News feeds and social media posts are a constant barrage to the senses here in hyper-connected South Korea. Domestic politics and historic summits with North Korea currently dominate headlines and conversations. But there are a few who consistently turn beyond the local issues of today to matters of humankind. Jeon Byung-geun is one such “knowledge curator”. A well-known writer and translator, he introduces overseas scientific and literary thinkers to Korea through his Book Club Origin, in partnership with Kakao’s 1boon platform. To his current work, he brings decades of experience as a journalist and foreign correspondent at Chosun Ilbo, one of the largest news media companies in South Korea. There he covered politics, international relations, science, and culture.
And knowledge is more than knowing a lot about something on your own—although that may be meaningful in its own way. I think I’m more interested in sharing knowledge, so that it can have a social impact and be used in better ways. I think journalism is something that spreads correct information and knowledge throughout society, to lead it in a more desirable direction. And in that aspect, I believe that I am still doing the job of a journalist.
Jeon’s passion to discover and share knowledge on ultimate concerns was palpable throughout our conversation. It is that same passion that drove his various career transitions—from academia to journalism to long-form writing and now translating. He has translated several international titles into Korean thus far, including Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead? The Munk Debate (by Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Alain de Botton, and Malcolm Gladwell), North Korea Confidential (by Daniel Tudor and James Pearson), and Technology vs Humanity (Gerd Leonhard). And this summer sees the release of his translation of Yuval Harari’s next book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
One of Jeon’s key convictions is that books are critical to human development and evolution:
In my opinion, books should be a critical instrument. And when I say books, I’m referring to a collection of writings that has a certain level of completion. Whether it’s online or bound into a book is a secondary question; a book is primarily something that communicates a complete story. As to why books are important, the most important human capacity is the ability to reason, and human intellect has advanced through evolution. Among several critical stepping stones in this process, one is the creation of books using the printing press. That opened a new chapter in human history, since people began writing and communicating through printed work.
The means that allowed the opening of this new chapter began to change during the digital era. But it was not a simple transfer of letters on paper to letters on screen. Our lives began to change in the digital era, and the acts of reading and thinking became less important. People often say that writings are not only in books but also on cell phones, but in the process of transferring the letters and words to the digital platform the essence of the writing vanishes or changes. Take the length of the text, for instance. A book contains a story of a certain length, but on the phone, everything’s in short sentences. Or fragments. And so everything becomes superficial. The topics discussed in the writing also tend to be suited to the format, so it’s difficult to get deeper into them. That’s why most digital writings tend to consist of things that appeal to our senses. Like pictures, for instance. And writings become shorter, appeal to our senses, or elicit immediate response. In that way, the content contained in traditional print books becomes altered when it is moved to digital platforms. And the thinking tools we once regarded as important seem to be in crisis.
But Jeon is no pessimist on this front. While many others predict an end to book reading, Jeon is fascinated by the possibilities afforded by wise use of technology. He continues to see potential in digital platforms to break the constraints—such as word count, article structure, and corporate political leanings—of traditional newspapers. His own website, for example, enables him to reach a broader audience than ever before with long-form interviews with the likes of Elena Ferrante, Max Tegmark, David Brooks, and Chu T’ien-Hsin. A compilation of these conversations were published as a Korean book last year. (A few are on The Dissolve, with more to come.)
He is pessimistic, however, about South Korea’s own intellectual environment. Given the political in-fighting and lack of infrastructure, he sees little prospect of Korean research and academia contributing works of international significance in the near future.
In Korea, the people who write books in the humanities and sciences tend to be professors. But they are busy writing academic papers, conducting research, and teaching. So it is very difficult for them to publish books for the general public. On top of that, you don’t know whether writings books would be lucrative and such books don’t count toward research accomplishments. And in Korea, translating foreign works doesn’t help build a career either. So ultimately, the reason such books are so rare in Korea is not that Korean scholars have fallen behind. It’s a problem of structure. And it impedes the production of accomplishments with universal relevance. I’m not saying that what is Korean is not universal. It’s that there are too many things lacking in Korea, in terms of infrastructure, for us to make universal contributions.
Actually, Korea has been through a rather unique historical experience, and we have a lot that can appeal to other countries, things that would be helpful to other countries. We’ve been through so much within such a short period of time since the modern era began. But unfortunately, discussions about that tend to be affected by partisan politics. I’d like for Koreans to try and persuade and understand each other on the opposite sides of issues, but it’s difficult to narrow the gaps and we end up intensifying the problems. So when even domestic discussions rarely reach the level of universality, I wonder if these scholars would be able to persuade non-Koreans when they make presentations or when their books are translated into other languages.
I am slightly more optimistic than Jeon on the potential of Korean scholars, but perhaps that is because I am content to accept local descriptions that make no attempt at universal implications. Still, Jeon Byung-geun’s knowledge curation is an undeniably vital and rich contribution to my own lifelong learning, and that of the Korean public.
The text of our conversation has been translated from the Korean, in collaboration with Jeon, and lightly edited for clarity.
Beginnings
Jeon Byung-geun: In Korea, elementary, middle, and high school are compulsory, so your life isn’t much different from everyone else’s. It’s once you’re in college that you start thinking independently. It was like that for me. I didn’t want to, but I entered law school somehow. And, like many people, when I was there, I started looking for answers to the questions I had about life. But it was difficult to find those answers in classes, so I read books and spent time thinking on my own. I wanted to know what the world was like. Everyone has those thoughts at some point, but I think I had a strong urge ever since I was little. So I read all kinds of books in college.
I wanted to study philosophy or history, so I was very interested in the humanities. That was because when I read, I really liked those writers who gave answers or hints to the questions I had. I thought, “It would be great if I could give answers to people who have questions about life and the world. And if that’s what I want to do, I need to have proper knowledge of these things.” So that I could give the right answers. And the things I wanted to know about were philosophy and history, so I read a lot of books in those fields.
I was in college in the late 1980s, and Korean society was in an uproar, undergoing democratization. There were a lot of political issues to think about. When I was applying to get into law school, I’d thought that law was justice, or a means of justice. But when I saw that wasn’t the case in reality, I started asking about the nature of power. So naturally I started to study political philosophy. Fortunately I was minoring in politics at the time, so I withdrew from my law major and changed course. I think I also wanted to go deeper into my studies.
At the time, I was also planning on going abroad for graduate school. So I read more systematically than others. I was disappointed with many of the lectures I attended, but things became clearer when I read the books in English. I thought they were well written. Even the Asian classics were easier to understand in English. To be honest, Korean publications weren’t that great back then. The translations weren’t directly from the English, they came from Japanese translations. That resulted in a lot of strange expressions.
Right. There weren’t that many either. Reading materials were limited. I read a lot of books in the original English because I liked them and there were a lot more of them. I thought that I should read them in advance, in case I did end up studying abroad. So even with the classics, for instance, I would read the two or three-volume books like The Cultural History of the World (Segye Munhwasa), and if any important books were mentioned I’d look for those books and read them too. So I was preparing for the future.
After I went to grad school and wrote my thesis, I had to serve in the military—like all Korean men—and I went to the Korea Air Force Academy. They were looking for professors, and it worked out. I got a taste of what it is like to be a professor, preparing lectures, and teaching cadets. While I was there, I think I got fed up with studies and the world of books.
Well, you know, Goethe said “All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.” Knowledge seemed to be ashen colored. It was some kind of a slump. Knowledge seemed dead, while the world was live, passionate, and vivid. The world of books increasingly seemed like a dead end.
That was 1994, so the mid 90s. In many ways, it was a good time to attend the Korean Air Force Academy. I was able to study and exercise. Eking out a livelihood would have been a challenge if I were just going to school, but I got a basic monthly wage there—albeit not very much—and I was guaranteed a reasonable standard of living. I also liked that I was living with people my age.
So at the time, I didn’t like the thought of spending all my life in school, and I wasn’t aiming to be a professor. Academia seemed like a bottomless hole, and I thought there must be better things to do with the rest of my life. For instance, Korea had become a bit more politically democratic, so I guess I hoped that there would be other changes in the world. I wanted to learn about the world, so to speak. Journalism was a natural fit.
I’d thought about becoming a newspaper journalist or a producer for TV documentaries. After I finished my military service, I took a few exams for media companies. I took the test for the producer position at an educational channel called EBS. I passed and went to the final interview stage. But EBS was really unstable at the time. It’s a public corporation, and though there’s more interest in EBS today, it was much more vulnerable back then, and I didn’t want to put myself in a precarious situation. Ultimately, I became a reporter at Chosun Ilbo. It was the most influential paper in Korea, and a good stepping stone for a journalist’s career, even if I wasn’t completely happy with the paper’s political position then either. Being a journalist was more demanding than I had thought, but overall, I liked it.
Turning overseas
I was in national news when I first started. It’s a long story, but since I had a degree in law, I covered court cases. Korean newspaper journalists back then preferred politics or economics, covering court cases like I did. But I actually preferred the international news department because I’d been reading foreign newspapers and books. Plus, focusing on Korean domestic issues was too confining. I was interested in looking at global trends and the big picture from the outside, so I enjoyed reading foreign newspapers and I liked writing articles on them and introducing them to Korean readers. And domestic issues always made me wonder, “Is this really worth my effort?” I still feel that way when I look at national partisan politics or controversies.
There’s that too, but instead of a good debate there’s a lot of factional fighting. And the press intervenes as though it’s a stakeholder. I didn’t like that. Instead of following the principles of journalism, I felt, directly and indirectly, that a lot of things were dependent on the paper’s political position. And that didn’t seem like fun. On the other hand, international news was a bit more neutral, so it wasn’t as subject to company political positions.
I liked reading foreign newspapers through the international news department and I learned so much. For me it was like studying. I was interested in universal issues on the global level. I had a lot of opportunities to go overseas on work trips. Then I served as a foreign correspondent. And I went abroad for training too. So I developed more interest in international news and did a lot of related work.
And my overseas training in the United States became the turning point. I went in 2008, when Obama was elected, and the IT revolution was in full swing. iPhones and Kindles were released, and Twitter, Facebook, Google were all emerging as big corporations. When I returned to Korea after witnessing all that in the US, I thought that it was just a matter of time before printed news disappeared. I was considering going freelance in the long term. Around that time, Chosun Ilbo started an online media wing called Chosun Biz. So I went there, and left later when Kakao Mobile proposed that I collaborate as a content provider on its 1boon platform. So in a way, I’ve always had an interest in the world, and had things I wanted to know, and in that pursuit of knowledge, where I went and what I was able to do changed. That’s how I ended up where I am today.
It wasn’t study. I’d planned on going abroad to study, but before doing that I had decided I wanted to learn more about the world, and ended up in journalism. In that perspective, I changed course while I was in the military, from staying in school to working. I call it pagye (파계, 破戒). In religious circles, for example, if a priest-in-training or a Buddhist monk decides to break his vows, that’s called pagye. It means “violating religious precepts”. The term is used when one decides to devote their whole life to something and then breaks that promise. That was analogous to what I did. Staying in academia involves graduating from college, going abroad to get a more advanced degree, returning to Korea to lecture, research, and teach. That’s the course that scholars generally take.
In a sense, I think that I’d been devoted to my studies but then decided to return to the secular world. That was my disposition, and I think it’s significant. Studying need not happen only in universities. And knowledge is more than knowing a lot about something on your own—although that may be meaningful in its own way. I think I’m more interested in sharing knowledge, so that it can have a social impact and be used in better ways. I think journalism is something that spreads correct information and knowledge throughout society, to lead it in a more desirable direction. And in that aspect, I believe that I am still doing the job of a journalist.
As for going abroad, I had a chance to go to Brazil between 2005 and 2006, when I was still with Chosun Ilbo. Central and South American countries are rather difficult to visit, but I was able to, and it opened my eyes as to how to view the world. So I stayed in the international news department for a while afterward. Usually, people work in international news for two or three years and transfer to another department, but I stayed on for some time. I became the most senior member in the department, and even the department head changed at least five or six times. I really enjoyed writing about what I’d learned and informing other people about it.
Before I left, I switched to the culture section. I’d been interested in the culture desk since I was a reporter, but I was in international news for so long that I just didn’t get the chance. But I decided that I should—before I left—so I worked there for about two years.
As for the training program in the United States, I had the chance to be in a year-long program. Actually, I was originally supposed to go to Russia as a foreign correspondent, and had been preparing for that. But then I received a scholarship from a nonprofit journalist organization in Korea, and one of the conditions was that I go to the US. And it worked out well in the end because I studied Russian there, at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS. And I had the chance to witness the changes I’d talked about earlier, at the heart of the US in Washington DC. It was a great experience for me.
When you get into it, there’s a huge difference between North America and Central and South America. They’re both Americas, but one’s Hispanic, the other’s Anglo-Saxon. That was very interesting to me as well, and I got to experience both. They were both new continents, but the mother tongues were different, and I saw first-hand how the countries and the social changes differed. While I was in the US, I traveled a lot and thought about being a correspondent in Washington DC if I got the chance. Personally, while it’s true that the US is a relatively new country, it is a leading nation, and how the country and its population groups think is very important. The US also leads in knowledge generation, so I couldn’t not have an interest in the country. Even now, back in Korea, I’m still interested in the foreign press, and I try more than many other people to introduce what they are saying to the Korean public.
Yes, that’s something that is probably different from what other people do. Compared to the things that are being discussed in Korea, I try to relay information from overseas that we should know about or hear about. That’s why Book Club Origin also tries to focus on content that is more universal, matters that we often neglect or overlook, something that is universal to humankind. So even the interviews with authors tend to focus more on foreign writers.
Books as key to universal questions
As you already know, that’s a big issue. To keep things simple, I can tell you a few things, but this is something that I’m still pondering. And it’s also the topic of the book I’m thinking about writing.
Oh, it’s about knowledge curation—what I’m doing now. I named my job title “knowledge curator”, and the key words are right there. The job title itself is a way of expressing my identity, so I have to clarify what I mean by that—what it means to be a “knowledge curator” and why it’s significant—since it’s something that I will forever be. So I need to explain what knowledge is, why it’s valuable, what curating is, and why curating is necessary. I think these are more than just personal questions, they are universal in scope.
In the larger context, what I’m interested in is the fate of humanity in the digital era—big themes like that. In every era, humans are most interested in figuring out how we should live in the environment we find ourselves in. These are fundamental question about the fate of humanity and our best course of action. In the environment that we are in, the biggest change is in digital technology. For instance, bio-engineering and information technology are all part of digital technology, and it seems that the changes occurring now are at a different level than industrial technologies of the past. These changes are transforming our lives, at a much faster rate and with higher intensity.
Then the question of what would happen to humans can emerge in many different ways. In my opinion, books should be a critical instrument. And when I say books, I’m referring to a collection of writings that has a certain level of completion. Whether it’s online or bound into a book is a secondary question; a book is primarily something that communicates a complete story. As to why books are important, the most important human capacity is the ability to reason, and human intellect has advanced through evolution. Among several critical stepping stones in this process, one is the creation of books using the printing press. That opened a new chapter in human history, since people began writing and communicating through printed work.
The means that allowed the opening of this new chapter began to change during the digital era. But it was not a simple transfer of letters on paper to letters on screen. Our lives began to change in the digital era, and the acts of reading and thinking became less important. People often say that writings are not only in books but also on cell phones, but in the process of transferring the letters and words to the digital platform the essence of the writing vanishes or changes. Take the length of the text, for instance. A book contains a story of a certain length, but on the phone, everything’s in short sentences. Or fragments. And so everything becomes superficial. The topics discussed in the writing also tend to be suited to the format, so it’s difficult to get deeper into them. That’s why most digital writings tend to consist of things that appeal to our senses. Like pictures, for instance. And writings become shorter, appeal to our senses, or elicit immediate response. In that way, the content contained in traditional print books becomes altered when it is moved to digital platforms. And the thinking tools we once regarded as important seem to be in crisis.
In fact, book readership is decreasing as well. People are becoming consumers of writings on mobile platforms. When you look around now, people are reading, but they’re not reading books. It’s like what they’re reading is similar to books, but falls short of actual books. They are reading fragments. So I believe that the threat faced by books, which were important means used by humans to realize their capacity for critical reasoning, is a serious challenge faced by humanity. If we define being fully human as the pursuit of becoming good people, being human is precisely what is under threat.
We can think about this threat in many ways. People have bodies. Reading isn’t a simple process of putting information in your head. It’s related to other activities we perform in our lives, such as setting aside the time and space to perform the act of reading. This means that if you want to read books, it requires a comprehensive change of lifestyle. You have to set aside time to read, and go to an isolated place. Of course, you can read on the subway or in coffee shops, but that’s a small difference, because you still need the will and the attitude to basically block out other things and focus on what is in the book. And you absolutely need to set aside time for it. You can’t read without time. In the future you might insert a chip into your brain to transfer information, but that doesn’t make sense in today’s world. So you need to secure time and space. And your physical position when reading could be uncomfortable, but you endure it. In that aspect, reading requires devotion just as artists devote themselves to their work. That kind of devotion is valuable because it is a way to become better people.
It’s difficult to answer that empirically. There are reports that Statistics Korea publishes. For instance they ask questions such as, “How many books did you read last year?” When we look at those reports, we can see that developed countries do read more. Recent statistics showed that Americans read a little more than Koreans. Economically developed countries probably fare better culturally, since the problem of eating and surviving has been resolved already. Not that we need to unquestioningly copy whatever the developed countries do. A country might fare better and be happier without reading any books. You can’t say that underdeveloped countries are unhappy because they don’t read books. But like I said before, if reading is an important tool necessary for what we want to pursue, then it could be possible to compare Korea with other countries with similar economic scales and have common pursuits. We’ve joined the OECD. In terms of economic levels, I think culturally we need to read a little more in order to fall in step with other OECD countries. I don’t think Koreans are particularly different to others, especially as the technological changes in this digital era are occurring everywhere at the same time.
Korea, actually, has digital technologies that are second to none. The technological changes are more rapid, intense, and comprehensive here, which means Korea was more quickly exposed to digital technologies than to printed books. In other developed countries, the culture of book reading was established long before the next step of digital technology. But Korea grew rapidly after industrialization. During the phase of economic growth, and just as Korea began to grow culturally, the digital era set in before there was time for a firm readership base to be established. An unfavorable environment for reading came too early. It would’ve been better if a larger population of cultured readers had been in place before the economic levels rose. But before that happened, the digital culture rushed in, so there wasn’t enough time for Korea to properly go though these stages.
An important characteristic of reading is having enough time, since it’s not a matter of survival. Reading becomes more active and energized when you take time, look into the future, and think of something bigger—and possibly more abstract—on a personal and societal level. But today, we each feel that we still have to catch up with the rapid progress around us, as a matter of survival. We still need to grow economically, and people need to make a living. So what I said about the universal human values… it doesn’t do anything for our survival, right? Seen that way, the situation is not favorable. Korean society simply does not allow the time for the emergence of a reading population. Despite that, recently—albeit partially—interest in reading and knowledge has been growing and I think that’s proof of what I said before, about how economic growth leads to the formation of a cultured population that is more interested in higher level issues than simply making a living.
The Korean market is small, which is unfavorable for growing a population of cultured people. Publishing has to play an important role in the book market, but since our market is so small, it’s weak. Books are mostly centered on bestsellers, and it’s difficult to diversify. Diversity would improve the quality of books, which would in turn lead to more satisfied readers. But books are becoming less diverse.
In another interview, I said it’s like bandages. People think of books as bandages. You’re in pain, so you want to buy one quickly and apply it, like you would a bandage. It’s true that books are like bandages on the one hand, but there are other remedies, like herbal medicine, that might be bitter to taste but begin to heal from deeper inside and make you healthier as a whole. If I apply this analogy, it’s like we keep applying and removing bandages. From the perspective of writers who produce books, naturally they wish to write something like that so they can sell a lot of copies. This is unavoidable, since, like I said before, the society is changing rapidly and there’s a strong sense of urgency to resolve things immediately; it’s difficult to think in a longer time frame. In that sense, people who look for herbal medicine instead of bandages are bound to be financially better off.
I believe it’s the same for foreign countries. It might seem as though there are more foreigners who read more complicated books, but if you look at the percentages it’s probably not like that. We have to look beyond North America and Europe, and the fraction of book readers is bound to be very small. In that aspect, I wonder if Korea is really abnormal in that there is only a small number of people who enjoy reading about complex topics. We’re a small country, so the number of people that make up that percentage is small. So it’s a shame. I think it’s the same everywhere that shallow and light self-help books are popular.
MiniBooks and text in the digital age
Right. Self-help books become bestsellers in the US, too.
In your Origin Book Club, the MiniBook interviews in particular are very long. You said, it’s desirable for people to read books, but the reality is that more people consume abridged or misrepresented versions of them. It seems that your MiniBooks are somewhere in between. How did you settle on this concept?
Length and size are relative; they’re difficult to pin down in absolute terms. I started MiniBooks as an experiment at Chosun Biz. And the first reason for it was I was unhappy about how short pieces had to be when I was working for a print newspaper. Not only from the journalist’s perspective, but for readers as well. There are short articles that can contain all the information—such as one-off incidents. But in general, the kind of things I was interested in and wanted to inform people about required more space. English newspapers tend to have small fonts and long articles. If you translate them into Korean, they generally become much longer than the original. But the articles in Korean newspapers are shorter. And as for the font size, they’re getting bigger to accommodate the elderly population, and so the articles get shorter. I’m not sure how it is right now, but I doubt the articles are much longer than when I was in the industry. Even the headline articles have a limit of eight to ten 200-character pages. And that was never enough to deal with a subject in depth. Some people might think otherwise, but I think this is a problem because social incidents can have multiple perspectives and interpretations. But due to the constraints in length, the diverse perspectives get cut out. This is harmful for the formation of public opinion in Korea.
All the newspapers always put forth one strong argument and occasionally add or sometimes entirely omit the the rest. As a result, public opinions become extremely polarized depending on the paper one reads. But if we look internationally, quality foreign papers publish articles that are pretty long. And those articles can be confusing in terms of the arguments they put forward. The title says one thing, but when you actually read the article, sometimes it takes up the counterargument. That can seem ridiculous to Korean readers. But when you think about it, social situations are never black and white. And I believe one of the functions of journalism is to deliver such complexities well. Why else would you read newspapers? You might as well follow someone’s slogans, or side with whatever political party. But I believe that the press plays an important role by simply introducing various positions in a clear manner. In that sense, I think it’s only right to secure a certain amount of space to fulfill that function. If we start compromising and go with the idea that news articles should be short, papers lose their essential function. And this would be the end-point of following the market logic.
But one advantage of online publications is that there is no limit to length. This characteristic was what had intellectuals point to the internet as if it held the key to the future. There is no limit, and anyone can upload or search for information. So initially, liberal intellectuals welcomed the internet, saying that it was a new tool of liberation and that it holds new possibilities for the human race. But as time passed, instead of long writings, we got more provocative content that appeals to our senses. It was inevitable. But in foreign countries, major media organizations or serious journals in particular tend to hold on to the traditional format. They have a lot of articles that are packed with text. Sometimes they’re as long as or even longer than books, because that’s the advantage of the internet.
So I named my series MiniBook, trying to provide a sufficient answer that goes beyond the limits of the newspaper. Interviews, in particular, tend to look similar, regardless of the interviewee and the media outlet, since they have to be short. Since people only talk about the key points, the articles have similar titles and similar questions are asked. There isn’t much room for difference. On the other hand, long interviews can differ depending on the interviewer. And interviewees can also include other details in their answers instead of the same responses they always give. And depending on the reader, there are a lot of things they can take away from such details. To some readers, a part that wasn’t picked as the title could be ideal, and to others a description the interviewee gave during the interview could be key. In that aspect, longer interviews can be more satisfying. And as an interviewer, I can ask enough questions. Of course, I’m not saying that interviews should include all the boring and pointless chatter. The point is to thoroughly revise and pack with content. So it takes more effort. But I took that all into consideration and still decided to write something long in the form of a mini book. And unexpectedly, people responded positively. I received attention by interviewing writers and scholars. And I was able to put them together into a book. The reason Kakao made me an offer was also because they saw my long pieces as long-form journalism—that were rare on the Korean internet—and were interested in it. And I decided to do it since it was hard to find such writings and thought it would be worth it.
And another reason was that books were considered the opposite of newspapers. Newspapers and journals provided short news articles, while books were long. But there was a demand for something in the middle. Of course, weekly magazines could keep up with demand, but print media, such as periodicals, take a while to print and produce. They can do it in a shorter period of time nowadays, but they are still slower than daily newspapers or real-time publications online. So publishing long pieces online would shorten the time involved in publishing, and at the same time reflect the kind of details and in-depth information as articles in periodicals. So it’s a combination of those kinds of factors. If this intent wasn’t realized properly, it could have ended up being neither this nor that. And readers who want articles to be shorter could have just ignored mine. But at the time, it was an experiment, and it was new, so people showed interest.
Yes, that’s why I called them mini books. They are kind of an odd length to actually publish them as short books. But I wanted to put in enough content that they would have the effect of a book on readers. And for the most part, I interviewed authors. Some readers told me that they understood the books better after reading the interviews because the contents of the books were summarized by the writers themselves.
Another interesting part is the relationship between writing and speech. One of the major stepping stones for humanity was the printing press, which helped people document, share, and conserve thoughts and events. On the other hand, speech is the natural means of communication. The advantages of speech sometimes vanish when it is turned into writing. It can become abstract. The worst result of that would be if people read the written work and didn’t understand what it meant at all. If you wrote in order to effectively deliver your speech, but the readers didn’t understand what you’d written, then that writing would be dead. But there’s this inevitability in writing. Of course, there are advantages to writing, since things that cannot be said could be written, and writings also leave room for imagination. But the vividness and a lot of things about the speaker get pruned. In those instances, the spark that wasn’t there in the author’s writing might come alive in the author’s speech. In that sense, interviews are appealing and valuable. They’re like live performances. People buy recordings because they like listening to them, but people also go to concerts because the musicians show something new in that moment. I transcribe interviews, but just listening to my interviewees talk is valuable in itself. The listening part becomes another text of its own. Sometimes I transcribe lectures. I think lectures by certain scholars are much more interesting and effective than their serious writing.
The future of sapiens
Broadly speaking, that’s directly related to what I’m interested in. I don’t dissociate myself from my work. I think that people are probably interested in what I’m interested in, or at least I want them to be interested in what I’m interested in. I’m not particular; I just have interests in the world as another human living in it. I also believe that what I gained throughout my life in this world as an individual would be helpful to others. And I think that’s desirable and natural in life. When I trace back, my interests are directly related to the question, “How should we live?” What kind of life would be a good life. This was a conclusion that the scientific world arrived at, that humanity’s pursuit of knowledge is related to thinking about the future. Organisms need to live in whatever environment, and living means moving. I’ve heard that knowledge emerged as an act of predicting the future and making life better, thinking “Where’s the best place for me to go?” So I’m interested in “what I need to live a better life” and “what we need to be happier in our lives”.
And I think knowledge plays an important role as a tool. In order to lead a good life, you have to have proper knowledge of the changes happening in the world. It’s related to the future. These days, new technologies are making a difference in the world. Technologies that influence the most people are of interest to me. For instance, I find new books from overseas on CRISPR or books that diagnose similar issues really interesting. Discourses form on whether such technological developments would improve our lives or if they are dangerous and must be treated carefully. I’m interested in that kind of discourse. So the more important something is for our lives in the future, the more I find it interesting. Meaning, I don’t find things that happened in this or that region in the past as interesting.
Right, relatively speaking. I’m interested in the future more than the past, and something that’s common and universal rather than particular, in positive things rather than negative ones. I like thinkers who propose solutions for the future. This is related to regression. I don’t like continuously obsessing over something that happened in the past. That doesn’t mean that history isn’t important. The past has huge significance for the future. The problem is how we handle that history. I’m critical of things that simply make us fixate on the past. On the other hand, I like writing that provides us with the necessary information, knowledge, insight, and encouragement for the future. That’s the kind of book I like.
If I may add, that’s the reason I believe science is important. We tend to have a narrow view of science, but I believe it’s the most universal activity in our pursuit of knowledge. Not simply physics or chemistry, but history can also be part of science. If we define science as the act of creating credible knowledge, then scientific knowledge and our approach to it are essential to us. Science is something that affects everyone, that anyone can question, and that provides answers that can persuade anyone. In that sense, I think that the accomplishments and books that come out of the science sector are important.
Korean people tend to be interested in certain things from the past and seem to just stop there.
South Korea’s intellectual environment
I believe there are. There are experts in Korea in all areas, I’m sure. But specifically, I don’t think it’s something that I can discuss with certainty. I’m more interested in foreign scholars. There are times when I think, “It would be nice if such and such person were known outside of Korea”. But I can’t think of anyone at the moment about whom I would say, “We should tell other countries about this person”. In general, I think there are a lot of things from overseas that we should pay attention to.
Sure. I don’t think the point is to say that a certain event is universal or specific. It all depends on how you approach that event and what you get out of it. You can’t separate universality from locality. It becomes too hollow, too abstract. When I talk about universal things, I’m not saying that we should talk about things from other countries. It’s about the kind of knowledge, expressions, or stories that other people can relate to, or that can be used to convince others. For instance, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian gained a lot of attention from overseas and received the Man Booker International Prize, and this made her book popular in Korea again. When you look at the way she dealt with certain issues in the book, it was very different from what Korean people liked or were used to. We were unfamiliar with the way she portrayed the main character or the situation she was in. But in other countries, the issues of non-vegetarian diet or violence are handled in, shall I say unusual ways? So I think other countries saw it as a different way of highlighting these issues. In that sense, we can certainly derive universal significance from something from our own country, and we need to do that. And there is probably more room for that in literature.
As for science—this is another paradox—you need the equipment and investment. If you are to study a big issue for a long time, you need capital and personnel. But Korea is lacking in that aspect. So it’s not that we don’t have any scientific achievements, but our achievements are relatively few in number, and it is even rare for books to be published on the subjects. We have top scientists, too. For joint projects with other countries, there are always a few Korean scientists who are included. But it is extremely rare for such projects to be published as books for the general public. In other countries, such achievements are published as books for the public either by the scientists themselves or others who have insight and knowledge into such scientific studies.
In Korea, the people who write books in the humanities and sciences tend to be professors. But they are busy writing academic papers, conducting research, and teaching. So it is very difficult for them to publish books for the general public. On top of that, you don’t know whether writings books would be lucrative and such books don’t count toward research accomplishments. And in Korea, translating foreign works doesn’t help build a career either. So ultimately, the reason such books are so rare in Korea is not that Korean scholars have fallen behind. It’s a problem of structure. And it impedes the production of accomplishments with universal relevance. I’m not saying that what is Korean is not universal. It’s that there are too many things lacking in Korea, in terms of infrastructure, for us to make universal contributions.
Actually, Korea has been through a rather unique historical experience, and we have a lot that can appeal to other countries, things that would be helpful to other countries. We’ve been through so much within such a short period of time since the modern era began. But unfortunately, discussions about that tend to be affected by partisan politics. I’d like for Koreans to try and persuade and understand each other on the opposite sides of issues, but it’s difficult to narrow the gaps and we end up intensifying the problems. So when even domestic discussions rarely reach the level of universality, I wonder if these scholars would be able to persuade non-Koreans when they make presentations or when their books are translated into other languages.
Korean media and polarizing discourse
Yes. That’s why I think that not only books but also media is extremely important. Media is something that mediates. And the image of the world we live in cannot be understood except through a medium. So I am increasingly convinced that, in the shared social medium, even the most personal stories do not end on the individual level. The personal stories are themselves shaped by the shared images in the media. In that sense, I think it is very important to be aware of the condition of the Korean media to understand why certain public opinions and discourses are formed.
I think the complaints that people have nowadays were caused by the distortions in our unsatisfactory media. I know because I’ve been in the media and I’ve played an inside role. I think such outcomes are only natural. When we ask if the media really play an intermediary role in line with universally accepted principles of journalism, many times the answer is no. A huge percentage of reporting is swayed by the interests or positions of the companies. There are various reasons for this, but in Korean history, media companies were directly involved with politics. The media is also the product of history. That’s why it can’t change right away. You build up inertia and legacy, so it’s difficult to change immediately. And that legacy hasn’t always been pure and neutral. You can see evidence of media interventions in politics.
Such was the function of old media at one point. Then when new media was introduced, old media retained its position without improving its negative aspects, while new media hasn’t yet achieved the status of the old media. So similarly banal internet news sites compete in a chaotic landscape and fracture the general discourse. Rather than drawing lines to create healthy divisions to foster fair competition, the whole society is becoming more fragmented, and the media companies that had once been influential are becoming more and more ignored and distrusted.
In any society, healthy media needs to be an important pillar, but there are nearly none in Korea. As a result, instead of putting forth opinions and directing them in a constructive manner, we see conflicts in every issue. But as I said, it’s not something that is limited to Korea’s case.
Trend setters vs Knowledge curators
It’s related to what we talked about before. Remember how I said that the role of the media is becoming more and more important? It’s intensifying now. I think it’s inevitable. The knowledge that we have is the product of a certain kind of society, and one individual can’t know everything. It’s a simple fact. Not only in the present but throughout the past, human knowledge has been dependent. It wasn’t that one person knew everything; it was that people relied on others who knew a lot about certain things or certain areas. That’s how specialization began. We also believe that most of our own knowledge comes from professionals. That is the basis on which we live. An increase in knowledge and information leads to a higher level of dependency. In the past, we focused more on personal experience than depending on others, but it is now growing more difficult to do so.
In that context, the role of curation—which is a sort of a medium—grows more important. It is also important to figure out whether the curator is a reliable intermediary or not. On the individual level, it has become important to select a reliable intermediary. Say that you wear glasses when your sight worsens or when there are just too many things out there so you want to filter some out. The curator’s work is like that of the glasses. In the past the mainstream media was in charge of this. But since the amount of information grew exponentially and regular individuals must make lots of choices, we now need curators to filter out fake news or prejudice. So I believe that the role of a curator is important for the public. It’s not simply an issue of job creation. Curation is becoming more and more important to the management of society.
So I started calling myself a knowledge curator, but even without the name, the things that fill this function are increasing in number and becoming more important in various areas. Only, I do have one concern about a related phenomenon. It’s the “star” culture, or the celebrity culture.
Right. Celebrities—people who are famous or have been well exposed, the so-called popular people—have great influence and become trendsetters. That in itself isn’t bad, but the problem is that they start wielding influence in areas unrelated to their path to fame and popularity. For instance, a singer becomes popular through her singing, but it’s not right to assume that her ideas about other issues—in science or politics—are also correct. They may or may not be correct, but they nevertheless sway people’s opinions. Or for instance, someone becomes popular for his cooking skills, but he starts giving health recommendations to which people start flocking. Cooking and health are different matters. When such things happen, they need to be backed by sufficient background or reasons, but those are often absent. When you gain popularity, the influence you have over people in your field begins to have an effect across other fields. It happens in publishing as well. When there’s a connection to someone famous, anything—books and other things—can sell. This kind of structure is deformed. So the celebrity phenomenon is emerging at the same time as curation, and depending on which direction we choose, the society goes that way. I think curators need to be established in a sound and healthy manner, but the trend seems to be heading toward celebrity culture.
And that is one of the things I worry about in general society. How we tell the difference between the two is related to reading. If the general public finds time in their busy lives to read and build a substantial knowledge basis, people can stop themselves from being swayed this way and that due to lack of knowledge. When we have a solid base of readers, such problems will have nowhere to gain a foothold.
Not all individuals, but it is important for there to be a solid base of such individuals.
Right, that’s important. More and more of such role will be created in the future. There could be curators who oversee primary curators. That’s a network. It’s the same for reading. There are writers and authors who play the role of curators. If a reader is just a beginner, she can start reading the works of the writers who can get through to her. And as she reads, she’ll go on to the next level. The best way would be to directly connect with the original writers of classics. And people who serve as steps between the different levels of reading can be curators. Fundamentally speaking, anyone can be a curator. It opens your eyes to the world. In that aspect, people can be curators for each other. Once you start feeling responsible for your curation, you’ll study more. You’ll ask more questions, cast doubts, and express your thoughts cautiously.
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