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All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan. The Japanese Empire was
by kyllo 11y ago
All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan. The Japanese Empire was the first polity in East Asia to adopt and apply Western political concepts to their government. Large numbers of Korean and Chinese scholars went to Japan to study and brought these concepts (as well as the vocabulary itself) from Japan back to their native countries with them. As a result, essentially all modern political thought in East Asia was tinted by Japanese imperialist ideology.
- russ0chen 11y agoI think you're forgetting about the British occupation of Hong Kong.
- kyllo 11y agoYes--relevant for China, but it had basically nothing to do with Korea.
- ekianjo 11y ago> All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan. Erm... Westerners were present in China way before they even came to Japan - you seem to forget Japan has an isolationism policy for several hundred years that explicitly restricted foreign influence until the late 1800s. If anything, China was way more exposed to any Western culture before the ships of Perry even sailed to Japan. British occupation of HK was from 1841. And let's not forget Singapore, with Raffles as early as the early 1800s. But yeah, "everything went through Japan" ?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- kyllo 11y agoNot "everything" went through Japan. Modern Western political philosophy went through Japan, because Japan was the first East Asian nation to adopt it in their government and teach it in their learning institutions.
- notahacker 11y agoI think the point being made was less that many North Korean intellectuals may have studied under the Japanese and more that ethnonationalist posturing and personality cults is pretty much the first resort for dictators in economically weak newly independent states. Obviously this also includes many ex-colonies whose intellectual class studied ideology under Western liberal capitalists and mainline Christian missionaries who were largely disdainful of personality cults and ethnonationalists...
- astine 11y ago"All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan." This is demonstrably false. Chinese communism especially, was not just influenced but guided Russia and the Comintern. Mao certainly didn't get his ideas from Japan, and the contrasting liberal and fascist influences largely came from the West by means of Shanghai rather than Japan. Similarly with Korea. Japan may have forced Korea to open up and dominated for nearly half a century, but Korean communism came from Russia.
- kyllo 11y agoThat was a bit later though. Leninism came to China and Korea in the late 1910s and 20s. I am talking about the ideologies and philosophies (Marxism among them) that came from the West by way of Japan several decades earlier than that. You could argue that Leninism and Stalinism are more directly responsible for North Korean Communism today than Marxism was, and you wouldn't be wrong in my opinion, but the concepts of socialism, fascism, democracy, etc. first came to Korea and China by way of Japanese scholarship.