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Paik Nak‐chung’s theory of overcoming‘division system’: rethinking theChina–Taiwan relation with reference to thetwo KoreasKuan‐Hsing ChenPublished online: 16 Dec 2010.

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Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 11, Number 4, 2010

ISSN 1464–9373 Print/ISSN 1469–8447 Online/10/040566–25 © 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14649373.2010.506779

Paik Nak-chung’s theory of overcoming ‘division system’: rethinking the China–Taiwan relation with reference to the two Koreas

Kuan-Hsing CHEN

Taylor and FrancisRIAC_A_506779.sgm10.1080/14649373.2010.506779Inter-Asia Cultural Studies1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis114000000December 2010Kuan-HsingChenkuanhsing@gmail.com

No truth can be called a genuine truthunless it is realized in daily life. (PaikNak-chung 2005: 19)

Introduction

In 1988, when cross-strait interactions werere-initiated, the independent-left journal

Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies

(hereafter Taishe) launched its first publica-tion. At that time, leftist intellectuals inTaiwan were either still mired in sorting outhow to understand the Cultural Revolution,or angered by the capitalist turn of the‘socialist mother land’, or busily involved inthe heated moment of social and politicalmovements. We did not have a real under-standing of the post-war conditions of themainland. Ten years later, cross-strait rela-tions had become a major issue confrontingTaiwanese society. In the summer of 1997,the editorial collective of the journal orga-nized its first trip to Beijing and Shanghai.That was the first instance where the groupbegan to concern itself with the cross-straitrelations. After the visit, individualmembers have established friendships withthe mainland’s critical circle, but as a groupwe did not have clear views and a coherentposition on the cross-strait relation.However, since 2000, after Chen Shui-Biantook power, Taishe was no longer able toescape but forced to seriously take up theissue, since Chen’s regime had provokeddangerous responses from the mainlandside in order to manipulate social contradic-tion within Taiwanese society and escalatethe crisis in the Taiwan Strait. But how toovercome the state-centered, political-party

dominated framework? To think of theproblems of the ‘two banks’ (‘liang-an’, thetwo sides across the Strait) has always beena difficult bottle-neck to break through. Weknew clearly that without a new mode ofanalysis, which will be able to cut closelyinto the historical reality, all we have to saywill fall simply into the reproduction of the‘independence versus unification’ frame-work, or worse, a blunt position taking.

In early 2008, to prepare for ProfessorPaik Nak-chung’s visit to Taiwan, membersof Taishe studied his English writings andessays available in Chinese translation, witha purpose to work towards a panel presenta-tion for the 20th anniversary meeting of thejournal. To our surprise, all members of thestudy group were very taken by ProfessorPaik’s theory of the ‘division system’.Intuitively, we felt the theory was very closeto the discursive-political space that wehope to open up. Engaging in long-termtheoretical work, we fully understand thatconditions between the Korean Peninsularand the Taiwan Strait were very different.We further agreed with Professor Paik’sinsistence that the ‘division system’ wasformulated to address the historicallyspecific condition of the North and SouthKoreas, which cannot be carelessly appliedto other instances. Nevertheless, it did notmean that the Korean experiences cannot bereferred to or served as inspirations for us tothink about relations between Taiwan andmainland China.

1

Eventually, in Taishe’s20th anniversary conference, the panelwas organized with the title ‘OvercomingDivision System’ and presented in the formof a team work to start to tackle questions

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emerging in the Strait relations on differentlevels from different angles.

We highly respect Professor Paik’swork and cannot simply instrumentalize histhoughts. The task of this essay is a limitedattempt to understand the theory of thedivision system by returning it to thehistorical process of the transformation ofProfessor Paik’s thought. Only in historiciz-ing his work can we relieve the anxiety ofreductionism and build the basis to begin toanalyze the cross-strait relation with refer-ence to the Korean peninsular.

Paik’s theory of the division system isnot a systematic construction modeled onconventional social theory. It has to do withhis understanding of literature, his worldview and his notion of the Third World thatare organically and immanently connectedwith each other. The next section of thisessay traces the background and basis of hisearlier thoughts. The third rediscovers thedriving force behind the gradual emergenceof thoughts on the division system. Thefourth concentrates on the main proposi-tions of the division system theory. The finalsection comes to the preliminary thoughtson the cross-strait relations.

Several clarifications are in order beforeI proceed. First, I do not have the ability toread all Paik’s important works in Koreanand cannot possibly have full understand-ing of his thoughts emerging in the past halfcentury. I could only try to partiallycomprehend the formation and trajectoriesof his theory of division system throughselective readings of his essays published inEnglish and some in Chinese translations.

Second, readers may be curious abouthow Professor Paik is politically positionedin South Korea. To my knowledge, due totheir emphasis on the national question overthe past 40 years and their adoption of thedivision system as a theoretical frameworkfor political thoughts since the 1990s, the

Creation and Criticism

(hereafter Changbi)group, represented by Paik Nak-chung,Choi Wonchi and Baik Youngseo are labeledas nationalist left by Korean progressiveforces. But this labeling does not do justiceto the complexity of political reality. Patient

readers will slowly discover that Paik andhis colleagues have a very strong tendencytowards internationalism, Third Worldismand critical East Asian regionalism. My ownlong-term interactions with core members ofChangbi come to the understanding thatthey are not close-minded nationalists at all.To use Paik’s own words, the movementthey are pushing is national but not nation-alistic. Perhaps a fair understanding is that,born in 1938, Paik Nak-chung grew up withthe experience of the Second World War,decolonization from Japan and the KoreanWar; he witnessed the split of the North andSouth Koreans and lived under the govern-ment of military dictatorship. For thatgeneration of intellectuals, anti-imperialismand anti-feudalism are fundamental tonationalism. How to evolve from colony,war, and poverty, to move towards thebuilding of a modern society and demo-cratic country, and to achieve national unityand the dignity of independence is a sharedsentiment and desire. This was, in fact, thecommon mental condition of Third Worldcritical intellectuals born before and grow-ing up after the War. This is the assumptionneeded to properly understand that genera-tion. To adopt theoretically and politicallythe correct gesture, produced from thepresent conditions of knowledge in order toface that era is not going to take us very farto fully grasp the roots of their lives. Such isalso the case in Taiwan. The younger gener-ation finds it difficult to understand whyleading leftist intellectual Chen Yingzhen,born in 1937, could have become a Chinesenationalist; but returning them to their time,it is understandable as to how natural it is tobe appealed by national sentiment. Askingthem to be rid of what they grew up withand to live with the mood of our time wouldnot be very sensible. It is our problem, nottheirs. But what really makes Professor Paikstand out is that, over the past half century,he has constantly updated his concerns,renewed his thought and redirected hisdiscourse in response to the changing condi-tions of time to come close to a new histori-cal reality. This toughness and persistencewill eventually receive the highest regard.

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Kuan-Hsing Chen

National literatures and Third World imagination

In 1966, the journal

Creation and Criticism

(

Changbi

) was launched. At that time, whenPaik Nak-chung became the foundingeditor of the journal, he was only 28 yearsold and had just begun his academic careeras a lecturer in the English Department atthe Seoul National University. During thepast 40 some years, the journal positioneditself outside the institution to operate inthe social space, and Changbi has not onlybecome the major platform to promoteSouth Korean national literatures in tunewith the democratic movement of thetimes, but has also evolved into a leadingpublishing house. Changbi has continuedto reposition and recreate itself to catch upwith changing historical conditions.

2

Itscirculation is over 15,000 copies per issue,one of the largest independent quarterlyjournals in the world. For anyone whoknows about the political economy of theEast Asian journal market, it is not difficultto understand the important location thejournal has occupied in the critical circle ofthoughts. My own understanding is thatthis close-to-miraculous circulation numberhas to do with Paik’s ability to ‘manage’intellectually as well as practically. Ourpurpose to start with Changbi is to fore-ground the independent nature of PaikNak-chung’s thought. Although his longterm teaching position has been with theEnglish Department at Seoul NationalUniversity, his major social and politicalparticipation has been played out throughChangbi. In the academy, he is seen as aproductive scholar who has made originalcontributions to literary studies; inChangbi, he is a much respected writer,critic, editor, publisher and critical intellec-tual. From the publication of high qualityessays in English, one realizes that he couldhave easily become an internationally well-known scholar if he has chosen to publishin English, especially given his breath ofknowledge. But it seems that Paik hasmade the decision to devote his entire intel-lectual life to his beloved home country.

Under the authoritarian era of the1960s, when space for critical thought wasextremely limited, literary creative workand criticism became the most effectivemeans to promote and disseminate criticalthought as well as to intervene in socialissues. In this sense, South Korean condi-tions were similar to that of Taiwan’s native-soil literature movement in the 1960s and1970s, except that ‘national literature’ wasthe umbrella term for Paik Nak-chung’scamp to lead the frontline of battle inthought. From the present point of view,especially in Taiwan, ‘national’ (

min-zu

) is atroublesome term. But ‘national literature’seemed to be a natural name in the Koreancontext of the 1970s to denote the literatureof the Korean people. What then exactly isnational literature?

In an important essay, ‘For the purposeof establishing the concept of national litera-ture’ (1974),

3

Paik openly laid out hisconsiderations. At that time, a wave ofmovement on national culture and nationalliterature was mobilized by the state toreturn to tradition and to carry forward theessence of the Korean nation; a similarmovement was agitated by the KMT state inTaiwan in the 1970s as an anti-communistcampaign to counter the Cultural Revolu-tion as well as in the 1990s in the form of a‘total movement for community building’.Standing on the opposing side, Paik sensi-tively suggested that the notion of nationalliterature cannot simply be given away tothe state, and therefore should intervene toput forward different agendas. He arguesthat the standpoint of the national literaturelies in

the survival of the nation and is theresult of a crisis consciousness whenmajority of the nation’s welfare are seri-ously threatened, and the correct atti-tude to face national crisis becomes thedetermining factor for the healthydevelopment of the national litera-ture… In this sense, the concept ofnational literature has radically histori-cal character. (Paik 1998a: 211)

That is to say, national literature is toconfront the present historical conditions

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and therefore cannot possibly be an a-histor-ical adoption of nationalist essence. To usecontemporary language, national literatureshould not be understood in essentialistterms as transhistorical and unchanging for5000 years, or to recollect and put all theclassical literature on one platform, but totake up its mission to confront and over-come the crisis when a national crisisemerges in specific historical conjuncture.Here, ‘national crisis’ and ‘fundamentallyhistorical characters’ in reality refer to thecrisis since the Japanese imperialist invasionand the present the reality of the splitting ofthe nation into North and South.

4

To avoidthe too-sensitive term ‘split’, Paik adopts theanalogy from economics to differentiatenation from citizen (or national) in order tomake the point that, under the system ofworld capitalism, national economy in rela-tion to national subject is a secondaryconcept; nation is a larger entity thannationals. ‘To insist on the purity of theeconomic concept is to ignore the threatconfronting the autonomy of the nationaleconomy. Similarly, to ignore the concept ofthe nation literature will result in conse-quence and challenge for the survival anddignity of the nation’ (Paik 1998a: 212). Inother words, simply using ‘South Korean’national economy as a unity of analysis ispartial and biased, since it cannot accuratelydescribe the national crisis in the entireKorean peninsula as a whole. It is here onecould locate the drafting plan for the articu-lation of the ‘division system’ brewing inPaik’s early thought.

5

If national literature is to deal withnational crisis, it follows that the demandfor literary work to be close to people’s lifewill be close to so-called realism. This ques-tion has emerged in this important essayand would be further developed in Paik’slate writing. But at the same time, he insiststhat literary work driven by national crisisshould never be reduced to being a politicalinstrument, rather, literature close to realitywill be highly ‘advanced’. Why is this?Paik’s positioning of national literature asanti-colonial has to do with his understand-ing of Western classics. For instance, he

thinks that well-known writers such asKafka and Camus could not really radicallycritique western colonialism, because if theydid it without considering the consequencesthey lived in they would be isolated fromtheir own societies, and therefore, ‘theircritique of colonialism stays on the surfaceor on the (minor) side’ (Paik 1998a: 222). Onthe other hand, ‘to breathe with minjung(the people), critique of colonial rule of theJapanese empire has become the most valu-able part in our tradition. How lucky theKorean poets like Wanhai Han Yunlung are,though they lived in extremely painfulconditions’ (Paik 1998a: 222). What Paik isgetting at is that the colonized’s painfulhistorical experiences are real and the artistsshare it with, and are supported by, theirown people, whereas the writings of uncolo-nized well-known Western authors, withouthaving the same experience and positioncannot be so penetrating. In this sense,Korean poets under Japanese colonizationcould share the pains expressed throughtheir work with their own suffering people,and in this sense, they are lucky. But Paiktakes one step further to suggest that tosimply critique imperialism does not consti-tute the most advanced nature of a worldclass literature,

because meaningful critique is not onlya struggle with powerful forces fromthe outside, but also a struggle with theself. One has to have profound intellec-tual training and emotional training sothat one could consciously or uncon-sciously detect and critique withinone’s own nation those forces catered tocolonial rule, and furthermore to beable to distinguish and defeat feudalspirit and comprador consciousnessdeeply rooted inside one’s own soul.(Paik 1998a: 223)

That is, national literature is only possiblewith deep consciousness of critical self-reflection. Anti-feudalism is to overcomethe conservative nature of the national self;anti-imperialism (and anti-comprador) isto establish subject consciousness. Such adouble mission is in reality highly diffi-cult, since coloniality and modernity are

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competing and conflicting interpellations.To use the experiences in Taiwan andmainland China to understand this point,to establish critical subjectivity, betweenthe call for a return to traditionalism andthe call for anti-tradition’s radical western-ization, is a highly fragile project since notenough basis has been built and experi-ences accumulated; therefore one has towalk on ice to move forward, only tomaintain such tension in order for subjec-tivity to be established and national litera-ture to establish its most advanced form.With this assumption, Korean nationalliterature is synonymous with modernliterature. It was formed through anti-Japanese invasion, at the same time tooppose feudal conservatism of the aristoc-racy, since national literature cannot bebased on aristocracy or on moving awayfrom people’s life. Paik further stronglysuggests that national literature cannotescape political reality to hide in a nostal-gic past: ‘the real national literature is tooppose anything sentimentalist or evenstrategically resort to revivalism. It cannotfall into nationalist quintessentialism (

guocui pai

)’ (Paik 1998a: 244). Paik’s long termanti-nationalist quintessentialist positionand anti-comprador wholesale westerniza-tion are grounded in the attempt to builda modern Korean subjectivity. It is herethat his position is in tune with the MayFourth spirit exemplified by Lu Xun, thatis ‘to confront enemy both front and rear’,a condition common to the Third Worldintellectual life.

I want to emphasize that the questionon the advanced nature of national litera-ture is not discussed within the confinementof the Korean nation. In his 1974 essay,‘How to view modern literature’, Paikconnects national literature with the ThirdWorld literature and pinpoints the latter’svanguardness. He traces back 20th centuryliterature and criticism to position D.H.Lawrence as the expression of the ultimatecrisis in Western literature, after which therewas no way out. But Third World literatureis not conditioned by this genealogy and hasproduced literature beyond the limit. He

cites Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904–1973)as an example to show that literature inWestern Europe falls into the dilemmabetween realism and anti-realism, butsuper-realism produced in Latin Americadoes not have such baggage and workscloser to social reality and people’s life.Similarly, Black American literature has alsodeveloped a new trajectory to the extent oftransforming the existing terrain of Ameri-can literature. That is, different subject posi-tions and historical experiences provide thepotential to break through the impasse,‘because it may well be easier for outsidersof the West to experience, recognize and tomove away from it. In other words, aren’tthe Third World writers, as most of thecommon people who experienced the inva-sion and inhumanness of Western civiliza-tion as a concrete historical fact, able tocreate works transcend the limit of Westernliterature without sacrificing one’s concernfor the daily reality of one’s own society, orto sacrifice the sense of solidarity with thepeople of one’s own nation? This is exactlythe reason why Third World literature hasbecome truly the vanguard in world litera-ture, including Western literature’ (Paik1998a: 249). In Paik’s mind, Third Worldliterature is a part of world literature, and itis the objective historical conditions that putThird World literature in the vanguard posi-tion. But at best, this is only a potentialpossibility. He reminds us, ‘late developingcountries must cultivate their own ability,enabling their subjectivities to cope with thedomination of advanced industrial societiescentered around Western Europe; in thedepth of the adapting process, there hides adanger of late developing countries who

volunteer to be recruited

into the rulingregime of the advanced countries’ (Paik1998a: 249; emphasis added). Here, Paik iswarning us an ambivalent sentiment or, onemay say, a more realistic attitude: on the onehand, in order to survive, we will need tocope with the structure and rules of thegame defined and set by the capitalistadvanced countries; on the other hand, wealso must have the subject consciousness toovercome the limits of the system, so as to

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look for new directions of the world.‘Adapting to … overcoming’ has hereafterbecome crucial in Paik’s methodology ofthought. The articulation of the subject-consciousness position is both ‘Korean’ andthat of the Third World. This is a strategicposition with a consideration of the entireworld. It is also what the radical critique ofhis position has targeted, since ‘adapting’means acceptance of given reality, not atotal negation.

Paik Nak-chung’s identification withthe Third World is a lifelong commitment.Even up to his recent writing, he still usesthe Third World to position Korea.

6

Whereare his intellectual sources of the ThirdWorld coming from? Several sourcessurfaced from reading Paik’s works. First, inthe 1960s and 1970s, world system theorywas internationally influential in progres-sive academia. Second, it originated fromhis literary training; in Seoul, he was amongthe first generation teaching Black Americanliterature, which was different fromEuropean literature. Third, it has to do withKorea’s own historical experience as acolony. Although postcolonial studies onlybegan to be prominent in the Americanacademy in the 1980s and 1990s, hepublished work like ‘Conrad’s literatureand colonialism’ early in 1969. With thecommon experience of decolonization andthe sense of solidarity, the Third World is anobvious coordinate for identification. In theconcluding part of the ‘How to viewmodern literature’, Paik praises Fanon’s ‘Onnational culture’ as a source of inspiration:

To move away from colonial conditionsis not simply a political and militaryquestion, but it also means to overcomethe reproduction of in-human anddiscriminatory culture produced undercolonial rule. For those who areimmersed in western cultural influence,it has become an arduous task to not tosimply fall into revitalism and primitiv-ism, but to rediscover the solidaritywith the people… (Paik 1998a: 252)

For Paik, the relevance of Fanon is notlimited to the analysis of colonialism, nor tohis participation in political struggle, but

‘his very existence as a subject to claim thatthe Third World’s ongoing struggle is tocreate a new human history cannot butbring inspiration and encouragement forKorean literature’ (Paik 1998a: 252). Fromhis attitude toward Fanon, one finds Paik’sposition that the imaginary Third Worldsolidarity has become an important sourceof mental support since 1970s.

7

Andprecisely because the Third World is asymbolic and imaginary resource, insideand outside one’s existence simultaneously,it finds much more wider understanding ofthe nation, breaking away from the nation-alist enclosure. (In relation to Korea, whydid the notion of the Third World neverenter the horizon of critical circle in Taiwan?Is the later tendency of Taiwanese national-ist closure to do with the absence of theimaginary Third World? These are theissues worthy pondering over.) ‘Only byrecognizing the historic aspects of the colo-nial ruling class of the modern WesternEuropean society as well as actively partici-pating in the people’s anti-colonialismstruggle, such accomplishment can beachieved. It will not only invariably create awhole new historical outcome for the colo-nial intellectuals themselves, but also for thewhole human race, including westerners’(Paik 1998a: 252).

If the discussion above sketches someaspects of Paik’s thought emerging in the1970s, part of his major work done inthe 1980s was to substantiate these claims inthe domain of literary theory. The deepeningof his thought on national literature wasachieved through responses to challengescoming from different positions and to thechanging historical conditions. The 1985essay, ‘On modernism, further discussion’was a debate about modernism and post-modern literary theory to defend the mean-ingfulness and practices of realism incontemporary Korea and the Third World.The 1986 essay, ‘Work, practice and truth – towork for the enhancement of the science andpractice of the theory of the national litera-ture’, is an argument that artistic and scien-tific nature of the national literature cannotbe compromised for the reality of national

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and

minjung

movement. ‘The

minjung

natureand artistic nature of national literature’,published also in 1986, is in dialogue withMarxist theory in the tide of rising leftistmovement, which highlights that nationalliterature is nothing but

minjung

literature; italso insists that the artistic nature of litera-ture cannot be sacrificed for the service ofclass movement. The 1990 essay, ‘Nationalliterature and realism’, takes up again theclaim that Third World realism is the mostadvanced form of literature and rejectsmodernism and postmodernism with thisstandpoint, and while facing new circum-stances and starting to have contact withNorth Korea, rethinks the theory of socialistrealism. Other than theoretical works, Paikcontinued with his literary criticisms, includ-ing discussion on Western literature andKorea’s national literature.

8

Owing to mylimited knowledge, I’m unable to fully graspthe discussion on literary and art theories orliterary criticism. I await capable colleaguesto deal with this part.

In summary, Paik’s theory of nationalliterature is based upon the assumption of anational crisis, which begun in the Japanesecolonial era and continued through the divi-sion of the North and South. Congruent withthe anti-colonial nationalist project, but witha strong sense of solidarity with the ThirdWorld, this has, since the 1970s, become theprimary backbone of his thought.

Confronting ‘division’: breaking the limits of knowledge

One characteristic of Paik’s thought is itsembeddedness in its time. His theory of thedivision system has been gradually formedin the movements of the epochal transfor-mation. It was only in the 1990s that histheory came into sharp focus; before that,his discourses were dispersed in differentcontexts. We will have to move into thesecontexts to identify flashes and elements ofthe emerging problematic of the divisionsystem.

On many occasions, Paik has statedclearly that to theorize the division systemshould be the task for intellectually more

prepared people (i.e. those who have a back-ground in social science, history or philoso-phy), definitely not someone trained inliterature.

9

Having waited and not heard aresponse for a more qualified person to takeup the urgent task, he could not but forcehimself to continue the discussion. Wecannot overlook and let go such a phenome-non. It really reveals the problems of thecondition of knowledge. In Korea (and alsoin Taiwan), the intellectual world is boundby the existing (transplanted) mode ofknowledge, and is often not equipped withreadymade analytics to account for the spec-ificity of experiences grounded in localhistory. It is precisely in this sense thatPaik’s theory of the division system has thecreative potential to break through thelimits of knowledge. The conditions ofknowledge in Korea are shared in otherparts of the Third World. When (imported)modes of knowledge cannot properlyanalyze our own social realities, we oftenhear the argument that the realities them-selves are too local to have universal valueand hence are easily being skipped over; orit is often considered a political question,which has nothing to do with knowledge.The opportunity to insist on its relevance togo on thinking and then to break throughthe existing structure of knowledge is lost inthis process. I personally take this to be atthe center of the intellectual problems in ourpart of the world.

The 1975 essay on ‘The current stage ofthe national literature’ had already begun toput forward the concept of the divisionwithout elaboration. It was written to echohistorian Kang Man-Gil’s discussion on‘historiography in the era of the split’. But atthat time, Paik saw that the urgent task forKorean national history was to ‘restoredemocracy and to realize the unity of thenational territory’ (Paik 1998a: 6). Forinstance, in his analysis, Paik reads HwangSok-Yong’s important novel

The Chronicle ofa Man Named Han

(1972)

10

on the loss ofindividual lives due to the separation of theNorth and South in terms of the problematicof the restoring democracy and sees this asthe keynote of the national literature in the

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1970s. The real momentum for the intellec-tual background of formulating the theoryof the division system emerged in thedebate on the social formation of Koreansociety. The representative work is the 1985essay on ‘The new stage for

minjung

-national literature’ (in Paik 1998a), whichcan be taken as a renewal of the position infacing the new situation after the 1975 essay.

From the title of the essay, one couldsense that this wave of challenge came fromthe peak moment of the

minjung

movementin the 1980s. In the South Korean context, the‘class’ movement was a taboo term due topostwar anti-communist ideology; if used,the movement could be quickly discreditedand therefore

minjung

(people) was apreferred term to nuance the left-leaningclass movement. When the term

minjung

began to be utilized, Paik questioned theambiguity of its denotation (Paik 1998a: 63).But now, written in the mid 1980s, the essaytries to articulate together the national withthe

minjung

movement. In clarifying the twoterms, we may be able to find the clue to seethe emerging problematic. Paik’s argumentwas with Chong Chang-Yol. Chong’s‘Nationalism of

minjung

’ first positions

minjung

as governed classes and from thisangle to trace historically the transformationof nationalist consciousness through the LeeDynasty, Japanese colonial regime to themodern era. Paik argues that

minjung

is acomplex formation and cannot be reduced tothe governed classes. The question he thenposes is what is a commonly understoodcapitalist society from Korean society in boththe colonial era and the era of the division?According to Chong’s framework, in anadvanced capitalist society, the superstruc-ture corresponds to the base structure,which forms the social totality; but corre-spondence does not exist for a society incolonial status, and therefore is exceptionalin human history. Paik disagrees withChong’s adoption of a theoretical model toexplain reality, especially using the experi-ences of the Western capitalist society tomeasure colony. For Paik, it is a ‘fallacy offormulism’. The issue at stake is: how toanalyze the class positions within the totality

of social formation in the articulation of thecolony and its sovereign colonial mother-land? Under this premise, what is the rela-tion between

minjung

, classes and thenation? Finally, locating the problematic inthe postwar condition of the division, howcan the two societies be discussed in thetotality of the nation?

Please slow down to ponder these ques-tions, which are not so easy to answer. If wesimply use a Marxian model of base andsuperstructure to analyze the relations andmodes of production on the level of the basestructure, how do we describe it when thetwo societies are combined together? Thisquestion has not only to do with analyticalknowledge, but also implies a strategicmove when analysis is done: ‘Needless tosay, from the starting point of the presentmoment in history, the existence of this jointentity has to do with great work of nationalunification, but to achieve unification wewill have to move through different lives ofclasses and strata so as to fully realize theirreal power. It follows then, today where canwe find the maximal to unify this power andto make it grow in the logic of life?’ (Paik1998a: 68). It is in dialogue with Marxiananalytical framework that the limits ofknowledge in the critical circle are high-lighted. In other words, Marxist class analy-sis was created to account for modernsociety of Western European capitalism andits analytical boundary is basically targetedat ‘one country’, which cannot be directlyadopted to explain the complexity of thecolony, nor can it properly deal with themodern society of non-European countries;for instance, how do we analyze the leftoverpopulation of the ‘untouchable’ in postwarKorean society within the framework ofclass analysis? Can those societies, predomi-nantly made of peasantry, be analyzed bydirectly adopting Marxism, which takesindustrial societies as its dominant frame ofreference? More importantly, how do weproceed to analyze two divided societieswhen they are put into one single concep-tual framework? Especially when the twodivided societies used to be one entity for athousand years, and only now are facing

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one century of political separation, how canthe analysis be done? In short, if theassumption is to account for the social real-ity in a real context but not to fit into exist-ing theory, then we obviously run into theobstacle of knowledge. The same challengeconfronting the intellectual circles in Taiwanand China is to analyze historically thedivided societies as one entity changingfrom an integrated unity, through Japanesecolonization, to postwar division.

The persistent tension is further radical-ized in the 1988 essay on ‘The present daynational literature and national movement’as Paik takes up the emerging opportunityto push forward the reunification project. Acontext needs to be reminded: although theJune 1987 Great Struggle could not over-throw Chun Doo-Hwan’s military regime, itdid in turn gain more space for a liberaldemocracy, in that the taboo issue over thetwo Koreas can now be openly discussed. Itwas in this new context that national litera-ture and the national unification movemententer the frontline for public debate, andtherefore, unlike the previous era duringhigh political pressure, discourses can nowbe staged without having to circle around.This essay was written explicitly in dialoguewith class movement activists and Marxistpolitical economists. Paik raises the issuefrom the side of national literature: ‘It isoften said that the basic contradiction formodern Korean society is class contradic-tion, and national contradiction is primarycontradiction. But how can the division beproperly explained without a hesitant senseof relief?’ (Paik 1998a: 108). Put differently,in debating whether national division is abasic or primary contradiction for Koreansociety, a series of theoretical questionssurface: can the division between the Southand North be apprehended from theperspective of ‘two countries’? Is divisionthe internal contradiction or a complex ofboth internal and external contradictions?How can the totality of social structure beconceptualized? Within the conditions ofdivision, is it possible to move toward ahigher level of democratization and nationalautonomy?

In this entangled set of difficult ques-tions, Paik is forced to begin to clarify anddelineate the problematic of the division.

By examining postwar experiences ofthe ‘partial state’, Paik locates the divisionof the North and South Koreas as the typewhere two societies either belong tosocialism or capitalism in the Cold Warsplit, but he also identifies differences (Paik1998a: 113). With reference to East andWest Germany, the Korean Peninsula wentthrough the prior moment of history ofbeing colonized; this is a crucial point in thatboth Germany and Japan were former colo-nizers, but after the defeat, unlike Germany,Japan was not divided and colonies werereturned. In contrast with the divisionbetween Taiwan and Mainland China, thesize of each entity is greatly incompatible,and in the prior historical moment, themainland was split by multiple foreignforces but never fully colonized. Thesedifferences make Korean experiencesunique. Through comparisons, Paik main-tains that the urgent intellectual task is totheorize ‘how this new contradiction of thedivision is reproduced through internal andexternal contradictions for each of the Northand South, and contribute to the reproduc-tion of contradiction as a whole’ (Paik 1998a:113). At this stage Paik’s theoretical formula-tion of the concept of the ‘division system’was not yet fully in place, but as a crucialcomponent, the reproductive and regenerat-ing function of contradiction of the division(i.e. internal contradiction for each, mutuallyfunctioning as external contradiction, andexternal contradiction for the peninsular as awhole) has already been sensitively intro-duced. Only later, when the more adequateanalytical concept appears to integrate rele-vant components into the framework,would the issue of reproduction becomemore comprehensible. In other words, theimportance of this essay is expressed in themethodological level of thought: the Koreanpeninsula as a whole entity for analysis hascome into the picture. The remaining diffi-cult question is: how is it possible to analyzetwo societies (which had become increas-ingly different) as a whole without falling

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into the theory of ‘two countries’? Paikknows the difficult intellectual challenge issevere but cannot escape from it (just as forus living in Taiwan who know the necessityto think about the cross-strait relation butgreatly lack sufficient knowledge of thepostwar mainland). Paik’s own wordsexpress the complex sentiment: ‘It is alreadya difficult task to fully research SouthKorean society, not to mention the lack ofnecessary materials and the pressure ofbeing voluntarily arrested. At the same timeto do research on North Korea is extremelylimited in the freedom of expression. Nowyou know how difficult it can be, but can wenot do it!’ (Paik 1998a: 114). It is with thisstrong inner passion that the task to theorizethe division system is put on the intellectualagenda.

One year after the publication of the1988 ‘The present day national literatureand national movement’, the ‘divisionsystem’ has become a key word in the essay‘Unification movement and literature’. Withthe division system as an analytical vocabu-lary, Paik begins to define the problematiceven more sharply: the fundamental contra-diction of the division system does not existbetween the political regimes of North andSouth Korea, but ‘between the divisionsystem and the people of both North andSouth’ (Paik 1998a: 21). From this formula-tion, Paik’s enunciative position has becomeclear: he speaks from the location of thepeople of the two Koreas to expose thepoints of contradiction. Such a formulationfurther implies that the people from twoKoreas are the subject to overcome the divi-sion system. Once again, in dialogue with asocial scientist, who maintains that conceptssuch as division or unification do not existin the basic literature of social sciences andthe movement to overcome the divisionsystem should be excluded from the scien-tific thought, Paik argues that such claim is aresult of the fact that intellectual work ‘hasnot touched our lives in the era of divisionand the concrete reality of the division soci-ety’ (Paik 1998a: 121). With this question inmind, he is now equipped with an analyticaleye to read literature. In the 1970s, Paik read

the aforementioned novel,

The Chronicle of aMan Named Han

(by Hwang Sok-Yong), interms of ‘restoring democracy’, and now inthis 1989 essay, he reads Hwang’s

Weapon ofthe Shadow

in different ways.

Weapon of theShadow

is a story describing how Koreansare incorporated into the Vietnam War.Utilizing this text, Paik teases out the basicdifferences between the Korean divisionand that of the North and South Vietnam:the Vietnam War is a continuation of theanti-colonial movement and a national liber-ation struggle to expel the invasion offoreign forces, whereas in the case of Koreathe intervention of foreign forces (althoughnot directly controlling state apparatus) arethe main factor in the division. In Paik’sreading, Hwang brings the anti-US, anti-imperialist questions into the agenda ofovercoming the division system movement.The other development in this essay is toinclude North Korea (and the people livingin Yanbian, the border of China) in the hori-zon of national literature, although there is aclear gap in his account, as he is not as confi-dent as in his knowledge of the SouthKorean literature. Such an effort to learn theconditions of North Korean literature,however, is in itself an intellectual practiceto overcome the division. In his closingremarks, Paik writes, ‘Even in historicallyunprecedented rigidity embedded in thebrutally killing mood of the division, theNorth and the South separately createdshocking miracle to the world to overcomethis previously unheard division system,our unification movement cannot succeedunless it is equally an unprecedentedlycreative movement’ (Paik 1998a: 153). Paikknows the future is going to be really rough,but has to hold his breath to move forward.

This section, in sum, attempts to presenthow, from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s,the notion of ‘division’ existed organicallyin the background of Paik’s thought andwas then slowly pushed to the front. I donot have the ability to objectively describethe changing conditions of the larger envi-ronment, nor can I sufficiently conveynuanced shifts, mental ups and downs, inthis period of Paik’s intellectual life. But in

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reading his work closely, I could deeply feelthat Paik is not one of those theorists whocan simply close the door to think abstractly,but someone who participates in the pulseof the society he lives in and breathes withthe rhythm of his time. At the same time, hevalues the necessity of engaging in intellec-tual debates, without which one cannotfollow closely the structural shift of historyand cannot generate the lively energy inthought. By the late 1980s, Paik had movedbeyond the understanding of the priority of‘restoring democracy’ of the 1970s to therealization that the limits and prospectsof South Korean democratic movementscannot be separated from the divisionsystem issue; division and democracy arenow gaining equally high ground, which isfor him a readjustment of the directions forthe movement of thought. This is his mostoriginal insight but also the most controver-sial part.

Theory of overcoming the division system

Having traced the trajectories of its forma-tion, we are more prepared to discuss thetheory of the division system. In the 1990s,Paik did more substantial work in theoriz-ing the division system, including severalimportant essays written in Englishpublished in

New Left Review, Positions: EastAsia Cultures Critique

and

Interventions

.

11

In‘South Korea: unification and the demo-cratic challenge’ (Paik 1993a), Paik pointsout that the formation of the division systemhas become the alibi for political leaders inboth North and South Korea to mutuallyuse each other to justify and strengthen theirauthoritarian power. Since the later periodof the Rhee Syungman regime (of the late1950s), except for ‘advancing military powerto recover the North’, unification has been aprohibited discussion topic. Later, when thesocial call for integration became strongerand stronger, Park Chung-Hee (of theSouth) and Kim Il-Sung (of the North) wereforced to sign the 1972 Joint Communiqué;but Park utilized it to consolidate his ownpower to the extent that he made himself alifetime president, whereas Kim seized the

opportunity to revise the socialist constitu-tion to strengthen his own power. Further,both sides exploited the popular psychicfear of being annexed by the other to repro-duce the legitimacy of authoritarian govern-mentality. Similar instances also occurred in1989 when Roh Tae-Woo abused his powerto announce a state of emergency to volun-tarily arrest dissidents. These scenarios arealso familiar in Taiwan’s authoritarianregime to arrest political dissidents inthe name of anti-communism or nationalsecurity, or, in other contexts, preventingcommunist invasion, and therefore the needto consolidate leadership became the rheto-ric for oppression. Simply put, the existenceof the division system has been the bestweapon to suppress democratic forces, andtherefore, to reinforce division has becomethe consensus without having to be negoti-ated by both regimes.

To stress that the division system didnot come into existence overnight, Paikdiscussed the historical process with refer-ence to the historical background of theVietnamese and German experiences. Hesees the division in Vietnam as originatingfrom the means of war by the US to take thecolonizer’s position of France, and thereforethe Vietnam War is a continuity of the anti-colonial movement, with the result that USlost the war and the North and Southunited. The German instance reflected thelocal division under the global structure ofthe Cold War; when one side lost itsstrength, the division quickly collapsed: thestrong West unified the weak East. Paikgoes on to argue that although the Cold Warwas a major factor for the division to takeshape in the Korean Peninsula, the mainforce was the US global strategy, which wasformed long before the Cold War. The endof the Korean War was the landmark for thedivision, with the North strongly backed bythe communist camp led by the USSR andChina, and the South supported by the capi-talist bloc led by the US and Japan. After theWar, because the two strongly antagonisticstates were shaping their own societies incommunist or capitalist ideology, system-atic differences were gradually built up and

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expressed in national, inter-bloc and intra-peninsular conflicts (Paik 1993a: 78), whichwere interwoven with internal social contra-dictions, such as class and gender. Forinstance, the militarization of societyenhances the power of patriarchy, andSouth Korea’s anti-communist nationalpolicy contributed to the severe suppressionof democratic movements such as theworker’s struggle. Paik therefore maintainsthat to overcome the division is the neces-sary assumption of the democratic move-ment (Paik 1993a: 79).

Among all the essays, ‘In order to makeit a daily life movement of overcoming divi-sion system’ (Paik 2005) is perhaps the mostclearly articulated statement. With somehesitation to ‘graphically’ visualize the divi-sion system, Paik gives us a descriptiveaccount of his theory. The system iscomposed of three interlocking dynamicrelations: the world system, the divisionsystem and the social system of each of thetwo societies. Made up from the socialsystems of the two Koreas, the divisionsystem is an integral part of the worldsystem. Among the three open systems,there exists two different specific relations;the specificities of relations are contingentupon the changing historical conditions(Paik 2005: 24). The capitalist world systemcorresponds to the subsystem of SouthKorean society, which is made up of differ-ent capitalist institutions, which cannot beself-sufficient, and its operation has beenlinked with the world system at a higherlevel. The most controversial part is, Paikargues, that the socialist system of NorthKorea is neither autonomous nor indepen-dent from the world capitalist economy, butit is through the latter’s superstructure(modern inter-state system) that connectionsare established. In other words, in Paik’spicture, the capitalist world system is thebase structure of the globe, whereas thenetwork of inter-state relations, made up bynational states (e.g. the United Nations), isthe superstructure. Moreover, neither Northnor South Koreas are self-complete systems,and therefore, one should avoid reductionistunderstanding to simply equate South

Korea as a capitalist society and the Northas a socialist one. But the structure of divi-sion system, cutting across the two societiesand encompassing the entire Korean Penin-sula, functions effectively to mobilizeconflict, hostility and mutual fear, and inturn reproduce and solidify the divisionsystem itself.

Paik goes further to point out that theconditions and ways in which the twoKoreas participate in the world system arenot voluntary but mediating via the divisionsystem. When the tension of the systemincreases, the more likely it is the worldsystem can exercise power in it. To under-stand this, once again, in terms of the cross-strait relations, especially on the inter-statelevel of the world system, it means thatwhen the relation across the straits deterio-rates more, other states (big or small) havemore chance to take advantage of it, becausethe two states would compete for interna-tional support. Paik argues, ‘the operationof the “system” of either North or Southcannot be adequately explicated without theconcept of the “division system” as a middleterm. This is not merely an epistemologicalmatter; it is also a matter of praxis in that onthe Korean peninsula, any effective move-ment is inconceivable in separation from thetask of overcoming the division system,whether the movement in question aims atreunification or at amelioration within thebounds of a divided half, or at reform orrevolutionary transformation of the world-system on a larger scale’ (Paik 2005: 26). Inother words, it is through the divisionsystem as an analytical concept that we areable to see the moving field of operation,either in part or as a whole; at the same time,only in arriving at this point of understand-ing does the division system itself becomean object to be overcome. The Korean nationcan acquire a fair subject position in theworld system only by dismantling the divi-sion system. In Paik’s analysis, it has alsobecome clear that overcoming the divisionsystem is not an internal and domestic prob-lem within the Korean peninsula, but also amovement to reform and transform theworld system, and practices in Korea can be

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a starting point to issue a breakthrough. It ishere that the movement to overcome thedivision system can make an importantcontribution to the world.

As mentioned earlier, ‘national security’was utilized by the state to sabotage democ-racy, to prolong the regime and tostrengthen military power, and to repro-duce the division system itself. In theKorean context, because of the tragic suffer-ing experienced in the Korean War andbecause, unlike the Taiwan–mainland rela-tion where the Taiwan Straits provide aspace of separation, the two Koreas arephysically connected, ‘national security’becomes less an ideological maneuveringbut an important material and mental basisfor the formation of the division system. Itresults in a peculiar phenomenon: hardlin-ers on both sides hate each other but at thesame time mutually cooperate with eachother, forming a subtle symbiotic relation tojointly sustain the division. Of course, thiswould be an embarrassing situation if oneconsiders how the mighty power of theKorean nationalism would shoulder theaccusation of allowing a foreign power (i.e.the US) to put military forces all over one’snational territory, especially as is widelyclaimed that this is already the end of theCold War. That the Six-party Talk hasbecome the site for struggle in internationalpolitics further reveals the powerful effect ofthe division system. It, on the one hand,allows various foreign forces to come in,and on the other hand, weakens the oppos-ing strength of the two Koreas inside thedivision system. The tension of contradic-tion between these two tendencies isnakedly expressed.

What is, then, Paik’s proposed strategyto overcome this gigantic division systemformed in the past half century?

Paik warns from the very beginningthat, although the theory of division systempresupposes the two blocks of interests (oneis the benefited of the system and the otheris the Korean

minjung

who are the victims),one cannot quickly jump into a populistposition seeing the two regimes as theenemies; just as

minjung

’s interests on each

side are varied, and with state as a converg-ing site of political forces, the interests of thetwo regimes are also different. Activists andsubjects of the movement to overcome thedivision system will have to locate them-selves in the concrete conditions to be sensi-tive to the changing shape of the field offorces and then to push forward the projectfor the interest of

minjung

. He suggests thatthis is like a ‘plural equation with two statesand a people which is both one and two’(Paik 2005: 29). This equation includes theforces of the world system, and thereforeone cannot overlook the presence of interna-tional powers (such as the US, China, Japanand USSR) in this dynamic field, and alsoone would have to weigh the interests anddifferences among them in order to decidehow to tilt the direction of the movement.Paik cites the US as an example, suggestingthat the US is least threatened in thisdynamic, as long as the capitalist system isnot radically challenged; therefore, themovement does not have to over-demonizethe US, but has to understand it objectivelyas a factor to be taken into account in theforce field of international powers.

Paik fully recognizes the immense diffi-culty involved in the overcoming divisionsystem movement where

minjung

isconceived as the subject, not only becausepeople in the North and the South Koreas aremutually ignorant about conditions of theircounterpart, but also because when themovement is fused in daily life in the foresee-able future, the gap will become even larger.Here, he relies on instinctual optimism:

The theory of division system, there-fore, envisions an alliance between thepeoples of the two Koreas around thecommon goal of a reunification thatwould maximize popular initiatives intheir own lives, even while people oneach side pursue separate agenda forinternal reform or transformation astheir immediate task. Thus they maystart with different tasks, but theirmovements are bound to converge inone big stream toward the middle-termgoal of overcoming the division systemand the long-term one of transforming

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the world-system, for their differentshort-term agendas are basicallyderived from the operation of the sameworld-system and mediated by thepeninsula-wide division system. (Paik2005: 31–32)

Like any other social scientific projectiontowards the future, Paik’s futurist forecast isthe most challenged part of his theory.People across the Taiwan Strait have beeninteracting for the past 20 years, but the gapis still unbridgeable. Although in their ownsociety they each may hold a critical attitudetowards the state, they trust their ownregime far more than the counterpart. Howto form a trans-border alliance among thepeople is the most challenging obstacle.Regarding questions as such, Paik’s hopelies in people’s experience in dealing with aconcrete crisis, such as the fact that the SouthKorean people’s helping hands are activelymobilized in responding to the food short-age crisis in the North; such humanist actswill enhance mutual trust and collaboration.Indeed, a similar experience happened to theSichuan’s earthquake crisis, when people inTaiwan actively donated resources to helptheir counterparts on the mainland; in theprocess, it has recreated the opportunity toestablish more friendly relations.

The theory of ODS (OvercomingDivision System) cannot avoid taking on theimagination of the future state structure,including how to treat the two existingstates. Paik’s theory posits that the states arethe key players in upholding the divisionsystem and therefore the objects to be over-come. But from

minjung

’s point of view, themovement cannot possibly support a mili-tary conquest as a means for one state toannex the other; therefore, the movementneeds to constantly empower the people tothe extent that they will over-watch theinterests of the two regimes themselves toprevent the state from taking militaryaction. Since peaceful coexistence is theprerequisite, Paik proposes that the looseform of a compound state

12

to compose afederation or confederation is a more realis-tic vision. And in fact, both the 1991 JointCommuniqué and the 2000 Joint Declaration

after the summit of the two Kims aremoving towards this direction (Paik 2005:33–34). To him, a confederation is clearly atransitional stage; the specific direction forconstituting an acceptable and workablepolitical form is something that cannot beplanned a priori and has to be discussed inthe process. But only in creating new formsof a federal state that actively responds tothe people’s demand and wins their consentcan the end of the division be ultimatelyrealized. In the postscript of this importantessay, Paik returns to his position as a liter-ary critic, mobilizing a metaphor to describethe two Korea’s relation:

If, for instance, we adopted the meta-phor of a married couple, then reunifi-cation needed to be viewed not as afresh union of two innocent youths, buta re-union of an old couple who hadquarreled and separated for a longtime, leading different lives andperhaps even having other love affairs,but now finally trying to re-establishtheir relationship after coming to abelated realization that this kind ofseparated life would no longer do. (Paik2005: 71).

This rich metaphor offers rich analysis ondifferent levels. The extra-marital affairs canbe communism or capitalism. The heatedquarrels occurred when both were tooyoung and insistent to understand eachother’s difference. But the key is whetherboth sides have finally realized that the rela-tion is not finished and there is still a strongemotional desire to come back together. Ifso, the rational calculation of interests is notgoing to work, nor is the need for a ritualceremony to marry again the rule to follow.Having been divorced for a long time, thetwo can always cohabit without beinglegally married again, or can live together ina flexible mode of life. In a 2004 publiclecture, Paik gave his profound expression:

I suggest that we change the concept ofunification to be rid of the rigid notionof the singular nation-state for‘complete unification’. We need to havea realistically new idea to enter the ‘firststage of unification’ while making sure

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the North and South find an entry pointto discuss between the confederationand low level federation. In otherwords, we will need to set aside theissue of what is unification and whenwill it happen. Instead, we move intomany workable parts to peacefullycreate the interaction between theNorth and South and more substantialforms of unification. If, perhaps therewill be a day, when the North andSouth suddenly agree to say, ‘Oh, theunification is already there. Why don’twe declare unification to the world?’This, I would say, is our own distinctway of unification.

13

Simply put, Paik is for a unification processthat is gradual and coexistent, not theGerman or Vietnam mode (i.e. a strongerside takes over the other); freer interactionbetween people on both sides will defusehostility and move towards reconciliation.Such form of unification is more substantial.The voluntary process of interaction itselfmay create a new form of unification. Theform of political system, not invented intheory to serve as guidelines, will emergeorganically in the mechanism of real interac-tion between the two sides. Bringing theissue of unification back into the ODS prob-lem, Paik reminds us time and again that thereal contribution of ODS far exceeds thelimited meaning of national unification:‘unification of the Korean peninsula has tobe conceptualized not so much as nationalreunification

per se

as the abolition ofthe division system as a crucial subset of theworld system (Paik 2000: 73). That is, thegoal for dismantling the division system farexceeds the commonly conceived meaningof unification movement.

As a realistic materialist, Paik takes theeconomic question seriously to suggest that,to overcome the division system, SouthKorea has to maintain competitiveness inthe global economy to win over

minjung

’ssupport. He fully recognizes that the factors(such as low wages, long working hours, orthe heavy reliance on the American militaryand financial support) for fast economicgrowth in the postwar era no longer exist.How to maintain a strong competitiveness

becomes a central precondition to dismantlethe division system. At the same time, theevacuation of the system within the bound-ary of the Korean peninsula is a big steptowards building a better society; in thecontext of the entire world, it is also a stridetowards transforming the capitalist worldsystem. He thinks that the existence of thedivision system has not only preventedNorth Korea from becoming a truly socialistcountry, but also South Korea from becom-ing a true liberal democracy, and althoughboth sides claim they are, the gap with real-ity is huge. More importantly, at thismoment of history when the ideas of thefree market and liberal democracy havebeen challenged and have lost credibility, inthe reintegration process Koreans will needto search for alternative forms of democracyand economy that would work best inKorean peninsula (Paik 2005: 74–75). Inshort, ODS would also necessarily meanovercoming the existing imaginations offreedom, democracy, market, and socialismthrough the interactions and fusions of thetwo different societies to create new formsand logics. For Paik, this is the potentialcontribution to the world the Korean nationcan make.

Paik knows that a movement cannot berealized simply by a theorist’s own imagina-tion. The second half of the essay is adialogue with three major social movements(worker’s, women’s and environmental) toforge the necessary connections betweentheir concerns and the problematic of thedivision system. He hopes to persuadeactivists to bring the ODS into the agenda oftheir own movement and to mobilize publicconsciousness to participate actively in theirown daily life practices. It is certainly diffi-cult for us to evaluate whether individualmovement groups have accepted Paik’spersuasion, partly because each group hasits own priority of concern. Unless the largerpressure reaches an unbearable level, forc-ing various social movements to cometogether to overcome crisis, it would bedifficult for the ODS movement to findcommon ground to unify diverse socialforces.

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This essay so far has traced through theformation of ODS theory in Paik Nak-chung’s thoughts. Let me now try to sum upthe theory in my own language. The birth ofthe division system in the Korean peninsulawas a result of the political history of theregion and has its own formation process.The immediate watershed was the KoreanWar, which has been the landmark for theformation of the Cold War in East Asia. Thelonger process has to do with the globalhistory of colonial imperialism, in which theCold War can be seen as an extension andthe US replaces the hegemonic position of theJapanese empire to enter East Asia. If one seesthis history as one single process, then theformation of the division system has to betraced back to the initial moment of Japanesecolonialism in Korean peninsula. The processbefore and after the Second World Warcannot be analytically divided. To put itcrudely, the corrupt feudal monarchy andthe invasion of Japanese imperialism werethe two intersection preconditions leadingto the later division of the Korean nation inthe 1940s. The loss of the Korean nationalsovereignty and subjectivity during the 40years of Japan’s colonial rule was the precon-dition at the end of the Second World War. Itwas precisely the moment when Japan wasdefeated and withdrew from the peninsulaso that the Korean people could entertain thenotion of rebuilding the nation, but as theirforce was not strong enough to resist interna-tional powers from the outside, the US andUSSR found the opportunity to intervene,just like an already injured person who istoo weak to defend themselves. In thisregard, the ODS necessarily means re-exam-ining the historical relations between thefeudal system, pre-war colonialism and post-war neocolonial imperialism. Overshad-owed by world history, the division systemon the Korean peninsula is made up of threeinterpenetrating, mutually conditioning,deterrent arrangements: the world system,the division system and the two societies.Changing power relations in the worldsystem (including capitalist and inter-statesystems) will directly reshape the balance ofpower in the division system itself (such as

the fall of Socialist bloc around the end of the1980s weakened Russian’s strength and gaverise to Chinese influence, or the rising Japanin the 1970s and China in the 1990s changedthe US’s strategic alliance relation). At thecenter of social formation, the two statemachines’ (including military confrontation,national security, ideological education, etc)internal shifts of dynamics (such as thechange of regime in South Korea, the substi-tution of new state leadership in the North,and the increase of the South’s economicpower) directly influence the shape of thedivision system. Although the divisionsystem itself is constantly changing, just as itsrelations with the world system and the twosocial systems are also shifting, it has becomestructurally self-autonomous, forming a self-reproducing mechanism. Because of theexistence of the division system, the auton-omy and subjectivity of the two Koreas (inthe East Asia region or in the world system)are very limited. In contrast to a non-dividedsociety, it has to rely more on external forcesor has created more chances for foreignpower to intervene; because of the relativelyincomplete sovereign power, it therefore hasto suffer from the damage of national dignity,such as allowing US military bases stationedwithin national territory. South Korea hasone of the world’s largest anti-Americanmovements, but at the same time may wellbe the territory that is most open to Ameri-canization; in pursuit of American modernityas a point of measurement, the South may inturn discriminate against the backwardnessof the North. Such a contradiction is a resultof the division. If it took a long time for thedivision system to be formed and its effectsare deeply inscribed on the popular psyche,then the ODS movement cannot resolve theproblem only on the visible level but has toecho Paik’s call to work on the level of socialsubjectivity to become daily life practices,since

minjung

themselves are supposed to bethe subject of the movement.

Rethinking cross-strait relations

Paik himself has argued that the concept ofthe division system is created to grasp the

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conditions of the Korean peninsula and isnot applicable to other instances, such as thesituation of Taiwan and mainland China.The physical sizes of the two Koreas areapproximately the same and their strengthsrelatively equivalent, whereas the differen-tial scale between Taiwan and China is hugeand is close to the category of the ‘partialstate’ (Paik 1998a: 113). Moreover,

[F]rom the PRC’s point of view, Taiwanrepresents not so much a division likethat on Korean Peninsula, but a sort ofunfinished business after China waseffectively unified in 1949 with thedefeat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces bythe Chinese communists. So certainlythis is not a genuine division of roughlyequal contestants. (Paik 2008: 212)

Paik’s view on the unequal relation betweenTaiwan and China is crucial here. It remindsus that although we need to insist on treat-ing both sides equally in dealing with cross-strait issues, we cannot fantasize that themap and size of Taiwan can be arbitrarilyexpanded to infinity. However, the cross-strait relation does not belong to the parti-tion type, such as India and Pakistan, orMalaysia and Singapore. In these two cases,the two sides agree to be separate and mutu-ally recognize each other as a political entityto enter the inter-state system, whereas inthe postwar era, both CCP and KMT refuseto be separate, and both insist on one Chinaand claim to represent the entire China. Butit is precisely due to the differences in thestrength and size, as well as long-term sepa-ration, that the competition in the inter-statesystem has been particularly severe in theform of either/or, life and death relations,which has created the opportunity for theinternational power to take advantage.During the DPP regime (2000–2008), the‘consensus’ that used to exist between thetwo sides (KMT and CCP) no longerworked, and the separatist direction ofmovement has revitalized the ‘pro America,anti-communist’ tendency, which had beenweakened by the waning Cold War. Indeed,what theoretical concept can be more accu-rate than the division system to describe thelong-term formed mechanism to reproduce

antagonism between Taiwan and mainlandChina? If, as Paik has suggested, all localhistorical experiences are unique and cannotbe fully explained by a simple theoreticalmodel, then perhaps it is through inter-referencing Paik’s theory of ODS that theproblem of the Taiwan Strait will emerge ina clearer form to generate more productiveknowledge.

How, then, can Paik’s theory of ODS,referring specifically to the Korean penin-sula, be useful in rethinking the cross-straitrelations?

The crucial methodological principle ofODS theory is to analyze the two Koreas onthe peninsula as a totality. In this regard,discussions of the cross-strait relation wouldhave to pay attention to the separate condi-tions of each side, the relation between thetwo and the historical process as a whole.This mode of thinking is analytically impor-tant since it is close to the real historicalprocess, but difficult to carry out, for itpresupposes that the analyst has alreadyacquired proper understanding about thehistorical conditions of both sides so that thesubstantial relation in history can be estab-lished. Intellectually unprepared to fullygrasp the postwar history of mainlandChina, I can only offer the following discus-sion built more on the understanding of theTaiwan side.

If the beginning point of divisionbetween the two Koreas can be located atthe end of the Korean War in 1953, then thestarting point for the separation betweenTaiwan and mainland China must bepinpointed in 1895, when Taiwan was cededafter the Sino-Japanese War, which is 60years longer than the two Koreas, and bynow the separation has exceeded onecentury. Long-term division has createdalienating effects for living subjects. In addi-tion, the two Koreas are divided by theinvisible line of the 38th degree, whereas theTaiwan Strait creates a physically separatedgeographical space. Temporal and spatialfactors make the divisions across the Straitdeeper and more complex, and not condu-cive for integration. Although, in bothinstances, the division must be traced back

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to the colonial rule of the Japanese empire,the experiences are inherently different.Koreans were not divided under theJapanese rule, whereas Taiwan became aJapanese colony while the mainland wasnever under Japan’s rule and fell into thefate of a semi-colony on the edge to be splitup by international powers. Different histor-ical experiences contributed to the ethnicconflicts in postwar Taiwan and have inten-sified the difficulty for mutual understand-ing. Paik has pointed out that Japanese rulein the Korean peninsula was far harsherthan in Taiwan, which in part reinforcesKorea’s stronger drive for national unifica-tion (Paik 2008), whereas instances like theNanjing massacre have been inscribed in thepopular memory of the mainland Chinese,and shaped the strong national hatredtowards Japan. In other words, the pre-warhistorical experiences as well as the differentunderstanding of these events in Taiwanand the mainland have become the impor-tant elements preconditioning the postwardivision (Chen 2006). Such a condition doesnot apply to the two Koreas. Further, duringthe Cold War confrontation, there was nospace for South Korea and Taiwan to openlydiscuss the complex of Japanese colonialismbefore the 1990s, whereas in mainlandChina and North Korea, the Japanese impe-rialist invasion has always been a key ques-tion in modern history of the nation. Suchovert differences mean that, intellectually, ifthe two sides across the Strait have thedesire to overcome the division, the pre-warJapan’s rule in Taiwan and the history of theanti-Japanese war in the mainland will needto be re-examined and shared, and cannotbe skipped over by simplistic nationalisthistoriography. That is, if modern historyproduced in the mainland has focused onthe eight years of Sino–Japanese war ratherthan the earlier one in 1895, and Taiwandoes not have proper understanding of theeight-year war, the understanding of theformation of the division will continue to bediscrepant. Similarly, the issue of ‘US impe-rialism in East Asia’ is fundamentallydisagreed on by the two sides across theStrait. The Kwangju event of 1980 has begun

to build an understanding that the Koreandivision has to be understood in relation tothe US hegemony in the global structure ofthe Cold War, whereas postwar Taiwan hadnever had a larger scale of cultural and intel-lectual movement to challenge the legiti-macy of US intervention in both KMT andCCP regimes. In sum, how to intellectuallyovercome the existing divergent under-standings of modern history (official orotherwise) is crucial. The production ofalternative histories will have to be set notonly in the background of the modernhistory of China, but will have to be meth-odologically placed in the dynamic field ofworld and regional history, so that the resultwill not fall into the set pattern of Sino-centrism or Taiwan-centrism.

Directly connected with the issue ofreconstructing history is how to carry outresearch on the historical formation of thedivision across the Strait. The question is notso much whether the concept of division isapplicable to the cross-strait relation, butwhether there has been a systemic build upof an opposing and antagonistic systemeffectively operating on the levels of localsocieties, the two states, interstate and capi-talist world systems. This question is worthdebating and investigating. If the answer ispositive, then historical research must becarried out, and, perhaps, a more refinedanalytical concept closer to the reality ofthe cross-strait relation will emerge in theprocess. My own view is that the corre-sponding echoes and functions of theKorean division system Paik constructs canbe found in the Taiwan-mainland counter-part. Moreover, looking back, we cannotexplain these formations of the postwar pro-US/anti-communist regime in Taiwan andthe pro-Soviet/anti-capitalist regime in themainland without referring to the realityof division. The long-term formed socialpersonalities continue to exist, expressed inthe form of utter distrust in human relations,and have not been dissolved in Taiwan’sdemocratization process; these effects cutdeeply in the social body beyond the bound-ary of the state structure. On the inter-statelevel, the two states have competed in the

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international arena. From postwar until thepresent, ‘dollar (bribery) diplomacy’ hasbeen commonly deployed on both sides. ThePapua New Guinea scandal of 2008 (ofbuying diplomatic relations) and PresidentChen Sui-Bian’s abuse of a secret diplomacyfund are salient examples. If we count in thenational defense budget, which has gener-ated the most severe confrontation betweenthe two states, in dealing with the US mili-tary industry mediated by Washington, thepicture of the existence of something like thedivision system becomes very clear. In otherwords, an analytical notion like the divisionsystem is needed to integrate differentmechanisms and forces at work so that theoperating logics of the division can be iden-tified. And it will be more possible to sortout who in this process are the victims orbeneficiaries, and who are the potentialallies for the ODS movement. In short, thenotion of the division system has analyticalvalue and explanatory power, and has stra-tegic implication for the movement.

Undoubtedly, Paik’s theory of ODS isstrongly motivated for national unificationin the Korean peninsula, and is directlyrelated to the national and nationalism ques-tion. This may not be a serious problem in theinstance of the two Koreas, and perhaps lessan issue for mainland China, but may triggerhuge anxiety and doubts in the context ofTaiwan, where an emotionally heated debateon integration or separation has dominatedthe political scene for the past 20 years. Thedifference between the two Koreas and themainland–Taiwan relationship is that thereis an unbridgeable disagreement in Taiwanover the national question. And the mosttouchy issue is whether the discussion onODS will necessarily point towards unifica-tion. My own understanding is that the ODSmovement refers to something much largerthan, and cannot be reduced to, the unifica-tion movement. It includes issues such as thedemilitarization and anti-fascist tendencieswithin local societies, the right of free traveland migration, and critique of imperialismand capitalism. But it does not mean theunification and independence issue can beevaded. What needs to be emphasized is that

the discussion on unification versus inde-pendence cannot stand on its own, but has tobe located in the debate about social rightand the project for overcoming imperialismand capitalism. Only by doing so can theunification versus independence issue reacha wider horizon of analysis. The assumptionof the debate is to fully recognize that bothunification and independence must be aprocess, not an end in itself; it should be seenas a step towards social autonomy, deimpe-rialization and liberation from the exploita-tion of capitalism. In other words, oncePaik’s theory of ODS is employed analyti-cally in the context of the cross-strait rela-tions, it does not assume a teleology forunification. Even if it has the potential tomove toward unification, it is for the purposeof reconciliation between people across theStrait. ODS is a form and means but not theultimate end. To state the least, the issue overunification versus independence has to berelativized, not absolutized; it needs to movefrom regarding the controversy as some-thing sacred to something historical and real-istic. Once again, it may well be the case thatPaik’s own account assumes a subjective willfor a unified Korea, but holding suchassumption to be the only agenda in thecontext of cross-strait relations is reduction-ist and essentialist, in that it narrows thecomplexity of the issue and adopts a statistline of thinking that evades an entire spec-trum of issues. In a different context, I havepointed out that the cross-strait issue doeshave to do with the national sentiment, butcannot be only that, and it has to be placedwithin the vision of the integration of theAsian region as a whole; and Asia’s movetoward independence and autonomy is amove towards regional peace as an integralpart of the global balance of power (Chen2010).

‘Unification versus independence’ is anemotionally charged issue and therefore it isdifficult to initiate public debate, not tomention the fact that it has become rigidifiedas a moral issue in the process of politicalmobilization for the past 30 years in Taiwan.But as critical intellectuals, we have to findways to deal with the problem. My own

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personal experience of moving around indifferent parts of the neighboring Asia tellsme that Taiwan independence does not havepopular support. Without having to considerwhether independence will trigger warfare,what needs to be seriously considered iswhether Taiwan wants to isolate itself fromthe region. Is this isolation beneficial for thepeople living on the island? Anyone who isfamiliar with the logic of the inter-statesystem would know that Taiwan needs thesupport from the CCP state to join the UnitedNations. If that is the direction to go, Taiwanwill have to reconcile with China and winover the support from the public and thestate. In the past 20 years, the KMT and DPPregimes’ agitation of the movement to jointhe UN has become money diplomacy inexchange for nothing but pure psychologicalsatisfaction. In reality, it has made a fool ofthe public, and worse it effectively reinforcescompetition and antagonism across theStrait to intensify the power of the divisionsystem. It is self-cheating and self-defeating.Conversely, is maintaining the status quo thebest way? The status quo is to accept theexisting condition and does not seekchanges; it will prolong the problems. Paikhas observed that the Korean division systemis shaking now, although the interactionbetween people of the two Koreas has yethappened. For the Taiwan–China counter-part, the system is changing more rapidly,marked by direct flights across the TaiwanStrait in 2008, ending the suspension of suchflights over the past 60 years. Therefore, prostatus quo is not the strategic choice for theODS movement. Standing along the side ofthe

minjung

, we will need to more activelypropose agendas to push the movementforward. Such agendas would includemaking clear to the public that if the hugeamount of national budgets that used to beallocated for opposing ‘the other side’ (suchas defense, military, information and secretdiplomacy) can now be shifted towards theeconomic livelihood of the people and socialwelfare, people’s living conditions can bemeaningfully improved, while the relianceon the division system can be graduallyweakened.

If the subject of the ODS movement is

minjung

, not as an abstract theoretical cate-gory but has concrete historical attribution,then it necessarily relates back to the‘national’ question. When Paik uses the termnation (

minzu

) there seems to be no contro-versy. It refers to the Korean people fosteredby the history of the Korean peninsula;nation does not imply a flat nationality but asubject group with a depth of history. Whenthe term is used in the mainland andTaiwan, the question becomes complicated.When Paik delivered talks in Taiwan, hetook special note that ‘national literature’(

minzu wenxue

) in the mainland means theliterature of the minorities and the way heuses this term is roughly equivalent to‘Chinese literature’ or ‘Taiwanese litera-ture’. That is to say, under the framework ofa modern nation-state, China is in realitycomposed of many nations (

minzu

), and‘

zhunghua minzu

’ (Chinese nation) is theumbrella term to integrate Han and otherminorities; at the same time, the term isinaccurate because the Han nation in thehistorical process has mixed with othernations.

14

Nation (

minzu

) is the product ofmodern world history. When deployed inthe Third World, East Asia and Chinesecontext, nation cannot be de-linked with thehistory of imperialism. The national libera-tion movement referred to the colonizedsubject’s attempt to liberate from imperial-ism in the form of an independent nation-state. In the process, ethnic nationalism hasalso become the mobilizing strategy to grabstate power, and therefore critical intellectu-als are very cautious of nationalism andeven afraid of talking about the nationalquestion. In postwar Taiwan, we were firstintimidated by KMT’s Chinese nationalistindoctrination and later frustrated by thedisaster of ethnic politics brought by theDPP Taiwanese nationalism. We are thusconditioned by these negative historicalexperiences of nationalism to the extent ofhaving to abandon the subject position ofthe ‘nation’ to combat it. This is what ChaoKang calls ‘subject without history’,

15

or touse Paik’s expression, because of the nega-tive emotional feeling, we hand over the

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‘nation’ to the political regimes. In effect, wehave happily become cosmopolitan with nonational identity! The first step to overcomethe division system is to overcome our ownnegative feelings against the nation andnationalism. Rather than moving away fromit, we need to fully recognize the historicalexistence of the nation and shoulder thenegative effects that come with it so as toreclaim the post-national subject position ofbeing Chinese with a historical depth. Thisposition is not an idealized or moralizedone, but one that is capable of embodyinghistory while problematizing the notion ofChinese to constantly rethink who we are.We will have to reconnect with the moderncritical intellectual tradition, exemplified byLu Xun of the 1920s, in order to enrich thedepth of the problematics. We are highlyaware that this adoption of the Chineseidentity is a response to the contradictionsproduced by the Taiwan Independencemovement and DPP’s de-sinisization move-ment.

Born, brought up and now working inTaiwan, we consider the construction ofTaiwan identity to be a legitimate task. Ourown intellectual work and emotional liveshave partaken in the nativist and democraticmovements. Although we are highly suspi-cious of the development of Taiwan’s democ-racy on the level of partisan politics, we arevery proud of the autonomous social forcesand the lively energy of the society we havehelped cultivate and now live in. What wecannot agree is to pit the Taiwanese againstChinese identity and force people to make aneither/or choice. It is a-historical to excludeChinese identity from the notion of Taiwan-ese. Placed in a longer historical period, theformation of modern Taiwan and modernhistory cannot be properly explained if theyare disconnected from China. When anypolitical movement starts to attack others’cultural identity in order to consolidate itsown power, it has become exclusionary poli-tics. Part of the energy of the 2006 Red-shirtMovement was precisely to resist theconstant insults to one’s own identity.

Chinese identity is not simply a domes-tic issue to Taiwan, but one that cannot be

evaded in the cross-strait relation. To returnto the historical process, searching for acommon identity is a step towards the ODSmovement among the

minjung

and evenpaving the way for the future integration ofthe region. For those of us living in Taiwan,in particular after the experience of theRepublic of China being expelled from theUN in the 1970s, to be ‘self-reliant’ has beenthe sentiment and mode of existence. Themerit is a strong sense of autonomy (e.g.Taiwan’s movement and NGO sectors neverrelied on foreign funding); the weakness isself-righteousness, losing the ability to thinkfor others. Oftentimes, it mutilates the‘Taiwan subject consciousness’ to mean ‘Ican do whatever I want to do,’ otherwise itmeans the absence of subjectivity, andworse, it is to condemn the opponent as atraitor of Taiwan. This widely diffusedconsciousness is extremely destructive toTaiwan. But if we seriously want to over-come the division across the Strait, we willneed to learn the real conditions of main-land China, and should not adopt the culti-vated habit of jumping to judgment in thesame way we treat things and events inTaiwan. If we are able to understand thereality of the other side, we in turn maybetter understand ourselves.

The interaction between two societieswill help but is not equivalent to the recon-ciliation among people across the Strait. Inthis process, the state does play an impor-tant role due to its structural position.Therefore, the interaction between the ODSmovement and the state is a necessaryprocess. As Paik honestly puts it,

To push forth such an agenda is the taskof the intellectuals, artists and activists.For policy makers in the narrow senseof the word, it is enough if they showdedication and professionalism in theirendeavors for economic recovery. Asfor political leaders, it will be remark-able enough if they remember to stress– supposing they keep doing so tothe end – ‘democracy’ alongside ‘themarket economy’; and even more so ifthey have visions as well for the recon-ciliation and reunification of the two

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Koreas. However, in view of the factthat realities, not his or her personalwish, are what move a political leader,the future of countless human beings,including Koreans, will obviouslydepend upon how far our practice forovercoming the division system candeepen, and how widely that projectmay become rooted in people’s lives.(Paik 2005: 8)

Paik’s statement was made in the context ofthe 1997 financial crisis. At that point, hemust have not been able to imagine that thedramatic Summit between the two Kimswould take place in 2000, not to mentionthat he himself would move to the frontstage and become the chief representativeof the ‘

minjian

’ (non-official popular realm)(Chen 2003) to implement the June 15Declaration. My own guess is that Paikonce again must have thought that therewere candidates better than himself to dothis work, just as he thought there werebetter prepared social scientists to articulatethe theory of the division system. Takingup the leading position in the ODS move-ment, he has perhaps run the risk of beingcriticized for working too closely with thestate.

It is not the purpose of this essay topropose action plans for ODS. I can onlyoffer preliminary thoughts here. Paik’stheory is grounded in

minjian

, and takes

minjung

as the subject of the movement.Paik’s position echoes the political positionof ‘popular democracy’ which I and otherintellectuals developed in the 1980s. Popu-lar democracy theory does not neglect theexistence of the state, but would not suggestthat the reconciliation across the Strait iscompletely the responsibility of the state,especially in places such as Taiwan andSouth Korea, where the so-called demo-cratic transition has created all kinds ofimpasses, and the partisan considerationsfor self-interest among all political partiesare highly suspicious. Therefore, to expandsubstantial interactions among people andto limit the intervention and interferencefrom the state is a realistic proposal at thepresent moment. For instance, direct flights

across the Strait is a crucial breakthrough,not only in bringing convenience topeople’s daily lives, but also in its potentialto speed up mutual understanding. If thechange of the regime would lead the stateto consider the suspension of the directflights, it will necessarily draw strongpublic resentment. Therefore, popular inter-action will restrict the regime’s chance andlegitimacy to disrupt the ongoing practiceof direct flights. Concretely speaking, theDPP as a political party will have to read-just its direction to come up with a morerealistic policy in dealing with the mainlandand to compete with KMT. Otherwise, DPPwill only be a negative force and will becounterproductive to Taiwan’s politicaldevelopment. In my own view, the majorproblem is that outside the state and politi-cal party there is no public forum similar tothe one established between North andSouth Korea after the June 15 Declaration.How to establish a public forum with credi-bility to convey diverse views of

minjung

isa necessary direction in which to move.

Paik’s theory emphasizes the necessityof making the project of reconciliation apart of daily life in order to form a move-ment of larger scale. In a way, the daily lifereconciliation movement is already takingplace across the Strait. We will need toproduce public discourse on the meaning ofinteractions that are happening now and toincrease people’s awareness of being thesubject of ODS movement themselves sothat they would more actively learn aboutthe life experiences of the mainland bridesin our communities (through cross-straitmarriage) before they came to Taiwan, ortry to understand with goodwill the hard-ship of peasant workers in mainlandChina’s major cities as seen on Taiwan’sTV, and to keep away from politicians wholike to incite hatred among people. Thesedirections are potential soils for nurturingreconciliation.

Let me end the essay with a real senti-ment. Thinking about the cross-strait rela-tion through Paik’s theory, I feel ratherembarrassed. There are huge intellectualpopulations in Taiwan and the mainland,

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but no individual or group has put forwarda similar analytical framework with equalintellectual intensity, not to mention thedesire to address the issue to higher levelson regional peace or overcoming the worldcapitalist system. Such a visionary thinker ofbreath of mind does not exist in contempo-rary Chinese intellectual circles. ODS is apolitical and intellectual project. It situatesitself in

minjian

and goes beyond the tradi-tional political thinking that aims at thestate. The very existence of the theoryexposes how the issue of cross-strait relationhas been addressed and confined by thestatist framework, and how we, as criticalintellectuals, have not fulfilled our responsi-bility. With ODS theory as analytical frame-work to base our thoughts, actors will notfall behind the steps of the political regimesand parties. Once the analysis is made clearas to the reproductive function of the divi-sion system, and the purpose is clearly todismantle it, we know when and on whatissue we will support or oppose the policyformulation of the state. For instances, wewill support ending the diplomatic warsand the removal of the missiles deployed inthe coastal area of the mainland; we opposethe Taiwanese media’s stigmatization oftourists from the mainland, and the state’sfoolish policy of not acknowledging themainland’s education diploma. In the past,without a visionary intellectual project, wecould only follow and would always fallbehind the political situations. With thevision of the ODS we can work actively andbecome the subject of the movement. I takethis to be the foremost inspiration from thetheory of ODS.

I personally hope critical circles in bothTaiwan and the mainland will worktogether to be concerned with our commonhistorical problems and to start the action byovercoming the intellectual division systemof knowledge.

Acknowledgements

A Chinese version was published in

Taiwan:A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies

, no. 74,2009. Discussions, response and support

from members of the ‘overcoming divisionsystem study group’ are gratefully acknowl-edged. This essay is a result of the researchproject on ‘South Korea’s theory of the ThirdWorld National Literature: Paik Nak-chungand Hwang Sok-Yong’ (NSC97-2410-H-007-049-). The author wishes to thank MonWong and Chia-Hsuan Lin for their helpwith editing the translation.

Because this essay is an integral part ofthe five papers presented by the ‘Overcoming“Division System”’ group at the 20th anni-versary conference for the journal

Taiwan: ARadical Quarterly in Social Studies

in 2008, itshould therefore be read alongside the otheressays. See, in particular, Chao (2009), Chu(2009), Ning (2009), and Zheng (2009).

Notes

1. Taiwan’s leading leftist writer Chen Yingzhen(1989) was the first one inspired by Paik’s notionof division in the Chinese-speaking world, whenhe visited Seoul and reproduced a reportage onthe wide range of social, cultural and politicalmovements in South Korea in late 1980s.

2. For a brief account of the history and project ofthe journal, see Kim (2001).

3. Unless noted, most of the essays discussed hereare based on the volume of Chinese translation.See Paik (1998a).

4. ‘Division’ was the term Professor Paik startedto use during this period. It appeared as earlyas 1975 in ‘The current stage of national litera-ture’. Although in the Chinese translation of thearticle, the term was translated as ‘split’, thetranslator’s note explained that ‘the originalterm in all of the articles is division’ (Paik1998a: 6).

5. In his first talk when he visited Taiwan on May,2008, Paik Nak-chung accurately distinguishedthe difference between

minjok munhak

and

kook-min munhak

(both are translated as ‘national liter-ature’ in English). The latter uses nation as a unit.For example, South and North Korea has theirkookmin munhak respectively, whereas minjokmunhak encompasses the whole Korean race.

6. See Paik (2008).7. Paik Nak-chung’s other discussions on Third

World include ‘Korean literature and ThirdWorld literature’ (1978), ‘Third World literatureand mingjung literature’ (1979) and ‘Viewpointon Third World literature’ (1982). These itemsare included in his publication list. See Paik(1998a: 593–603).

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Paik Nak-chung’s theory of overcoming ‘division system’ 589

8. About literary criticism, please see the third partof Paik (1998a), including chapters such as‘Understanding western classic novels bysubjective stance’ and ‘Zen poetry and realism’,and so on.

9. See ‘Contemporary national literature andnational movement’ (Paik 1998a: 108) or Paik(2005: 8).

10. I rely on the 1988 translation in Chinese (Hwang1988). For other representative work available inChinese translation, see (Hwang 2002, 2006).

11. See Paik (1993a, 1993b, 1995, 1996a, 1996b,1998b, 2000).

12. For a more detailed account of the compoundstate, see Baik (2008, 2009).

13. See the Chinese translation of the ‘The KoreanPeninsula and Peace of Northeastern Asiaduring June 15 era’, in Baik and Chen (2010).

14. On this part, see Zheng (2009).15. See Chao (2009).

References

Baik, Youngseo (2008) ‘East Asia discourseand the double project of “adapting to and over-coming modernity”’ ‘

’, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterlyin Social Studies 71: 255–274.

Baik, Youngseo (2009), East Asia as IntellectualThought: History and Practices from the Perspectiveof the Korean Peninsular :

, Taipei: Taiwan: A Radi-cal Quarterly in Social Studies Publisher

.Baik, Youngseo and Chen, Kuan-Hsing

(eds) (2010) Paik Nak-chung:Division System and National Literature

. , Taipei: Taiwan: A RadicalQuarterly in Social Studies Publisher

.Chao, Kang (2009) ‘Methodological Chinese

and the overcoming of the division system’‘ ’, Taiwan: ARadical Quarterly in Social Studies

74: 141–218.Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2003) ‘Min-jian and civil society:

on political society and popular democracy’,Cultural Studies 17(6): 877–897.

Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2006) Towards De-Imperi-alization: Asia as Method ,Taipei: Éditions du Flâneur .

Chen, Kuan-Hsing (2010) Asia as Method: TowardsDeimperialization, Durham: Duke UniversityPress.

Chen, Yingzhen (1989) ‘Opposition culture ofKorean people’ ‘ ’, Ren Chian

44: 8.

Chu, Wan-Wen (2009) ‘The China factor inTaiwan’s economic miracle’ ‘

’, Taiwan: ARadical Quarterly in Social Studies

74: 49–93.Hwang, Sok-Yong (1988) A Reader for

Contemporary Novelists ,Chen Ning-Ning (trans.), Taipei: KwangFu Book .

Hwang, Sok-Yong (2002) The Old Garden, Chen Ning-Ning (trans.),

Taipei: INK .Hwang, Sok-Yong (2006) The Guest , Jin

Sheng-Yi and Miao Chun-Mei (trans.), Shanghai: Shanghai TranslationPublishing House .

Kim, Yeong-Hui (2001), ‘Doing a literary journal in adivided country: Changbi, its history andprojects’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2(3): 355–359.

Ning, Yin-Bin (2009) ‘How would Chinese be(alter-native) Chinese again?’ ‘

’, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in SocialStudies 74: 223–238.

Paik, Nak-chung (1993a) ‘South Korea: unificationand the democratic challenge’, New Left ReviewI/197 (January/February): 67–84.

Paik, Nak-chung (1993b) ‘The idea of a Koreannational literature then and now’, positions: EastAsia Cultures Critique 1(3): 553–580.

Paik, Nak-chung (1995) ‘The reunification move-ment and literature’, K. Wells (trans.). InKenneth M. Wells (ed.) South Korea’s MinjungMovement: The Culture and Politics of Dissi-dence, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,179–208.

Paik, Nak-chung (1996a) ‘National and transna-tional claims on civil society: a South Koreancontribution’, Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 9:65–72.

Paik, Nak-chung (1996b) ‘Habermas on nationalunification in Germany and Korea’, New LeftReview I/219 (September/October): 14–21.

Paik, Nak-chung (1998a) Literature and Peoplein the Time of Globalization: The Korean Perspectiveunder the Division System :

, Kim Jeongho and JeongInkap (trans.), Beijing: ChineseLiterature Publisher .

Paik, Nak-chung (1998b) ‘Nations and literatures inthe age of globalization’. In Fredric Jameson andMasao Miyoshi (eds) The Cultures of Globalization,Durham: Duke University Press, 218–229.

Paik, Nak-chung (2000) ‘Coloniality in Korea and aSouth Korean project for overcoming moder-nity’, interventions 2(1): 73–86.

Paik, Nak-chung (2005) The Shaking Division System,Sol Chun-Gyu et al. (trans.), Seoul: ChangbiPublisher.

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590 Kuan-Hsing Chen

Paik, Nak-chung (2008) ‘Barriers to reconcili-ation in East Asia: the case of two Koreasand its regional implications’ ‘ :

’, Taiwan: A RadicalQuarterly in Social Studies 71:201–213.

Zheng, Hongsheng (2009) ‘How couldTaiwanese be Chinese again? Overcomingidentity controversies in the division system’‘ :

’, Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies 74: 95–139.

Author’s biography

Kuan-Hsing Chen teaches in the Institute for SocialResearch and Cultural Studies, National Chiao TungUniversity, Taiwan. His most recent publication isAsia as Method: Towards Deimperialization (DukeUniversity Press, 2010).

Contact address: Center for Asia-Pacific/CulturalStudies, National Chiao Tung University, 1001,University Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan.

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