(NOTE: I originally wrote the following essay for the Kyunghyang Shinmun [in its 5 May 2007 edition], and it also appeared
in English in The Korea Times on 7 May 2007. Two caveats: Since it was written primarily for a Korean audience, I spent more
time introducing the '60s than I otherwise would have for a mainly Western readership. And while I am aware of the Black Power
Movement, The New Left, Students for a Democratic Society, The Situationists and many other important groups from that era,
my focus here is on the intersection of sex and politics then and now. In any case, be sure to check out the Scott McKenzie
link at the end. Peace and love, y'all!)
NO KOREAN SUMMER OF LOVE
Sometimes I feel so sorry for South Korea. For the past 45 years, it's toiled and sweated like a slave on all the hard work of national
economic development, but hardly had a chance to experience any of the real fun that other developed countries in the West enjoyed
in the past. What is the point of development when it is so boring and bland, so utterly one-dimensional?
Last Fall at Hongik University, I taught two writing classes to a great group of whip-smart students, and early in the semester gave
a lecture on the 1960s in the West, since I had assigned Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel "On the Road," a sort of Bible for free-spirited
American youth in the '60s. When I asked at the start of my lecture if any of them knew anything about the '60s in the West, I saw
only blank faces and heard only the sound of silence. I was astonished.
What is wrong with South Korea's education system, when its teachers cannot do their job properly? The 1960s in the West shook
the entire world, and now it was as if they had never happened. Incredible!
During the 1960s in the U.S. and Western Europe and even Japan, something truly special happened in the development of modern
civilization: Millions of ordinary people decided that there was more to life than just working one's whole life for a company that didn't
really care for you, and being a mindless consumer of endless and often useless products made by those very same companies.
There was, in other words, a broad-scale redefinition of what being human really meant.
How did this happen? In short, the forces of sexual liberation and political revolution came together and created an explosive
synergy, a kind of cultural big bang. The social and political philosopher Herbert Marcuse, for instance, argued in "Eros and
Civilization" (1955) that liberated sexual energy could be channeled and used as a tool to help transform repressive capitalist
societies. Such ideas resonated widely among the younger generations who came of age in the '60s in the West, and who sought
to lead a countercultural revolt against the established order. Rock 'n' roll, of course, was the soundtrack for this exciting new
movement, and it was very sexy indeed.
It helped that an oral contraceptive pill for women had been introduced at the start of the 1960s, radically freeing sex from biological
reproduction. Christian sexual morality and the nuclear family underwent widespread questioning, as the notion of "free love"
transformed traditional social relationships and helped liberate women from oppressive patriarchy. On a basic level, "free love"
meant "free sex" for many, but it was much more than that. Sex was not just a private act between individuals, but also part of a
greater social and political consciousness. The personal was now political. "Make love, not war" was the popular mantra of those
seeking an end to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Making love suddenly became a revolutionary act.
In 1967, the "free love" ethos reached critical mass during the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, when tens of thousands of
hippies and young people from around the world flocked to the city's famed Haight-Ashbury district. Scott McKenzie's hit "San
Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," released in May of the same year, expressed the loving mood perfectly:
All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion people in motion
Soon this "strange vibration" was shaking the very foundations of mainstream Western culture, and turning it on its head. In the
summer of 1969, half a million "flower children" gathered at the four-day Woodstock Music and Art Festival in Bethel, New York,
celebrating the values of peace and love while legends like The Who and Jimi Hendrix rocked the world. Meanwhile, in France,
radical students had brought the entire country to its knees in May 1968, as 10 million workers nationwide went on strike in support
of the students' protest against a soulless technocratic society. Bernardo Bertolucci's 2003 film "The Dreamers," starring the brainy
bombshell Eva Green, is all about the idealistic energy and spirit of May '68, and its title says it all. Never before had revolution been
so much fun, and so damn sexy.
Alas, it is doubtful that South Korea will ever have its own Summer of Love, or even its own equivalent of the countercultural '60s
as seen in the West. The April Revolution of 1960 was quickly silenced by nearly two decades of dictatorship under Park Chung Hee,
while the democratization movement of the 1980s offered no serious challenge or lasting threat to this country's underlying capitalist
system, let alone sexual liberation. (Free market? Yes! Free love? What?!) No wonder my students hadn't been taught about the '60s
in the West during their middle or high school years: the anti-establishment values of that decade were in fundamental contradiction
with South Korea's all-important and all-consuming ideology of hyperdevelopment.
Of course, thanks to the Internet and so-called "globalization" (read: Americanization), there has been sexual liberalization of a sort
here in South Korea for the past few years, but there has been nothing terribly revolutionary about it. Just as slick disco overtook
radical rock in the 1970s, the market found a way to co-opt sex in the 1970s and '80s and use it for its own insatiable purposes.
Today in South Korea as in the West, sex largely follows the laws of the marketplace, driven primarily by ruthless competition and
compulsive consumption. It has been drained of any countercultural energy or revolutionary potential, transformed into endless
marketing strategies and so many shallow, disposable lifestyle choices for sale. Certainly the Hongik University area is a perfect
symbol of this entire process: Where once it was a truly countercultural alternative to the mainstream back in the 1990s, today it has
been thoroughly colonized by the market and well-integrated into South Korea's developmental paradigm. In general, it offers no
grander idea beyond efficient and quick -- "Bballi, bballi, Oppa!" -- sexual consumption for the time-pressed working masses, a
sort of all-night flesh emporium where drunken one-night stands and escapist anonymous sex are available to just about anyone
who's willing to pay the seductively cheap price.
Forty years after the original Summer of Love, another summer is upon us here in South Korea. No doubt, there will be much
"free sex" here this summer, but will there be any free love? Who dares to dream of something higher than themselves? Who dares
to dream that revolutionary love is the greatest gift of all?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFp48BLpH-A&mode=related&search= |
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