Return to Korean-style Confucianism

By Mark Peterson

This week, through the upside of all this downside known as the COVID-19 pandemic, I will be giving a lecture to an audience based in Brisbane, Australia, at the University of Queensland. The topic: "Two Types of Korean Confucian Cultural Legacy and Its Implication to Contemporary Korean Culture and Society."

I'm looking forward to my Tuesday evening, Australia's Wednesday noontime lecture, because there will be discussants who will respond to my presentation. I hope they like it, but I fear they may not for one of them is the president of the World Foundation for Confucian Culture, based in Andong, Korea, Kwon Du-hyun. It looks for all intents and purposes like he is going to be a pretty conservative critic of what I may say. Maybe not.

But if you've read my work on "Two Confucianisms" or seen my YouTube video on the subject, you know I am advocating that Korea discard its "recent" Confucianism ― meaning that of the last three centuries, and return to an original, I argue, "Korean-style" Confucianism.

My research has shown me, and whoever chooses to accept why I have concluded, that Confucianism came into Korea about 1,500 years ago, but came in making accommodations to Korean culture. It was after the changes that took place in the late 17th century, that Korea transformed and began practicing "Chinese-style" Confucianism. The new interpretation of Confucianism carried with it all the things that people dislike about Confucianism.

Yes, I've been surprised to see in the response to my YouTube channel (a great barometer of the range of attitudes in contemporary Korea) that there are a whole bunch of people that hate Confucianism and everything about it. Many Koreans rightly associate an oppressive hierarchical social structure and with it heavy gender discrimination with Confucianism. But it doesn't have to be so.

These days, the culture wars between Korea and China are heating up, and Koreans are looking at the downside of the Chinese cultural legacy more than the upside, and the Chinese aren't helping matters by trying to claim all things of worth in Korean culture originated in China, ridiculously, like kimchi and the hanbok. Well, here is my fuel for the fire: that the orthodoxy movement that changed Confucianism and change Korean society in the late Joseon period was due to Korea adopting Chinese-style Confucianism.

What was the difference between Korean-style Confucianism and Chinese-style Confucianism? It was mainly a social system based on "patrilineality" ― an odd term in English, perhaps, but a very well-known term in Korean ― "bugye" society. The term patriarchy is sometimes used, but patrilineality is a more accurate term to describe what was going on ― you can have patriarchy, or power in the hands of men, even in a matrilineal society.

The essence of a patrilineal system is that of inheritance, meaning the eldest son received the inheritance from the parents' generation. It led to the formation of lineage groups of agnates ― a fifty-cent word meaning male relatives, or members of an extended family group of people all with the same surname who are related to each other by male connections. Fairly often I hear the erroneous assumption that prior to the patrilineal system in Korea, there was a matrilineal system. This is a simple-Simon deduction that is completely false.

The fact of the matter is that prior to the adoption of the patrilineal system in Korea, there was a "bilateral system" of kinship and social organization, meaning that men and women were on equal footing in family matters. Daughters had full and equal inheritance rights with sons. There were difference in gender roles, yes, for example, only men served in government. But in matters of the family, daughters stood equally with sons.

And we see it was true in matters of marriage. In post-18th-century Korea, marriages were always "sijip ganda" (the wife goes to the husband's house). But prior to the changes of the late 17th century, it was just as common for the husband to marry and move into the wife's house ― "jangga ganda." This fact alone accounts for the fact that most Koreans do not live at their "bon'gwan" ― ancestral home. A remote ancestor moved away to marry into the wife's home, and village, away from his own.

Accommodating differences in Korean culture meant that Confucianism, though based in ancient Chinese patrilineal society, became Koreanized when it came to Korea. For example, another example, the ancestor ceremonies. The texts say the eldest son should perform them. But in Korea, the ceremonies were shared on a rotational basis, with sons and daughters each taking an equal turn.

Until the 18th century when Korea decided to become orthodox ― to do what the texts said ― for more than 1,000 years of Korean-style Confucianism, Korea decided, "sadae-juui" ― do it the Chinese way.

My presentation on Wednesday online via Brisbane is going to argue that Korea would be happier with Confucianism, and there would be fewer objections to Confucian practice, if Korea discarded the Chinese-style and returned to Korean-style Confucianism. I wonder how my traditionally-minded critics will respond.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.