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Discussion has been actively going on with regard to building a Chinatown district in South Korea. In an official letter recently, the Embassy of China in South Korea wrote to the South Korean government stating that China would be ready to make an investment in building a large scale Chinatown in In-Chon city, if land was provided by the city authorities. According to this letter, signed by the Chinese Ambassador, the Chinese government would provide a pavilion where Chinese culture could be experienced. The pavilion could also be utilized as a venue to host a Chinese government organization, such as the China intercultural exchange association, a Korea-China friendship association, as well as a student exchange information center. Further, Chinese hotels and restaurants too would be set up within the core of this Chinatown. The South Korean government, in response, has shown positive signs to this request. Chinatown is an almost universal element of Chinese cultural and business aspects, and can be found in numerous destinations around the world. However, in spite of being a neighboring country and culturally proximate to China, there is not a single Chinatown in Korea - often an uncomfortable topic for Koreans, given that its absence engenders an image of Koreans being reclusive and xenophobic by nature. Indeed, human rights activists, on occasions, assert that the lack of a Chinatown is proof of the discriminative attitude of Koreans towards the Chinese. Besides this human rights concern, those who focus on the economic benefits that could accrue argue that a Chinatown should be build urgently so as to attract investments from the wealthy, overseas Chinese diaspora. It is about time then that South Korea, a member of the OECD group of countries, establishes a Chinatown. However, if we look at the discussion of building a Chinatown not from the human rights perspective but from the economic benefits perspective, a simple question arises: Why doesn't Korea have a single Chinatown even though it shares a border with China? Historically, the outlines of Chinatown had been visible on the Korean peninsula, just as they were in the whole Asian region. However this state of tacit existence changed rather quickly as Korea started to modernize rapidly following its independence in 1945. Lee Seung-Man, the first president of Korea and Park Jung-Hee, the second president, who happened to have graduated from the Manchuria Military Academy, played major roles in the disappearance of the then-existing Chinatown. Both focused their efforts towards trying to suppress the presence of Chinatown in Korea, and in a broader context, suppress the economic presence of Chinese residing in Korea. The Acquisition and Management of Land by Foreigners Act established by Park Jung-Hee in the 1970s, which legally limited the amount of assets Chinese could own, was one of the primary means used to limit Chinese economic and societal penetration in Korea. Another discriminatory law created 30 years ago which effectively forced Chinese restaurants and other commercial activities in the Chinatown area near In-Chon Park to shut down, one after the other, was one which restricted Chinese restaurants from selling rice and other food, unless those restaurants were merged with Korean restaurants. Done on the pretext of promoting flour-based food, its intended target was the ten thousand ethnic Chinese living in this area and the staple dish served and consumed by them in their restaurants - fried rice. As time progressed, under this law, many Chinese restaurants and smaller versions of such outfits inevitably disappeared. There is no question that Lee Seung-Man and Park Jung-Hee took crafty measures to suppress the Chinese presence in Korea, but the question needs to be asked as to why they both severely suppressed the Chinese. The answer is simple. Both of them could not forget the humiliating memories that had gradually built up during their childhoods. As far back as they could remember, the Chinese had always been the ones who would set up small businesses that would in time come to economically dominate areas in the vicinity of train terminals. In this center of commerce, they ran restaurants, established realtor and loan shark businesses and gradually accumulated massive amounts of wealth and power that was highly difficult to ignore. As such it is not surprising that Lee Seung-Man nationalized Chinese restaurants around train stations in the name of terminal development. A short story called "Potatoes," written by 1920s realism writer Kim Dong-In, depicts the Korean people's view of the Chinese particularly well. In the story, the main character Bok-Nyo, due to reasons of sheer poverty, steals potatoes from a vegetable garden owned by a Chinese man named Wang. Instead of punishing Bok-Nyo though, Wang pays her money and sleeps with her. In this novel, Kim portrays this Chinese man as a symbol of money and power who happens to belongs to the ruling class, and hence believes that he can do anything as he so pleases. Later Wang marries a young Korean girl whom he buys for 10 dollars, and kills the jealous Bok-Nyo. To make it a perfect murder, Wang buys out Bok-Nyo's husband and also and disguises her death as if she had a stroke. Extrapolated from this novel is the understanding that China was a master of Korea, and was in the position of being able to do anything to Korea. In 1897, Japan demanded that Korea open its doors and thereafter drew up the Kanghwa-Do Treaty, the first article of which stated that Korea was an independent country. Koreans at the time welcomed this article for it freed them from Chinese interference. Though this treaty in time became the start of a process of Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula, it was initially based on the Korean people's anti-Chinese feeling. The more than seventy thousands Chinese on the Korean peninsula were an oppressive presence on the Korean peninsula in the late-19th century. Lee Seung-Man, who was educated in the United States, and Park Jung-Hee, who had studied under Japanese military academy, though of totally different backgrounds, shared the common anti-Chinese view. For them, Chinatown was a head quarter of loan sharks and a site where bankrupt Koreans had to sacrifice their wives and children. These two Korean Presidents views towards China happen to be too old to be accepted by the Korean people in 21st Century. China appears as a hopeful opportunity for many Koreans today. According to a newspaper poll, almost 95% of Koreans support building a Chinatown immediately. The countdown has already started for building Chinatown, as a sort-of-headquarters for Chinese in Korea. How have modern Koreans, filled with self-esteem and confidence and backed by economic might, come to accept China as great power with a 1.3 billion population? The Chinatown currently about to be built in Korea may hold an answer to that, as well as to the future relationship between these two countries. (February 10, 2003) |
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