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Bradley Tatar*
1. Introduction
plastic mats are absorbed in the creative act of drawing and painting
pictures of whales. These children are participants in the Whale
Drawing Contest, an annual competition which produces fanciful,
colorful images of whales frolicking in the sea, and living their lives
as happy individuals much in the manner of humans. As throngs of
festival goers walk along the wharf, one foreign visitor is heard to
say to another in an irate tone, “They say that this event is celebrated
because they love whales, but then they are here eating the whales.
How can they love whales if they eat them?”
This episode, which is taken from my field observations of the
Ulsan Whale Festival in 2011, illustrates what appears to be a
contradiction between celebrating whales as magnificent creatures
and eating whales as a delicious sushi. From the perspective of the
foreign visitor, the contradictions were clearly visible at the festival.
However, what the visitor to the festival may not have understood
is that serving whale meat and creating artwork to glorify whales
are merely two different ways of materializing whales. Artwork is a
material representation of a whale for visual consumption, and whale
meat is an ingestible material with gustatory attractions for certain
consumers. These are material productions to be consumed in Ulsan,
a city with more than 100 whale meat restaurants—the highest
concentration in Korea(코리아타임즈, 2010.07.11.).
Korean environmentalists have also criticized the Ulsan whale
festival, arguing that the tradition it celebrates is merely invented for
increasing the sale of whale meat at the local restaurants(오마이뉴
스, 2017.05.26.). Some have argued that eating whale meat is not an
became clear that explicit and conscious efforts were made to attach
practices to a specific place, and to fix the meanings of these practices
as signifying a “shared” history and connection to the past.
Hence, it is important to signal that landscape is distinct from
ethnoscape and other “scapes” introduced into ethnographic parlance
by Appadurai(1990). While Appadurai’s ethnoscapes result from the
deterritorialization, or decoupling of social practices and cultural
identities from specific territories, landscape is produced through
the attachment of practices and meanings to a specific territory. The
self–conscious efforts of social groups to connect social practices
with specific places is important in modernity, as a reaction against
deterritorialization processes. Escobar points out that, “the tearing
apart of space from place,” which Giddens considers essential to
modernity, “would seem to push people to invest place and home
with personal agency to counter these tendencies”(Escobar 2001:148).
Relations between humans and nature are an important part
of place–making, and crucial to the production of place–
based identities. Ulsan is an industrial city known for factories
and smokestacks, but the designers of the Jangsaengpo SCWZ
argue that whales represent the key to improving the relationship
between humans and the natural world(파이낸셜뉴스, 2010.10.24.).
Some social scientists have argued that attitudes toward wild
animals are connected to beliefs and dispositions toward nature
more generally(Franklin 1999; Milton 2002; Čapek 2006; Lorimer 2007).
According to Escobar(2001: 155), nature is critical to place–making,
just as “place is central to issues of development, culture and the
environment.” Anthropology must concern itself with place–making
Place-making, Landscape and Materialities·413
Ulsan Whale Festival. Mr. Lee Man–woo, who was one of the
early organizers of the festival explained to me in an interview that,
“Whale culture is more than just eating whale meat. We needed to
include performances, such as in Taiji, where they include drumming
performances at the festival”(2011.09.09., Interview with Lee Man–woo,
President of Whale Culture Preservation Association).
scientific whaling.
In the district seat of Ulsan Nam–gu, frustration is openly
expressed that the return to whaling is blocked by the IWC and the
international environmentalist movement. In a conversation with the
author, one of the district officials said, “It’s unbelievable that we are
not allowed to carry out whaling, just because foreigners think that
whales are cute and can’t be harmed”(Interview 2009.10.24.). From
his perspective, pigs are cute too, but that does not stop people from
eating pork. Nevertheless, this account ignores a crucial difference,
as pigs are domestic farm animals but whales are wild animals,
and are viewed by environmentalists as essential for biodiversity
and preserving the environment(Einarsson 2005). Ulsan supporters of
whaling, like their Japanese counterparts, oppose this conception of
whales.
Hence, an important local belief regarding whales is that they are
a resource to be consumed for human benefit, based upon a broader
disposition toward natural resources as consumable entities to be
utilized for economic development. This belief represents the logic of
the production of nature during the Japanese imperial period, when
the whaling industry was developed.
2) Historical Context
for processing the whales they caught(Neff and Jeon 2012). The
418·한국문화인류학 50-2(2017. 7)
was an important sheltering area for the western Pacific stock of the
gray whale, during its yearly migration. However, after the Japanese
whalers brought them to the brink of extinction, the remnant of gray
whales changed their migration route and no longer pass near the
coast of South Korea.
In the Jangsaengpo Whale Museum, there is an exhibit which
spotlights the gray whale’s ecology and migration pattern, which
includes the display of an original monograph authored in 1914 by
Roy Chapman Andrews, titled Monograph of the Pacific Cetacea
I. The California Gray Whale (Rhachivanectes glaucus Cope). An
American researcher who visited Korea in January of 1912, Andrews
sailed from Ulsan aboard the Japanese whaling vessels to observe
how they captured the whales, and he collected skeletons from two
specimens which he shipped to the American Museum of Natural
History(연합뉴스, 2013.02.17.).
For the people of Ulsan, there are two important facts about
Andrews’ visit. First, that in his monograph, Andrews gave the name
“Korean gray whale” to the Asian population. Hence, Andrews’
writings are locally understood as having tied this species to the
territory and nation of Korea in this act of naming. A second
significant aspect of Andrews is that he is rumored to have been the
inspiration for George Lucas’ movie character, Indiana Jones. The
fact that a researcher from a prestigious North American institution
visited Ulsan to study whales seems to put Ulsan “on the map,”
allowing Ulsan to make a valuable contribution to natural history.
The idea that the researcher was “the real–life Indiana Jones”
increases its significance by connecting Ulsan to a global mass media
422·한국문화인류학 50-2(2017. 7)
image.
These significant aspects of Andrews’ association with Ulsan
are visible in the SZWC, where three statues are displayed on the
Jangsaengpo wharf, near the entrance of the Dolphin Ecology
Experience Hall. The first statue installed is a bust of Andrews
mounted on an engraved stele, which was dedicated in a public
ceremony on May 25, 2011 by Ulsan Nam–gu Chief Executive Kim
Doo–gyeum and a contingent of local political figures[Figure 1]; the
bust was dedicated in conjunction with an academic symposium held
in honor of the 100th anniversary of Andrews’ visit to Ulsan. When
I observed and recorded the dedication of the bust and stele in my
field notes, I noted that the material environment of the SZWC had
been marked. With the placement of the bust, Andrews’ face looks
toward the visitors who enter the Dolphin Ecology Experience Hall,
and from the visitor’s standpoint the bust is in front of the waters of
the Jangsaengpo Inlet that leads to the East Sea of Korea. Hence, the
waters of Jangsaengpo are marked by the visage of Andrews in the
foreground, and the ship traffic entering and exiting the port is visible
in the background. The placement of the bust of Andrews marks the
maritime movements in and out of Jangsaengpo in the present, but
also symbolically in the past and in the future.
In proximity to the bust and stele, a second statue one meter away
depicts Andrews as a life–sized figure standing upright, wearing a
Stetson–style hat and facing a globe mounted on a pedestal[Figure
2]. The globe seems to signify Andrews’ global travels, and the
global nature of scientific investigation. Finally, a third life–sized
figure depicts Andrews as Indiana Jones, wearing a similar hat, and
Place-making, Landscape and Materialities·423
2) Whale as Meat
Even those villagers who had nothing to do with whaling could obtain
some whale meat, because whaling companies gave some to its employees,
who always shared it with their neighbors and relatives in the village.
Thus, when a whale was hunted, villagers were able to eat whale meat
Place-making, Landscape and Materialities·427
[Figure 3] The Jangsaengpo Whale Museum’s display of vats for whale fat,
with mannequins representing the workers in the flensing facility. Photo by
author.
won to any person who could photograph the gray whale in Korean
waters. In 2005, the Cetacean Research Institute of the National
Fisheries Research and Development Institute[CRI–NFRDI] offered
a 5 million won reward for any person who could sight a gray
whale in Korean waters, if they submitted a photograph as evidence.
Scientists working in the CRI, which is also located in Jangsaengpo,
are continuing the search. One scientist remarked, “I would trade
everything for the joy of seeing a Korean gray whale crossing our sea
again”(연합뉴스, 2008.01.13.).
There is a meaning in the calls to preserve a whale stock that
has been hunted to the verge of extinction. The Korean gray whale
represents a “lost” or vanishing member of the Korean natural
community, and the opportunity which has been wasted to restore
the relationship between humans and nature. For this reason, Koreans
are striving to find, or rediscover this “lost” whale, while calling for
preservation of its remaining population and the official recognition
of its [former] habitat. Seemingly, to call for the conservation of
432·한국문화인류학 50-2(2017. 7)
the only whale species which is described in terms of its life cycle and
biological characteristics. The work of Roy Chapman Andrews has
also been creatively reinterpreted in order to markedly “Koreanize”
the gray whale, to assert that it does indeed belong to Korea.
When Andrews carried out his investigations into the gray whale
in Ulsan in 1912, he sought to discover what the gray whale eats,
by examining the contents of stomachs after the whales were
caught. He found only some bits of seaweed and green gelatinous
liquid, so he concluded that the whales do not eat food during their
migration(Andrews 1916: 207). However, recently, Koreans took
Andrews’ observations as indicators that gray whales eat kelp, 미역
[miyeok]. This has given rise to a story that the female gray whale
eats kelp to recover strength after she gives birth, just as the Korean
woman eats kelp soup after childbirth. This story was told by marine
biologist Kim Zang Geun, who was the Director of the CRI(한겨레,
2010.09.17.). It can be understood as an attempt to Koreanize the
whale with Korea, and not with Japan, and the Cultural Heritage
Administration also granted the City of Ulsan the official stewardship
of the monument.
Hence, the gray whale is the subject of discourses which assert its
relationship to a place and to a territory. These discourses may assert
the whale’s Koreaness, to appeal for protecting the whale, or they
may assert territoriality by designating a special, monumental status
to the coastal areas of the whale’s former migration [Figure 6]. But
how do these calls to protect the whale coexist with the 25 whale
434·한국문화인류학 50-2(2017. 7)
■ 참고문헌
87: 97–115.
Neves, Katja, 2010, “Cashing in on Cetourism: A Critical Ecological
Engagement with Dominant E–NGO Discourses on Whaling,
Cetacean Conservation, and Whale Watching,” Antipode 42(3):
719–741.
Richardson, Tanya, and Gisa Weszkalnys, 2014, “Introduction: Resource
Materialities,” Anthropological Quarterly 87(1): 5–30.
Smith, Neil, 2008, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the
Production of Space, Third edition, Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
Song, Kyung–Jun, 2014, “Status of Marine Mammals in Korea,” Ocean
and Coastal Management 91: 1–4.
Watanabe, Hiroyuki, 2009, Japan’s Whaling: The Politics of Culture in
Historical Perspective, Hugh Clarke (translator), Melbourne: Trans
Pacific Press.
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442·한국문화인류학 50-2(2017. 7)
Abstract
Bradley Tatar*
국문초록