yin MENT 인터뷰 질문

Draft of Interview Questions (With Contextual Information) jan 31-feb 20

Public sphere 

You have traced evolving gender roles as Korean society underwent colonization, compressed modernization, military authoritarianism, economic and social liberalization, and neoliberal restructuring. As you note, the expansion of the modern public sphere has not created any fundamental change in gender roles but led to “housewifization” and the emergence of the “manager mother,” who helped sustain and reproduce interests of the neoliberal state through ensuring the educational and market competitiveness of her children. Korean youths have been sacrificed on the altar of economic growth and labor productivity, as they internalize the neoliberal logic and submit themselves to the “relentless grind of study, cram schools, and preparation for the college entrance examination.” The result is an exclusive familism and an instrumentalization of selfhood that are both wielded in the service of state and market interests. There is thus little space for self-reflection, civic consciousness, or community building. 

In your writings, you continue to emphasize the need for the cultivation of alternative public spheres that are structured around the values of mutual care, social responsibility, and communication. What role do you think popular media can play in the cultivation of such alternative spheres? 

As you’ve noted, mass media and consumer culture have pernicious effects in creating the “image of the feminine as embodied in a lovely and sexy woman.” At the same time, you also note the importance of mass media activism. How do you imagine such activism playing out? 

In recent years, K-dramas have increasingly engaged with “social dilemmas engendered by modernity” (Baldacchino and Park, 2020). I’m thinking, for instance, of shows like Sky Castle and Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which depicted the ills of South Korea’s educational system, of My Mister and My Liberation Notes, which explored the sense of alienation produced by the neoliberal corporation, and of Because This Is My First Life and Melo Is My Nature, which spotlighted the gendered violence that women experience in the workplace. How do you read the politics of such representation? Does it go far enough, or do you think such narratives remain constrained by their genre and/or format? If so, how so? 

In 1999, you founded the Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture (also known as the Haja Center) to provide youths with a space for pursuing their own ideas and interests. I found it interesting that the Haja Center began with a focus on design, filmmaking, web content design, popular music, and studies in humanities. Could you talk a bit about how you landed on these areas of focus? How has Haja Center evolved in the past twenty-five years, and how does its evolution reflect broader generational shifts?

Youth activism

You have written about how South Korea’s neoliberal transformation has created a generation of youths–what you call the “Spec Generation,” who entered college in the 2000s–that prioritize conventional success and practice “a highly calculated micro-management of self” in order to accomplish that goal. In contrast, the “New Generation” that came of age in the decade before them “valued freedom, self-expression, and self-realization,” forging “a radical alternative to the existing conservative and authoritarian culture” through “the adoption of digital media technologies” and critical engagement with popular culture. What role, if any, does popular culture play for the youths of the “Spec Generation”? Might communal engagement with popular culture help lay the groundwork for the kind of affective activism that Anne Alison has identified in Japan, and which you think may similarly manifest in Korean society? And now, twenty years later, do you see the emergence or potential emergence of a new generation (I’m thinking, for instance, of the 4B movement), or is spec consciousness still very much the dominant worldview? What gender differences do you observe in the responses to crisis society and neoliberal precarity among today’s youths? 

What role do youths and youth culture play in political activism today? I’m thinking in particular about the recent protests against Yoon Suk Yeol. Major Korean news outlets have noted that young women in their 20s and 30s have “emerged at the forefront of [these] protests,” singing K-pop songs like Girls’ Generation’s “Into the New World” and waving concert glow sticks in order to rally the crowd. Does this signal the emergence of a new political consciousness? What conditions ushered in this collective action? In your analysis of the Korean street festivals during the 2002 World Cup, you have noted that “there are politics based on sporadic spurts of energy and reciprocal trust, memories that rely on legend and myth as well as memories carved into the body.” Do the recent protests constitute such a political instance? What memories–particularly memories connected to a sensory engagement with popular song–do they help create, and what futures do they make possible? 

Hallyu

You have noted how in the early 2000s, the Korean Wave has been appropriated by, on the one hand, a nationalistic discourse with imperialistic ambitions and, on the other hand, a neoliberal ambition driven by concern for the bottom line. A third position reads in Hallyu possible “site[s] of intervention for building postcolonial communities.” In 2025, in the wake of Parasite, BTS, and Squid Game’s global triumph, Hallyu does not seem to be slowing down. From Sopyonje to Parasite, from Autumn In My Heart to Squid Game, and from Seo Taiji and Boys to BTS, in what ways have the terms of discourse shifted or remained the same? What are your thoughts about the current limits, dangers, and opportunities that Hallyu poses for Koreans, for Asians, and for diasporic and postcolonial subjects everywhere? How are these dangers and opportunities differently inflected by race, gender, and class? To what extent can the mobility of these pop culture products help create new kinds of consciousness and solidarities that are not bound by nationalism? To what extent can pop culture activate a different orientation toward everyday life?

The Internet / Digital Technologies

From the 1990s onwards, the Internet has served as an alternative space for Korean youths and provided the groundwork for political participation. As a digital publication, MENT itself was founded out of an utopic investment in the digital commons. In our first and our second issue, we have explored both the uses and limits of digital, particularly fan-based, activism. At the same time, as you note, digital ecosystems have also become a hotbed for financial speculation, misogyny, bullying, hate speech, and sex crimes, including the recent deepfake porn crisis that particularly targeted women and minors. What is your perspective on where we are in this moment and where we are headed in the future?