US author urges against summarizing Korea

Colin Marshall, author of "No Summarizing Korea" / Courtesy of Colin Marshall

There’s no denying it: Colin Marshall’s new book is a big hit. The Korean press has praised it. Sales are strong. Interview requests keep coming. The book is in Korean, a project by a publisher that wants to bring foreign perspectives to Korean-reading audiences’ attention. This particular “foreign perspective” having succeeded, it’s worth a look.

The book’s title translates as "No Summarizing Korea."Its writer, Colin Marshall, has for years “translated” Korea for English-reading audiences, as a columnist for such places as The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Guardian. He is a practitioner of informed, thoughtful, on-the-ground “Korea” writing. But he is neither a neutral observer nor a both-sides player. He is a fan of Korea, and of its culture.

The cover of "No Summarizing Korea" by Colin Marshall

The book’s cover includes what appears to be a caricature of Marshall as a lanky, comic character. Huge magnifying glass in hand, he pokes around Korean culture. Such is the publisher’s promotional pitch. A fresh view on Korean culture, through the discerning eye of a foreign mega-fan, or "deokhu."

But a more-useful framing of "No Summarizing Korea" is that it’s a cultural-engagement memoir. Marshall proposes the term “Korea connoisseur” to describe his approach to cultural engagement. He says he wants to avoid “summarizing Korea, judging Korea or explaining Korea.”

Like any would-be connoisseur, Marshall has little time for “top 10 ‘best’ things about Korea”-type commentary (the social media-driven, click-seeking, neo-genre of writing found all over the internet). In essay form, though, he tries it out: “43 Reasons Everything in Seoul Is Good and Nothing Is Bad (or Something Like That).”

It’s unclear how much the semi-ironic tone Marshall tries out in that essay (originally published in English) is “translatable.” Marshall elsewhere says Korean culture has “a relative lack of irony.” It’s another reason to admire Korea over “the West,” where irony is out of control. This tone — things in Korea are special and great — holds throughout "No Summarizing Korea," mostly.

What made Colin Marshall so “pro-Korea”? Interspersed throughout the text are pieces of the answer. The earliest encounter, at about age 15, ca. 2000, was with very early K-pop (via Napster, a music-sharing internet sensation of the day). More importantly, he discovered Korean movies around 2008, at the library in University of California, Santa Barbara.

Those Korean-cinema DVDs were a turning point. Metaphorically, they were seeds. A pre-existing interest in Asia was fertile soil, as were aspiring literary and film interests. Discontent with California’s direction shored everything up. (Marshall frequently uses the term “the West,” sometimes disparagingly — and, on any matter touching urbanism, almost always disparagingly. His “the West,” though, often seems to mean “Southern California.”)

Living in Santa Barbara, 2003-2011, Marshall attended university there and got his start in radio broadcasting and journalism. After that fateful encounter with Korean cinema, he took on Korean-language study as a hobby. Today, he is a committed language-learning enthusiast (studying six languages); it all started with Korean.

By the early 2010s, Asia beckoned. There was Japan. But a “foreigners’ narrative” on Japan had become strong, Marshall recalls feeling. It was so strong that it would swallow any newcomer who touched it. But Korea, he sensed, was an open field.

From late 2011 to late 2015, Marshall lived in Los Angeles. Most or all that time, he lived in the LA Koreatown. That choice of neighborhood symbolically confirms his man-on-a-mission status. In one telling essay, he jointly defends the honor of Seoul and Los Angeles, “two unfairly maligned cities.” A blending-of-worlds “acculturation” process began for Colin Marshall well before he left America.

There are parallels, here, with the young “K-culture fan” archetype more familiar today. There are lots of Westerners born in the 2000s, around 20 years Marshall’s junior, who will be able to write Korean cultural engagement accounts comparable to Marshall’s. So far, they lack the perspective to do so, perspective which Marshall already has.

If we are interested in casting Marshall as a pioneer, and in casting his book as a cultural engagement memoir, some follow-up reflections on his essays would have helped. So would firm dates attached to the essays. The book has no dates of composition. It isn’t immediately clear that they were written over eight years. It’s useful to know, though, that his “Gangnam Style” retrospective essay first appeared in The New Yorker in August 2022 — and not back, say, in 2015.

Marshall argues that the West’s K-culture wave started with PSY's “Gangnam Style” YouTube video in mid-late 2012. That is fair game for debate. But 2012 aligns nicely with Marshall’s own interesting life trajectory. Around that time, he could have abandoned his Korea interest. But, no. He pursued it, with an Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass intensity. Korean-language acquisition eventually became a major life goal.

Without learning Korean, Marshall says, deep and meaningful cultural engagement with Korea(ns) is impossible. Language-acquisition reminiscences, reflections and strategies pop up throughout "No Summarizing Korea": back in LA, memorized one-liners delivered to restaurant ajummas (understanding not one word of what the ajummas said back was okay; long journey, single steps…); Korean TV (a commitment to the travel-show "Hanguk Gihaeng" and a language-mastery game show); podcasts; book clubs. By the late 2010s, we find Marshall consuming books in Korean. (No wonder his writing in Korean is so strong.)

About 29 of the 34 essays were originally published in English, between late 2015 to mid-2022. Marshall translated and adapted his essays into literarily eloquent Korean. About five of the essays are originally in Korean compositions, and they seem to have been made last, around 2023.

The book is “set” primarily in late-2010s Seoul, often taking a first-person perspective. One of the composed-in-Korean original essays is a nostalgia-tribute piece to western Seoul's Sinchon area, where Marshall lived for seven years. The “nostalgia” is, it would seem, more for his successful cultural engagement life project than the place (now married, he lives a mere half-hour away by subway).

Colin Marshall, author of "No Summarizing Korea," poses on a rooftop in western Seoul's Sinchon neighborhood. Courtesy of Colin Marshall

But does Marshall “go too far”? He reveals, in one essay, that some fellow foreign residents think so. This view holds him to be uncritically positive about Korean society, and unfairly negative about foreigners in Korea. It’s the long-standing split, long observed among Westerners in Asia: one type seeks out fellow Westerners, essentially exclusively. Another type seeks to immerse in the local culture, to the point of avoiding fellow Westerners.

Marshall’s essays are firmly in the “immerse in local culture” camp. He sometimes accuses foreigners of moral failings, or of approaching Korea too shallowly. Other times, he pities the non-Korean-engaging foreigner for being stranded out there beyond a cultural barrier.

We do get criticisms of Korean society in "No Summarizing Korea." But, seen through the narrator’s magnifying glass, Korean society often looks absolved, even as it’s being criticized. Take Marshall’s characterization of the hit 2019 film "Parasite," which he says “visualize[s]…the idea that the richer Koreans become, the more they turn into grotesque parodies of Westerners.”

One reviewer hailed "No Summarizing Korea" as laudably “without Orientalism.” Is that just a euphemism, here, for “pro-Korean”? Other Korean reviewers say they wish Marshall had been more critical. Marshall chides such Koreans for having too-pessimistic assessments of their own society.

The least-valuable sections of "No Summarizing Korea," as an essay-collection, may be when “in-the-moment Korea-boosterism” comes through. But even these have value, when we view the book as a cultural engagement memoir.

How shall we evaluate Marshall’s “Korea” writing? One comparison is with the celebrated Peter Hessler’s “China” writing. The similarities: The New Yorker publishes both Marshall and Hessler. Both men tell insider knowledge-based stories of the Asian society they know well; both combine eloquence, moral seriousness, knowledge and experience; both are sympathetic towards their subjects.

The name Lafcadio Hearn also comes to mind, a famous Western “Japan” writer. Arriving in Japan in 1890, Hearn had had a career in U.S. journalism (like Marshall). Becoming a “mega-fan” of Japanese culture, Hearn’s writings bordered on cultural evangelism. Hearn’s output remains highly regarded; still today, bookstores in Japan sell his books.

Or George Foulk, who had been a young U.S. Navy officer before entering Korea in the 1880s. Foulk was idealistic (same as Marshall), taught himself Korean (same as Marshall), had harsh words for some fellow Westerners and sought entry into Korean society (same as Marshall). Foulk was eventually expelled from Korea (same, incidentally, as Peter Hessler — whose visa Beijing revoked recently).

Marshall probably need not worry about Korea expelling him. But he may have to worry about a different problem vis-à-vis his hosts.

Almost half a century ago, U.S. medical missionary Paul Crane wrote in his 1967 book "Korean Patterns" that “A Westerner [in Korea] is most respected when he is first true to his own philosophy, ideals, and beliefs.”

Crane sought to “explain” Korea, yes, in a now-maybe-out-of-vogue sense. His goal was to help Westerners in Korea relate to Koreans. “It pays to leave Korea from time to time,” Crane added, “and live for a while in one’s home country, to regain one’s vision of [one’s] own culture.”

Marshall stands today as a significant figure in “Korea” writing. We are, truly, better for having him. He has successfully integrated, in certain respects, into Korean society. The positive acclaim flowing forth lately about his work is deserved.

But, in the spirit of Paul Crane’s advice from yore-times, we offer the following coda. Let the praise not be a siren song, through which vision is lost. Marshall would do well to keep in mind his true audience: the members of his own culture.

Marshall will give a book talk for Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) Korea, titled "Writing About Korea for Koreans: The Making of No Summarizing Korea." The lecture starts at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the fifth-floor lounge of the FastFive building in Da-dong near Seoul City Hall. Entry costs 10,000 won or 5,000 won for students, and is free for RAS Korea members. Visit raskb.com for more information.

Peter Juhl is a researcher focused on Korean political and security issues.