Seattle Pacific University Digital Commons @ SPU Seattle Pacific Seminary Theses Seattle Pacific Seminary, 2009 - January 1st, 2018 Postcolonial Discipleship: Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty: Explorations in Contemporary 'Korean American' Theological Discourse Michael Sungjoon Won Seattle Pacific University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.edu/spseminary_etd Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Won, Michael Sungjoon, "Postcolonial Discipleship: Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty: Explorations in Contemporary 'Korean American' Theological Discourse" (2018). Seattle Pacific Seminary Theses.edu/spseminary_etd/13 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Seattle Pacific Seminary, 2009 - at Digital Commons @ SPU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Seattle Pacific Seminary Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ SPU. POSTCOLONIAL DISCIPLESHIP - MOVEMENT, GENIUS, AND UNCERTAINTY EXPLORATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ‘KOREAN AMERICAN’ THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE “Postcolonial Embodiment and Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty” MICHAEL SUNGJOON WON SEATTLE PACIFIC SEMINARY TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 Context for Construction 5 Racial Conflict and Healing by Andrew Sung Park 5 The Grace of Sophia by Grace Ji-Sun Kim 8 Heart of the Cross by Wonhee Anne Joh 10 From a Liminal Place by Sang Hyun Lee 11 Theology as a Work of Identity 14 CHAPTER 2 Maintaining the Boundary 16 Apples and Oranges 17 The ‘Proletariat, ‘Poor’, and ‘Oppressed’ 19 Reprise 23 CHAPTER 3 Transgressing the Boundary 26 Chapter Outline 28 Fanon as a Foundation 29 Challenging Sovereignty 30 ‘Self’ and ‘Other’/ ‘Other’ as ‘Self 33 Identity as Transaction, Translation, and Representation 35 Transaction 35 Translation 37 Representation 38 Synthesis 39 Reprise 41 CHAPTER 3.5 Understanding Markers of Identity 43 Reprise 46 CHAPTER 4 Analyzing Park, Kim, Joh, and Lee 49 Faithfulness and Discipleship 50 Christology 55 Foundations of a ‘Postcolonial Korean American’ Discipleship 60 CHAPTER 5 Building Towards a ‘Postcolonial Korean American’ Discipleship 52 The Instability of Symbols and the Fluidity of Power 64 ‘Everyday Genius’ 66 Bodies as ‘Locations 68 CONCLUSION 72 BIBLIOGRAPHY 75 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty Introduction The artists have ventured far ahead of us in their theological imagination… 1 -Kwok Pui Lan Hey Where you from? I’m Ganghis Khan -Dumbfoundead, ‘Ganghis Khan’, 2013 As I progressed through my first three quarters of seminary, I found myself becoming hopeful - hopeful for the ways that theological work could help me to understand my life in relationship to God, to my ‘other’, and to myself.
Yet as my theological education progressed, I came to realize that the white authors of my required course texts spoke from a place that could not attend to the subtle nuances and particularities of my ‘Korean American’ identity. “Could these voices speak into my life?” “What might it feel like to read a theologian who looks like me? Eats like me? Speaks like me?” These were the questions I asked as I worked through my first quarter of seminary. From this process of questioning I chose to read, From a Liminal Place by Sang Hyun Lee. This decision was made in order to provide a corrective to the ways in which I was led to believe that compelling theological work has, and continues to solely be done by those whose bodies have been the standard by which all others are measured 1 Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology.
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 185. 1 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty against - the white body. From a Liminal Place was my introduction to theological work done from an ‘Asian American’ perspective. I would then go on to read three other theological texts written by ‘Korean American’ theologians.
These texts consisted of The Grace of Sophia, Heart of the Cross, and Racial Conflict and Healing. I concluded my first year of seminary experiencing a newfound excitement - excitement for the ways that these respective theological texts held certain resonances and sensibilities amongst them that caused my heart to stir. Yet as I began my second year of seminary, this excitement became dulled. My interactions with a ‘Korean American’ faculty member within a different university reminded me that I would never be ‘Korean’ enough - that my inability to speak the language and my concurrent lack of cultural sensibilities would always be used against me in the presence of this community.
This led me to question the efficacy of the ‘Asian American’ and ‘Korean American’ theological texts I had worked through the past year. “Did these literary works function to pen my body into existence?” - a ‘Korean American’ body that was and continues to be scorned by others within the ‘Korean American’ community for a lack of ‘Koreanness’. The more I reflected on these voices that I initially perceived to hold resonances with my own, the more I became aware of my disconnection - that my reality was in fact different from theirs. Their usage of hangul (the Korean language), their deployment and understanding of culture, as well as their treatments of tradition and custom were all reminders that I would never be ‘Korean enough’.
I found myself distraught, hopeless at the realization that even a ‘Korean American’ theology could not adequately outline what I perceived to be a ‘Korean American’ existence - my ‘Korean American’ existence. 2 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty I begin this theological account with an introduction to the work of ‘Korean American’ rapper, Jonathan Park - also known as Dumbfoundead. As ‘Korean American’ theologians have written and published theological texts that seek to understand and articulate faithful modes of discipleship and ‘being’ in our contemporary moment, Dumbfoundead’s work speaks clearly to those who have felt like foreigners in multiple settings dictated by Western and Eastern norms. My appreciation for Park goes far beyond my appreciation and love for hip hop.
Park portrays an observable resistance to cultural essentialisms - ultimately creating space for new modes of cultural articulation. Through his playful, provocative, and often times comedic candor, he creatively assumes and denounces stereotypical ‘Korean American’ motifs, persistently challenging and destabilizing what it means to be both ‘Korean’ and ‘American’. In Park I find hope, not because he is what I dreamt myself of becoming ten years ago (though I did often dream of becoming an ‘Emcee’), but because it is his craft, his artistry, his very existence and embodied presence that profoundly speaks to the possibilities of my own. Park depicts the ways that the ‘Korean American’ body can be perceived as revelatory - revealing the ruptures and disjunctions that confound claims of cultural purity and authenticity.
The work of Dumbfoundead has the capacity to prophetically guide ‘Korean American’ individuals and congregations into “new and promising ways of living in society, living the life of faith, and embracing the gift of hope vividly and creatively.” 2 As I will display throughout my work, ‘Korean American’ theological discourse imagines the formation of a ‘Korean American’ subject in disparate and conflicting ways. It is my goal to conduct an in depth analysis of these varying modes of 2 Daniel G. Groody, The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology. 3 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty identity formation, and to subsequently propose why Dumbfoundead provides us with a theologically rich understanding of what living faithfully can look like through a ‘Postcolonial Korean American’ discipleship - a mode of discipleship that is committed to the particularities of the historic and contemporary narratives of ‘Korean American’ life, but simultaneously retains an ability to imagine ‘wholeness’ in the lives of those who do not call Korea ‘home’.
4 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty Chapter 1 Context for Construction In order to provide the context from which my theological project is birthed out of, I find it necessary to provide a brief overview of four different ‘Korean American’ theologians who are representative of various approaches to ‘Korean American’ theological thought in the past 22 years. Their differing methodologies will become increasingly apparent as I work to summarize their respective theological projects. These ‘Korean American’ theologians consist of Andrew Sung Park, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Wonhee Anne Joh, and Sang Hyun Lee. This is by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive list of ‘Korean American’ theologians, but is representative of who I read and was drawn to more deeply analyze during my time at Seattle Pacific Seminary.
Racial Conflict and Healing by Andrew Sung Park (1996) In his book entitled, Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian American Theological Perspective, Andrew Sung Park seeks to provide ‘Korean Americans’ with a theological framework that accounts for the historical ‘Korean American’ narrative, as well as the particularities that characterize what Park understands to be the ‘Korean American’ experience. Park introduces his book by summarizing the immigration and settlement narrative of ‘Korean Americans’. In doing so, Park introduces the Korean term, han, which can be defined as a holistic experience of pain and/or bitterness that results from 5 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty the injustice of oppression - it is, in many ways, an inescapable void of grief. 3 The first three chapters of Park’s book communicates the ways that ‘Korean American’ people are a people of deeply seated han.
Not only because of the ways in which the ‘Korean American’ narrative has been largely determined by Western colonialism and Eastern imperialism, but also in the ways that ‘Korean American’ people have historically been the perpetrators who cause others to experience han. 4 The beginning of Park’s text communicates the importance he places on historicity and the knowledge of one’s ‘roots’, in order to thoughtfully construct a new ‘Korean American’ subject. For Park, an account of history allows him to more accurately locate himself within the present moment. Park goes on to discuss the ways that Eastern notions of the self and Confucian ideology operate within the ‘Korean American’ mind.
This is most succinctly summarized when Mullinax and Lee state that, “the traditions of Christianity and Confucianism operate in the Korean-American Christian mind as twin gyroscopes and dual liturgies.” 5 Park goes on to exhibit this sort of creative operation through his analysis and subsequent translation of the word, ‘human’. The word ‘human’ in English, translates to inn-gahn in Korean. ‘Inn’ means ‘person’, and ‘gahn’ means ‘between’. To be human in Korean culture is to exist between persons.
In this way, the Korean notion of the self heavily revolves around the threefold self - that is, the relationship one has with their parents. This directly informs notions of filial piety, where children are to hold their parents in reverence and high honor - children are extensions of their parents’ bodies. 6 3 Andrew Sung Park, Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective. 6 Postcolonial Discipleship - Movement, Genius, and Uncertainty Filial piety can often take on the form of abusive hierarchies within family systems, but a reimagined notion of filial piety that intersects with ‘Christian love’ creates the possibility to see and love one another in mutuality.
This reimagined notion of filial piety is but one example Park gives in order to illustrate the ways that Confucian ideology and Christian faith can be coupled with one another from his perspective. When discussing current ‘Korean American’ frameworks for understanding church and culture, Park disagrees with Sang Hyun Lee’s pilgrim theology, because of the ways that it presents itself as a traditional paradoxical model. 7 Lee’s pilgrim theology speaks to the ways that ‘Korean Americans’ are called to wander through the wilderness, where their true home is neither Korea nor the United States. This theology of pilgrimage views marginality as not wholly negative, but as a source of creative potential.
Lee’s conception of pilgrim theology would eventually develop into his theological work around the concept of ‘liminality’ - that is, a space of ‘in-betweenness’, that allows for one to exercise new modes of navigation.