective. In the 1960s, most ethnographers assumed a distanced prose that sounded very empirical and “objective.” In the 1980s, a methodological and paradigmatic shift called the crisis of representation in anthropology created more reflective works that took into account the complexity of ethnographic fieldwork and the effects of personal engagement with the informants.² The narrative of the 1971 ethnography attempted to explore factional divisions, loyalties, and values in Sŏkp’o.³ Brandt then asserts that he found Sŏkp’o to be mostly an egalitarian society with mostly harmony and few conflicts.⁴ In the memoir, he confesses that debates and disagreements did exist in the village and were felt mostly by the people who belonged to lower social ranks. His initial intention to compare the personalities of fishermen and farmers proved less rewarding than looking into the social networks and interpersonal relationships.

Another strength of the book is its attention to mundane daily life in rural Korea after the Korean War, that received scarce attention in English scholarship of that period. Even the seminal work by Cornelius Osgood, from 1951, does not offer detailed descriptions of the most mundane activities.⁵ Brandt relates to the description of meals, using the outhouse, and other issues including gender, religion, commuting, and festivities in the village as a background to his personal encounters and learning of village life. Descriptions of community life in random daily routines—without intention to use them as an illustration of a research statement—are less available than thematic ethnographies. Several such works were published a decade later, in the early 1980s. Laurel Kendall’s Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits discusses shamans, but also tells of women’s lives in rural Korea of the 1970s. The Janellis tell in their book, Ancestor Worship and Society in Korea, about their arrival to the field and the difficulties they encountered, while describing village life and norms. Brandt’s descriptions in his memoir shed light on various aspects of rural South Korean society in the 1960s.

In the memoir, Brandt discusses various experiences that he had in the village. He built his own house as a complex, community-oriented project. He joined fishing trips, and he spent much effort conducting a structured survey that yielded few reliable responses. He also lists the process of his arrival to the field including the long walk over hilly footpaths. He tells how he had to use crowded buses to visit Seoul, where his wife stayed, and the difficulty getting food other than rice. The sacrifices of an ethnographer in 1960s South Korea are told in a humanistic tone, while also explaining how personal issues related to family and the emotional reaction to a new culture could affect fieldwork and the progress of research projects in general.

In reflection of his research methodology, the memoir adds information that did not appear in the ethnography. For example, in the first book his wife...