Mr Christian Caiconte1
1University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia
The Saemaul (New Village) Movement, Park Chung Hee’s initiative for Korea’s rural infrastructural development, was a key ideological component of the country’s rapid capitalist development in the 1970s. The state-appointed Saemaul leaders were not only responsible for the economic transformation of their rural communities but also for the diffusion of the cultural values promoted by the state. However, despite their relevance to the success of the Park regime, the role played by Saemaul leaders has been obscured by approaches such as the developmental state theory that emphasises the power of the Korean state over a “docile” and “weak” Korean labour. This paper argues that the debate on Korea’s late development is incomplete without a theorisation of the agency of these developmental subjects (the Saemaul leaders), who agreed with and willingly worked for the regime. To this purpose, the paper draws on the Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of surplus enjoyment, misrecognition and fantasy to make sense of the peasantry’s support to the movement despite widespread labour repression and exploitation. The analysis of autobiographical documents written by Saemaul leaders will show that Park’s developmental project was based on a social fantasy that provided peasants with the (mis)recognition from society that they unconsciously desired.
Biography:
Christian Caiconte is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests are at the intersection of political economy, psychoanalysis, and development studies. His doctoral thesis articulates a Marxist-psychoanalytic critique of capitalist development in South Korea.