Transcendental collectivism and participatory politics in democratized Korea

Abstract

This essay sheds new light on Korean democracy after democratization. It examines how the notion of ‘transcendental collectivism’, associated with familial bonds and the concept of chŏng, led to an emphasis on citizen‐empowerment. This participatory perspective replaced the militant elite‐led activism of the transitional period, which was underpinned by a Confucian ‘transcendental individualism’ predicated on the concept of ren. The argument is based on a detailed case study of a recent episode of citizen action. The article shows how the search for a new democratic citizenship that was capable of overcoming the parochial regionalism that has bedeviled Korean politics for decades, led ordinary (especially young) Korean citizens to come up with a new national democratic civic ethos that corresponded to the changed political environment. This new ethos was uri‐responsibility, a uniquely Korean view of collective moral responsibility. After examining uri‐responsibility and comparing it with Kantian‐liberal accounts of responsibility, its strong democratic implications for Korea are explored.

Keywords:

• transcendental collectivism: transcendental individualism
• chŏng
• civil society
• uri‐responsibility

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of the manuscript was presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association. I am grateful to the comments from Carlo Bonura, Fred Alford, Benjamin Barber, Sam Fayyaz, and Mike Evans. Special thanks are due to the journal’s two anonymous reviewers and Richard Bellamy, editor of the journal, whose constructive criticisms were crucial in improving the manuscript.

Notes

1. Neo‐Confucianism is a reformed Confucianism in the Song dynasty of China (960–1279) resulting from the religious‐philosophical challenges of Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. This version of Confucianism was more orthodox in its scholarly interpretation of the Confucian canons and more rigorous in its moral stance.

2. The purges took place in 1498, 1504, 1519, and 1545.

3. The coalition was between the opposition New Korean Democratic Party and various civil society groups.

4. For the historical unfolding of such a rivalry between monarchical power, on one side, and Confucian ministership founded on Confucian scholarship, on the other, see Dardess (1983) and Wood (1995).

5. In English, uri translates into ‘we’.

6. The criteria were destruction of the democratic constitutional order through anti‐humanity activities (specifically, collaboration with the past authoritarian regimes), corruption, election law violation, instigation of regionalist sentiments, tax evasion, and conscription irregularities.

7. The election law at issue was made in 1989 in order to prohibit such anti‐democratic (un)civil organizations as those that propped up the previous military authoritarian regimes from political activities.

8. See http://www.peoplepower21.org/article/article_view.php?article_id=752

9. Sheri Berman (1997) has warned, that vibrant civil society, when it is not supported by a well‐developed institutional politics (i.e., party politics), could endanger a democracy itself.

10. Edward Shils (1997, p. 71) understands civility in terms of a ‘civil collective self‐consciousness’, and by ‘collective’ he frequently means ‘national’.

11. For how Weber was indebted to Tocqueville in his theorization of civil society, see Weber (1985), Kalberg (1997) and S.H. Kim (2004).

12. One might argue that a series of national candlelight demonstrations from 2002 to 2003 were indeed ignited by anti‐Americanism. But it is heavily controversial what truly motivated the ordinary Koreans across generation and across party lines to take to the street holding candles. I just want to remind readers that even the conservative citizens, who had seldom showed up to a public demonstration, thought it necessary to revise the unequal terms in the SOFA while believing that traditional US–South Korea alliance should never be weakened. For them, to repose the souls of the two innocent girls struck by a US military vehicle in summer 2000 was by no means a signal of anti‐Americanism. Nor was it an unbridled nationalism.