A month ago I began to research a diary about Korea. I wanted to learn why our American Empire finds Korea such a valuable enemy.
Quicker, better focused and more knowledgeable diarists got there first, with excellent recent contributions here, here, here, and here (all recommended).
But I found something I've never heard about before, the religion of the Korean people. It's a beautiful way to live and, for a former Catholic altar boy who's spent 40 years exploring religious beliefs and is well read on the subject, it comes closest to my own "collected" sense of how we are, how we should live, and what is important.
I think it embraces, accommodates, and expresses the central ideals of most of the dKos community, from the pastordans and DemfromCTs to the most ardently cynical, among whom I include myself.
Today about 75 million people speak Korean, which stems from the Ural-Altaic language group that includes, surprisingly,
Finnish and Hungarian as well as Mongolian.
About 70 million Koreans -- one of the world's most homogeneous ethnic groups -- live on a peninsula roughly the size and shape of Florida's, whose infamous "I-4 Corridor" almost perfectly replicates the 150-mile long "Berlin Wall" that separates 23 million "North" Koreans from twice that many in the south.
People-wise, North Korea is Iraq plus change. Wealth-wise, they are dirt-poor, averaging $1,300 in annual "GDP purchasing power parity" against $1,700 for Iraqis, $17,800 in South Korea, and $37,800 in the USA (CIA World Factbook).
Name-wise the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" (DPRK)" sounds like "Antichrist" if you play it backward. But DPRK isn't all that backward: 99 percent of North Koreans 15 or older can read and write, which is better than South Korea and even America (CIA World Factbook).
North Korea is where the Cold War started. Officially, North Korea is still at war with South Korea, although Kim Jong Il reassured the world today he has no intention of attacking.
America is South Korea's best ally and biggest sugar daddy, with 35,000 troops stationed along the DMZ. Most of the world's attention is focused on our Islamic Crusade, but Korea, particularly North Korea, is awaiting in the wings.
And the weapons we will use to destroy them, if it gets to that, will likely be nuclear.
Sichenjou: I serve God within me
Russia and the U.S. created "North" and "South" Korea in 1945, at the end of World War II. Koreans on both sides have fought and died ever since for what we westerners call "Korean Nationalism" and most Koreans call "Unification."
Liberty and independence are root words in the meta language Koreans -- north and south -- use to define themselves. Liberty, independence and, since 1945, unification are defining political precepts of Chondogyo (Chohn-do-kyo), the native religion of Korea.
Officially, North Korea doesn't recognize religions. From the CIA World Factbook on DPRK:
Religions:
traditionally Buddhist and Confucianist, some Christian and syncretic Chondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way)
note: autonomous religious activities now almost nonexistent; government-sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of religious freedom
But almost all North Koreans embrace Chondogyo or "Juche" (Jew-ché), a diluted version of Chondogyo officially promoted by the government even outside Korea.
In Juche: A Christian Study of North Korea's State Religion (Living Sacrifice Books Co., Bartlesville, Okla., 1999), Thomas J. Belke claims:
[DPRK father-and-son dictators] Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il's control of Chondokyo now seem so complete that [it] seems to be tolerated as an ancient form of the Juche religion...
Belke warns his fellow Christians of the political nature of Juche:
...many casual observers of North Korea draw improper conclusions by applying a Western cultural paradigm that separates the political from the religious. Such a concept is totally foreign to the Juche mindset shared by 23 million Koreans.
Chondogyo was "revealed" by God to Great Master Su-en in 1860. A decade after Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, as Americans were squaring off for a civil war over slavery, Chondogyo asserted -- and still asserts:
a fundamental egalitarianism by which all members of society, rather than members of one special class, serve God within themselves and are equal, infinite beings, free of such distinctions as "rich and poor" or "high and low."
Chondogyo holds that God, the universe, you, me and the lamppost all comprise the same "thing," and all deserve the same respect.
The most important precept, Sichenjou, is an avowal: I serve God within me. Chondogyo's next most important precept is an admonishment: Treat every human being as you would treat God. The third most important precept, Samgyeongsasang, is more of a commandment: Honor The Three (God, All Human Beings, All Things).
In those precepts, you can hear a little Buddhism, a little Confucianism, a little Bushido and an awful lot of the teachings of Jesus, of the sort very capably explored by this diary (and not to be confused with the more commercial, warlike "Christianity" that's fighting to "keep the Christ" in winter solstice.
You can also hear core expressions usually referred to as "New Age," and, according to Republican types, quite a lot of utopianism.
Chondogyo claims four religious objectives:
...to support the nation and comfort the people (boguganmin), spread truth throughout the world (podeokcheonha), deliver people everywhere from suffering (gwangjechangsaeng), and thereby construct a paradise on earth (jisangcheonguk).
For 150 years, Chondogyo has found expression in Korean political and military independence movements. Chondogyo's first three "popes" were successively beheaded by offended governments.
In 1894, Korea's "Donghak Rebellion" gave Japan and China pretense to intervene with the Sino-Japanese War. Japan, the winner, "owned" Korea until the end of World War II. [Thanks to rentogen for corrections, see comment below.]
"Donghak" (sometimes "Tonghak") is an important Korean idea. "Donghak" means "Eastern Learning," and it has a value that's roughly equivalent to "common sense." Liberty and independence are essential components. Chondogyo represents the more fully articulated "doctrine" of Donghak.
Chondogyo asserts that liberty and independence are characteristics innate in all human beings because God is expressed in each person. Donghak is as central to the Korean idea as "mom and apple pie" or "all men are created equal" are to Americans.
One might imagine that, as a religious principle, "liberty and independence" would inspire amber waves of affinity over here in the Home of the Brave.
Not exactly. To be sure, North Korea only tolerates it. As one of the world's last plenipotentates, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il promotes the more practical Juche as North Korea's official religion.
"Juche" translates roughly as "self-reliance," but that's way too superficial. "Suck it up" works sometimes, "get over it" will do. Nike's billion-dollar "Just Do It" probably captures the idea most efficiently, so does the U.S. Army's "Be all that you can be." Juche says we are all God, fully capable of determining our own destinies.
Juche is as much a political idea as a religious one, although religion and politics in North Korea are at least as symbiotic as they are here. DPRK exports Juche to South America -- as in Venezuela -- and to Europe. The Juche idea is universal, it doesn't require government to "grant" it, that's the same idea best expressed in Western terms in that phrase from the Declaration of Independence: "...they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...".
Juche is an admonishment to the whole (a nation, e.g.) and to every part (each person) to exercise our own human will and our own human sense to determine our own human destiny. Within the ancient culture of the East, Juche is Descartes in motion: I think, therefore I do.
Liberty and independence are obvious necessities. The opposite of Juche, sadaejuui, translates as "flunkeyism --- excessive dependence on foreign countries, particularly cultural and political dependence on China."
That's enough about Chondogyo. Sunday night, I'll put up a diary with what I learned about South Korea, Sun Myung Moon, the Washington Post and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It gets pretty interesting.