Kim Jong-il was not Confucian, Kim Jong-un is not Confucian

Heard the news today (oh boy...): The Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, is dead.  Not much of a surprise really.  He had been seriously ill for a long time and had already set up his son, Kim Jong-un as a successor.  But such transitions are never wholly set in stone.  Get ready for some North Korean politics in the coming months...

I have a particular interest here, however, one that I have expressed on various occasions.  And that is: we should not look at North Korea as some sort of demonstration of political Confucianism.  Or, to put it more bluntly: North Korea is not Confucian.  I do this because, from time to time, we see in the press stories that construe hereditary succession of tyrants as some sort of illustration of political Confucianism.  This is wrong on several fronts.

First, we cannot assume a simple historical continuity in North Korea running from the Confucian past to the Stalinist present (if I were to pick a single political term to summarize the NK regime, "Stalinism" would come the closest...thought Stalin had a bit of a problem with succession also...).  Korean culture now, especially North Korean culture, should not be assumed to be a revised expression of what came before.  The twentieth century, with Japanese colonization and horrible war and national division and modernization, is just too much of a disjunction.  There may be certain historical continuities but they would appear to pale in comparison to the events and institutions created in the past one hundred years.  Thus, contemporary North Korea political culture owes more to the dictates of the modern Stalinist state than it does to the values and principles of The Analects and Mencius.

Second, "Confucianism" when it is invoked in relation to North Korea, is often simply reduced to obedience to authority and respect of elders, especially older political leaders.  This is, of course, not what Confucianism is all about.  For a country to more accurately be labeled "Confucian," there would have to be an extensive and voluntary public enactment of Duty, as flexibly defined to suit particular social and familial situations, according to Ritual (the conscientious and constant attention to right action) to move toward Humanity (ren - 仁 ).  I don't see anything like that in NK, dominated as it is by the authoritarian, or even totalitarian, regime. 

Third, on the particular matter of hereditary succession, there is nothing particularly Confucian about this.  It is to be found in virtually every part of the globe at various historical times.  It is not the ideal form of political succession for Confucianism, which would champion something closer to a meritocracy based on virtue, as expressed in the story of Shun.  It is true that Mencius certainly accommodated his political thinking to the aristocratic society that surrounded him.  He warned us "...don't offend the great families" (126) and gave only royal ministers the duty of overthrowing a tyrant.  But these were compromises to the political realities of his day.  In the best of all Confucian worlds, hereditary succession would not be the primary mechanism for regime reproduction.

So, please, don't say North Korea is Confucian, or that the succession from one Kim to another is somehow consistent with Confucianism.

I have been looking at the press thus far this morning and I can report: so far, so good.  I have only found a couple of invocations of Confucianism, and they have been conditioned and qualified.  Take this, for example, from The Guardian:

In a country that, despite its communist doctrine, retains a Confucian respect for seniority, Kim Jong-un could have expected to give way to his older siblings, but reportedly emerged as his father's favourite after impressing him with his single-mindedness and leadership qualities.

This is a stretch: if the supposed "Confucian" expectation (choose older siblings) doesn't appear relevant under the circumstances, and in the context of "communist doctrine," why even invoke it?  

Or this from the National Journal:

There is a reason why the regime of the Kims survives while, all around it, the Soviet bloc disintegrated and the Chinese opened up and reformed. The North Korean regime's ideology, called juche, is often simplistically defined as Korean self-reliance and ridiculed in the West. But to the North Korean elites, juche is still a powerfully intoxicating brew of traditional Korean xenophobia and nationalism, Confucian respect for authority and utopian Marxism-Leninism. The party embodies all of these ideals--nationalism, filial respect, utopia. Exploiting this confluence of philosophies and experiences, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il created "an impermeable and absolutist state that many have compared to a religious cult," wrote longtime Korea observer, Don Oberdorfer in his 1997 book, "The Two Koreas."

Here's a question: why do people in NK "respect authority"?  Is it because they have some deep-seated traditional understanding of Confucianism?  Or is it because they have learned that if they challenge authority they are as good as dead?  I don't think you can simply assume the former when the latter is such a strong possibility.  So let's just avoid the facile invocations of "Confucian respet for authority."

To all my journalist friends out there: don't do it.  Don't make the lazy move to describe NK as "Confucian."  I'm watching, and I will call you on it.  Of course, if you want to dig a bit deeper and sort throught the historical disjunctions and show how something like "Confucianism" (which would have to be defined clearly as something more than simply respsect for authority or hereditary succession) may tell us something about contemporary NK, by all means do it.  But be ready for a critique...

Because saying NK is Confucian is pretty much like saying DR Congo is democratic...

UPDATE: This NYT piece gets it about right:

The only precedent is the last transition in the current ruling dynasty, when Kim Jong-il took over after the 1994 death of his father, Kim Il-sung. In that case, the son observed a three-year period of traditional mourning before formally taking over control of the nation, a move that reflects the regime’s odd mixing of the trappings of ancient Confucian monarchy with a 20th-century Stalinist cult of personality.

"Trappings" is about as Confucian as it gets...

Comments

[Gray Hat]

And Chris Hill gets it wrong:

"To understand the leadership structure requires going way back into Korean culture to understand Confucian principles." (today's NYT)

At least we know where to go, now, if we want to understand Confucian principles!