The Physical Return

Helene K. Lee in “The Logics of Cosmopolitan Koreanness and Global Citizenship” (2018) describes the dispositions and disparities of Korean Americans (and Korean Chinese) in relation to homeland South Koreans. Lee details the way that cosmopolitanism is utilized as an effective apparatus for navigating identity, ideology, and consolidating cultural capital as travelling migrants or those born into Western societies and then make the return home. Although modern day South Korea, especially in the bigger cities like Seoul or Busan, aren’t considered third-word or in association with the Global South, the specific characteristics that make a person ‘Korean’ or adjust to the Korean way of life is set at a different standard than those of Chinese or American origins. Lee says that hyphenated persons in Korea use their differences as “mobility” (115).

            Such is the issue of a developing dissonance for older generations of people who left Korea but returned years later to see that it has been completely changed. For Patricia Park’s main protagonist in Re Jane (2015), we are introduced to Jane’s closest uncle, Sang, finding it incredibly difficult to adjust to a new, consumerist way of life once he returns to Korea for his father’s funeral. Emo, Jane’s aunt, says, in Seoul-standard Korean: “I always tell your uncle to lighten up! The air around him is so heavy and stern. But he’s like a typical Busan man…[he] belongs to a different generation. Times have changed since” (150-151). This scene even further complicates the type of class struggle that develops when working-class men like Sang, who at this point are working-class American citizens, are profiled by hostesses at upscale Korean restaurants in Seoul: “The woman’s face remained expressionless, but I saw her eyes tilt ever so slightly downward, sweeping Sang from head to toe. They flickered into an almost imperceptible wince” (144).

            But Jane navigates her place in Seoul society differently. She internalizes this “gyopo” characteristic (gyopo meaning ‘born overseas’) as a way to stand out and market herself. Helene Lee writes that this method of embracing disparate transnational identities amalgamates into a ‘cosmopolitan Koreanness’ that lends itself for those like Jane to be mentally flexible an ideologically adaptable. Such is the case, for example, for her to get a job as an English teacher in South Korea—a job that is high-demand (173). A cosmopolitan Korean positions themselves as better global citizens in relation to South Koreans. And because of this ‘bettering’, as Lee explains, cosmopolitanism represents an “embodied state of cultural capital” that achieves two fundamental goals for returning migrants: one, making ‘gyopo’ Koreans distinct from South Koreans and thus attracting more capital for the sake of empowerment; and two, resisting marginalization in their ancestral homeland (115-118).

            We see that Jane is not just subconsciously acting as a ‘gyopo’ but is routinely weaponizing it. She has a constant reassessment of her imperfect Korean (193) or as Park defines very succinctly as linguistic loneliness by recognizing what is the Seoul-Korean standard of communicating and then gets better as her sojourn in South Korea continues (181, 199-200). She still participates in social situations like “always refuse offer first time” (185), pouring drinks for elders, purposeful utilization of aegyo or demure femininity/hyperfemininity (201), being courted by Changhoon and describing it as “old-fashioned” paradoxically a “guilty indulgence” (192). This juggling between the triangular paradox of ‘space,’ ‘time,’ and self-actualization is made clearly with a pivotal interaction between Changhoon and Jane:

            “You really are a Busan girl.”

            “And a New York one, too,”

                                                                         (201)

Such is to say that despite the fact that she recalls that Beth would consider her tactics as a “regression of feminism” (193), as a typically Western philosophy, Jane understands that by leaning into certain -isms of Korean culture, she’s able to market herself as an object of desire in growing hyperconsumerist society such as South Korea as a new class of peoples, as a Cosmopolitan Korean.

             Socio-psychoanalytical reversals such as we see in Re Jane can be understood in a Neo-Victorian frame of mind as a way to observe the ways in which femininity was once positioned as a strict moral code of behavior like in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Where class and patriarchy shaped women’s lives, now the critical onus within identity and self-determination allows femininity to operate as a fluid mechanism that navigates and consolidates literal and cultural capital on their own terms. Brontë’s Jane earns mobility, albeit a lot slower, within a patriarchal apparatus where not being “ambitious” (318) may be a quintessential aspect of a desirable demure-feminism in the face of St. John; Park’s Jane converts demure into aegyo with Changhoon. Beyond this idea where 'the Victorian' women is positioned in our cultural understanding, it is important to create space to understand that the global, Cosmopolitan women is the Neo-Victorian.

Citations:

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.  Ed. Deborah Lutz, W.W. Norton & Company (2016), London. pp. 313. Print. 

Lee, H.K. "The Logics of Cosmopolitan Koreanness and Global Citizenship," Between Foreign and Family. Rutgers University Press (2018), pp. 115-118. Accessed: 10-11-2019.

Park, Patricia. Re Jane. Penguin Random House, New York (2015). pp. 144, 150-151, 181-201. Print.