I keep obsessing over the concept of Juche: the North Korean political philosophy. It's not that I agree with it, or even understand it. And North Korea, as a political or even cultural entity, scares me much more than it interests me. But I keep coming back to Juche as being some kind of secret key to understanding Korean national character. Not that I really even believe such a thing.
I've been reading a book by Simon Winchester, Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles. It's very interesting. At the beginning of the first chapter, he quotes The Description of the Kingdom of Corea, the English translation of Hendrick Hamel's 1668 book written in Dutch, which was the very first account of Korea by a westerner. The words that struck me: "This kingdom is very dangerous, and difficult for Strangers."
Out of curiosity, I found the original Dutch, too (which I find fascinating just because it's weird language… archaic Dutch):
I like the way that the name of Korea is romanized… the way that it provides clues to both 17th c. Dutch phonology and 17th c. Korean phonology: "Tiocen Cock" represents what is now written in Korean 조선국 = joseonguk.
Anyway, the phrase " Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen, " definitely sums up Kim Jeong-il's Hermit kingdom even today. And the account of the foreign Dutchmen being captured and enslaved by the Koreans for 13 years, until they finally escaped, stole a boat, and went to the relatively more hospitable Japan. It's hard to imagine late-medieval Japan as being more hospitable to strangers than some other country, but Korea was definitely much more inwarding looking than even Japan, I think.
OK. I was thinking about Juche. Inward-lookingness made into an explicit national philosophy. Inward-lookingness but with external hostility. Hmm… that could be my boss. It's a bad idea to make generalizations about "national character," and to project those generalizations onto individuals is even worse. But… it's so tempting.
Notes for Korean
일반 = general or universal
액세스하려는 파일은 일시적으로 이용할 수 없습니다 "file access cannot be completed at the moment"
일시적으로 = at the moment, temporarily
방법=means, plan, method, way, recipe