{"id":2425,"date":"2022-03-29T16:20:39","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T16:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anthropological.cloud\/wau\/wcaa\/?page_id=2425"},"modified":"2022-03-30T23:33:29","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T23:33:29","slug":"korean-cultural-anthropology-korea-interview","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/dejalu\/issue10\/interviews-with-journal-editors\/korean-cultural-anthropology-korea-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Korean Cultural Anthropology, Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Questions for Journal Editors for the Tenth Anniversary of Deja Lu\n\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Jinsook Choi, editor of Korean Cultural Anthropology, journal of the Korean Anthropological Association<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Nov 17 2021<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Interviewed by Gordon Mathews\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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GM: Many D\u00e9j\u00e0 Lu readers won’t know much about the world of Korean anthropology. Are most Korean anthropologists writing about Korea, or about other societies?<\/p>

JC: Half of the papers that we publish are about other societies: Korean anthropologists study Japan, China, some Southeast Asian countries and, in some cases, Latin America, although the majority, I would say, are dealing with Japan and China. Even in papers on Korea, the topics are very diverse.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Do you publish papers only in Korean? Or in English as well?<\/p>

JC: We publish mostly in Korean, but also sometimes we do have international authors who we publish in English. Yes, if you wrote a paper on Japan in English, please send it to us!\u00a0 I\u2019m dying to get more papers from international authors!\u00a0 Our next issue will have one English-language paper out of nine; one or two English-language papers in each issue would be fine.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Your journal, Korean Cultural Anthropology, is linked to the Korean Anthropological Association. Do your authors have to be members of the Korean Anthropological Association?\u00a0<\/p>

JC: You don\u2019t have to be a member, but if you\u2019re not a member, there are fees you must pay to try to publish with us. But yes, anyone in the world can publish with us\u2014you don\u2019t have to be Korean.\u00a0 We have reviewers who can read and write reviews in English.<\/p>

GM: How many anthropologists are in South Korea?<\/p>

JC: I think about 200.\u00a0 Members who paid membership in the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology are about 150.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: So the referee process must be difficult if you use Korean anthropologists.\u00a0<\/p>

JC: Yes, this is one of the challenges we face because we have to have three reviewers for each paper. For some topics, it\u2019s really hard to find referees. There aren\u2019t many linguistc anthropologists, for example.\u00a0 I myself am a linguistic anthropologist, and if I were to try to submit, then I pretty much know who’s going to be the referees! \u00a0<\/p>

GM:\u00a0 Does that make the refereeing process a problem, since people you know might not speak fully honestly?\u00a0<\/p>

JC: Well, Korean anthropologists can be very tough!\u00a0 One of the rumors about Korean Cultural Anthropology is that referees are strict.\u00a0 People say, \u201cOh no, I don\u2019t want to submit there! I\u2019d rather submit to some other journal!\u201d\u00a0 Anthropologists have a more rigorous standard: \u201cdo you have good empirical data; did you properly connect that with theories?\u201d It doesn\u2019t mean that referees want to reject papers, but they do really try to have standards and give good feedback.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Are your readers interested in an East Asian focus primarily? \u00a0<\/p>

JC: That\u2019s primarily right, although we don’t limit to any areas or any topics.\u00a0 We have certain areas and topics because there are more anthropologists who do that. Among sub-disciplines, there are more economic anthropologists or political anthropologists among cultural anthropologists in Korea, and there are not many linguistic anthropologists. In area studies there more Korean anthropologists studying China and Japan than, say, Mexico or Guatemala. I myself got my PhD doing linguistic anthropology in Guatemala, studying minority groups; there aren\u2019t many people like that, but then, if you have written about Japan or China, then we can easily find reviewers. Of course, in some cases, we don\u2019t have to have a reviewer who specializes in the same geographic area, if they can evaluate the theories and arguments in a paper.<\/p>

GM: I would imagine that with only 150 members in your society, it must sometimes be tough to find submissions.<\/p>

JC: Right, it is hard. Sometimes I actually have to extend the deadline for an issue for a week. We have three issues per year, with deadlines of November 30, March 30, and July 30.\u00a0 Sometimes you even have to say, \u201cWill you please submit to my journal?\u201d I have to do some salesmanship! I go to conferences and say, \u201cOh, this is a great paper. Are you going to submit it to our journal?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Is the formal publisher of your journal a commercial press in Korea? Who publishes it actually?<\/p>

JC: We have a publishing company that does only just minor editing and final work. We pay them from the Korean Anthropological Association membership fees, We have money for that.\u00a0 But all the other work we editors do, for free. Yes, it does take a lot of time to do this\u2014I hope people notice that! (laughs.)\u00a0 It\u2019s academic service that you cannot say no to. To be editor, you have to be at a certain stage of your career, and you have to know people so that you can find authors and reviewers; there are not many people who can do this.\u00a0 When they asked me to do it, I couldn\u2019t run away!<\/p>

GM: Is Korean Cultural Anthropology the only Korean-language anthropological journal?<\/p>

JC: No, there is one more, a journal of cross-cultural studies published by Seoul National University.\u00a0 We\u2019re kind of competing with them!\u00a0 There are two anthropology journals that publish papers in Korean.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Do most Korean anthropologists write in Korean or do they write in English?<\/p>

JC: The younger generation, those who got their PhD in the last 10 years may write in English. The Korean academic standard has changed. Now you’re highly encouraged to publish papers in English in international journals.\u00a0 Now they even care about citation indexes. So they do publish in English, but of course they can publish for Korean Cultural Anthropology as well.<\/p>

GM: So would a young scholar get more status from publishing in English in a mid-level American or British journal than in a journal in Korean?\u00a0<\/p>

JC: Right, I think that’s what’s happening. That\u2019s another challenge as well for us: the.universities have evaluation criteria and they’re all going for international publications. They really care about the internationalization of institutions; one of the things they check from faculty members is \u201cdo you have international publications?\u201d<\/p>

GM: That\u2019s a real problem for a Korean-language journal. \u00a0<\/p>

JC: Yes, exactly.\u00a0 In the recent past, Korean-language publications were most important but not now.\u00a0 Yes, this is because of citation indexes.\u00a0 Honestly speaking, I think international publication is good; I don\u2019t think that we should just forget about international publication. But I also think that Korean-language journals should be valued as much as international journals. Because institutionally, international publications are highly valued, people tend to shift toward international publications. But Korean-language journals are not any less difficult to publish in!\u00a0 Korean language journals are still deemed important, although it depends on different institutions in our different universities in their criteria.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Why are there no journals published in Asia in the Social Science Citation Index? \u00a0<\/p>

JC: Good question!\u00a0 I think there are some Social Science Citation Index or Arts & Humanities Citation Index journals in Asia\u2014a few but not many, I think that there is an A&HCI journal in Singapore, and one in Korea. People want to publish in famous journals, because then their citations go up.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a very strong view of this, but I do think that we did lose a chance to build and develop our own identity as Korean anthropologists practicing Korean anthropology. But then when the world is changing and everything is globalized, scholarship has to so this as well: we kind of have to adapt to the new environment.\u00a0 Yes, we lost a chance, but at the same time, we cannot deny what’s going on in the world. Korean pop culture has become internationally known due to globalization, and I think scholarship is the same –if we study something, it can be in Korean, but it should also be distributed in English as well. Recently, scholars in communication studies and cultural studies are doing Korean studies and I think that has become more popular than a typical traditional Korean anthropological topic; more people are interested in Korean cultural topics today. But Korean Cultural Anthropology has its traditions.\u00a0 Recently I was trying to have different genres for Korean Cultural Anthropology, not just articles and reviews, but forums and debates. But it was hard to get writers.\u00a0 I was told, \u201cthere are other journals that do that. Why should we do that for Korean Cultural Anthropology?\u201d A lot of members want to keep our journal the way it is.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: How much pressure or communication or directions do you get from the Korean Anthropological Association? \u00a0<\/p>

JC: Not much. The journal is relatively independent, although the executives of the Korean Anthropological Association might say, \u201cOh, I think you might want to have this\u2026you might want to have more book reviews\u2026\u201d\u00a0 They can suggest, but no one can pressure me on certain issues!<\/p>

GM: Tell me more about the refereeing process. \u00a0<\/p>

JC: For Korean Cultural Anthropology we don’t have desk rejection.\u00a0 Everything we receive goes out to referees. To be honest, I think we should have desk rejection. Other international journals all have desk rejection; but I don\u2019t have that power! We have three reviewers per paper, and that\u2019s a lot too\u2014sometimes if a piece isn\u2019t good enough, you shouldn\u2019t have to send it out and waste referees\u2019 time. I think the reason that we don’t do that is because with desk rejection the editor will get all the blame for rejection; some authors can be very aggressive and this way the editor can say, \u201coh no it’s not me, it\u2019s the referees who said it’s not acceptable.\u201d There are eight members of our Editorial Board. They help me to get reviewers; sometimes they also publish with us as well.\u00a0 Yes, it does happen that sometimes referees can be hard to find.\u00a0 I have an administrative assistant part-time who’s the one who sends out all the emails and receives replies and the most of the people we ask to referee say yes within one or two days.\u00a0 In some cases I use my network to find referees: \u201cplease help us!…\u201d \u00a0<\/p>

JC: For some issues, we have a lot of submissions\u201420 or 25\u2014and for others a smaller number, like only 10.\u00a0 Generally our acceptance rate is 60-70% of the papers we receive. Yes, we publish papers in English too, so please submit papers!\u00a0 It’s my philosophy that we should try to publish most papers we receive. Authors may need to revise and resubmit but our cycle is not so long.\u00a0 Yes, we try to help authors rewrite\u2014we help a lot, as do reviewers.\u00a0 Authors simply need to explain to us what they can do and what they cannot do, and then their paper is pretty much acceptable.\u00a0 If the paper is acceptable, then we can accept a paper we have received after just two months. But you will hear from us within a month. \u00a0<\/p>

GM: If you had to sum up what the biggest problems that you face as journal editor are what would you say? \u00a0<\/p>

JC:\u00a0 The biggest problem is that it\u2019s hard to find authors and reviewers.\u00a0 More than anything, we want to keep the quality of papers; we don\u2019t want to publish whatever, because it will lower the standard of our journal. Another challenge is that, except for young scholars and recent PhDs, it may be hard for anthropologists to have really rich empirical data\u2014while you\u2019re teaching and doing administrative work, how can you do fieldwork?\u00a0 I think we have to be more open-minded about anthropological work apart from such rich empirical data. With on-line data now, we need to be open to broader and more diverse topics. We need to rethink what ethnographic data means.<\/p>

GM: I don\u2019t know much about anthropology in Korea.\u00a0 Tell me about it!\u00a0 Are there Korean anthropologists who say, \u201cwe want to have a Korean anthropology apart from English-language anthropology!\u201d Is writing in Korean different than writing in English?<\/p>

JC: Of course in writing in Korean you have a different way of expressing than in writing in English, but I don\u2019t think that the underlying logic of arguments is that different. Some Korean anthropologists do want a distinct Korean anthropology, focusing on Korean history and folklore, seeking Korean data and theories.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a majority voice.\u00a0 In Korean Cultural Anthropology, we respect diversity: make your argument as you see fit, and we will respect that approach. In Korea, we don\u2019t generally have a resentment of Anglo-American hegemony.\u00a0 Instead, anthropologists may find that Anglo-American theory doesn\u2019t work for their own particular Korean or East Asian data. The more diverse your theorizing, the better. We don\u2019t say that you have to be nationalistic, or you have to be global; there\u2019s not a conflict between them. \u00a0<\/p>

GM: Do Korean anthropologists get upset about the pressure to publish internationally, and more and more in English?<\/p>

JC: There are people who are upset, but I think that’s a generational issue. Younger-generation scholars accept that as a norm.\u00a0 I think that about half of Korean cultural anthropologists got their PhDs in the US or European countries; they are familiar with foreign languages such as English and with Western anthropological theories and may seek to introduce those theories to Korean scholarship.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Do these authors write different kinds of papers for you in Korean then they would for, say, an American journal?<\/p>

JC:\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s that much difference, although I guess it depends upon the journal.\u00a0 If you are writing about a non-Korean area, for Korean readers you may need to provide some background knowledge, because Korean readers may not be familiar with the topic\u2014for example, when I published about Guatemala in Korean, I did that so that my readers could fully understand what I was discussing.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Do you ever get authors who say, \u201cI want to use only Korean theory in my writing\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>

JC: There have been authors like that.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s fine. I think when they use only Korean theories, it\u2019s often coming from folklore studies or ethnohistorical studies, more empirical-data-based than other studies, with less theoretical discussion. That is very valuable as well.\u00a0<\/p>

GM:\u00a0 Now, if I were to advertise for Korean Cultural Anthropology, I would say, based on what you\u2019ve told me today, \u201cAnybody writing about Korean issues but for that matter any issues in the world should consider publishing with you.\u201d Is that right?<\/p>

JC:\u00a0 Yes. We have a great review process and very fast reviews and we are open to diverse topics and diverse theories. Please consider our journal for your next publication. We consider submissions not just in Korean but in English; we have good referees who can referee in English.\u00a0<\/p>

GM: Yes, the big lesson that I am getting from all my interviews is this: \u201cDon\u2019t just submit to large, famous journals.\u00a0 Submit to smaller journals.\u00a0 They want your work, and will deal with it in a more personal and probably a more rapid way than a large journal might.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>

JC: I think the same thing is true for conferences as well\u2014smaller is better!\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Questions for Journal Editors for the Tenth Anniversary of Deja Lu Jinsook Choi, editor of Korean Cultural Anthropology, journal of the Korean Anthropological Association Nov 17 2021 Interviewed by Gordon Mathews GM: Many D\u00e9j\u00e0 Lu readers won’t know much about the world of Korean anthropology. Are most Korean anthropologists writing about Korea, or about other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":371,"parent":2346,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2425","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2425\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/waunet.org\/wcaa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}