[KS] Re: To the Observer of Korean Politics

Marion Eggert Marion.Eggert at ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Mon Oct 23 06:25:20 EDT 2000


REPLY sends your message to the whole list
__________________________________________

Mrs. Williamson:

My apologies for misconstrueing your gender (perhaps because of a mental
link-to-be-deconstructed between maleness and authoritarianism?) and for
not looking closely at your last name.

Very likely that Confucianism played a part in how money flowed through
society, but less likely that it was a decisive factor in where from,
why, and to what ends it flowed.

Am I incorrect if I detect in your message a sequence of binary
oppositions with "western values, development, wealth, Park/Chun
regimes, ultimately democracy" on one hand versus "traditional values,
backwardness, poverty, political opposition, no basis for democracy" on
the other? In my simplistic view, those who "wound up being tortured"
may have expected to be tortured because they knew their political
system, but not because they believed torture was what they deserved, or
what their opponents deserved -- they rather tended to be  those who
believed that torture is inhumane and who fought for putting an end to
various kinds of torture and deprivation.

Finally,  p'ungsu believes may be an obstacle to building highways along
the straightest route, but they are no obstacle to democracy or any
other kind of political system. They  are widespread in mainland China,
Hongkong, Taiwan, to some extent also in Japan, and are spreading
rapidly in North America, Europe and Australia...

Marion Eggert

--
Prof. Dr. Marion Eggert
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Fakultät für Ostasienkunde
Sektion Sprache und Kultur Koreas
44780 Bochum, Germany
tel (0234)-3225572
fax (0234)-3214747





More information about the Koreanstudies mailing list