[KS] Yusin question

[gkl1 at columbia.edu]

   It may be, as Don Baker says in response to Alon Levkowitz's
query, that Park Chunghee followed the Japanese usage of the term
<Ishin>, in Korean pronunciation <Yusin>, for his new constitution
in 1972. If so it was a brash act of political in-your-face, and I
think he and his advisors would have been foolish to ape Japan so
blatantly, especially when Park already had so much Japanese
baggage already. But maybe there was a more complicated background.
   The term in question goes back to at least 2,700 years ago, maybe
even more, when it appears in one of the classic Chinese Shijing
poems in the sense of "renewal" (<weixin> in Chinese pronuncation).
The second element means "new"; the first--the yu-/ wei- part, is
not easy to translate, but classical scholars have seen it as a
binding copular verb which later on, but well before the imperial
age (late 3rd century BCE), became obsolete in classical Chinese
(the word <fei>, still current as "it is not" is thought by some
scholars to be the negative form of this copular verb). The sense
of the compound, standing by itself, would seem to be something
like "Let it be new!" In the context of the line in the poem, the
phrase would come out something like the following: "Zhou is an old
nation, but may its mandate be new" (Zhou sui jiu bang, qi ming wei
xin). Since ancient times the phrase <yusin/weixin/ishin> appears
frequently in the classical political discourse of China, Korea,
and Japan, almost always in politically problematic times when a
need for reform is felt and articulated. In the Korean case, it
came up in the discourse of the 1860s when dynastic fortunes were
at a nadir and the Taew^ongun took over the government in a
historically unprecedented manner. But this was by no means the
earliest Korean usage.
   I don't know whether Park himself was aware of the classical
resonances, but it should not be ruled out that he was. He could
surprise you sometimes with his Confucian instincts; at any rate
many of his slogans had a Confucian ring. And his Confucian
understanding was most likely a by-product of his Japanese military
education in Manchuria rather than as a result of earlier
acquaintance with Confucian texts like the Shijing. If someone who
was well informed in Confucianism and sympathetic to his policies
had been asked to explain the propriety of the term, he might have
said that Korea is old and great, but it needs some renovation.
Park's official English translation was "revitalization."
   The official Meiji translation was "restoration." While a key
aspect of the Meiji reforms was restoration of the imperial family
as the supreme authority of the state, in no sense can yusin/ishin
itself be taken to mean "restoration." That was certainly the spin
at the time, but one suspects that the changes were politically
much easier to sell to the Japanese public as a restoration of the
emperor than as the adoption of a very radical modernization of the
society, especially a western-style one, which was at the heart of
"Ishin."
   The general view of the Korean public in 1972 was, as other
respondents have already noted, highly negative. They could not
have cared less about the classical connotations. What was obvious
above all was that it was a clear seizure of more power. The Yusin
constitution, in a series of articles (I have notes mentioning
Articles 12-15 and 18, but there were certainly more than that),
gives a string of human and political rights supposedly guaranteed
to the Korean people, but the assertions of such rights all follow
the same formula: "No citizen shall be subject to restriction of
freedom of speech and press or of freedom of assembly and
association except as provided by law" (Art. 18). That last phrase
rings like a litany throughout the constitution, in effect voiding
whatever is protected before the given sentence is ended. The fact
is that any law that was needed to deny or abridge such rights (a
term generally avoided in the constitution) could easily be
provided by the legislature, of which a third of the members were
appointed by the president and which was otherwise the beneficiary
of election laws favorable to the ruling party. And if the
necessary law was not forthcoming or took too much time to be
passed, the president could suspend any rights guaranteed in the
constitution and rule with "emergency measures," which "shall not
be subject to judicial deliberations thereon" (Art. 53). In 1975
there was a referendum to determine whether the people wanted the
Yusin constitution revised. But it was against the law to argue
against the constitution even though it was the subject of the
referendum. Naturally it passed.
   The ancient and traditional Confucian concept of <yusin/weixin>
recognized the legitimacy of periodic needs to reform and revise
governmental institutions. But using this term to name the 1972
constitution, which was itself a travesty, was tantamount to
blasphemy against Confucian principle.

Gari Ledyard

Quoting Alon Levkowitz <levko at smile.net.il>:

> Dear group.
> I would like to consult the group about a word - Yushin (Yusin).
> Was the term Yushin for the yushin constitution under Park's
> regime was chosen for a specific goal. Does the word, without the
> problematic applications of the constitution by Park, means
> positive or negative?
> Thanks
> Alon
> Dr. Alon Levkowitz
> Email: levko at smile.net.il
> Tel/Fax: 972-3-6133045