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South Korea CULTURAL IDENTITY
South Korea's homogeneous population shares a common ethnic,
cultural, and linguistic heritage. National self-image is, on one
level, unambiguously defined by the convergence of territorial,
ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities
(see Population
, this
ch.). Yet intense feelings of nationalism, so evident in athletic
events like the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Olympic Games held
in Seoul, revealed anxiety as well as pride concerning South
Korea's place in the world. More than Western peoples and even
more than the Japanese, South Korean individuals are inclined to
view themselves as a tightly knit national community with a
common destiny. In a rapidly changing world, however, it is often
difficult for them to define exactly what being a South Korean
is. To outsiders, the intense concern with identity is perhaps
difficult to understand; it reflects a history of subordinate
relations to powerful foreign states and the tragedy of national
division after World War II.
Many modernized, urban-dwelling South Koreans embark on a
search for the "essence" of their culture, which commonly
expresses itself as hostility to foreign influences. For example,
the poet Kim Chi-ha, whose opposition to the Park regime in the
1970s was a model for a younger generation of dissidents,
attacked the government as much for its neglect of traditional
values as for its antidemocratic tendencies.
Seoul has not been slow to employ traditionalism for its own
ends. In 1987 the government adopted guidelines for the revision
of history textbooks instructing publishers to describe the
foundation of the Korean nation by Tan'gun in 2333 B.C. as "a
reflection of historical facts" rather than simply a myth. The
legendary Tan'gun was, according to the myth, the son of god and
a bear-woman. According to a Far Eastern Economic Review
commentator, ". . . people ranging from reputable university
scholars to chauvinist mystics regard Tan'gun as the
personification of ethics and values that emphasize a native
Korean identity against the foreign religions and philosophies of
Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, Christianity and Marxism that have
otherwise dominated Korean history and thought." Tangun's
legendary kingdom is older than China's first legendary dynasty,
the Xia (2205-1766 B.C.), and its antiquity asserts Korea's
cultural autonomy in relation to its largest neighbor. There have
been proposals that the government subsidize the rites of the
numerically small community of believers in Taejonggyo and other
cults that worship Tan'gun.
Problems of cultural identity are closely connected to the
tragedy of Korea's division into two hostile states. Many members
of the younger generation of South Koreans born after the Korean
War fervently embrace the cause of t'ongil, or
reunification, and believe that it is the superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union, who are to blame for Korea's
national division. The South Korean government's dependence on
the United States has been cited as one of the principal reasons
for the lack of improvement in north-south ties. While a majority
of South Koreans remains suspicious of the North Koreans, many
South Koreans also share the sentiments expressed by Kim Chi-ha:
"our name is division, and this soiled name, like an immovable
destiny, oppresses all of us." When parts of the wall dividing
East Berlin and West Berlin were knocked down in November 1989,
Koreans reflected sadly that breaching the DMZ would not be such
a simple task.
Data as of June 1990
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