Authority v Liberty. The curious case of South Korea
What kind of cosset do you want?
In my last post, I mentioned the censorship I have experienced in relation to the Chinese translation of my book, Seven Keys to Modern Art. Last week, in my class here in Korea with mainland Chinese students I brought it up with as much subtlety as possible. In the class, I discussed sociological approaches to modern art. As I am using Seven Keys as a textbook, and between them the ten Chinese and one Korean students have the Korean, English, and Chinese versions, they could compare editions. I pointed out the gap in the Chinese version between Barbara Kruger and Bill Viola, which is where Xu Bing should be. He’s gone because in my discussion in the book I refer to his shocked response to the repression in Tiananmen Square, which is still very much taboo in mainland China.
The students seemed very surprised. But also understandably rather tight-lipped about the omission.
I taught them the word ‘censorship’.
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In the same class I showed the diagram above. It’s a rather good way of tracking the difference between China and the West, but also the unique position of the Republic of Korea. The West lies at the bottom right: ‘Individual Liberty’. China is up at the top right: ‘Collective Authority’. Hence the censorship. South Korea is somewhere in between. It’s an experiment in ‘Collective Authority plus Individual Liberty’.
The way in which these societies dealt with Covid helps to illustrate the differences. With its ‘zero tolerance’ attitude, China applied from the start its ‘Collective Authority’ model to the crisis. The West, by contrast, adopted an ‘Individual Liberty’ approach. South Korea dealt with Covid by mixing the two.
At first, ‘Collective Authority’ seemed the best option for everyone. The East Asian countries, being more attuned to this model, were quick to respond by introducing the necessary measures. China went to lockdown. The Western nations panicked, because ‘Individual Liberty’ is so obviously inappropriate in such a crisis, and they too went for lockdowns as an extreme recourse. South Korea managed to avoid lockdown, by contrast, but also any extreme spread of the virus. This is because with its unusual blend of ‘Collective Authority’ and ‘Individual Liberty’ it was able to steer a middle course, epitomised by the skilful tracking of cases and the strict implementation of individual quarantines.
But with the evolution of the virus into the Omicron variant, ‘Individual Liberty’ has proven, rather surprisingly, in the long run a more robust social structure for dealing with the pandemic. China is now castrating itself by still pursuing the impossible goal of zero covid, even imposing lockdown once again in Wuhan, where the whole thing started. Only a society founded on ‘Collective Authority’ could work this way, that is, could be so rigid and maladaptive. Meanwhile, South Korea has segued to a situation in which the pandemic is confidently under control but in which people are still wearing facemask, because of the ‘Collective Authority’ component of this society. But it seems to me that the West has careened too fast away from the disagreeable experience of imposed ‘Collective Authority’ back towards a dangerous level of maskless ‘Individual Liberty’.
In this context, the tragic events in Itaewon, Seoul, over this Halloween weekend can be interpreted as an unfortunate unintended consequence of South Korea unique social blend, or social experiment. Inevitably, ‘Collective Authority’ and ‘Individual Liberty’ exist in uneasy tension. South Koreans tolerate a – to Westerners - very high level of group control, but they are also primed by Western ideals of ‘Individual Liberty’. The result in this particular case was a massive feeling of release amongst the young after the restrictions imposed during the pandemic. But, ironically, their desire for individual liberty expressed itself in a very collective fashion!
Image source: http://factmyth.com/understanding-collectivism-and-individualism/
What’s going on in China?
My experience of being censored by the Chinese!
China’s been in the news because of the 20th Party Conference in Beijing at which Premier Xi Jinping guaranteed himself a third term in office. Like me, you must have been confused by the footage of the previous Premier, Hu Jintao being escorted rather forcibly away:
What’s going on? It reminded me of a similar moment in North Korea in 2013 when Jang Song-thaek was similarly very publicly removed from a meeting of the WPK Political Bureau:
Later it was announced that Jang had been executed. Will the same thing happen to Hu? Probably not. The Chinese Communist Party is more subtle. He’ll simply disappear from public view.
This is the way they do it in dictatorships, apparently! It’s important to show who’s boss.
As I noted in a previous post, the philosopher Karl Popper wisely observed that the benefit of democracy is not so much that people get to vote but that leaders get to be removed from power without risk of violence. The contrast to the UK at the moment is striking. We are certainly way more genuinely democratic in this sense than China and North Korea, and our leaders very evidently get removed from power. But our democracy is still obviously very flawed as we are obliged to watch charlatans taking it in turns to become Prime Minister in a risible game of musical chairs.
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China is especially on my mind because a couple of my books are now in Chinese translations. Seven Keys to Modern Art, and The Simple Truth. The Monochrome in Modern Art. Here they are:
The mainland Chinese version.
The Taiwan Chinese version.
The Taiwan Chinese version of The Simple Truth.
Seven Keys was published by Sichuan Fine Arts Publishing House in Beijing, while Seven Keys and The Simple Truth was published by Diancan Art and Collection Ltd. in Taipei, Taiwan. But I have only received copies (and recently) of the mainland Chinese version of Seven Keys, and can find almost nothing about the Taipei edition on English language Google. The Taipei publisher did a couple of weeks ago send me three copies of the recently published Chinese translation of The Simple Truth. But still no sign of their Seven Keys.
The fact that Seven Keys has been published in Chinese in both Taiwan and mainland China may seem a bit odd, and also surprising, because the English edition, published by Thames & Hudson, couldn’t be printed in China because one of the artists I discuss is Xu Bing, whose work is related to the Tienanmen Square protests in 1989. This is a taboo subject in the People’s Republic! So, I assumed at first that Party censorship has become relaxed enough to allow the unexpurgated publication of my book. But of course not! When I looked at the mainland Chinese version more closely I realize that there is now no chapter on Xu Bing!
This is ironic for me, because I am currently teaching (in English) a PHD class here in Korea made up of almost entirely of mainland Chinese students - about ten of them - plus one solitary Korean. I am using Seven Keys as a text book, so the students can choose between using English, two Chinese, or Korean translations. But I hadn't realized until very recently that the mainland Chinese version, which is the one for sale on Amazon (no sign there of the Taiwan version…) and the one several of the Chinese students have opted to purchase, that Xu Bing has been excised.
Image Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/23/xi-jinping-chooses-yes-men-over-economic-growth-politburo-purge-china
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/23/xi-follows-maos-footsteps-puts-himself-at-core-of-chinas-government
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/614727.html