The Useless Tree

After Kim

News reports are circulating that Kim Jong-il, the supreme leader of North Korea, may have "suffered a serious health setback:"

U.S. intelligence officials said today that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may have suffered a serious health setback, amid reports that the 66-year-old dictator had failed to appear at an important celebration of his country's anniversary.

An intelligence official said it appeared that Kim "has suffered a health setback, potentially a stroke." The official said the episode was believed to have occurred in the last couple of weeks, noting that U.S. officials are watching the development closely because of the far-reaching effects it could have on North Korean affairs.

    Two things.

     First, let's stay away from the sloppy invocation of "Confucianism" in describing the nature of the NK regime.  Just because a megalomaniacal East Asian dictator arranges for his son to succeed him does not mean that Confucianism is somehow in play.  After all, Confucius and Mencius both pushed against hereditary succession.  The sage-emperor Yao, a favorite in Confucian circles, did not push for his son to succeed him but sought out and trained Shun, who himself became a sage-emperor.  Authoritarian patrilineal succession is not a Confucian ideal.  

     Second, I sense the possibility of a long-term irony.  Everyone disdains the Kims of NK, and they have earned that disdain.  But, if Kim Jong-il dies and, further, if that sets off a political struggle and crisis that ultimately brings down the hated NK regime (I know, a lot of "ifs" here), and if the Korean peninsula unifies under an effective central government extending up from the South, what does that bode for East Asian international politics?  The Koreans will be happy, for sure.  But once the economic wreckage of the North is cleared up (I think this could happen fairly quickly: a decade or two), what we will have is a strong, unified Korea, with a global top-ten economy and nuclear capability.  That power will provide its leadership with the confidence to steer a foreign policy course that is independent of China and the US and Japan.  And while that might be OK for US interests, it might raise some anxieties in China and Japan.   Question:  will a strong, unified Korea make it more likely for Japan to build a nuclear weapons capability and will China respond, in turn, by expanding its nuclear arsenal?  I don't mean to get all John Mearsheimer here (his most dire predictions have not come to pass, after all), but I wonder if some in Beijing might look back 30 years from now and wistfully long for the relative stability of the Kims.....

Modernization and Family Breakdown in Korea

   A couple of days ago I received an email from a blogger at Korea Dispatch, calling my attention to a post, "Korean families in crisis."  It is a sad, and all too common, saga, made the worse by the fact that one of the people profiled is disabled, and after overcoming all sorts of difficult circumstances she is faced with the necessity of divorcing an abusive husband. 

  The post ends with this:

According to Confucius, the family was seen as both the model and the foundation of the nation, it’s structure thought to mirror the relationship between the ruler and his people. In Korea family has always been esteemed, a core value that has defined tradition for millennia. Today, while lip-service is still paid to family values, the reality appears quite different.

     The question, then, is: why have Confucian family values declined in Korea? 

      The first thing to note is that this is not a specifically Korean problem. I suspect the underlying culprit is modernization.  By that I mean the broad, trans-historical forces of industrialization (and now post-industrialization), urbanization, social mobility (the capacity and freedom to move from one livelihood and lifestyle to another) and associated social and cultural ramifications (which are complex and problematic but which include a certain cultural individualization and transformations in gender roles and expectations).  These kinds of processes started to have noticeable effect on US society over the decades of the twentieth century and we now live with their products: high rates of divorce, attenuation of tradition, high-stress/high-consumption society, infantilized culture, etc. There is good to come of all of this as well - creativity, innovation, freedom - but the costs are clear.

      Korea, then, is experiencing something similar, although the processes began in earnest after WWII.  Yes, the Japanese colonial period matters in significant ways, but the high-speed industrial development of the 1960s and afterward, in my opinion, is of greater social-cultural importance.  This is not to say that Korea is becoming like the US (which I suspect many Koreans might fear).  Rather, it is to suggest that all societies (well, almost all; North Korea is largely spared all this - but at even more horrendous cost) are moving along a somewhat similar trajectory of modernization (yes there are variations in the expressions of modernity but the similarities here tend to catch my eye.)

     If this is true, then it is quite understandable why Confucian values would erode.  It's hard to maintain the integrity of family or community when economic and social and cultural forces of global scale are encouraging individualization and undermining collectives of all sorts. 

    And, perhaps, it is precisely these global forces that make it ever more necessary to keep the Confucian conversation alive.  I do not consider myself a Confucian, not by a long shot, but I learn a great deal from, and have come to respect deeply, the Confucian perspective.  It is a reminder that we can still strive for Humanity, even when the Way is not in the land.

UPDATE:  Pete, at Korea Dispatch, wrote to correct me: the disabled women in the family does not have an abusive husband, her sister does.  She (the disabled women) is being forced to divorce her husband, who is loving and loved, in order to save the family home - something to do with divorce and property laws.  Also, Pete suggested a new blog, new to me at least, that looks at modernizing Korea: The Grand Narrative.  Some good stuff there.

On Being Powerful

Good news today on the foreign policy front: the US has finally started to make progress in opening up its relations with North Korea.  Don't get me wrong.  I have nothing but disdain for the government of NK. But the question is, and has always been, how best to deal with a bad situation there.  The Bush policy of isolation and pressure did not work.  And in a rare instance of learning on the part of that same Bush administration, the failed policy was changed and that has yielded today's announcement by the president. 

    I have long felt that the best way forward in US NK policy is to encourage as much economic and social openness there as possible.  This might have the effect of preserving the regime but it would also redound to the benefit of average North Koreans.  They would come to have more opportunity to eat (which in itself is a major problem there still) and live their lives with a bit less constraint.  That is clearly the story of the opening of China these past thirty years.  While politics in the PRC remain draconian, society has certainly liberalized, people have more social and cultural space and, of course, the economy has boomed.  If NK experienced half of what has happened in China it would be better for all concerned. 

    And this brings me back to the Tao Te Ching.   Among its many lessons is one in how to be powerful, as in this excerpt from passage 61:

A great nation that puts itself below a small nation
takes over the small nation,
and a small nation that puts itself below a great nation
gives itself over to the great nation.

Some lie low to take over,
and some lie low to give over.

A great nation wanting nothing more
than to unite and nurture the people
and a small nation wanting nothing more
than to join and serve the people:
they both succeed in what they want.

Great things lie low and rest content.

      We do not have to take this literally; that is, the ultimate outcome does not have to be "taking over" of the small by the large.  Rather, it is a matter of each getting what they want.  The point, then, is how the powerful should exercise their power.  Force and domination produce resistance and conflict, denying the interests of the powerful and raising unnecessary costs (see Iraq war).  Alternatively, if the powerful accommodates and engages with the less powerful, and if the powerful is willing to bear the costs of compromise, then better outcomes are possible.  It reminds me of US policy toward Europe and Japan after 1947.  The US encouraged the creation of what would eventually become the European Union and it, for many years, worked to open its economy to the exports of Germany and Japan.  In so doing, the US absorbed the costs for constructing a relatively open and productive world economy, a global structure in which the US thrived.  Openness and engagement ultimately served the interests of both the US and Europe.  Openness and engagement have similarly served the interests of both the US and China more recently.  So it is good to see some glimmer of openness and engagement between the US and NK.

     Great things lie low and rest content.

Lee Myung-bak as a reminder that Korea is not as Confucian as some would want us to think.

     Lee Myung-bak, the candidate of the conservative Grand National Party, won a significant electoral victory in South Korea's presidential poll yesterday.  The elections were free and fair, though turnout was relatively low (about 63%), and Lee captured about 48.7 % of the vote, which gave him a historically high 22.6 or so percentage point lead over his nearest rival.

     He is described as a pragmatist with ethical issues.  Vowing to ramp up the country's economic growth, he faces an investigation into manipulating stocks of a company, BBK, he founded.  As one voter, interviewed by the NYT, said:

“I voted for Lee Myung-bak even though I think he’s a little corrupt,” said Kim Cho-rong, 21, a college student studying interior design. “I figured someone who is a little guilty but competent was better for our society than someone who is innocent but incompetent.”

     And perhaps, given the messy world of politics, that's OK.  But one thing we can say about Lee's election is that it would likely draw a frown from Confucius.

      This thought comes to me as I read lines like this, from the Marmot's Hole:

The election of Lee Myung-bak (assuming it survives the ongoing BBK investigation) is break from the ideologically-driven politics of Korea’s past. His campaign has explicitly said that “economic considerations must receive higher priority than political considerations.”

     Giving so much priority to economic issues, especially in the relatively well off South Korea (something like the 13th richest country in the world), strays from the path of the Master.  Think about this man-on-the-street comment from the WaPo:

"No one is absolutely clean when you strip-search successful and wealthy businessmen in Korea," said Ahn Jae-woo, 54, an insurance executive who voted for Lee early today before going Christmas shopping with his family in a Seoul mall. "This election is not about ethical issues, it's about who is really capable of making Korea prosperous."

      It's all about "prosperity," making people richer, allowing them to live more comfortable lives.  Forget the ethics.   Now, I will not criticize Koreans for making that choice.  It's perfectly understandable, especially coming after a president, Roh Moo-hyun, who overplayed the political ethics card and let the economy sag.  But, whatever we think of Lee's victory, it is not in keeping with Confucianism.

      This passage from the Analects seems to speak directly to not only Lee himself but to Korea voters in general:

The Master said: “Wealth and position – that’s what people want. But if you enjoy wealth and position without following Way, you’ll never dwell at ease. Poverty and obscurity – that’s what people despise. And if you endure poverty and obscurity without following the Way, you’ll never get free.
“If you ignore Humanity, how will you gain praise and renown? The noble-minded don’t forget Humanity for a single moment, not even in the crush of confusion and desperation.”  Analects 4.5

     Even when times are bad, even when the economy is growing slower than it might, you can't forget the ethics, you can't ignore Humanity.

     Confucius would not have voted for Lee.