Uncovering Chonggyechon: The Ruins of Modernization and Everyday Life

Abstract

By November 2004, Seoul's Ch'onggyech'on reclamation project had advanced into its final stage of construction and landscaping. A remarkable feat of advanced urbanization in which the natural environment and commercialism coexist, the project offers a felicitous, symbolic conclusion to the tumultuous, often dehumanizing paths of the nation's modernization that left behind trails of devastation and misery. This curative view of the project is informed by a sustained effort of nationalist historiography to promote a potential for cultural creativity and social progress in the formation of modern Korea's selfidentity. This essay argues, however, that such an approach fails to take into account a sense of ambivalence lodged in the restoration project, which reflects the contentious site of the everyday in which Ch'onggyechon's drastic change is translated into job loss, business relocation, and changing opportunities. This article draws attention to varying images of rubbish or rubbish salvaging that are often inextricably linked to different phases of the area's modernization. These images bear out the material or practical realities of modernization devoid of a tendency of nationalist historiography for "selfinflated" story-telling. Such an unassuming observation of the region's changing façade brings to light the challenging aspect of the everyday in coping with adverse circumstances of modernization. Attention is given to different types of "rubbish discourse" set in Ch'onggyech'on and its immediate localities. Using these discursive types as loops of meaning to interweave, the article offers an interdisciplinary insight into the tension between modernization and everyday life.