Cultural politics of the Red Devils
The desiring multitude versus the state, capital and media
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12671583 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gyuchan Jeon (corresponding author), Tae‐Jin Yoon (0000-0002-5243-8536) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 77-88 |
| Publication date | 2004-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1464-9373 • E-ISSN: 1469-8447 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1464937042000196833 |
| OpenAlex | W2063729092 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 2 |
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes ‘Red Devils’ originally refers to the members of a fan club, who support the Korean national soccer team. But during the World Cup, millions of Koreans went out onto the streets with red shirts on and chanted. There was no distinction between the fan club members and others, and ‘Red Devils’ became to refer to all these people, at least during the World Cup. In this paper, by ‘Red Devils’ we mean the millions of people, not only those members of the fan club. For a problematization and theoretical debate on this issue of ‘micro‐fascism’ inside Korea, please refer to Contemporary Criticism , vols 9 and 10. Concerning this matter, the role of the temporary US military government between the Japanese colonialism and the formal Korean regime installed in 1948 cannot be overlooked. Transforming and/or appropriating the Japanese education into the American one and the fascist ideology into an anti‐Communist one through the usage of old media and school apparatuses, it systematically implanted the Americanized form of yet undemocratic, totalistic life in South Korea. Even the elementary students under tight Japanese control had to swear everyday as follows: 1. We are the subjects of the Great Japan Empire. 2. We will in one union heart be faithful to the emperor. 3. We will endure and train ourselves to become the good and healthy gookmin. More specifically, the Ministry of Culture in 1983 insisted that all television and radio stations reflect the given order in their programmings. The two key themes informed were, first, educating the gookmin spirit and, second, leading the development of gookmin consciousness. These themes were to be reflected not just in the news but also in entertainment and even children's programmes. If this kind of direct censorship has gone, with the collapse of military government, the myth that the media are working for the totality of gookmin is still observed with ease in everyday discourses by and about the media. The role of the ‘US Army Military Government in Korea’ in Korean media history has been discussed in various books and articles. The authors consulted Tae‐Jin Yoon (1997). Professor Noja Pak, who was naturalized as a Korean citizen, said after witnessing the Red Devils on the streets, ‘... It reminded me of the Nazi rally in Nuremberg, 1937’ (Pak and Hong 2002). The discussion on Althusser (and Hall) was inspired by Ogasawara's critique, entitled ‘Seoul Searching: Nationalism and the Subject in Spectacle,’ of the earlier version of this paper. This expressive national identity will later reappear in the Asian Games being held at Pusan, South Korea. The same Red Devils will chant ‘We are the One!’ and ‘Our Father's Land Shall be Unified!’ with hundreds of pretty girl supporters visiting from the North. It is indeed amazing to see how in people's seemingly trivial desires for pleasure, insignificant flows of desire can easily cross over the old ideological boundary set by the states. This failure of the Red complex, the anti‐Communism shows that we need a very different unification theory based not on people's consciousness but on their instinctive desires. The state and people's movement after the 9/11 terror can be analysed in this way, too. In a TV interview with Noam Chomsky by one of the authors (Jeon), he appeared to be very optimistic about people despite the undemocratic, fascist state policing. Is people's desire for freedom really winning that of state for discipline? Or do new reactive immigration policies show the victory of state over people
Club · Communism · Consecration · Empire · Ideology · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Political theory and Gramsci
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
| Citation span | 2006 - 2022 (17) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |