Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2017. 312 pp. (Illustrations.) US$94.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8223-6277-7.
Eunjung Kim’s richly textured and important book, aptly titled Curative Violence, draws attention to the “uncertainty of gains” from trying to treat or cure disability or illness and “the possibility of harms” (10). Kim interrogates the intersections of disability, illness, gender, sexuality, and cure by analyzing Korean cultural representations of disability from the past century. She makes a compelling case for understanding cure as “based on complicated social and familial negotiations that occur beyond an individual’s desire or volition” (233).
The evidence comes from “cure discourses and imagery” (7) in Korean literature, film, folktales, media, and activism. The introduction’s succinct and focused historical overview offers crucial context for such representations of disability and illness, which were often metaphors for Japan’s colonial rule over Korea and national division (27–34). Koreans’ longing to be made whole enables Kim to link disability and nationhood as themes. She joins other scholars in documenting how the push for modernization and government control in Korea obscured much violence and certain categories of victims. Korean interviewees have similarly told me that there are “more important victims in Korea” when I asked about, for instance, survivors of Hansen’s disease or hepatitis C-tainted blood products.
The book’s evidence is thematically organized across five chapters. The cultural representations Kim analyzes are sweeping in their scope, and she narrates them with sensitivity and a theoretical rigour that lays bare societal divisions and power hierarchies. A recurring theme is “folded time,” which is most clearly articulated in the conclusion. With this innovative concept, Kim conveys the “difficulty of inhabiting the present” for people with disabilities or illnesses. Hope for a better future or recollections of a better past may exist for many people, but the book’s chapters suggest that this sensibility is more acute for persons with disabilities.
Chapter 1 explores reproduction and efforts to prevent disability via eugenics and modern genetic screening. Though the chapter evinces well the disproportionate burden women bear, it could have also placed disability-related eugenics in the context of 1970s state policies to curb population growth generally, including through financial incentives for men to be surgically sterilized (especially p. 65 ff). Women also feature prominently in chapter 2 as it investigates the notion of cure by proxy, which refers to a non-disabled person’s sacrifices to help cure or the imposition of some remedy to aid the non-disabled caregiver (85). In chapter 3, Kim delves into the disturbing subject of how violence is sometimes justified as a cure or overlooked by society or in the criminal justice system. Together, these chapters uncover the Janus-faced and gendered nature of the cure itself and of societal and familial negotiations about cure.
The final two empirical chapters are less persuasive. Chapter 4 focuses on Koreans with Hansen’s disease (leprosy), who suffered mass killings, forced vasectomies and abortions, institutionalization, and ostracism due to official policies and prejudice. While Kim’s analyses are illuminating, her bibliography contains omissions. Most importantly, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea’s 2005 report on such abuses in the name of curing prejudice deserves Kim’s astute analysis. Kim also rapidly passes over the historic statute known as the Hansenin Special Law, which is short for the Special Law on the Investigation of Violent Incidents against People Affected by Hansen’s Disease and Livelihood Assistance for Victims Etc. (law no. 8644, 2007). The law’s incomplete implementation spawned six collective lawsuits—which Kim only alludes to—filed starting in 2011 by nearly 550 leprosy survivors who endured forced vasectomies and abortions until around 1990. These lawsuits are quite relevant to Kim’s themes. For example, the plaintiffs’ lawyers requested more compensation for forced abortions than for vasectomies and found women reluctant to join the lawsuits. Also, though it happened too late for inclusion in the book, in February 2017, the Korean Supreme Court ordered the state to compensate the plaintiffs. The landmark ruling noted, “Even if the plaintiffs gave a prior consent, they were forced to make such a decision based on prejudice, discrimination and poor social, educational and economic conditions without being fully informed of whether the disease was hereditary or if it can be cured” (Yonhap News, Feb. 15, 2017). Chapter 5 likewise suffers from omissions when scrutinizing the nexus between disability and sex. Kim’s credible argument against monolithic assumptions (e.g., disabled persons as asexual) or solutions (199–202) would have been stronger with citations or quotes.
There is much that is laudable in this book, but some questions remain. First, how distinctive is Korea on the topic of curative violence? Some themes seem relevant elsewhere, as Kim hints in the conclusion. For example, intersectionality and the uneven burden women bear in issues related to reproduction and sexual pleasure are hardly unique to Korea. The most distinctively Korean dynamics emerge in chapter 2, when Kim discusses hyo (filial piety). She convincingly shows how this value and legal clauses based on it (i.e., families’ legal obligation to care for disabled relatives) “exempt the state from its duty to provide social assistance” (118–119). The discussion is relevant and troubling in light of current social issues, such as poverty and suicide among the elderly in Korea.
Second, how did Kim select the works she so deftly analyzes? Are they meant to be comprehensive or illustrative? Can the book’s findings be generalized to all of Korean society? A brief anecdote in the concluding chapter drove home this conundrum for me. Kim recounts how one activist in the disabled women’s movement was proud about refusing surgery on her leg while her co-worker had no regrets about the surgery she had had on her leg (225–226). The book rightly warns against monolithic assumptions, but one wonders how representative or pervasive each of these perspectives is.
The strengths of Curative Violence lie in its nuanced and at times arresting contributions to studies of Korea, disability, and gender. It would work well in graduate or perhaps advanced undergraduate courses related to Korea, disability, sexuality, and state-society relations in East Asia.
Celeste L. Arrington
The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
pp. 172-174