is, the faster modernization proceeds and the fuller Westernization takes place – the more successful the concerned countries tend to be considered (in spite of cultural and emotional irritations as well as political and economic sacrifices experienced by various indigenous groups). However, the very processes of modernization and Westernization endemically induce the cultural and political backlashes on the part of the adversely affected groups and, in frequent cases, systematically reinforce the traditional/indigenous civilizational constituents as these are deemed ironically useful for a strategic management of modernization and Westernization. Thereby compression becomes inevitable among various discrete temporal and regional civilizational constituents.
2.2 Constitutive Dimensions
The five dimensions of compressed modernity (in Figure 2.1) can be explained in terms of South Korean experiences in the following way. Time(era) condensation/abridgement (Dimension I) can be exemplified by the case that South Koreans have abridged the duration taken for their transition from low-income agricultural economy to advanced industrial economy on the basis of explosively rapid economic development. The rapid changes so often discussed in connection with South Korea – such as the “compressed growth” of the economy and the “compressed modernization” of society – belong to this dimension. (That is, compressed modernization is a component of compressed modernity.) Such compressed (condensed) changes are also apparent in the cultural domain, so that even postindustrial and/or postmodern tendencies are observed in various sections of society. South Koreans’ pride that they have supposedly achieved in merely over half a century such economic and social development as had been carried out over the course of two or three centuries by Westerners has been elevated to the level of the state. The South Korean government has been busy publishing numerous showy statistical compilations that document explosive economic, social, and cultural changes for the periods “after liberation,” “after independence,” and so forth (NSO 1996, 1998).
South Koreans’ success in condensing historical processes, however, does not always reflect the outcome of voluntary efforts but, in numerous instances, has simply resulted from asymmetrical international relations in politico-military power and cultural influence. For instance, no other factor was as crucial as the American military occupation during the post-liberation period for their overnight adoption of (Western-type) modern institutions in politics, economy, education, and so forth. Nowadays, even the postmodern culture has been instantly transposed onto South Koreans through internationally dependent media and commerce (Kang, M. 1999). Even in those areas in which voluntary efforts have been decisive, the targeted end results alone do not tell everything. For instance, if one drives between Seoul and Busan taking ten, five, or three hours respectively, the driver (and passengers) will feel differently about the trip in each case and the probability of experiencing accident and fatigue from driving cannot but differ as well. We should analyze South Koreans’ experience of overspeeding for development by focusing on the very fact of their overspeeding.
Space (place) condensation/abridgement (Dimension II) can be exemplified by the fact that the successive domination of South Korea by various external forces in the last century compelled the country to change in diverse aspects, ranging from political institutions to mass culture, under the direct influence of other world regions (societies), no matter what geographic distances and differences existed. After South Koreans were physically subdued by colonial or imperial external forces, many ideologies, institutions, and technologies engendered in dissimilar regional contexts were coerced onto them directly – that is, omitting or compacting the usual geographic or spatial requirements for inter-civilizational exchange and accommodation. Such geographic omission or spatial compacting constituted an abridgement or dismantlement of space. In particular, the Korean urbanization in the periods of colonial rule and capitalist industrialization was respectively a deepening process of external institutional imitation and economic dependency, so that the modern cities thereby created through space abridgement turned out to be utterly alien spaces disengaged from the indigenous civilization of Korea. As another customary evidence of space abridgement, most universities located in major cities function as the comprehensive, shopping mall-like outposts of the Western civilization.
The space condensation realized by South Koreans’ own will was accelerated in the 1990s under the full forces of informatization and globalization. Especially, the splendid development of the so-called ICT industry has placed South Korea at the rank of a very leader in informatization. Now, the abridgement or dismantlement of space by electronic communication mechanisms is a catchword for national development in the twenty-first century. With these changes combined, South Korea – a society where until only a few decades ago overseas travel used to be a luxury experience for a privileged minority – has enabled its citizens to have quasi-travel experiences of foreign (mostly Western) spaces even without moving overseas physically.
Time (era) compression/complication (Dimension III) involves the phenomena of intense competition, collision, disjuncture, articulation, and compounding between (post)modern elements (which have been generated as a result of time (era) condensation/abridgement and traditional elements (which have been either left unattended or intentionally preserved or reinstated) within a compact sociohistorical context. These phenomena, often dubbed “the simultaneity of non-simultaneous matters,” are usually observed in ideology, culture, and other non-material domains that have fairly complex conditions and processes of change.2 Particularly on the Korean peninsula where no indigenous social revolution helped to eradicate the feudal social structure, colonization and capitalist industrialization fell short of thoroughly permeating or replacing traditional values and culture. Besides, South Koreans’ rapidly extended life expectancy as a core facet of social development has elongated the lifespan of traditional values and culture along with that of the old generations who wish to maintain such values and culture.
Consequently, traditional, modern, and postmodern values and cultures have come to coexist so as to bring about inter-civilizational compression among dissimilar time zones. Such inter-temporal compression is also found in the economic arena where the strategy of inter-sectoral “unbalanced growth” led to the coexistence of rapidly growing modern manufacturing sectors (in which the state has favorably supported modern industrialists) and stagnant traditional agriculture (in which only archaic family farming has been allowed legally). As a result, the articulation between dissimilar systems of production representing dissimilar historical epochs has become a core trait of the modern economic order. The everyday life, not to mention the lifetime, of South Koreans who are confronted with the compression of various historical epochs is filled with ceaseless “time travels.” This is perhaps the most crucial ingredient of the South Korean television dramas and movies that have fascinated so many Asian nations under the rubric of the “Korean wave” (hallyu).
Space (place) compression/complication (Dimension IV) concerns the phenomena of intense competition, collision, disjuncture, articulation, and compounding between foreign/multinational/global elements (which have been generated as a result of space (place) condensation/abridgement) and indigenous elements (which have been either left unattended or intentionally preserved or reinstated) within a compact sociohistorical context. As diverse social elements generated from different world-regional contexts coexist and function within a same time–space, a hierarchical structure of dependency or (neo)colonial domination between them often ramifies. In the cultural realm, what Edward Said (1978) criticized as the West’s “Orientalism” has frequently been internalized in postcolonial societies under the “internal Orientalism” (Schein 1997) of modernization elites or other culturally dependent local interests. According to Michael Lipton (1977), a similar hierarchical order has been observed in the form of “urban bias” in many Third World countries, sacrificing native agriculture, peasants, and rural society unjustly or irrationally. Besides, the early modernization theory, which induced self-abasement on to indigenous societies and peoples, was warmly welcomed by South Korean elites even if it reflected an external political effort to propagate the supposed superiority of the Western civilization into the politically subjugated territories (Kim, J. 2015).
Such a historical atmosphere has
