By Bernard Rowan
These days, I see various forms in which the traditional arts of a culture find new practice and adaptation. In the United States and England, some successful businesspeople, fed up with corporate norms and contexts, go to the countryside. They want a simpler, more bucolic existence.
There are videos and TV series about their trials and travails learning to live on a farm or live in the way people did in 18th century England. Some do well and find in this adopted lifestyle greater peace, satisfaction, and happiness. The practice hasn't "caught on."
My wife and I enjoy watching the series of YouTube videos by a Chinese personality known as Liziqi. She practices "traditional arts and crafts," living on a farm in rural Pingwu County, Mianyang, north-central Sichuan Province, southwest China. She is a capable farmer, cook, clothes designer and tailor, and builder.
A beautiful, energetic, and talented person, Liziqi is now an international celebrity. I admire that she cares for her grandmother, who raised her, while toiling harder than a team of men. She has a production crew, and the videos take on various exaggerations. She also, as I understand it, and sadly as well as is typical of present-day China, has attracted the attention of Chinese communist inquisitors, determined to root out corruption. She's not Zsa Gabor on "Green Acres," and she's powerless to change China's backward approach to her rural poor.
Recently I read an article on Korean political culture and the way forward. Andrew Kim and Daniel Connolly wrote "Building the Nation: The Success and Crisis of Korean Civil Religion" (MDPI/Religions, Jan.20, 2021).
Kim and Connolly trace the practice of five fundamental doctrines for South Korean political identity or what in earlier philosophies was called the "civil religion." Among them are the values of Confucianism, democracy, and national development. The authors note South Korea's evolution in political culture has paralleled its national development.
They worry that Korean civil religion is now in crisis due to the impacts of events such as the IMF crisis and "Hell Joseon" or "Hell Korea." They also discuss associated demographic conflicts (elites, the elderly, youth), the status of Park Chung-hee, and South Korea's relationship with America versus North Korea.
I'd like to focus on the potential for South Korea this century to use Korean folk culture as a basis for broader and more inclusive regional development. It need not be a new" saemaul undong." It doesn't mean "going back to the past." However, Korean folkways and methods don't deserve just a national museum, as wonderful as the National Folk Museum in Gyeongbokgung Palace is.
South Korea has relegated the pursuit of her traditions to the margins in my view. They form the subjects or wrappings of high historical ritual at official events on holidays or in a commemorative sense. They extend tourism as an industry, localized and siloed in their living impacts for the economy. The Korean wave has more potential than K-pop and historical dramas.
Developing Korean regional and local cultures needs an impulse extending the practices and values of Korean political culture into the 21st century and beyond. It should catalyze support to mitigate the "crisis" identified by Kim and Connolly. Today and tomorrow's versions of Korean cultural arts and practices should form another part of the Korean wave, both for continuing national development and for the benefit of other advanced and developing nations' learning.
Just as with Liziqi, creating and developing Korean traditional arts in new forms continues the Confucian notion of passing along means of common self-development to the current and next generations. Korean products, music, artwork, and agricultural and local production aren't just matters for "country people." They shouldn't remain the province of cultural conservatives, or those catering to tourists.
I hope the next presidential contest will consider the further evolution of Korean political culture and technologies as a basis for their economic promises and plans. I also hope Korea's stock of universities and educators, among the finest in the world, will apply themselves to facing down the crisis of Korean political culture.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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There are videos and TV series about their trials and travails learning to live on a farm or live in the way people did in 18th century England. Some do well and find in this adopted lifestyle greater peace, satisfaction, and happiness. The practice hasn't "caught on."
My wife and I enjoy watching the series of YouTube videos by a Chinese personality known as Liziqi. She practices "traditional arts and crafts," living on a farm in rural Pingwu County, Mianyang, north-central Sichuan Province, southwest China. She is a capable farmer, cook, clothes designer and tailor, and builder.
A beautiful, energetic, and talented person, Liziqi is now an international celebrity. I admire that she cares for her grandmother, who raised her, while toiling harder than a team of men. She has a production crew, and the videos take on various exaggerations. She also, as I understand it, and sadly as well as is typical of present-day China, has attracted the attention of Chinese communist inquisitors, determined to root out corruption. She's not Zsa Gabor on "Green Acres," and she's powerless to change China's backward approach to her rural poor.
Recently I read an article on Korean political culture and the way forward. Andrew Kim and Daniel Connolly wrote "Building the Nation: The Success and Crisis of Korean Civil Religion" (MDPI/Religions, Jan.20, 2021).
Kim and Connolly trace the practice of five fundamental doctrines for South Korean political identity or what in earlier philosophies was called the "civil religion." Among them are the values of Confucianism, democracy, and national development. The authors note South Korea's evolution in political culture has paralleled its national development.
They worry that Korean civil religion is now in crisis due to the impacts of events such as the IMF crisis and "Hell Joseon" or "Hell Korea." They also discuss associated demographic conflicts (elites, the elderly, youth), the status of Park Chung-hee, and South Korea's relationship with America versus North Korea.
I'd like to focus on the potential for South Korea this century to use Korean folk culture as a basis for broader and more inclusive regional development. It need not be a new" saemaul undong." It doesn't mean "going back to the past." However, Korean folkways and methods don't deserve just a national museum, as wonderful as the National Folk Museum in Gyeongbokgung Palace is.
South Korea has relegated the pursuit of her traditions to the margins in my view. They form the subjects or wrappings of high historical ritual at official events on holidays or in a commemorative sense. They extend tourism as an industry, localized and siloed in their living impacts for the economy. The Korean wave has more potential than K-pop and historical dramas.
Developing Korean regional and local cultures needs an impulse extending the practices and values of Korean political culture into the 21st century and beyond. It should catalyze support to mitigate the "crisis" identified by Kim and Connolly. Today and tomorrow's versions of Korean cultural arts and practices should form another part of the Korean wave, both for continuing national development and for the benefit of other advanced and developing nations' learning.
Just as with Liziqi, creating and developing Korean traditional arts in new forms continues the Confucian notion of passing along means of common self-development to the current and next generations. Korean products, music, artwork, and agricultural and local production aren't just matters for "country people." They shouldn't remain the province of cultural conservatives, or those catering to tourists.
I hope the next presidential contest will consider the further evolution of Korean political culture and technologies as a basis for their economic promises and plans. I also hope Korea's stock of universities and educators, among the finest in the world, will apply themselves to facing down the crisis of Korean political culture.
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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