When foreign cultures come to Korea, they seem to change to suit the Korean sentiment and the new environment.

For example, TGI Fridays is just an ordinary family restaurant in the States. In Korea, however, it is a rather decent, expensive Western restaurant where you can bring valued guests without hesitation. Another example is hotels. Unlike in the States, Holiday Inn is a four-star hotel in Korea and the Marriot Hotel a five-star super luxury hotel. In the States, Chinese restaurants are known to be relatively inexpensive, featuring quick delivery dishes. In Korea, however, we have many exclusive, expensive Chinese restaurants. 

Experts say that when Christianity came to Korea, it, too, blended with Korea’s native religion, shamanism. Perhaps that is why many Christians in Korea tend to think of church primarily as a place where they pray for God’s blessings for themselves and their family, instead of a place where they show love for their neighbors and charity for needy people.

Likewise, Confucianism, which came from China during the Joseon Dynasty, blended with Korean formalism and has produced incredibly formalistic social norms and rituals that do not exist even in its country of origin.  

Sometimes, Koreans received Western literary or social movements in distorted ways, without fully understanding the complex meanings behind them. When modernism came to Korea in the early 20th century, many people took it simply as a decadent movement reflecting contemporary social phenomena such as free sex, dissipation and eccentricity. Likewise, when postmodernism was introduced to Korea in the mid-1980s, even scholars misunderstood it as an even more decadent movement than modernism, marked by sexual promiscuity, unbridled plagiarism and extreme oddity. Even realism was distorted in Korea, as Korean leftist literary critics used the term as a tool with which they criticized and fought the government during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

Koreans misunderstood capitalism, communism and socialism as well when they came in. Many Koreans wrongfully perceive capitalism as a synonym of greed, corruption and materialism. Although people are disappointed and aghast by some immoral Korean moguls or the impertinent Wall Street businessmen, true capitalism is actually far from those avaricious people’s ways of making and spending money.

Koreans also seem to misunderstand that communism means “take from the rich and give to the poor.” However, the true intention of communism when it was originally conceived by no means entailed the brutal extortion of the rich by the government or working class people. Socialism, too, is largely misunderstood in Korea. In the eyes of the Korean people, socialism brings unlimited benefits of social welfare. They do not seem to realize that they should pay heavy taxes for it. Besides, socialism does not simply mean free meals at school or a local government’s populist measures such as tossing money to unemployed young people.

We misunderstood democracy too when we imported it from the West. Many of us wrongfully assume that democratization means depriving high-ranking officials of their privileges which, in fact, they are entitled to as professional courtesy. In democratic societies in other advanced countries, class distinction clearly exists and you should respect your superiors’ privileges. We also frequently confuse “equality” with “no distinction between the rich and the poor” or “no class consciousness.” In other advanced countries, however, it means “equality in human integrity.”

We also tend to think that freedom allows us to do whatever we want to. However, freedom always entails responsibility and thus is not supposed to interfere with other people’s freedom, integrity or honor. In addition, we mistakenly believe that justice is served when everybody is equal in affluence and social status. That, however, is not justice. Michael Sanders argues that if the rich earned money in rightful ways, stealing or robbing money from them would be a crime and extortion. Indeed, we should honor private property, especially when the owner earned it properly. We have no right to take it away under the excuse of “maintaining economic equilibrium.”

“Grand cause vs. lesser good” is another foreign term that mutated on Korean soil. In the 1980s, when Korea was still ruled by military dictators, antigovernment political activists thought anything could be sacrificed for the grand cause. In their eyes, there was simply no room for individuality which they regarded as personal luxury. In “The Just Assassins,” however, Albert Camus sharply criticizes such dehumanizing ideology that justifies the shooting of an innocent child in a dictator’s arms in the name of the “grand cause” of killing the tyrant. Even if it is merely a child’s life, we should value it as much as we respect the freedom of many people. That is what we call “humanism.”

We should correctly understand the precise meanings of key words that have foreign origin. We should know the complex underlying contexts and connotations and rightly perceive the accurate concepts of the above-mentioned terms. Otherwise, we will be isolated and lost in the vortex of perilous international seas.      

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. -- Ed