Michael Breen is a journalist and a writer who has published, among other things, a book entitled The Koreans. I haven’t read it. Something about the presumptuous tone of its subtitle “Who they are, what they want, and where their future lies,” I think, prevented it from making it onto my Korea reading list. The phrase is filled with obnoxious assumptions.
Breen also publishes opinion pieces in the Korea Times. In an otherwise fairly unobjectionable article discussing problems with a new international school in Seoul, Breen drops this bombshell on his readers:
I hate to put this in writing but I can think of no example in Korea of a committee of multiple interests working together toward a common goal, unless a foreigner is in charge. My point here is not racist. It is cultural. Confucian thinking does not permit equality. Even friends, as one friend pointed out to me recently, call each other “hyung” (older brother). Thus, in Korea, a group endeavor involving different interests and viewpoints only works when one person is clearly in charge. In this case, the chairman is in charge and the other members, including MOCIE and Seoul City representatives, retreat into passivity.
This sort of comment is quite irresponsible. The Koreans, he is essentially claiming, are “culturally” incapable of politics. After all, what is politics, if not the coming together of a people with multiple, and usually conflicting interests, to work towards a common goal? While it is also remarkable that someone who has published a book on “The Koreans” has only recently learned that friends call each other “hyung” or “older brother” we can assume this was a rhetorical move. It is his portrayal of the static, if not feudal “Korean Confucian” that resembles so many like it in the past century of scholarship and writing about Asia. I have recently become fascinated by Western accounts of China, Japan, and Korea and it makes great easy summer reading. I find this paragraph by Breen just barely less insulting than many of the passages found in those books.
You can read more in this incomplete series of entries I posted over at Frog in a Well:
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part I
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part II
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part III
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part IV
Early Western Perceptions of Koreans: Part V
I obviously don’t share Mr. Breen’s long years of experience working in a Korean business environment but I find it ludicrous to suggest that Koreans are not, without the benevolent leadership of a foreigner, able to work towards a common goal in a committee of conflicting interests. We need look no further than the fact that, for all its problems, South Korea does have a highly developed civil society and extensive political and educational institutions. I strongly suspect that many of these institutions developed without the aid of bitter foreigners like Mr. Breen. That aspects of Confucian culture promote or preserve undesirably excessive hierarchical orders is not terribly controversial (though it has also a long and complex legacy of virtuous and stubborn protest which can and has been co-opted by many Korean protesters), nor is the idea that this has at least some kind of influence on development of democratic institutions, but you cannot simply throw about accusations like: Koreans=Confucians=Only Productive in stable Master/Slave relationship.
I have read Mr. Breen’s book and I thought it excellent. I always joke that before I read it I though I had a 25% understanding of Korean culture, but halfway through the book, I realized I really was at only around 10%. But, by the time I finished it, I was back up to 25%. The book was recommended to me by an American I know who is married to a Korean, has been living in Korea for 20 years, and speaks absolutely fluent Korean. It was also endorsed by another friend, a Korean-American, who returned to Korea about 20 years ago. Not saying this makes it 100% accurate, but Breen is definitely not someone to push off lightly.
I read an article in a Korean newspaper (in English) a few months ago talking about an entirely Korean high tech company with about 30 employees that went to English only a few years ago. Their reason: they felt that the Korean language was so hierarchical that they could not have a consensus based company using Korean. Now this also goes to show that Koreans are capable of acting in committees, but it does highlight the problems.
Thanks for your comment. I’ll reserve comments on Breen’s book until I have read it, which I may do some day.
Like many foreigners studying Korean, I also find the hierarchical aspects of the language in terms of honorifics and terms of address to be very annoying. However, I have strong suspicions that the effects of this in social relationships and the supposed extent to which it preserves or enforces a power structure is hugely exaggerated by everyone. While I would be more happy if the language evetually dumped these aspects, I don’t see it as a significant obstacle.
I suspect (and I would welcome comments from Koreans here) that as in Japanese, those “lower” in the language hierarchy can wield their more obsequious language to great sarcastic effect and show great contempt for their “superiors” when they want to contest the opinions of others in an aggressive way.
My feeling (and it is only a feeling really) is that ‘outsiders’ or ‘westerners’ tend to have a rather mistaken idea of honorifics and hierachical language in Korean. It sort of gets conflated with all the Orientalist ideas that are floating around in our Euro-American consciousness about such nebulous concepts as Oriental discipline, work ethics, extended families, Asian values, ‘face’ etc etc.
I think Michael Breen’s mention of the term of address hyŏng is a case in point. My feeling about these family-based terms (others being 누나, 오빠 etc) is that while they may sometimes imply a master/slave relationship, more often than not they are about showing closeness, intimacy etc. The line between relationships of intimacy and domination is obviously fine but I think the tendency in the mind of ‘westerners’ is to always imagine that this sort of language is about domination.
However, I have strong suspicions that the effects of this in social relationships and the supposed extent to which it preserves or enforces a power structure is hugely exaggerated by everyone.
A quick comment: many Westerners who have experience of Koreans interacting among themselves and have managed to get some clue have been involved in bureucratic organizations, where the language levels and terms of address and reference often reflect relations of power and domination.
But outside of such organizations, in more voluntary organizations, in friendship, among neighborhood acquaintances (a gallery of pics from WC 2002 as an example of such setting) and such, the language use (now that we’re talking about it), while still staying within the bounds of the Korean “propriety,” is no more about dominance and much less about power.
And Michael Breen, who needs a friend to point out such thing after living decades in Korea, fails to learn what Owen mentions about the aspects of intimacy and friendship that these terms of address also contain.
And yes, the honorifics can be used in a sarcastic and derisive way in Korean.
Funny that you mentioned Breen’s book–I read it just a month ago. If you can forgive the condescending tone, grammatical errors, typos, and inconsistent romanization it might be worth reading, for the sake of a couple of interesting anecdotes. Maybe.
Speaking of romanization, I thought it was “Samseong Station”! Don’t tell me you’re stuck on old M-R too! But I digress…
I do use the M-R system, it is what I see most in academic stuff (though I used his “hyung” in the body of the text, which I shouldn’t have since I think we should be consistent)
[...] I am beginning to see a pattern in the opinion column’s of Michael Breen. I talked a little bit about his problematic portrayal of Koreans in a previous posting. In today’s Friday issue of the Korea Times, in a warm and fuzzy column entitled, “Why Streets of Seoul Are Safe” he tells us why didn’t feel it ungentlemanly to leave his wife alone on the streets of Seoul in the middle of the previous night. [...]
Hello. I’m a Korean-American, born and raised in the US. I learned about this Michael Breen for the first time reading an article he wrote for the Korea Times.
I consider myself well-educated, with a degree in American history. I have visited Korea several times to visit relatives in my life, and I can tell you this.
Even though Breen can claim he has lived in Korea longer than I have, and could probably tell me many facts and figures about Korea than I could ever know, he is not Korean, has not been raised in a Korean family, and therefore could never understand Korea as the Koreans do. Breen projects his Western frame of mind onto interpretations of culture. Just because he is disgusted and uncomfortable about society in Korea doesn’t mean they are faulty and problematic. They are just faulty and problematic for the Westerner trying to understand and live in Korea.
People who are a priori skeptical about something, will always find harsh criticisms and complaints to point out, because inherent in an a priori skepticism about something, is the refusal to be refuted or disgust to find out what is good or right.
The problem with people like Breen is that they go in with an assumption of finding fault or wrongness, they do not go in with a belief in the goodness of the nature of a foreign society they do not understand.
This is the fundamental problem that Breen is not aware of, nor does he probably want to be aware of, that he first assumes that the Western scale is the absolute scale by which all other societies should be measured. It is only natural. But what is natural is many times not morally right nor revealing of truth. The Westerner would definitely not think it proper or right to have to live life in his own land to be met by the approval of an Asian judge. Nor is it the case that Asians should necessary live life to satisfy or seek the approval of their Western counterparts.
The amount of chauvinistic crap and ethnic bias that goes on is amazing and disconcerting. Arrogance and ignorance unfortunately have the bigger and poisonous voices than humility and knowledge.
It is a shame that it is often the people who are the more dimwitted, biased, and chauvinistic (i.e. Mr. Breen himself) who wield the bigger, louder, and bigoted mouths.
I pity Michael Breen for whatever grudge or distaste he holds against Asian societies.
Perhaps he should read material by his Asian equivalent (if there exists one) who lives in Ireland or Scotland, wherever he is from, and see if he approves. He probably will begin with the assumption that that person has a faulty understanding.
I am critical of Breen and I agree with much of your comment, but I am equally critical of nativist reactions of the nature of “he is not Korean, has not been raised in a Korean family, and therefore could never understand Korea as the Koreans do.” Of course he can’t. But this kind of statement is deeply problematic. It has several false assumptions: that “Korea” is some uniform thing floating out there waiting to be “understood”, it is not, it is a geopolitical entity but only an imagined and flexible national construction which has no fixed reality. The statement also has a highly problematic identification of “Koreans” and we could begin by suggesting that you certainly are not one of them. You are a Korean-American, born and raised in the US. While you probably share many aspects of the culture of that imagined community of Koreans, and have perhaps been taught many things during your life about what it means to be a “Korean” one could easily say that “you will never understand Korea like the Koreans do” Even without these problems there is the uncomfortable fact that not “understanding Korea like the Koreans” could in fact be a good thing – since many “Koreans” understand “Korea” from just as, if not more, essentialized, stereotyped and nationalistic ways than observers who have spent less than their full life in the place.
I have actually read Breen’s book, and while I agree that it is extremely biased, it does not necessarily follow that it should not be read. There are only a few widely available books about Korea and Breen’s gives a necessary perspective on culture and society in Korea. I don’t take any author’s views as gospel, but knowing how one westerner who has lived in Korea for a very long time understands it is very helpful.
It is important to remember anytime you read a book about culture, whether it is Breen’s type of cultural analysis or simply a documentation of customs such as the Culture Shock! books, that these books are one person’s perspectives. While these books do not contain universally true observations of the cultures, they show different ways to view the cultures they discuss.
Although I doubt that Breen’s comments about the detriments of Korean Confucian culture are true of all Koreans or all aspects of the culture, I find it difficult to believe that his criticisms are totally off the mark, or that all of the aspects of Korean culture he discusses are NOT affected by them.
As for the language issue, it is true that the language does not necessarily reflect the mindset of the speakers, but it is true that it contains grammar that constantly reminds speaker of his or her position relative to their interlocutor. That has to effect Korean perspectives on interpersonal relationships in some way. You can’t possibly tell me that relationships in Korea are the same as relationships in English-language cultures.
Muninn, you are completly off (in your thinking, basic grammar and spelling) when you write “While I would be more happy (sic) if the language evetually (sic) dumped these aspects.
This is not about language, it is about culture. Calling someone Hyung (big brother) is not just a word. It has to do with the confucian respect to the elders.