Abstract
The title of this paper is a word-play on 'rites of passage' and 'rites in the post-colonial era', focused on Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The interdisciplinary conference on 'Ritualizing the City' has been a challenge to review what I have known about urban processes, public policy and urban life in contemporary Seoul through the lenses of the rite of passage as a classical anthropological concept.
My immediate starting point was the destruction of the Government-General building in 1995 as a manifestation of self-determination from the Japanese colonial occupation. The given symbolic dimension of South Korea becoming modernized by casting away its colonial past triggered the reasoning of this act as a nation-wide rite of passage from its underdeveloped, backward and colonial era.
This was the official narrative of former president Kim Young-sam1, towards a modern and globalized nation. In order to illustrate this movement, we selected an array of events regarding the festivities taking place (or that have taken place) in urban Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
This includes the several-step demolition of colonial edifices (Korea Shrine, Government-General building) and the Independence Day celebrations that marked Korea's ''ostentatious'' breach from its colonial past. Then, we discussed the 'staged modernity' through FIFA World Cup Organisation and the Lantern festival on Chonggyecheon Stream.
Covering a third type of events, we presented Jongmyo Daeje, the ritual to royal ancestors, as a blending of the ''staged heritage'' and its actual living Confucian ritual. We will be interested in observing how these events shaped the urban landscape of Seoul and how they co-exist in Korea's contemporary capital.
We will be further concerned in demonstrating how the conflicting social era of collective memory events in urban Seoul intersects with the use of 'post-coloniality' as an analytical tool for interpreting these urban rituals and festivities in Seoul.