WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2011
Confucianism and Korea - Part IV: Confucianism in Modern Korea


So after three preceding parts, here we are now -- the most fun part of the series where we will look at Confucianism in contemporary Korean society and compare/contrast with what we know already. In fact, the Korean could have jumped straight to this post, but he opted to take a slower, more prodding route for exactly one reason -- to give context. And the reason for giving more context is because people who are unfamiliar with Korea overuse Confucianism to explain everything about Korean culture. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is misleading, and sometimes it is laughably ignorant.

An excellent example of such ignorance comes from back in 2008, regarding the earthquake in China. (Hopefully people still remember this.) In a Q&A with a New York Times reporter stationed in China, one of the questions was this:
Have there been any mentions of the earthquake as an example of the Chinese leadership's `mandate of heaven' being withdrawn?





The rest of the article is here: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2011/04/confucianism-and-korea-part-iv.html