Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea

Epilogue: A Correlative Architecture between the Void and the Solid

This book has presented a comprehensive overview of architectural and urban development in Korea within the broad framework of modernization. A meaningful conclusion can only be drawn if we begin with an understanding of the modernization process. Korea’s modernization cannot be explained by any single widely accepted theory. It followed its own distinctive trajectory in several respects, leaving two daunting tasks to the observer. The first is to answer the question whether Western-centric concepts of modernity can encompass the particularity of its manifestation in Korea. Like many nations emerging in the wake of World War II, Korea managed to achieve modernity in two to three generations, or sixty or so years. The nation soon reached a critical threshold, and this can be largely attributed to the supercharged growth of Korea’s economy. Such a case is extraordinary. Accordingly, the story of Korea’s modernization has aspects that cannot be accounted for by Western standards or by theories pertaining to underdeveloped third-world nations. The second task is to draw out the implications of the colonial introduction of modernism for the entire modernization process, which was of longer duration. It is true that the colonial experience determined the social, political, and economic development of twentiethcentury Korea in irreversible ways. However, Korea’s experience stemmed from a singular fact: the colonizing power was not composed of Westerners seeking control over resources or to expand their territory. It was neighboring Japan. The modernization of Korea therefore needs to be described from its own unique perspective, and recent theories about globalization can help in formulating this approach. Modernization is usually regarded as a bundle of cumulative processes that mutually reinforce the formation of capital through the mobilization of resources, development of production forces and labor productivity, establishment of centralized political power, proliferation of political rights and participation, secularization of values and norms, and so on.1 In defining the concept of modernization, Western scholars have typically shared several assumptions: (1) “traditional” and “modern” societies are separate and dichotomous; (2) social, political, and economic changes are integrated and interdependent; (3) the path of development toward modernity is linear and shared; and (4) contact with developed societies can dramatically accelerate the progress of developing ones.2 Oddly, when studying the modernization of Korea, these assumptions prove false owing to the unique trajectory of Korean history and culture. Contact with the so-called developed countries of the West, for example, did not result in the acceleration of material progress but rather in colonial rule, exploitation, and civil wars. In a globalizing era when regional economies, cultures, and societies are becoming integrated through a global network of communication and exchange, attitudes toward modernization are undergoing great change. According to Arjun Appadurai, “the new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing centerperiphery models. Nor is it susceptible to simple models of pull-push, or of surpluses and deficits, or of consumers and producers.”3 Appadurai suggests that a unilateral flow from the West to other countries is actually rare and that the process is a two-way street, with give and take on both sides. In this view, all localities in a globalized field are politically, economically and culturally interconnected while retaining distinct identities. As a result, there has been increasing recognition that several strains of modernity can coexist. “Theriborn identifies three major sites, other than Europe, where modernity developed relatively autonomously: the New World, where modernity developed as the result of the decimation of existing peoples; East Asia, where modernity arose as a response to a threatening external challenge; and much of Africa, where modernity was largely imposed through colonization or imperialism.”4 Epilogue A Correlative Architecture between theVoid and the Solid Epilogue 143 Globalization embraces the intermingling of these diversities and the creation of hybridized cultures. If the modernization of Korea can be seen through this lens, it will not be positioned at the fringe of any discourse of modernity but will be an important link in comprehending the process of modernization and a new modernity. To acknowledge that Korean architecture and culture have the potential to affect other advanced countries is to take a manifestly postcolonial approach to today’s global arena, and this opens up two new possibilities for understanding the Korean modern. The first is that the Korean modern can more accurately be understood within the broader frame of East Asia. This perception gets us beyond...