By Michael Breen
According to a survey released this month, more than one in three Koreans believes that physical violence is an acceptable way of getting some things done and more effective than other strategies and means of persuasion, such as the law and negotiations.
Of 1,500 asked in the study, which was conducted by the Korean Institute of Criminology, 37 percent said it was OK to use violence to solve some problems. One in five believes in an ``eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'' approach to justice.
These figures show the notion captured in the old Korean saying, ``The fist is closer than the law'' is not that old.
You would not expect this to be so in modern Korea. Despite the widespread use of physical force in society, you would assume it to be condemned, not justified. Korea, after all, is not only an advanced country in economic and political terms, but it is also ethically sophisticated. Most citizens claim to be Christian or Buddhist, and their faith is underscored by a Confucian tradition that places emphasis on harmony, dignity and proper relationships.
There is also in Korean society an acute awareness of the face and feelings, or ``kibun,'' of others and most are skilled in not offending them.
There are two areas where violence seems to be considered acceptable. One is in the assertion of authority, such as by parents over children, husbands over wives, teachers over pupils, officers over recruits and so on.
In recent years, teachers and military and police officers have had to start going easy on their charges, not because of any argument that striking the body of another person is a violation of their rights, but more because those who were once ``inferior'' can now use the power of the mobile phone camera and the Internet to expose the bastards. Technology, you could say, has allowed the meek to unionize.
The other area is in the achieving of political objectives. Take the occupation by squatters, which ended last month with a tragic fire in Yongsan, Seoul. Six people died in the police raid on the building, a disaster that the political opposition are using to attack the ``dictatorial'' Lee administration. But while they think they are being democratic by supporting ``the people,'' these government critics, by failing to condemn the violence of the squatters, have taken a position that undermines the rule of law, which is the basis for democracy.
Instead of arguing for new legal or institutional means to resolve disputes around urban development, an area which is fraught with conflict, they demand symbolic resignations and seek to galvanize anti-government forces while all the time romanticizing the ``struggle.'' The prevailing culture of blame has blinded them to the irony of supporting violence as a way of achieving allegedly democratic results.
All this amounts to a damning indictment of Korean society.
The justification for violence is an example of the type of issue that the country's leaders have great difficulty in addressing.
Of course, politicians may not even realize that it is an issue. These are the people, after all, who have regular punch-ups in parliament. I doubt many would get it. I was at a diplomatic dinner last year when one leading light of the former administration, making a point about carrots and sticks in dealing with North Korea, admitted in passing that he found that beating his second daughter was ineffective. She responded better to carrots, he found.
I know of another leading politician on the government side who slapped an aide in the face at an airport for having booked him a flight which required him to sit next to another passenger. The politician, you see, may like the people, but doesn't like people, at least not if he has to sit next to one of them on a plane and is wealthy enough to book the seat beside him to make sure that he has the space he deserves. This fellow once ran for the presidency but, thankfully, lost.
Perhaps the way to approach this is to expand that awareness of face to include the actual face. Just as it is wrong to cause another person to lose face, so it is wrong to slap them in it. Unless, you're serving the people by doing so, I guess?
Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants Exclusive Partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms