Understanding Korean society and Politics [1/3]
Understanding Korean
society and politics
Forbes magazine recently ranked South Korea as the 6th most powerful nation in the world, with France and Japan following. Rankings can differ depending on criteria, but what amazes us is the speed the country has been arising in terms of the global influence. In less than a decade’s time Korea has grown as one of the major global suppliers of ammunition, soon to be, or many say already, one of the big four in the world there. What happens on the soft side is none the lesser of the harder one. Seoul became another hub in the global entertainment industry after Hollywood. Their position in the beauty industry, becoming one of the two largest exporters in the cosmetics along with France, well attests to the ascension in soft power status of the country in the global stage.
Yet Korean society remains one of the least understood, far below the level its status should call for. Given its sudden, yet growing global influence, you really cannot afford to let the ignorance prevail. Actually, the significant portion of your perception of the country may have been formed by opinion manipulators. The country was at its lowest point in history when it began to be known to the world late 19th century and it was defenseless to the distortions and manipulations meant to justify the colonist ambitions over the country.
It is a quite challenging venture to deliver
a balanced perspective on the Korean society to the neophytes in the Korean
history. The Korean society has one of the longest histories of unbroken
cultural identity in the world, more than four millennia, at least to its own belief.
No brief introduction of their history would produce a good grasp of the constitution
and feel of the Korean society. Given that, it would make it easier for many to look into the nature of the Korean society through the window of the most well-known, yet unique phenomenon and asset
of the Korean society, which is Hangul.
The
creation of Hangul as historical landmark
The
Korean writing system Hangul should be one of the most noticeable elements of
the Korean society. When you see Hangul signs, you know it’s Korean street
right away, not Japanese or Chinese, nor anywhere else in the world. Hangul is
quite unique is in that it is the only writing system in the world which has its
inventor known and its proclamation clearly dated. It was created and promulgated
in 1443 by Sejong the Great, the third king of the last Korean Dynasty Joseon.
Korean
language and Hangul
Then, the question should arise why
there had to be invented a new writing system when we know as the Chinese
writing system was prevalent in the Northeast Asia. The same question would work
for the Japanese script, which employs Chinese characters heavily, yet needed
the Japanese letters, Hiragana and Katakana, to make sentences. Let’s hear from
King Sejong directly about the background for the new phonetic alphabet system he created.
<訓民正音解例本 ”Introduction of Hangul” published 1446>
The first page of the “Introduction of Hangul” starts with the King Sejong’s declaration of the new alphabet system of his invention and it goes like this when translated word for word:
" The language of Nara [] is different from the Chinese, so the people cannot
[] Nara can be translated as State or Nation. This Korean word has been in use for more than two millennia by Koreans.
Phylogeny of Northeast Asian languages
One of the most Important, yet the least understood facts about the Northeast Asian countries is that the two countries there, Korea and Japan, have a linguistic root totally separated from the Chinese one. People tend to think the languages of the three countries would be similar to each other like in Europe, perhaps because of the common use of the Chinese characters. But the reason why they use the Chinese letters only in part, in other words, why the Chinese couldn't take up the whole writing system in the other two countries, is because their languages are widely and deeply different from the Chinese.
The truth
is, the linguistic distance between the Chinese and the other two, Korean and
Japanese, is bigger by far than between any two you can come up with in the
Western hemisphere so that the notion that the term “Chinese Character Culture
Sphere” presents, or is intended to generate, is highly superficial and can be
more misleading than to say that German and British cultures fall under Italian
culture because they depend heavily on the Latin vocabulary. The distance of
the two languages, the Korean and Japanese, from the Chinese belong to a
different dimension from that of the German and English from the Italian.
The wrong notion of the predisposed assumption of the linguistic affinity in the three countries in the region may have been fed by the propagandic misleaders such as “Chinese Character cultural sphere” and “Confucian Cultural Sphere”, terms created by the Chinese, while the shared derivation of the two languages, Korean and Japanese, has been treated like a skeleton in the closet by the Japanese.
The bipolar distances of the languages
At this juncture, it should deserve a few minutes to briefing on the subject, the scale of difference of the two languages from the Chinese, since the lack of comprehension on the fundamental linguistic heterogeneity and homogeneity among the three has been the culprit that has been hampering the objective understanding of the cultural phylogenies of the Northeast Asian nations for many.
First of all, the Chinese language has the SVO structure like English, but different from English it is a typical isolating language with no inflection at all, for instance, no inflection for the plural, no inflection for verb tense, no suffix for derivatives, while the Korean and Japanese have the common SOV structure characterizing the Transeurasian language family, carries one of the most developed, perhaps over-developed, forms of inflectional system that comprises nearly all categories of grammatical components. The Korean and Japanese have an almost symmetrical set of particles that makes sentences highly context-sensitive, yet flexible in the order of the words deployed. So, the particles are the integral and pivotal part of the two languages that the Chinese has no counterpart of, being one of the reasons why they needed phonetic letters in their writing, like Hiragana and Hangul.
On top of the bipolar distance in the chart of grammars, none the less extreme is the difference in vocalization. In addition to the differences in the way consonants and vowels are pronounced, each Chinese word has to go with one of the four tones, without which its meaning gets lost or confusing, while the Korean and Japanese are non-tonal. Thus, whereas in the post-renaissance Europe the intellectuals could communicate in multiple languages thanks to the affinity of the European languages, Korean literati class and Japanese intellectuals could not communicate with their Chinese counterparts verbally. They used the translators or communicated in writing.
The cultural divergence stemming out of the linguistic difference
Yet the pivotal difference, perhaps as big as the grammar and vocalization combined in terms of the cultural consequence, could be in the disparity in the richness of honorific expressions. While Japanese and Korean are known to have the most elaborate speech system in terms of respect levels, rivaled by no other languages in the world, comprising titles, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and even particles, Chinese application of the respect-sensitive expressions is limited to some pronouns, i.e., ni or nin for “you”, and titles, such as Master, Teacher and Senior.
The most foundational element of the Confucian teachings is the respect for the senior. The Koreans and Japanese could not and cannot find a way not to respect the seniors and strangers, not because of the Confucian teachings, but because of the social protocol framed in their language. It would be quite obvious which one came first, between the language and Confucianism. The honorific speech system is a common feature across the Transeurasian languages without an exception, including the Turkish, only varying in complexity and rigidity in application. It would be only natural that the Confucian teaching was meant for the Chinese people, whose language did not and do not carry the respect embedded. Much of his teachings came over to the easternmore neighbors as redundancy in regimentation of their inherent culture. They may look more Confucian in their manners not because they have been better followers of the Confucianism than Chinese, but because it had been their native culture well preserved in the framework of language.
What the linguistic distance of the Northeast Asian languages tells us is that the Chinese culture and that of Korea and Japan had totally separate cultural birthplaces and cradles. Two notable studies recently made endorced the disparate nature of the linguistic landscape of the Northeast Asia. Their studies were published respectively in PNAS Journal May 2019 and in Nature November 2021, both employing cross-disciplinary approaches with scholars from the most renowned schools and research bodies across the world. []
[] The briefings on both studies are available by googling "Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages" for the Korean and Japanese, and "Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan" for the Chinese.
“Nara”
and Korean society
Now that we know why the Korean society needed
a new script based on the phonetic letter system, another question, yet
remaining, could be how the monarch of the kingdom in 15C happened to be the
inventor of the alphabet system himself.
In the
declaration for the new script system, the king used the word 나라 in Hangul, pronounced “nara”. That is just the word Koreans today when they
refer to the state or the nation. It is believed that the word has been in use
more than the time of two millennia. []
[] Chinese was calling the
ancient Korean capital Lolang 樂浪, which is believed to
have been the Chinese transliteration of Nara, more than 2.3 millennian ago. If
it had been in use from the Bronze age, it must have meant at first the core
state or capital state that had the authority over the peripheral sub-states. In
the lower Manchu and in Peninsula, the sphere of the ancient Korean polity named
古朝鮮 Go-Joseon or Old Joseon, are
excavated the bronze daggers and mirrors interpretated as bestowals from the theocratic central authority Nara as symbol of power delegation to the sub-states. Given
the nature of the trappings excavated along with the bronze daggers it is
highly probable that the nature of the central authority at the time of the
bronze period was both shamanistic and secular. Nara was where the ruler or government
resided, so it meant the center of the country or capital. Over the time of millennia,
the word had evolved to mean the state or nation as the whole country came
centralized under the rule of the central government, as in Koryo and Joseon,
while the word appears to have been fossilized as name of city in some areas
where the ancient Koreans settled themselves as ruling class.
The way Koreans use this word suggests the perception of this word nara. In Korean, nara(t)-nim means the leader of the nation and the nara(t)-nil means the state affairs or public affairs. Thus, Sejong was narat-nim, doing narat-nil. Though not all Joseon-Dynasty kings can be said to have been so dedicated as Sejong was, it was the main job expected of a narat-nim to take care of the difficulties of the people. At the time of the15th century, the word King would have been primarily associated with power, prestige or ownership over the land and people across the world. In Korea, on top of the royal authority and prestige, the king’s position was strongly tied to its calling as narat-nim doing the narat-nil, that is, serving the people. The Korean society had a quite modern perception of the government leader in the king’s position as public servant and that’s how the Joseon Dynasty could produce in a king the inventor of the new alphabet system that would serve as coherent force of the nation since and would turn out to be the core asset for the competence of the Korean society in the digital environment to come six hundred years later.
The perception of Nara
according to the founding ideology
The
Korean legend of foundation can be unique in many ways, but the most salient
point would be that it has the founding ideology declared in it while it
carries all the trappings of the ancient mythology such as animals and
agricultural elements. It stipulates 弘益人間, Hong-Ik-In-gan, which
means “benefit the people broadly”, as the founding ideology. []
[] The founding myth
goes: Hwanin, the Heavenly God, grants his son Hwanung’s wish to govern the earth to benefit the people
broadly and send him down to the earth with the demigods of elements to take
care of all the human affairs. Then, a tiger and a bear came forth to Hwang-ung
with their wish to become human. He tasks them with staying in a dark
cave for 100 days, eating only mugwort and garlic. The tiger gives up after a
couple fortnights, but the bear finish the task and become a woman named
Wung-nyo. Dangun was born between Wung-nyo and Hwan-ung to establish the new
state named Joseon.
It needs to be noted here that the country's legendary founder Dangun is a leader both theocratic and secular in nature. He came down from the Heaven, carrying the theocratic authority but with the mundane assignment to work for the benefit of the people.
It may sound hard to believe the national dictum was really made four thousand years ago where the myth unraveled in, but it would be still incredibly modern statement for a state’s raison d’etre if it had been established any time before eight hundred years ago when its oldest extant narration dated. Regardless when it really came into being, the founding motto of the country is still alive in the Korean collective mind in terms of their expectation on the state’s role for the people and in their perception of the relation between the people and the state they call nara. []
[] All Koreans, at least
in the South, are taught of the founding myth and ideology at school. And the
first ruler Dangun of forty-three hundreds of years ago is an everyday name in
Korea, being mentioned perhaps more often than George Washington would get in
the United States. The university Hong-ik, well-known for the trendy street
named Hongdae, was named after the national dictum in the founding myth.
Many
Koreans associate the phrase Hong-Ik-In-gan, 弘益人間, with
the role of the state for the public benefit based on egalitarianism. The
ideology may sound socialist, but for Koreans the expectation for the equality ends
with equal opportunities, especially in the education. Korean society has tended
to accept the social strata as result of the competition based on equal
opportunities, which clearly differentiates the Korean society from the
socialist. There is little room for socialist ideas in the Korean society. They
are like football players accepting the game result as long as they believe the
referees were not too unfair.
The way the founding ideology is at work in the Korean society today
Following
are the typical examples of the way the founding ideology, claimed to have been
established four and half millennia ago, is working alive in the Korean society
of today and how.
The First Presidential
Impeachment and egalitarianism Park Geun Hye was dismissed from the
Presidential office in March 2017 by the Constitutional Court after the
impeachment by the Congress at the end of 2016. The key causes enumerated in
the Court decision were the abuse of power and betrayal of the public trust
based on the several specific charges, but the first incident that ignited the
public indignation was the exposure of the foul play committed in the course of
college entrance in favor of a daughter of the President’s unofficial yet most
influential confident. It was in September 2016 when the unjust favor went
public in the Congress. The fire of the public fury turned inexorable so fast despite
President Park’s strong political base built on her father Park Jung Hee’s halo
and regional stronghold. Barely three months had passed since the first
exposure of the scandal in the congress when the impeachment was decided by the
Parliament and then another three months before the dismissal approved by the
Court. The incident of the first
Presidential impeachment in the modern history of South Korea was the showcase
how sensitive the Korean society reacts when the equality of opportunities gets
broken, especially in education.
The egalitarian order is at work in their everyday life too. The Inchon Airport does not offer the paid fast track service. And the owner of a restaurant can be nicer to his most important patron, but it will raise eyebrows if he serve him quicker than others or give him the best spot. The best patrons usually do not expect such treatment either. They go to other places when they find the shop too busy.
The people’s expectation for the state You may find the invention of the whole new script system for the people by the monarch himself quite improbable to happen in the world of six hundred years ago, but in light of the founding ideology of the ancient Korea the incident would come quite plausible. Not all Joseon Kings may have been as creative as Sejong the Great, but the dedication by Sejong for the public interest was not an exception. While Seonjo (r. 1567-1608) sponsored the publication of 東醫寶鑑 Donguibogam, which is registered as Memory of the World by UNESCO, King Jungjo (r. 1800-1834) wrote the medicinal book himself on the emergency treatments. All the details of those monarchial activities were recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty 朝鮮王朝實錄, also registered as the Memory of the World, for which the independence of the recorders was so strictly protected that no monarch ever had been allowed to view the annal on himself. The systemic check on the king’s authority was at work throughout the Dynasty and that was one of reasons why the productivity of the state could be sustained.[]
Behind the resilience South Korea has been showing towards the social stability is the power of the shared perception of Nara as defined by the founding dictum that has taken root in the Korean society throughout their unbroken history of millennia. Nara has been there always in their collective memory and there is no space for anachism in their society.
The initiatives the Nara took since the release from the Japanese rule in 1945 includes the land reform of 1949 and the public health care system first legislated in 1963, when it was one of the poorest countries in the world, [] to be activated in 1977. It was the land reform that would enable many small farmers to send their children to colleges and some even to overseas study, nurturing the national knowledge base for their industrial take-off. The public health care system contributed greatly not just to the welfare of the people but to the social integrity, without which things may have taken quite different courses in their tumultuous modern history. They may as well be regarded as socialist from today's perspective and if they had to be implemented today, it would turn out to be almost a mission impossible given the current political landscape in South Korea, where any suggestion for public welfare is called communist or populist by the rightist block.
[] In 1963, the nominal per capita income of South korea was 146 USD, poorer than Philippines of 180 and Ghana of 205 USD.
End of 1/3 of the article
'Understanding Korean Society and Politics'
<left> A Falcon on the pedestal 架鷹圖, Boston Museum of Art,<right > Puppies beneath the Flower Tree 花鳥狗子圖, Samsung Museum of Art , both by Yi-Am 李巖 (1507~1566), Joseon Dynasty, Korea. Yi-Am was great-great-grand child of Sejong. His paintings had a great following in the Edo paintings.
Part 2/3 of this article will be uploaded by January 26 (Mon.) of 2026
Sorry, for the delay. Now, the uploading of Part 2/3 will be made on January 29( Thur).
The religious landscape and politics in the
Korean society
< Prof. Michael sandel at his 2012 Yonsei Lecture>
-Hananim, the God of Justice
-Buddhist ego in the Korean mind
-Questioning the Confucian influence
-The two faces of the Protestant Churches in
the modern Korean history
-the shift in the religious landscape
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Part 3/3 Uploading to be announced with the Part 2/3
Understanding the geopolitics and political
terrain of Korea
-Hangul and Americans
-China vs. USA
-The geopolitics and political terrain of
Korea
- Understanding the rise and implications of the Korean
ammunition industry
- Asset or Ally
Closing
remark
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