Hesse’s Impact on Korean Culture: A Gateway to Individualism and the Self

However, before BTS helped popularize Hesse’s Demian, the novel had already put down firm roots in the South Korean cultural landscape. Understanding the sociocultural history of the country, particularly in its journey from Confucianism to Western ideas such as individualism and self-reliance, contextualizes why Demian resonates with South Koreans.

Confucianism came to Korea in 109 BCE following the Chinese invasion, bringing a system of government and philosophy that promoted harmony through the repression of individualism and the supremacy of collectivism. Society split into a hierarchy based on class, age, gender, education, and official position, with rules and etiquette for each stratum. According to American writer and journalist Boyé Lafayette de Mente, author of The Korean Mind, the cultural imperative for Koreans to subsume their individual selves in the collective was so strong that even the pronoun “I” was rarely used, and it was only in the twentieth century that average Koreans began to think and behave as individuals.2Boye Lafayette De Mente, The Korean Mind: Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture (Tokyo: Tuttle Pub, 2012), 21. Individualism as a concept was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century; many struggled to comprehend it, particularly since “individualism” was also considered immoral and was even prohibited by law at one point.3De Mente, The Korean Mind, 167.

In their study of Shim-Cheong psychology—a collection of psychological mechanisms that can describe unique complex cultural emotions that form the foundation of Korean social interaction, providing a cultural psychological approach that incorporates the concept of the collective that is specific to Korean culture—Korean psychologists Sang-Chin Choi and Chung-Woon Kim define it as a principle of being forced to take part in “we-ness,” reflected not only in a language without “I” but the search for self-identity also became of negligible importance, and is instead defined through social relationships.4Sang-Chin Choi and Chung-Woon Kim, “‘Shim-Cheong’ Psychology as a Cultural Approach to Collective Meaning Construction,” Korean Journal of Social and Personality Psychology 12, no. 2 (1998): 87.

South Korea has been in transition since the early 1900s. Hundreds of years of Confucianism left their mark, and although young South Koreans are becoming more individualistic and independent, many still grapple with an intellectual and emotional, internal conflict between tradition and Western democratic individualism.5De Mente, The Korean Mind, 150.

In a country seeing a rapid loss in tradition, where the pace of life is rapidly increasing, and a dizzying transition from an agrarian to an industrialized society took place in just decades, Hesse’s texts clearly resonate with Korean readers.6Jörg Drews, “‘… bewundert viel und viel gescholten …’ Hermann Hesses Werk zwischen Erfolg und Missachtung bei Publikum und Literaturkritik,” in Hermann Hesse Today, ed. Ingo Cornils and Osman Durrani (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 24–25. Although Demian is considered a coming-of-age story in the West, in South Korea, the novel also mirrors the societal and political transformation of the country, as shown below.

South Korean society not only saw a shift from the collective to the individual, but over the course of the twentieth century, it also endured occupation by Japan from 1910 until 1945 (accompanied by the suppression of Korean language and culture), the Korean War, a period of authoritarianism, and a long, painful road to democracy. In 1987, a nationwide uprising ended the tyrannical regime and ushered in a new era of democracy.7Paik Nak-chung, Paik, “Democracy and Peace in Korea Twenty Years After June 1987: Where Are We Now, and Where Do We Go from Here?,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 5, no. 6 (2007), https://apjjf.org/-Nak-chung-Paik/2440/article.html.

In the meantime, the reception of Hesse’s works in Korea began, albeit slowly at first. His books first appeared in 1926, but in a Korea occupied by Japan, his work was not published in Korean but Japanese. Although some Korean translations of Hesse’s writing existed before the end of the Korean War, the boom in his translated works began from 1954 onwards. All his full-length novels were translated into Korean, and his popularity gained traction in the 1970s. In 1974, the Korean Publishers Association announced that Demian was among the bestselling books.8Cho, “The Asia Reception in Hermann Hesse’ and Hesse Reception in Asia.”

Another reason for the popularity of Demian is that its translation from the original German into Korean can be seen as an act of postcolonial emancipation. The reception of Korean-language editions of Hesse flourished in the 1970s, with many Koreans studying German in Germany in the following two decades.9Viktoria Döberl, “Hermann Hesses Demian in der südkoreanischen Populär­kultur,” Hesse-Forschung 40 (2018): 175. Translations of Hesse’s books were also being made directly into Korean from German and not from the Japanese translations (Koreans exposed to Hesse either read his work in Japanese translations, or in the case of some translators, like Hang Seok Seo who was one of the first translators to translate Hesse’s poems into Korean, had studied German first through the Japanese language10Cho, “The Asia Reception in Hermann Hesse’ and Hesse Reception in Asia.”). Since Demian was first translated in the 1950s, there have been a total of sixty-seven Korean translations, making Demian the most frequently translated work of Hesse’s into Korean and the second most translated work of German literature into Korean after Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, another novel following a similar theme focusing on the concept of the self.11Döberl, “Hermann Hesses Demian in der südkoreanischen Populärkultur,” 175. According to Viktoria Döberl, Demian is a book that reflects the self-discovery and journey to independence of both Korea and its individuals.12Döberl, “Hermann Hesses Demian in der südkoreanischen Populärkultur,” 181.

In the twenty-first century, Demian has seen a cultural resurgence in South Korea, thanks to the intertwining of K-pop group BTS and Hesse’s novel. BTS’s album Wings and the accompanying media (music videos and short films) take BTS’s message of not giving up on dreams or denying individual desires due to pressures to conform and blend it with the symbolism, philosophy, and narrative of Hesse’s Demian, popularizing the novel among their young fans not just in Korea but beyond.