{"id":4598,"date":"2019-01-27T20:39:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T04:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4598"},"modified":"2019-01-27T20:39:09","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T04:39:09","slug":"korea-blog-reading-tocqueville-in-korea-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4598","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: Reading Tocqueville in Korea (Part One)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"644\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/KB-Reading-Tocqueville-in-Korea-e1548605407629.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4599\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><\/p><p>\u201cCulture is not necessarily our destiny,\u201d wrote the high-profile Korean activist and later president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/southeast-asia\/1994-11-01\/culture-destiny-myth-asias-anti-democratic-values\">a 1994&nbsp;<em>Foreign Affairs<\/em>&nbsp;piece<\/a>. \u201cDemocracy is.\u201d Kim made that claim as part of an argument against Lee Kuan Yew, three-decade prime minister of Singapore, who took a dim view of transplanting Western political institutions into Asian soil. Like many pronouncements heard in Korean public life, Kim\u2019s framing of democracy as destiny possesses in forcefulness what it lacks in understandability: not that I\u2019ve read all or even most of Kim\u2019s voluminous writings, but try as I&nbsp; might I\u2019ve never been able to understand quite how he arrived at so unambiguous a conclusion. I keep thinking of the&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.lareviewofbooks.org\/the-korea-blog\/protest-korean-style\/\">student protesters<\/a>&nbsp;P.J. O\u2019Rourke interviewed in the 1980s: \u201cWhat\u2019s this election all about?\u201d \u201cDemocracy.\u201d \u201cBut what is democracy?\u201d \u201cGood.\u201d \u201cYes, of course, but why exactly?\u201d \u201cIs more democratic that way!\u201d<\/p><p>But democracy has been compelling as a subject of discussion since the invention of the thing itself, and before the world began to watch in fascination as democratic (or at least quasi-democratic) institutions spread across Asia, it watched in fascination as they took shape in that grand experiment known as the United States of America. Of all the copious observations made on democracy in America, none have proven more enduring than&nbsp;<em>Democracy in America<\/em>, the French diplomat, political scientist, and historian Alexis de Tocqueville\u2019s first-person study of that new country, its laws, and its customs first published in two parts in 1835 and 1840. \u201cEveryone can see that a widespread revolution toward democracy is in full swing amongst us,\u201d Tocqueville writes early in the first volume. \u201cSome look upon it as something new and, taking it as an accident, are still hoping to be able to check its progress, whereas others\u201d \u2014 the Kim Dae-jungs of the world \u2014 \u201cconsider it irresistible because they see it as the most sustained, longstanding, and permanent development ever found in history.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.lareviewofbooks.org\/the-korea-blog\/reading-tocqueville-korea-part-one\/\">at the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cCulture is not necessarily our destiny,\u201d wrote the high-profile Korean activist and later president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung in&nbsp;a 1994&nbsp;Foreign Affairs&nbsp;piece. \u201cDemocracy is.\u201d Kim made that claim as part of an argument against Lee Kuan Yew, three-decade prime minister of Singapore, who took a dim view of transplanting Western political institutions into Asian soil. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-4598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-korea-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4598"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4605,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598\/revisions\/4605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}