hankyoreh

Will the era of liberal social criticism come again?

With social literary review magazines, which have disappeared over the past three or four years, being revived one by one, progressive writers have again come onto the scene.

Observers said such a situation was due to a need felt within society to analyze and explain social changes, including the rise of neo-liberalism and informatization.

These progressive magazines exercised influence as fundamental written companions to the pro-democratic movement in the 1980s and enjoyed their second heyday in the late 1990s through the reviews "Dangdaebipyeong" (Contemporary Criticism) and "Sahoebipyeong" (Social Criticism). However, owing to the rise of the Internet, these types of print magazines started to disappear one after another from 2003.

"Sahoebipyeong," a politically moderate quarterly which was founded in 1987 and stopped publishing after producing its Spring 2003 issue, has returned this year. The new edition of the quarterly was a special issue analyzing social changes since democratic elections came to Korea in 1987.

"Dangdaebipyeong," a progressive quarterly which was published from 1998 to 2005, will be reissued next month in a book form under the theme of "assessment on Korea’s 20-year democratization." Bookmaker Greenbee Publishing issued a new bookzine "R," a mixed form of book and magazine. Its editors said "R" was aimed at "capturing the heartbeat of those pushed to the margins of capitalism and bonding them together, in the process being an in-depth testing ground for new types of thinking."

"Monthly Review," a leftist U.S. periodical founded in 1949 by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy, issued its first Korean edition last week. Its Korean publisher, Philmac, has decided to publish the magazine on an irregular basis once or twice a year by selecting articles from the U.S. periodical to translate. The Monthly Review has functioned as a forum regarding international issues among worldwide leftist intellectuals and activists.

In addition, biannual "Japan Space," Korea’s first magazine devoted to issues about Japan, published its inaugural issue in May.

Regarding the background of the reappearance of progressive reviews, Park Yeong-do, an editor of "Sahoebipyeong," said, "We felt the necessity to cope with a situation in which intellectual hegemony seems to be held by the rightists, and we needed to properly filter discussions which cannot be filtered on the Internet."

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