Its Time to Overcome Regional Antagonism

By Lee Keun-yeop

My dead wife used to advise me for 22 years to speak less, or, if possible, keep quiet in public ― obviously apprehending my outspokenness that caused minor side effects in my career.

But this personal pathology seems to be almost ``natural" to me. And there is no remedy. I begin with another one at the risk of being labeled as lacking in decency: regional hegemony in South Korea.

Last July, Barack Obama mania saw a gathering at Tiergarten in Berlin during his visit there. In July 2002 I dropped in at Humboldt University. On the wall of the lobby I saw a quotation: ``Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretet. Es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verandern." (Philosophers have so far only interpreted the world diversely. However, what matters is to change it.) Quite understandable.

Do we get allergic to it at the sight of a familiar name at the bottom … Karl Marx? The school kept the quotation as an academic asset even after the national reunification in 1991.

This is the site of the pre-WWII Friedrich Wilhelm Universitat Berlin (usually called Berlin University), founded in 1810 by Wilhelm Humboldt, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, among others.

Before the founding of the university there used to be the famous Berliner Akademie der Wissennschaften (Berlin Academy of Science). My memory roams back around this era.

This was the prime time of German arts and science. We see the following constellation. To name but a few ― Herder, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe in literature; Bach, Beethoven, Schumann in music; Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Herbart, Humboldt in philosophy. Simply, German romanticism flourished when Germany was divided into many autonomous states.

It was during the Napoleonic War that the German people awoke one morning to find themselves reduced to servitude. The whole land was overridden by Napoleon's invading army.

Amid the French cannon roars, Franz Joseph Haydn composed the German national anthem, ``Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles, uber alles in the Welt ..." for German people's national integrity.

At the Berlin Academy of Science, philosopher Fichte made his famous speech: ``Reden an die Deutsche Nation (Speeches to the German People)" before scholars, educators, and civilians who gathered from all over the land, while the French mounted men patrolled the streets. He made the speech 14 times between 1807 and 1808.

Fichte maintained that individual and state egoism, moral corruption, and apathy to truth accounted for the German loss. For the regeneration of the German people he advocated the need for state-sponsored, universal education instead of private tutoring. Above all he advocated the unity of the German nation.

Later, we saw German integration. I do not mean the negative side of it. I want to focus on the national strength of the unified Germany, as Korea is a nation once reduced to a colony due to a lack of national strength. Can we overlook the reunified Germany's topos in the world arena today?

Korea was divided into two after World War II. Koreans don't seem to feel the pain from ― or ashamed of ― 60 years of national division, conditioned by the tranquilizers called ``liberal democracy" and ``socialist idealism" that was indoctrinated by external powers.

Are both ideologies a good pretext for our indulgence in living in a separate state? Aren't we Koreans shameless people before our ancestors and national history? Isn't current the ideological standoff of both Koreas a luxury?

The hard won rapprochement of the two Koreas initiated by the regimes of former Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun seems to be almost discarded now by the Lee Myung-bak administration, backed by rightist groups.

We Koreans share a bitter memory of the 35 years of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). With the election of Kim Dae-jung as President in 1997, we put an end to 36 years of ``rogue" regional hegemony rules (1961-1997), which inflicted sorrow, frustration, wrath, and humiliation on the nation.

These regimes were headed by presidents Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Rho Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam, all from the southeastern Gyeongsang provinces.

During that time, most of the key government posts were filled with men from the provinces. Major industrial complexes were built there. The 1980 Gwangju popular uprising could be defined as the last-ditch resistance of residents of the southwestern Jeolla provinces against the Gyeongsang provinces' dominance.

According to a media report, 47 percent of key government posts under the Lee Myung-bak administration were ``quickly" filled with men from his home province of North Gyeongsang. As for the alleged four major rivers cleanup plan, 50 percent of the budget goes to a river in the province.

Are South Koreans autonomous people? In the last presidential campaign, approval rates showed 90 percent for Lee Myung-bak and 7 percent for his rival Chung Dong-young in the Gyeongsang provinces. And vice versa in the Jeolla provinces.

Is this a valid assessment for selecting a national leader? It is nothing but a measurement based on provincial greed. Aren't we a nation of the same skin color? Our expectations for candidate Lee was high.

Dear President, please stop heading for the disintegration of the nation. I advise you to learn the art of compromise for the creation of a ``South Korea with a human face."

Dr. Lee Keun-yeop taught education philosophy at Yonsei University in Seoul. He is a Vietnamologist and founding member of the Korean Association for East Europe and Balkan Studies. He is a regular contributor to The Korea Times. He can be reached at kylee300110@hanmail.net