I am beginning to see a pattern in the opinion columns 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 he felt comfortable leaving his wife alone on the streets of Seoul in the middle of the previous night.
There are several reasons, he says. One seems to me a quite plausible factor: the dense population of a place like Seoul means that there are “always witnesses,” making it more difficult to conceal crime completely, thus acting as a kind of constant deterrent against crime. He also claims that the Korean press does not play up stories of crime as much as our own media, which if true might also help explain why the public feels more safe. However, one of his “overriding” factors is:
“…that Koreans are raised to think hierarchically and, contrary to the popular expatriate theory that people bump into you in the street because they see you as a non-person, Koreans instinctively consider people to be either above, below or equal to them. If you think like that, it is much more difficult to get aggressive with someone you consider a superior. Put the other way, if you see all people as equal to you, you’d have less compunction about mugging or assaulting them.”
Is it just me, or this just a completely bizarre claim? Well let us put aside the discussion of whether or not the “hierarchical” thinking of Koreans really could create this sort of effect against crime. Since he identifies this with Confucian ethics, wouldn’t it be simpler to claim that the Koreans, if they are still just brain washed Confucians as he seems to think they are, have been raised to follow moral principles that dissuade them from committing acts of crime? Apparently, it isn’t the passages of the Analects, Mencius or in the commentaries of Zhu Xi exhorting them to act in a morally responsible manner but those which emphasize their hierarchical relationships with each other that count more for Breen.
The pattern I see emerging in his writing is the habit of portraying Koreans as being stuck in some feudal Confucian mindset. All of the ills of Korean society can be blamed on its Oriental despotism and Confucian hierarchy. All the virtues of Korean society can be attributed to those same Confucian values and hierarchical thinking. Oh quaint land of the morning calm Korea, how we love it and how we hate it for its mysterious oriental ways. Breen’s fans, both Koreans and non-Koreans alike can say, “Wow, he doesn’t always criticize Korea, but he really comes through with his love for Korea by showing us how its feudal mindset actually helps produce an ordered and productive society.” I believe, however, that anyone who thinks a little bit more about it will see how condescending this whole approach is.
Culture matters, to be sure, and the values and education of this society have an important impact. Breen might even be able to make a reasonable claim about the relevance of culture on the level of street crime, when carefully combined with other factors. However, his particular brand of pop-psychology is demeaning to Koreans and unhelpful for foreigners who want to better understand the environment they are in. It is truly sad that Andrei Lankov’s historical articles in his series “The Dawn of Modern Korea” should share the same page with Breen.
I realize that Breen, not crime is your point here, but what is street crime like in Korea? I ask because when I lived in Taiwan crime patterns were quite different than in the U.S. and I was told that this was in part due to a very different attitude about the role of the state. Almost no gun crime, but lots of cat burglary. My landlord had big metal bars on all the windows even though we were 7 stories up, and supposedly the reason was that the police were indifferent to property crimes against ordinary citizens, and so protecting your own was your job. The police also supposedly had pretty good relations with local criminal gangs, and so if you did something that really annoyed the police you could count on having them hunt you down with the help of the 四海幫. A very different local crime situation but for historical rather than racial reasons.
That is interesting stuff. Actually, to his credit, Breen says that there is a difference between perception and reality of crime – at least if you include burglaries which are apparently very common for houses as opposed to apartments. He claims though, and I don’t know anything about this myself, that the streets are safe and street crime is low. I must agree that I certainly feel quite safe on the streets from what little wandering I have done in the seedier areas of Seoul at night but that is hardly scientific.