The way forward

When I visited Seoul in October, I went to meet a friend for dinner in Gangnam. While waiting, I took the opportunity to visit shops in the area and chanced upon the grounds of Dosan Park. I visited the museum and walked around the park, both of which were wonderful. The museum staff flabbergasted me by offering copies of books about Ahn Chang-ho, also known as Dosan. I lingered there and watched a video about Dosan’s life. One of Korea’s independence activists and a founder of the Korean Provisional Government during Japanese occupation, Dosan is a well-studied — if perhaps less trendy — national hero these days.

I’d urge Koreans and friends of Korea to reinvestigate the thought and work of Dosan as a way to consider the effects of political polarization. There seems to be a great deal of it in the democratic world today. The clash of rival views is an important aspect of freedom, but excessive polarization can also become a threat to progress. In America and Korea today, there are signs that we have both the clash and the partisan stasis.

One of the resources given to me at the museum was a cloth print with writing in Chinese characters. It is an epigram of Dosan’s personal vision and his ideas for us all. My wife, who is Chinese, told me it’s a common saying. It still bears repeating: “Love others to love yourself.” It’s essentially a version of the Golden Rule, but it represents what scholars refer to as his concept of mutual love (chong-ui).

Certainly, Dosan’s life was dedicated to the Korean people and their right to self-determination. He sought unity among the factions of Korean freedom patriots so that Koreans could chart their own destiny as a nation. The political philosopher and professor Kwak Jun-hyeok presents Dosan’s doctrine of mutual love as continually living for mutual self-development through the building of a good society.

Dosan was a syncretic leader and unifier who combined the elements of idealism and pragmatism. He founded schools, encouraged Koreans in the diaspora to acquire skills in trades and occupations and to create Korean-owned businesses, and spoke of the need to stand as one people against the tendency to splinter. He was also a proponent of coeducation, founding Chomjin School.

Dosan believed in tending to the needs of people, whether rich or poor. He was an advocate for equality, not at all costs, but as an enduring aspect of a good society and good government. He was critical of those who blamed others for Korea's plight. Do today’s polarized parties blame themselves more than each other for the persisting issues of the day?

I suggest we study how Ahn Chang-ho worked to transcend Korean factionalism. His social, economic and political ideas, as described in the work “Strengthened Abilities” by Tschung-Sun Kim and Michael Reinschmidt, make for excellent reading today, addressing excessive partisanship and its impacts, as well as the way forward. The enemies of Korea take heart when successive administrations invest in and double down on prosecuting present or former leaders. This is going on in America as well.

Of course, Dosan had clashes and conflicts with other Korean independence activists. The sources I’ve read note that Syngman Rhee, for example, had big differences with him. The ethnic studies professor Edward Chang indicates that people arguably loyal to Rhee worked in 1926 to see Dosan deported from America, where he had relocated with his family. But not letting disagreements harm the country is key. Certainly, Dosan faced conflict. How did he approach those situations? He considered them an opportunity for loyal citizens to arrive at greater unity through action, for both the good of others and greater self-understanding.

Former U.S. president James Madison advocated for the steady and active involvement of people in public matters through interest groups, parties and voluntary associations as a basis for addressing factions. Dosan’s call to love others as a way of loving oneself is not dissimilar. For it is through creating businesses, meeting the needs of those who aren’t equal, providing universal education, believing in internationalism, promoting political participation, and upholding the value of national freedom that Korea has risen to an advanced status as a beacon of freedom in today’s world.

Democracies exist as contingent possibilities, as experiments that may or may not succeed. They also may or may not continue in time. It depends on what “We the People” do. Dosan was a lifelong proponent of the integrity and self-determination of the Korean people, despite internal and external threats to the nation. His declaration that he would keep striving for Korean independence until he died is the kind of spirit that is sorely needed today — one that strives to overcome partisanship for the national interest and the good of a shared humanity.

Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and academic services 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.