Source: Public account [Blood Diamond Story]
Author: Mediterranean crab
Tips: This article totals about 21,000 words, and it is expected to take 40 minutes to read
South Korea's politics are extremely complex, and due to historical reasons, it has caused a tug-of-war between chaebols, presidents, religions and other forces. Park Won-soon's suicide may be just the tip of the iceberg and will involve something deeper.
Regarding Korea, there is an old article on Blood Diamond, which looks at the present of Korea from the depth of history, and strives to dispel the fog and restore the truth. On this day, re-recommend to everyone, the article is very hardcore, patiently read it, there will be gains.
wedge
Insadong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Taehwa-kan.
This residential building, which witnessed more than 400 years of the Joseon Dynasty, was transformed into an upscale restaurant in the early 2000s. It was hosted by Ahn Soon-hwan, the former imperial court chef of the Joseon Dynasty.
Before March 1, 1919, it was frequented by officials of the Joseon Governor's Office and pro-Japanese tycoons who were directly subordinate to the Emperor of Japan, and Taehwakan was a famous banquet venue in the capital. But after that day, the restaurant's history changed. It began to connect with religion and witnessed first-hand how the latter has come to this day in the nearly century of Korea's modern history.
The national movement that took place on the peninsula a century ago made Taehwa-kan more famous. But at that time, it was silent in the center of the whirlpool. After a long period of silence, he finally let out a heart-rending cry:
North Korea is dead, and Jesus can't save it!
As history suggests, the national independence movement that took place in Korea also deeply affected the sons and daughters of China in the south, and they launched another patriotic movement belonging to the Chinese nation on May 4, two months later. But unlike the May Fourth Movement, the Korean national independence movement that took place two months ago has, to some extent, set another end for South Korea a hundred years later.
The key to determining the success or failure of the movement and later the national fortunes of South Korea was not how high the patriotic enthusiasm of the students was, nor whether the manpower and material resources that the peninsula could organize at that time could resist the Japanese gendarmerie, but how deeply the religious circles in high positions believed in their respective religions.
The story begins in 1919.
Three-one movement
In January 1919, the deposed king of Korea, Lee Hee, died suddenly. Rumor has it that the Japanese poisoned the king. Because the king was ready to send representatives to the upcoming Paris Peace Conference, looking for foreign allies to rescue the Korean Peninsula, which had been colonized by Japan for half a century.
Gojong Lee Hee of Joseon
The death of Emperor Gaozong Li Xi brought the growing anti-Japanese sentiment of the people to its peak. A group of people with special status felt that the time had come to overthrow colonial rule. 33 leaders of religious organizations belonging to three distinct doctrines decided to plan an independence movement.
Of these 33, 16 are Christians. Since the Sino-Japanese War, Christians have used their religion to explain the fate of Korea: the Korean people were enslaved by Japanese colonies as God's punishment for past sins, and the Old Testament story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt predicted that the Koreans would be liberated from Japanese slavery after a hard struggle.
In addition to Christianity, which originated in the West, the other 15 religious organizations belong to Theodo. This is a Protestantism that combines The Eastern confucians, Taoism, and Buddhism. The founding purpose of this religion is also very direct, that is, to defend Eastern civilization against all the religions and doctrines transmitted from the West. Therefore, this religious organization is also known as Dongxue.
The two religious organizations were supposed to be natural enemies, but in that magical land, the two could get along harmoniously. The last two of the 33 came from Buddhism, which was supposed to be a non-worldly affair.
It is reasonable to say that under the high-handed rule of Japan, these three seemingly incompatible religious organizations are difficult to organize a large-scale independence movement. This is also the case, religious people have little role in this movement, and it hastily ended. However, the addition of another group allowed the movement to spread rapidly throughout the peninsula and brought the national independence movement known as the 'March 1 Movement' to the world's attention.
This group is the students.
At that time, the First World War had just ended, and the international situation was unpredictable. As far away as Europe, Poland and Czechoslovakia both regained their independence at this time. This gave hope to a group of Patriotic Young North Koreans from the Far East. These eager students shouted in their hearts: It is time, now is the time!
The students, already in the dark, decided to start a fight and drafted a declaration of independence for speeches. This scene was seen by religious people, who decided to unite this poised force.
At that time, Christianity had a profound influence on almost all the students on the peninsula, and they were even organized by the Christian YMCA. To this end, Christian leaders met with student representatives and informed the students that religious figures had elected ethnic representatives. The delegates will issue a declaration at Tadong Park on March 1. The two sides made an appointment, and when the delegates gave a speech, the students came forward to show their support.
On March 1, 1919, at 10:00 a.m., 3,000 students gathered at Tadong Park in Seoul as planned. Those days coincided with the state funeral of Emperor Gaozong Li Xi, and hundreds of thousands of people poured into the capital city of Seoul to mourn the former king. As a result, the Japanese colonial authorities did not notice anything unusual about the students who had gathered in the park.
At 2 p.m., the time had come for the appointed declaration, but the students could not see the religious organizers for a long time. The three student representatives decided to go to the hotel where the organizers were staying, Tai Wo Hall, and invited them to visit TaDong Park as scheduled.
God may not abandon Korea, but man will. These national representatives rejected this request. He said, "We can't work with you, please pay attention." ”
After being rejected, the students decided to act on their own. In order to cooperate with these religious figures of social status, students abandon their prepared declarations. When speaking to the onlookers, the declaration drafted by these "national representatives" was used, and the content was full of compromise.
Even a declaration to safeguard the interests of the upper class triggered the anti-colonial demands of those around it that had been suppressed for many years. After reading the manifesto, a student in the audience suddenly shouted "Long live Han!" ”。 The emotions of the surrounding masses were immediately mobilized and they joined the student ranks.
As a result, the students and the newly joined masses walked out of the park in three teams and demonstrated. One team walked in the direction of the foreign consulate, and they wrote "Korean Independence" in blood in front of the American consulate; the other team went to Deoksugung Palace, where the coffin of Gojong Lee Hee was placed, and people shouted "Long live" in front of the spirit; the other team went directly to the Japanese gendarmerie and shouted at the Japanese soldiers, "Get out!" ”。
North Korea's "March 1st Movement"
The whole process of the parade was orderly, and wherever the procession passed, the surrounding citizens spontaneously joined in, and the scale continued to expand. On the same day, more than 300,000 Seoul citizens spontaneously participated in the demonstration movement.
After the Japanese Governor's Office learned of the news, it immediately dispatched all the police, gendarmerie teams, 3 infantry squadrons and 1 cavalry squadron into the city to disperse the demonstration. They arrested more than 130 demonstrators, but still managed to stop the march. At dusk, demonstrations in the capital spread from the city center to the suburbs until 11 o'clock in the evening.
As students took the lead in chanting "Long live independence" in the streets, religious figures who came to be known as "national representatives" gathered in a box in Taehwakan, where 29 people, except for the four delegates who had not yet arrived in Seoul, sat in the box and read the Declaration of Independence.
After reading it, a representative gave a closing speech and then shouted 3 long live. They then asked Ahn Soon-hwan, the owner of taehwakan, to call the governor's office directly under Japan and tell the Japanese that they were in Taehwakan. He also said that he had just drafted a declaration as a representative of the Korean nation in the hope of holding peace talks with Japan.
On the phone, Ahn Chun-hwan specifically mentioned the former owner of the Taehwa Pavilion, Lee Wan-yong, who personally ceded Korea to Japan, and was also selected as a national representative by them to show his sincerity.
After the phone call was made, the delegates began to dine at the Taehwa Pavilion. Before the imperial chef Ahn Soon-hwan had finished cooking, the 29 top leaders of religious organizations, who were also "national representatives" of North Korea, were arrested by the Japanese gendarmerie who suddenly broke in. In this way, these "national representatives" who had entered the upper echelons of society by relying on religion withdrew from the stage of this national movement that even Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao praised.
After the hasty end, these religious people each started a new life. Some of them turned to the embrace of Japan and in turn oppressed their compatriots; some fled to the United States and became the spokesmen of the United States in Korea; some crossed the Yalu River and went into exile in Shanghai, China, where they established a provisional government and later composed another lament.
Most of them believe not in religion, but in rights. They are not representatives of the kingdom of God, nor of the nation, but of the upper classes; they are guarding not the interests of the kingdom of heaven or the interests of the nation, but of their own worldliness.
But the students are different. After March 1, students continue to burn their blood and youth. In early April 1919, the fires of the Trinity Movement spread throughout the peninsula, and millions of people stood up against the Japanese. Fearing that the two divisions stationed in Korea would be difficult to control, Japan sent six infantry brigades and more than 4,000 gendarmes from home to Korea to suppress the people's uprising.
In the face of the guns of the invaders, the students of national consciousness carried the last hope of that land. Carrying the heavy future of the country on their backs, they told their own stories and handed over the strongest stroke to Liu Kuanshun to write.
Korean "Joan of Arc"
Liu Kuanshun is a woman born in 1902.
At the age of 14, with the assistance of an American missionary, Yoo Kuan-soon enrolled in seoul's Ewha Academy (now Ewha Women's University) for free. Asia's first women's college was a Christian school opened by Western missionaries in the mid-19th century. In the future, it will appear many times in Korean history.
At that time, it was Liu Kuanshun who left a footnote in the history of this institution.
Liu Kuanshun was not yet 18 years old when he died. The most famous story of this woman who is well-known in South Korea is that she was martyred for the country in the Korean independence movement.
In March 1919, all major universities in Seoul received orders to suspend classes from the Governor's Office. Liu Kuanshun, who left school, returned to his hometown from Seoul and planned a demonstration with his classmates.
The parade attracted more than 3,000 people. As one of the initiators, Liu Kuanshun gave each participant a Taiji flag that had been hidden for 9 years, and took the lead in shouting the slogan "Long live" representing independence. Japanese gendarmerie and police killed a demonstrator during the crackdown. So, Liu Kuanshun took the body of the deceased and rushed to the police station with the marchers to ask for explanations.
During the argument, several angry youths cut off the telephone line of the police station and tried to storm the police station. When the Japanese saw this, they immediately shot and suppressed it. They set up a submachine gun and strafed the crowd. 21 demonstrators who rushed to the front were killed, including Liu Kuanshun's parents. The rest fled in dismay, while those who ran slowly were arrested by the gendarmerie.
The next day, Liu Kuanshun, who had just turned 17, was taken to court as a sinner. In the face of the judge's questioning, she said contemptuously: "I have no reason to accept the trial of your Wokou!" ”
After saying this, Liu Kuanshun, who witnessed the tragic death of his parents, was still angry. She got up to recharge, then picked up the stool behind her and threw herself at the presiding judge. For this reason, she was sentenced to 3 years more than others and was sent to the Seodaemun Prison Tonic to serve her sentence.
In Room 8 of the Xidaemun Prison, Liu Kuanshun was held in a narrow space of less than 3 square meters with more than a dozen other female prisoners. The prisoners locked up here have no space to sit down and can only stand 24 hours a day. If you stand still all the time, your legs will soon become puffy. The female prisoners who came first had experience, so they called Liu Kuanshun to circle with them, and when they were tired, they stood still and rested.
When going around in circles, people would sing patriotic songs such as "Arirang". Singing and singing, these patriotic young women could not help but cry. The cries reached the next door, and the female prisoner next door also cried. Soon, the song and the cry reached the jailer's ears. They would often come to reprimand them at this time and tell the female prisoners to be quiet.
Before that, these female prisoners often choked back tears and suppressed their cries. But Liu Kuanshun is different. She shouted at the prison guards, "We are not frogs who stop crying when they see people coming!" Whoops...! ”
These last few provocative frog cries completely annoyed the Japanese. They tortured Liu Kuanshun: smeared tar on Liu Kuanshun's head, then ripped her hair off her scalp like a wig; pulled out her fingernails and toenails with pliers...
Such a degree of physical torture is not the most brutal. A woman, captured by militarists, is almost impossible to escape the physical and mental torture related to sex. Because the torture she received before her death was too cruel, in the 21st century, filmmakers also deliberately use black and white film to make films reflecting her deeds, so as to introduce only three types of torture that do not involve sex, so as to reduce the degree of cruelty.
Stills from Resistance: The Story of Yoo Kuan-shun
But without knowing the horrors she experienced before she died, you can't understand what Yoo Kuan-soon means for Today's South Korea.
According to later autopsy reports and visits to the Xidaemun Torture Center, Liu Kuanshun suffered nearly 100 kinds of torture during his lifetime. The frenzied Japanese army once burned her private parts with a red-hot soldering iron; taking advantage of the loach's habit of drilling into damp and dark holes, locked her naked in a tank filled with water, and poured a large amount of loach into it...
These punishments are both physical torture and the killing of Liu Kuanshun's female identity: they are afraid of a people who even women are beginning to rebel.
And this woman is still a woman of faith.
Liu Kuanshun is a devout Christian. At the age of 8, Gojong Lee Hee abdicated under Japanese coercion. Then Prime Minister Lee Wan-yong signed a treaty with Japan to permanently cede sovereignty over the Korean Peninsula to Japan. Since then, the Korean Peninsula has completely become Japanese territory.
No one wants to be a slave to the country. But at that time, even the original lord of the domain, the Great Qing Dynasty, was crumbling, and in another year, a fierce fire called the Xinhai Revolution would burn it to the ground.
At this time, there is no one to ask for on the peninsula, and no one to save. The oppressed North Korean people looked up at the sky, and there was not a glimmer of light in those desperate and empty eyes.
Then a voice suddenly sounded: "Even if the world abandons you, the Lord still loves you." "People who can't find a way out in the real world have come into contact with religion and looked for spiritual sustenance. Among them, Christianity is the most important.
As early as the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Christianity was introduced to Korea through China. At that time, the upper echelons of Korea respected Confucianism and read the canonical notes written in Chinese characters; while ordinary people spoke Korean and had a low literacy rate. After the introduction of Christianity, missionaries vigorously opened schools to teach believers to learn the easier to learn Korean. Through easy-to-learn Korean characters and missionaries-run schools, the threshold for the dissemination of knowledge began to narrow. Slowly, the belief in Christianity became a symbol of folk intellectuals.
In the Sino-Japanese War, Confucian orthodox China could not defeat Japan, which directly led to Japan's entry into Korea. Japan, on the other hand, followed the Orthodox Christian West. As a result, more and more North Koreans began to embrace Christianity, and the Yoo Kwan-soon family was no exception.
It was as a Christian that Liu Kuanshun was able to enter the Ewha Academy with the help of missionaries. Similarly, most of those young students, both men and women, believe in Christianity. This is also why the patriotic students who participated in the March 1st Movement at that time relied on the Christian youth association to assemble, and why they accepted the invitation of high-level Cooperation between The Christians in Korea at that time.
Religion gives these patriots who are desperate in reality the last spiritual strength, but they still cannot change reality. The flames of the Trinity Movement were extinguished by the Japanese. In the massacre brought about by the crackdown, some students were deliberately crucified on the cross of the church by the Japanese army.
Liu Kuanshun also failed to escape the fate. The gender-specific torture eventually killed her from a man-made rupture of her bladder and uterus. After her death, the Japanese army decided to burn her body quickly in order to cover up the punishment imposed on her during her lifetime. When the principal and teacher of their alma mater, Ewha Academy, learned of the news, they managed to retrieve the mutilated body from the Japanese army and buried her in Itaewon Temple.
But Japan did not anticipate that Yoo Kuan-soon's death did not alleviate the Korean people's desire for independence. On the contrary, those terrible encounters made her dying words burst with great spiritual power:
"Although I can bear the pain of pulling out my nails, cutting off my ears, nose and breaking my legs, I can't bear the pain of losing my motherland. As a young girl, the only thing I feel sad about is that I only have one life to dedicate to my motherland, so I'm sorry for it..."
Liu Kuanshun's last words were like a strong typhoon blowing across the entire peninsula and sowing a spiritual seed in the hearts of the people. To this day, South Koreans dare not forget: 100 years ago, a Christian girl who symbolized hope was tortured to death by an inhuman experience for the future of the country.
She is the "Joan of Arc" of Korea.
100 years ago, this "Joan of Arc" hoped that the country would become independent as soon as possible, and then get better and better.
But she couldn't wait for the day.
In 1920, when she was martyred, Japan had just bloodily suppressed the national movement launched by the students by force; in the first two days before her death, Japan had Emperor Gojong's son marry a Japanese princess in order to weaken the anti-Japanese sentiment of the Korean people and facilitate colonial rule; at this time, the provisional government in Shanghai was full of internal factions, and behind her stood the government representatives of the major powers as patrons, who did not obey anyone...
At that time, looking around, whether north or south, or inside and outside, full of hunger and devastation. Whether it is the people or the country, the people are afraid and the road ahead is uncertain.
Desperate people hold their breath and wait with the peninsula called North Korea for someone, someone who can open the door to a better future.
Finally, history waited for the Korean "Father of the Nation" who shared the same faith as Yoo Kuan-soon, Kim Joo.
Father
In 1876, the Korea-Japan Peace Treaty was signed, and Lee's Korea was forced to open its doors. It was this year that Jin Jiu was born in a civilian family in Hwanghae Province.
Golden Nine
At that time, the upper echelons of Korea ruled the country with Confucianism.
However, unlike in China, the only Confucianism promoted by the Li dynasty was Cheng Zhu Lixue, and even the later Wang Yangming was not allowed to be mentioned. In this context, the Hierarchy of the Lee Dynasty was strict. The Jinjiu family belonged to the common class and were often bullied and oppressed by two classes (the aristocratic class). In order to make his family into the second class, he asked his father to send him to study, and in the future, he would take the meritorious examination and honor his ancestors.
As a result, lucky Kim-joo was able to learn Chinese characters and Korean at a private school and participate in the imperial examination. In the examination hall, Kim-joo saw the various drawbacks of the Korean imperial examination at that time, and the aristocratic class almost mastered all the career paths.
After falling off the list, Jin Jiu was disappointed and turned to studying feng shui with his father, and for the rest of his life, he only wanted to find a feng shui treasure land for himself and protect future generations.
Jin Jiu, who had received mainstream education, studied feng shui superstitions, which was not unusual at the time. Due to the high cost of learning Chinese characters, the two classes of nobles had the right to interpret knowledge. The people at the bottom only strictly adhered to part of the Confucian ideology in their lives that favored the rule of the upper classes: the hierarchical division of kings and subjects, and the special emphasis on the superiority of men over women.
The gates of class mobility have been welded to death. The hopeless people at the bottom had to seek spiritual sustenance in shamanism, which was widely spread among the people. This religion can be traced back to the founding of the peninsula. About 5,000 years ago, uncivilized people gathered together by wizards to form a theocratic state. Chiefs are both kings and wizards, and their greatest ability is "psychic". Wizards with psychic abilities can guide the confused public, and whenever there is a major event, people always look around for these wizards to ask for good fortune.
The upper echelons use Confucianism to maintain the ruling order, and the lower levels rely on feudal superstitions to gain the courage to survive. But fate tricked people, and Jin Jiu failed to regain confidence in feng shui. On the contrary, when studying the appearance, he found that instead of having a hint of wealth, he was born with a lowly appearance and became more decadent. Fortunately, the physiognomy did not kill him completely, and the book said again: "It is better to be good than to be good, and it is better to be good than to be good in heart." ”
Jin Jiu found a rare side of the beneficial side of people in feudal superstition, decided to be a good person as a belief in this life, and adhered to this standard in the later life path. At that time, the highest standard for being a good person was to overthrow the colonial oppression of the Japanese for the broad masses of the people.
Young Golden Nine
In 1893, at the age of 18, Jin Jiu joined the largest anti-Japanese organization at that time, and it was also a newly established Oriental religious organization, Dongxue. Two years later, he supported the local Dongxue peasant movement in Haizhou against the Japanese army. After the uprising failed, Jin Jiu crossed the Yalu River, hid in northeastern China, and was arrested.
After a year in prison, Jin Jiu was released after completing his sentence. But a piece of news that put him in jail again, just released from prison: the Korean empress was killed by the Japanese. At that time, Jin Jiu, who was still flesh and blood, was angry. He assassinated a Japanese officer and was arrested and imprisoned again. A North Korean official noticed the young man who had entered the palace and advised him to read some Western books. Therefore, Jin Jiu in the prison read Western books such as "New History of Taixi" and "World Geography" and sighed:
After reading a volume of the New History of Taixi, I realized that the foreigners with concave noses and noses were not savages like monkeys, and they also had the way to govern the country and the people. Only the corrupt officials and corrupt officials of our country who are like the crown of the Crown and the Immortal Wind Dao bone should accept the honorific title of the savage. ”
Kim-joo, who had experienced the imperial examinations in his early years, finally understood that the problem in North Korea was far from being a Wokou invasion, and he began to teach other prisoners to read and write in the prison, turning the prison into a school.
A year later, Kim-joo escaped from prison and began building schools around North Korea. He explained the purpose of his school in this way: "No matter how urgent the situation, if the people do not wake up, do not realize the rise and fall of the country, and the responsibility of the puppeteer, then no force can save the country." ”
Under the rule of the Li Dynasty, Jin Jiu finally understood that he had been shouting out by Gu Yanwu for hundreds of years that "the world rises and falls, and it is the responsibility of the pirates." In order to better spread this idea, Kim-joo joined Christianity, which was already large in Korea at that time.
Not long after, Jin Jiu was arrested and imprisoned again for the national movement. This time he was sentenced to life and released from prison on parole. Throughout Jin Jiu's life, these three palace experiences are only a small paving for his future path. After his release from prison, he went to the countryside to carry out the Enlightenment movement, directly intimidating shamanism, which numbed the minds of the people.
In 1911, the Trinity Movement broke out. Most religious patriots of status and status fled to Shanghai. After Jin Jiu learned the news, he once again crossed the Yalu River to China to join these people.
Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea
Compared with these big figures, Jin Jiu, who had only attended private schools for a few years and read a few books in prison, felt that he was not talented enough and wanted to work only as a janitor of the provisional government. But these people only know how to distribute leaflets and shout slogans scattered in the streets, and Jin Jiu, who once assassinated Japanese officers, has carried out practical actions. As a result, Jin Jiu was promoted to the post of commissioner of police and was responsible for espionage.
On April 29, 1932, to celebrate the victory of the war, the Japanese army held a large gathering of tianchang festival in Hongkou Park in Shanghai. An inconspicuous man in the crowd was creeping toward the Japanese commander. He was loaded with bombs. As he approached, he lit a bomb and threw it at the Japanese commander-in-chief, Yoshinori Shirakawa. It also successfully killed and injured a number of civilian and military officials, including the commander-in-chief of the Japanese army.
In December 1932, the perpetrator of the Hongkou bombing, Yin Bongji, was executed by firing squad outside Kanazawa, Japan
After the bombing, the Japanese army found out that the assassination was organized by the Korean Provisional Government and that they had assassinated the emperor in Tokyo a year earlier. Soon the Japanese arrested sixteen people. In order to avoid more people being caught, Jin Jiu revealed in the newspaper that he was the mastermind of the bombing.
To this end, Japan offered a reward of 600,000 yuan for the capture of Jinjiu. Unable to stay in Shanghai, Jin Jiu first took refuge in Hangzhou and then traveled to many Chinese cities. During this period, Jin Jiu asked for a meeting with Chiang Kai-shek and hoped that the Nationalist government would provide financial support so that he could guide the rebellion and carry out assassinations behind enemy lines in the northeast and other enemy lines. But Chiang Kai-shek said: You killed one emperor, and there is the next one. Killed a general, and a new general took office. What's the use?
Chiang Kai-shek's words have some truth. But Kim-joo knows that these are the only things that a small and poor North Korea can do.
This communication with Chiang Kai-shek was not without results. The Nationalist government promised to provide 500 yuan a month to ensure the livelihood of interim government officials. At that time, even Jin Jiu himself had to make ends meet by picking up cabbage pickles on the road. But after getting the money, he immediately recruited more than a hundred young people and established a military school in Luoyang dedicated to training Korean officers. After the first officers graduated, the Nationalist government ordered the closure of the school under japanese threats.
The desire to organize an army became even more unrealistic. At the same time, factional rivalries within the Provisional Government reached a fierce point. At this time, the provisional government had moved to Hangzhou, and there were not many people, but it split into 7 parties. Two of them opted out, while the factions in power wanted to dissolve the interim government.
Former site of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Hangzhou
Jin Jiu was angry again. He ran back to Hangzhou and formed a new party with the remaining 8 people who were still thinking about maintaining a unified political system. After the Lugou Bridge Incident, Jin Jiu moved to Changsha with the rest of the people, and in the late stage of the Anti-Japanese War, he formed a paratrooper of about 300 people and participated in the Battle of Changsha.
Jin Jiu named this paratrooper the Guangfu Army, thinking that he would rely on this army to land on the peninsula to restore the country in the future. But fate once again made a joke with Jin Jiu. In 1945, Japan surrendered and Korea was restored.
When the news of Japan's surrender spread around the world, Jin Jiu had just finished inspecting the military training of the Guangfu Army in Shaanxi. The national representatives of all parties were overjoyed, but Jin Jiu collapsed and said: "We have not done a single thing in this war, so we will not have a voice in the international community." ”
Things turned out just as Jin Jiu expected. Bounded by 38 degrees north latitude, the peninsula was divided into North Korea and South Korea by the Soviet Union and the United States. Because it has no right to speak, the provisional government representing the unification of North Korea is not recognized by the United States, and members are not allowed to return to China in the name of the North Korean government.
On November 5, 1945, Jin Jiu and the dignitaries of the Provisional Government left Chongqing and arrived at Gimpo Airport via Shanghai, embarking on the unforgettable homeland of the peninsula for 27 years. Although important members of the Provisional Government returned home in their personal capacity, they were warmly welcomed by all walks of life. Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Seoul Avenues at the same time, holding aloft taiji flags.
Jin Jiu, who was about to return to China in 1945
Looking at the joyful welcome crowd, Jin Jiu was worried. He poured cold water on the people of our country who were immersed in the joy of victory and said openly: The highest goal of our national task is, first of all, to establish an independent state that is free from the control of others and does not depend on people.
But apparently, this goal is not achieved. Whether it is North Korea in the north or south Korea now, it is the Soviet Union and the United States that have the final say. In His "Message to the Korean People" Proclamation No. 1, MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, declared: "The authority to rule the territory of Korea south of the thirty-eighth degree north latitude and the Korean people shall be temporarily exercised under the authority of this commander."
The U.S. military completely continued the administrative structure of the Governor's Office during the Japanese occupation, and the former pro-Japanese politicians and landlords who colluded with the Japanese military government were transformed into senior officials of the U.S. Military Administration. The internal party to which Jin Jiu belongs also began to split, some people broke away from other factions, and some people established new parties. The purpose is self-evident: to stand in line to get a piece of the new government.
Jin Jiu was unwilling to accept such a situation, and he risked his life to cross the 38th line to negotiate with Kim Il Sung. Finally failed. On June 26, 1949, Mr. Kim Joo was shot dead at the age of 73 by South Korean infantry lieutenant Ahn Doo-hee at his home in Kyunghashi-sho.
Jin Jiu was one of the few people at that time who dared to publicly rebuke the withdrawal of U.S. and Soviet troops from the peninsula and cancel the 38th Parallel. In his early years, he proposed that North Korea needed a unified philosophy in order to unite its people and develop its country. But Kim-joo, who returned to his homeland after Japan's surrender, seems to have forgotten a fundamental problem, and the social crux of North Korea's centuries-old existence remains: ignorance and numbness at the bottom, and greed at the top.
The revolution has not yet succeeded.
Jin Jiu died with regret. After his death, he handed the baton to another Christian. In his heart, he always had an inexplicable fondness for the Western culture that helped him find his purpose in life. After returning to his homeland after 27 years of absence, he toured the place. He told the local masses that he had no desire for power or status, and that if Korea became independent, he would return to the countryside as a farmer. The first president recommended Dr. Syngman Rhee, whom he admired.
Syngman Rhee, an American graduate of the Doctor of Theology. He was the president of the Provisional Government of South Korea, but he had no interest in the front line of resistance and was reluctant to take office. Instead, the desire to save the country was placed on the United States.
During his term, the still desperate Korean people will once again turn to religion and find hope in the spiritual world. Only this time, the Korean people no longer believe in Christianity.
Military juntas, chaebols and cults
In October 1945, Syngman Rhee arrived in Seoul on a special plane from MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces, and soon came to Daegu City to inspect. To this end, Daegu City held a business welcome party, and Samsung founder Lee Byung-zhe was also among them.
Because he lived in the United States all year round, Syngman Rhee did not have any political resources in China at this time. He was desperate to get the support of entrepreneurs. At the dinner party, he patted Lee Byung-zhe on the shoulder and, after some praise, invited Lee Byung-cheol to sit down at his residence in Seoul, Ewha Province.
During Syngman Rhee's tenure, Samsung's influence on the South Korean economy has continued to increase, and Lee Byung-zhe has repeatedly emphasized that he is "not the chairman of Samsung, but the chairman of the country." The chaebols' grasp of the lifeblood of the South Korean state has been evident since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Samsung's expansion is also related to Rhee's political philosophy. In addition to being fellow Christians, Syngman Rhee was able to be trusted by Kim Kwang in large part because Syngman Rhee also insisted on unifying the peninsula. After the Korean War, there was no hope of reunification. Despite the opposition of the people, Rhee repeatedly demanded that the United States continue to support the reunification of the North and the South. To do so, he needs to rely on the military to achieve his political ambitions. In this regard, the Government has turned a blind eye to the corruption that breeds in the military. Economically, Rhee was also not interested, and adopted a laissez-faire policy, allowing companies such as Samsung to pay bribes to officials and grow bigger step by step.
At that time, the country's most important source of economic resources was U.S. aid, which in turn was corrupted by the military or fell into the hands of private companies. The lives of the people at the bottom are getting harder. Their dissatisfaction with Rhee intensified, with frequent demonstrations and protests.
In 1954, Syngman Rhee, whose popularity had fallen to the bottom, saw no hope of re-election and manipulated the vote to pass a new constitution that would make him president for life. After his successful re-election, as a Christian, he severely restricted freedom of speech and carried out assassinations against political opponents. Later generations of scholars have strongly suggested that Kim Joo's death was related to Rhee.
Under Syngman Rhee's dictatorship, the people suffered terribly. It was the students who took the lead again. On April 19, 1960, a group of young people went to the Blue House to protest. At this time, Ewha Academy had been renamed Ewha Women's University, because it was a Christian college, and the university did not recommend that students intervene in politics. But the female students at Ewha University still provided logistical support to the front line.
The "April 19 Revolution" that overthrew the Syngman Rhee government
History repeats itself once again, with Christian Rhee suppressing the demonstration by force, killing 186 people and injuring more than 6,000. This provoked the anger of the people and quickly triggered a large-scale nationwide riot. Syngman Rhee was ousted by the South Korean people and fled to the United States. The United States also supported Yin Yanshan to ascend to the throne. But the puppet president was helpless against the mess left by Syngman Rhee. Even the U.S. military in South Korea at the time complained that if they did not pay bribes, they would not be able to get U.S. aid.
But what bribes do ordinary people take? The people still can't eat. People in the depths of the water are waiting for the next person who can save themselves from the sea of suffering. Two years have passed, and the person the Korean people are waiting for has not yet waited. Until the honor graduate of the puppet Manchukuo Army School, Masao Takagi, who later became famous, came to the stage of history.
In the early hours of May 16, 1961, a gunshot broke through seoul's calm night. Led by Major General Park Chung-hee, nearly 4,000 soldiers staged a military coup d'état and seized power from then-South Korean President Yoon Hyun-sun. This political storm is known as the "May 16 Coup". Two years later, Park Chung-hee officially became South Korea's third president since its founding.
Park Chung-hee
When Park Chung-hee's military government came to power, it immediately imposed a curfew. But Park Chung-hee added another sentence: except for religion.
He urgently needed to win over this force that could not be ignored.
Because Rhee disregarded the people's livelihood, the people at the bottom who had no way out in reality began to frantically search for spiritual sustenance. They began to practice any form of religion. Once upon a time Western missionaries would only tell people that God would save you. During Syngman Rhee's reign, more and more wild missionaries directly said that they were God.
For these desperate people, even the most absurd rhetoric can find believers. Especially in that land where illiteracy roams everywhere. At the end of World War II, South Korea's illiteracy rate was as high as 53 percent, and only 14 percent had a schooling experience.
These "gods" naturally became the last straw for many low-level people who could not distinguish between true and false, and cults sprung up like mushrooms. Many people have founded churches under the guise of Christianity and recruited believers. The most famous of these is the "Eternal World Sect" founded by Cui Taimin.
Eternalism is a fusion of Christianity, Taoism and Buddhism, and has deep ties to native shamanism: the master is also psychic. After Park Chung-hee came to power, he co-opted Choi Tae-min, who has a deep mass base. But Park Chung-hee himself is a Buddhist. For him, co-opting this cult is more for political reasons. He himself did not have a good feeling for the cult's founder, and even specifically reminded Choi Tae-min to keep his distance from his daughter Park Geun-hye.
After Park Chung-hee came to power, in the face of a desperate people, he decided to vigorously develop the economy. But at that time, the source of supplies was mainly from the United States. Park Chung-hee, on the other hand, wants to make his own decisions.
In order to get rid of the control of the United States, in addition to co-opting the cult, Park Chung-hee also found the capitalists he had always hated. As soon as he took office, he "invited" 11 important big entrepreneurs to tea, including Li Bingzhe, the founder of Samsung, who had a close relationship with political enemy Rhee.
The joining of churches and capital is not enough. In order to get rid of the constraints of the United States and develop the economy independently, in 1965, Park Chung-hee signed the "Basic Treaty between Japan and South Korea" with Japan, and exchanged the huge concessions of giving up post-war reparations in exchange for Japanese capital entering South Korea and opening up Japan's overseas markets.
The waiver of Japan's reparations did not seek national opinions. In addition, Park Chung-hee, who graduated from puppet Manchukuo, was a thorough Korean traitor during the Japanese occupation and directly enlisted in the Japanese army. His identity is too sensitive. The signing of the Basic Treaty between Japan and South Korea completely exploded among the people, who were already dissatisfied with the military junta's iron-fisted policy. Tens of thousands of students in South Korea took to the streets to protest against Park Chung-hee's authoritarian regime. Ewha female college students participated in this hunger strike protest for more than 100 hours. Another Christian institution, Yonsei University, another Christian institution a dozen minutes away from Pear, openly criticized "the Park Chung-hee government for fabricating democratic ideas."
Seoul university students who were dissatisfied with the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan took to the streets to boycott the Park Chung-hee government
The dictatorial Park Chung-hee has become more and more unpopular, and domestic political enemies are eager to try; the United States is not so satisfied with Park Chung-hee, who has his own calculations; and the chaebols who have been suppressed by military forces have also grown further while developing the economy; various religious organizations have taken advantage of the market operations as government allies, and even Choi Tae-min has become more and more close to his daughter Park Geun-hye...
Both Park Chung-hee himself and his authoritarian government are in jeopardy.
On the evening of October 26, 1979, President Park Chung-hee, who had been busy for a day, came to the luxurious casual restaurant of the Central Intelligence Department in Miyai-dong to relax his body and mind. South Korea's Central Intelligence Minister and Presidential Secretary General accompanied the banquet, and after a few glasses of wine, there was a song and dance, and Park Chung-hee temporarily forgot about complicated political affairs. At this time, the director of the Intelligence Bureau suddenly spoke with a murderous face: "Your Excellency, you must look at the overall situation in your political pursuits!" Can you do politics with such rubbish? ”
Before he could finish speaking, he quickly drew his pistol from his waist and shot at Park Chung-hee's chest, blood gushing out. Park Chung-hee became the first South Korean president to die in office. Behind the intelligence chief who assassinated him was the United States, and the "waste" he said in his mouth was a saying that it referred to Choi Tae-min, the leader of the cult who had frequent contacts with the Park Chung-hee family.
After Park Chung-hee's death, Choi Tae-min relied on her "psychic" skills to summon Park Geun-hye's mother, who died in an assassination two years before Park Chung-hee. Through Choi Tae-min, Park Geun-hye, who has lost her parents, washes her face with tears all day long and talks to her parents who have been summoned; and the chaebols represented by Samsung are also like beasts, and will become the biggest mountain that will make the bottom breathless in the future.
The United States on the outside, the chaebols on the inside, the cults in the folk... With the death of the iron-blooded Park Chung-hee, the weak balance that had been maintained was broken, and South Korea will once again spiral out of control.
History followed the waters of the Han River, and various figures took turns to take the stage. Nearly 40 years after Park Chung-hee's death, the Drama is still staged in the South Peninsula. During his lifetime, he could not predict how strongly he would mark South Korea; after his death, the seed he planted for Korea called "education" broke through the soil and grew into the last hope of the Korean people.
Miracle of the Han River
Park Chung-hee created the miracle of the Han River. When people today tell the story of how this soldier has the heartache and courage to mediate between the United States and the chaebols, they often underestimate Park Chung-hee's far-sightedness as a politician.
The division of the peninsula cannot avoid the background of the Cold War. And the entire Korean Peninsula was also the front line of that ideological war. Government pressure is not small. In the 1960s, when Park Chung-hee came to power, almost everything that could be used for development was concentrated in North Korea, such as 133 times the iron ore resources north of the 38th Parallel, which were 133 times that of South Korea.
With the strong support of the Soviet Union and China, North Korea, which has its own foundation, staged an economic miracle in the Far East, and its GDP was 4 times that of South Korea. South Korea, on the other hand, was still a backward agricultural country. Unlike the frequent defectors now, it was more South Koreans who left the south and ran toward North Korea.
This phenomenon made Park Chung-hee feel sad. He was bent on turning an agrarian country into an industrial country. To this end, South Korea, which depends on the United States for its livelihood, learned from China and the Soviet Union under the leadership of Park Chung-hee and formulated a number of five-year plans.
In order to smoothly implement the five-year plan, south Korea continued to receive aid from the United States on the one hand, and on the other hand, it attracted Japanese capital in the face of national scolding; internally, Park Chung-hee began to win over capitalists and also formed alliances with religions in order to gain the support of civil forces.
Seoul Street after the Korean War
Relations between each side are not easy to manage, and each side has the potential to become the last straw to crush the junta. Walking on thin ice, Park Chung-hee has maintained the balance between the parties by relying on the absolute power of the junta. And these are not the most difficult. What really gives Park Chung-hee a headache is the cause of education in South Korea.
In 1965, when the Japan-South Korea Basic Treaty was signed with Japan, in the face of the demonstration of the people at home, the military government could only hope that the economy would take off to win back the people's hearts. At the same time, economic independence could provide Park Chung-hee with the biggest leverage to get rid of the United States. But what was in front of him was that the junior high school enrollment rate in South Korea at that time was only 30%.
It is difficult for a woman to cook without rice. The development from an agricultural country to an industrial country is inseparable from workers and technical personnel. This is far from a problem that can be solved by the military. Weak education has dragged down industrialization.
During the Japanese occupation, 80% of South Korea's schools were destroyed by artillery fire, and only a very small number of colonized Korean people were able to successfully receive education. At that time, most of the schools were Japanese teachers for colonial education. Now this first generation of Korean education originated in Japan. Park Chung-hee, who graduated from the puppet Manchukuo Military School, knows this well. After Japan's surrender, it also took 70% of South Korea's teaching staff. In The Korean elementary school of Syngman Rhee's time, a small classroom was often filled with more than 100 students because there were no teachers.
A land full of illiterate people, a government with a taste of corpses, a group of people who see no hope. This is the reason for the prevalence of Korean cults during the Rhee period. After Park Chung-hee came to power, he began to vigorously fight corruption and gave the people real-world hope with one five-year plan after another. But there are no human resources that can promote the process of industrialization, and that hope will become a mirror flower of the water moon.
How to make a pot of rice-free porridge?
Park Chung-hee gave his own answer: without rice, start planting crops now.
To this end, the Park Chung-hee government promulgated a policy to build basic education in the form of government payment, and promoted the Korean version of 9-year compulsory education. By the early 1970s, South Korea's primary school enrolment had grown to 99 percent, while junior and senior high school enrollment rates were as high as 75 percent and 54 percent, respectively. The country has basically realized the modernization of education and laid the foundation for the economic miracle of the Han River in the 1970s and 1980s.
But for Park Chung-hee in the 1960s, starting with dolls was clearly unable to cope with the urgent need for industrialization. He gave a second answer: no rice, but millet. Turn millet into rice, and do as much as you want.
Therefore, he promulgated the "Industrial Education Revitalization Law" to vigorously support vocational education. Encourage young people of school age to receive training in technical schools and colleges in order to directly contribute to the construction of industrialization.
If only these two methods are used, it is not a dictatorial military junta. Park Chung-hee is a typical example of the state leaders of the Confucian cultural circle in East Asia, with one person having all the state power. He invented a new talent model, ordered the mandatory abolition of the high school entrance examination, and forced the diversion of a large number of students to technical schools and vocational schools in the form of lottery plus examination, so as to become a qualified screw in the factory as soon as possible.
In addition to Park Chung-hee's painstaking efforts, the Han River miracle is also built on the sacrifices of a generation. Many top students with heads overhanging beam cone thorn stocks, even if they achieve test scores, will not be able to shake the number of high school, and can only go to the assembly line to become a worker.
Korean workers
But in any case, this is all Park Chung-hee can do. He could make everyone in the original illiterate country have schooling, but he could not make out of thin air teachers proportional to the number of students. Especially those famous teachers in key high schools and professors in colleges and universities.
Through education reform, Park Chung-hee's five-year plan can finally be implemented smoothly. Economic development has allowed the South Korean people to finally get rid of the original hellish model, and Park Chung-hee has gradually acquired the capital to get rid of the United States. Because everyone has been to school, the growth of new cults is difficult and can only be associated with the word "rural.".
Workers worked day and night on the assembly line to shed blood and sweat. They created the miracle of the Han River, their lives were finally secured, and they began to learn to accept their destiny.
"At least it's much better than before".
The workers comfort themselves in this way, but fantasize that the next generation can get rid of the fate of the screws.
They are waiting. When high school no longer draws the number, ordinary people can also enter college through hard work, and then change the fate of the family.
At that time, they will pin all their unfulfilled wishes on the next generation.
For ordinary people, knowledge is the only way to change their destiny. But for a few, knowledge is just a castle, used to stop ordinary people outside the city.
The seed of hope, after decades of germination and growth, has dramatically grown into a "city in the sky."
City in the Sky
Not far from Ewha Womans University is another Christian university: Yonsei University. The university is one of the members of South Korea's "piece of heaven", SKY University.
SKY is taken from the English initials of three top universities: Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. In South Korea, these three universities have even higher status than the Ivy League. And a Korean drama in 2018 gave this college alliance a glare suffix in the folk: Castle, Castle.
In early February 2019, the Korean drama "Castle in the Sky", which was supposed to end a week ago, ushered in the grand finale. Ratings beat "Please Answer 1988" in one fell swoop, setting a cable station record. A week ago, due to bumping into the South Korean team for the Asian Cup, "Castle in the Sky" was extended. To this end, the Korean Football Association specially apologized to the people, which affected everyone's pursuit of the drama.
In a castle called Sky City, only 0.1 percent of South Korea's upper class qualifies to live. The drama tells how the rich second generation living here, and even their entire families, prepared for the college entrance examination.
Stills from Castle in the Sky
In the episode, a father exhorts his children in a serious way: the world is a pyramid, and only by climbing to the top can you enjoy life.
The children who were driven crazy by their studies and parents cried out in collapse: When you son, it is hell for me.
Families with extremely high social status still cannot withstand the pressure of the college entrance examination, so what about ordinary families? Viewers in front of the TV set left messages online, saying that the episode only reflected one percent of the harsh reality of South Korea's college entrance examination.
According to the 2017 World Health Statistics, South Korea has the highest suicide rate among adolescents aged 10-19 in the world, and "grades and school attendance issues" have been the number one cause of suicide among Korean adolescents for 10 consecutive years. In the series, overwhelmed students choose to commit suicide, and in reality, there have been real cases of Korean students killing their mothers because their mock test scores did not meet their parents' expectations.
Park Chung-hee used education to build a bridge across classes for the people at the bottom. However, with the rapid development of the economy, limited educational resources began to concentrate in large cities. As early as the 1970s, there was a popular saying in society: "If you have a horse, send it to Jeju Island; if you have a son, send him to Seoul." ”
But can going to Seoul make your children win at the starting line? As the chaebol grows bigger, graduates have little chance of success in starting a business. Small companies cannot afford salaries, and only by entering the large enterprises under these chaebols can they afford the consumption levels of big cities. To enter a large enterprise, you must be a graduate of one of the only few famous schools.
Korean students began to fight for the "day", and the school did not leave classes until 9 o'clock at night. At night, students carrying school bags walked out of the campus and into the cram school that their parents had reported to them. In South Korea, more than 80 percent of students attend cram schools, and according to a report by the Education 30 Forum, the proportion of Chinese students attending cram classes is about 20 percent.
In 2012, tuition fees in South Korea accounted for 36 percent of the education budget. In South Korea, nearly two-thirds of middle-class households spend six times more on tuition fees than the bottom households. And the 0.1 percent of upper-class households spend several times more on education than the middle-class households.
Can the efforts of children alone compete with the rich second generation who use a lot of tuition fees to attend famous teacher cram schools? In the 1980s, two-thirds of SKY's top-ranked students at Seoul National University came from poor Families in South Korea, and today, half of the students are concentrated in Seoul's Gangnam wealthy district.
Failure to pass the famous school is a failure, but the famous school is for the rich.
South Korea is still that Korea, and the bottom is still the bottom layer. What should ordinary people do to complete the counterattack?
A familiar voice resounded: Even if the world abandons you, the Lord still loves you.
In 1960, as Park Chung-hee was preparing his first five-year plan for his term, a man named Moon Chak-sung traveled to the United States with his wife, who was only 17 years old. They called themselves "true fathers" and "true mothers" and were received by President Nixon of the United States. After returning to China, Wen Ming became an informant of the CIA, and took American money to start preaching and investing, building a huge business empire by relying on the church. Soon, his personal income reached $700 million a year.
Wen Ming and Nixon
In this regard, the Wild Churches have found a new position. Instead of going to the countryside as before, they used a variety of literary success stories to show these riches to the low-level people who could not afford the high tuition fees, so as to gather believers: believe in the Lord to live forever, believe that I can get rich.
They used the money they had looted from believers to invest and manage their money, and they took advantage of the economic take-off of the whole country and obtained a great return. So repeatedly, an industry is formed. Choi Tae-min, who was close to the Park family, also founded the "Yuying Consortium" in this way, greedily sucking the blood of the people at the bottom and quickly completing the class leap.
But Koreans who lived through the Park Chung-hee era are no longer illiterate countries in the early days of the founding of the country. The middle and high levels of the entire church are the relatives and friends of the church leader, and outsiders cannot enter, and the lower layers of these pyramids naturally do not share the investment income. Why are so many people still joining the Wild Church?
They're not stupid. In Christianity, anyone who can give a unique view of the Bible can stand on their own. Changing one's destiny through knowledge was once the only hope of Koreans, but knowledge belonged to a minority. Like the Sky City, which accounts for only 0.1% of the population, it mercilessly isolates the bottom layer.
At the same time, wild churches of all kinds have shown a shortcut across classes. See the shortcut, go in and learn two years of experience. More and more people are building wild churches under the guise of Christianity. South Korea became a hotbed of wild religion. The Almighty God cult, which occurred in Zhaoyuan, Shandong Province in 2003, fled to South Korea to continue its growth after being suppressed by the Chinese government.
With the establishment of various churches, gradually, the local leeks were not enough. They began to expand overseas again. In 2007, 23 South Korean missionaries set foot in Islamic Afghanistan. In war-torn Afghanistan, the missionaries were captured by the Taliban.
While the world marvels at the courage of these missionaries, they do not know that the benefits behind the mission are large enough to make people take risks. Today, South Korea's wild churches have long infiltrated China, using rural China as a new power development zone.
So, can the South Korean government completely ban these wild churches and cults?
This can be more difficult. Because christian doctrine determines that many wild churches cannot be classified as cults. And South Korean politics has never been able to bypass religion. Presidents over the years have even been able to divide the left and the right based on their respective religious beliefs.
On the whole, the history of korean political change is also a history of the collision of Eastern civilization and Western civilization.
In the early days of the Victory of the East, Korea was dominated by a right-wing military junta with the historical imprint of the centralization of power in the East. At this stage, no matter how barbaric the chaebols grow, in the face of a powerful totalitarian military government, they can only be a tool of rule cultivated based on the economic concept of "national policy and private ownership". The United States, on the other hand, is the force that politicians have to co-opt in order to maintain their position. Even if Park Chung-hee was bent on getting rid of the United States, in the situation of poverty and poverty at that time, he still had to introduce Us capital, send troops to Vietnam, and establish good relations with the United States.
But since 1992, the Western civilization represented by Christianity has triumphed completely in South Korean politics. It was only after Kim Young-sam, the first non-military president, came to power in 1993 that South Korea truly embarked on the path of democratization. From 1993 to the present, South Korean politics has been a complete confrontation within Christianity. The two sides can be directly divided into Right-wing Protestants and Left-wing Catholics. The only exception is Park Geun-hye.
So the question is, are it the chaebols or the religion that rule South Korea?
Chaebol is indeed a mountain in South Korea, but its impact is more economic. It fights the government by infiltrating into every aspect of South Korean society to form a situation that cannot be lost. But it has never been able to stand up to the state apparatus, which holds absolute power.
In the confrontation between the two sides, the only good years for the chaebols were the withdrawal of the dictatorship from the stage of history, and the Protestant figures they funded just happened to be in power. After Park Geun-hye came to power, she walked in the same way as the military government of the last century, planning to rely on the oppression of power to let the country gradually take over the chaebol enterprises. The chaebols of the Park Geun-hye era had a worse life.
The chaebols have no control over politics and can only get involved in politics indirectly by legal means of investing in politicians. When we say today that the chaebols control South Korea, we actually mean that the chaebols occupy an important position in the national economy and affect all aspects of Korean society. The government with absolute power does not dare to cut it at will, and can only allow it to grow barbarically and continue to suppress the people at the bottom.
After sorting out the position of the chaebol, we can finally re-understand Korea.
For hundreds of years, the two classes of aristocrats of the Li dynasty had been honored with sinology, and the lowly commoners had no way of acquiring knowledge and could only accept the ruling class instilling in the more favorable part of Confucianism. Ideas such as the orderly growth and childhood, male superiority and female inferiority have influenced the present day. In the Korean drama "Castle in the Sky", the son was accused of being a "traitor" because he was unwilling to accept his father's arrangement; the "Room N" at the beginning of this year let the world see how humiliating women in that land lived.
Room N incident
But acceptance is not a willingness. In addition to using the ideas indoctrinated by the two classes of aristocrats as a moral constraint, the people at the bottom who had deep grievances would still look for hope in traditional shamanism. The influence of shamanism also continues to this day, and many students have to find a wizard to do a ritual before entering the examination room.
These two traditional cultural drosses prevailed on the peninsula for hundreds of years, until Christianity was born. They translated the Bible into easy-to-learn Korean and built schools for missionary purposes. Some of the people at the bottom are also beginning to grasp the knowledge. They gradually realized that the peninsula was not only the peninsula of two classes of nobles, but also their own peninsula. The national consciousness of this group began to awaken and took to the streets as Christians during the Japanese occupation.
During the junta, the people who were miserable in reality turned to various wild churches and cults. Park Chung-hee took South Korea out of the real predicament and used education to let the people see that there is hope in the real world. However, the growth of the chaebol has made famous schools the only stepping stone to change their destiny, and the examination has evolved into a competition for the bottom of the family. The ground floor is still hopeless. At this time, the cult reappeared, showing the world a shortcut across classes.
By the 1990s, Christian leaders came to power. It was divided into Protestantism and Catholicism. These two Christians have opposite political ideas, and both sides have staged a great drama in Korean politics in the new century. But whether Catholic or Protestant, greedy or greedy, incorruptible or incorruptible. Thus, the obvious truth was finally put on the table: politics is politics, religion is religion. The latter is only a tool used by the former to rule.
The cult Xintiandi, which is under the guise of curing diseases, has hindered the fight against the epidemic, and the sect leader has still been arrested; Kim Kwang-hyun, president of the Orthodox Christian General Association, who shouted "release Park Geun-hye" at GwanghwaMun during the epidemic for human rights, has also been arrested. The Korean drama "Defamation Law" shows the fly camp between senior government officials, chaebols, and wild religions in a surreal way.
Poster of the Law of Defamation
Can the government ban cults?
Absolutely. But if there is no direct impact on government decision-making, why ban these organizations?
In today's Korea, various religious elements are mixed together and integrated into every aspect of korean life. They serve as the spiritual sustenance of the Koreans. After the ban, how should South Koreans who have lost their spiritual sustenance face the cold reality of class solidification and disparity between rich and poor caused by the chaebols?
This is precisely what Park Chung-hee's forethought is: only by developing education can we ensure the normal functioning of society after we and the dictatorship have withdrawn from the stage. Successors can alleviate growing class contradictions without relying on religion. It's just that he died too quickly, and too suddenly. The plutocrats rose far faster than he expected, and the door to class circulation was closed too early.
This is also the embodiment of Moon Jae-in's fearlessness: the chaebol is not unable to move, but how to move, and how to end after moving. After all, this monster, which was supported by the government itself, is the pillar of the national economy, and they have indeed played an indelible role in the development of South Korea. Taking a step back, maintaining the status quo means that two-thirds of the country's households belong to the middle class. But without them, can South Korea maintain a PER CAPITA GDP of more than $30,000?
Except for close friend Roh Moo-hyun and former Park Geun-hye, no one dared to take this risk. And Park Geun-hye's daring to take a shot at the chaebol is out of her own political philosophy. She longs to return to the dictatorship of her father, Park Chung-hee, does not care about sacrificing democracy and freedom, and can directly rely on power oppression, allowing the country to gradually take over the chaebol enterprises to cope with the unknown economic situation. However, Park Geun-hye herself has no qualifications, but only relies on the prestige of her father Park Chung-hee to enter the political arena, even if her heart is higher than the sky, she can only empty her hands.
As an orthodox Catholic leftist, Moon Jae-in cannot ignore democracy, and naturally cannot rudely intervene directly in the market with power and rush south Korea into an unknown situation.
He could only choose a narrow path that took care of both left and right. This determines that he has a long, long way to go.
A while ago, Moon jae-in made the head of the Samsung bow his head. This is far from a victory, because the question remains: If the chaebols are really beaten, how will South Korea respond to the economic situation?
He thought of a group of people.
He thought of a man.
Epilogue: Hongyi Human
After entering the new century, the Taihe Hall was purchased by the South Supervision Church Consortium several times, and the original building was demolished to become a 12-storey Christian Church Welfare Hall.
In 2016, the Park Geun-hye girlfriend's interference in the government incident broke out. Choi Tae-min, the leader of the cult who had been reminded by Park Chung-hee to keep a distance from Park Geun-hye, introduced his daughter Choi Soon-sil to Park after his death. Choi Soon-sil inherited his father's psychic skills and became Park Geun-hye's girlfriend for 40 years. Choi Soon-sil's daughter entered the prestigious Ewha Women's University with a privileged status.
In this regard, the unspoken rule that has long been known in Korea also occurred in Ewada. Even Seoul National University, the head of the "City in the Sky", has half of its students from Gangnam-gu, so what's so unusual about a family with a lot of ties to the president that lets their daughter enter Ita university as a special student?
But the female students of Pear University ignored this fact. Perhaps in their opinion, the rich second generation in Jiangnan District may have competed with other opponents in the college entrance examination by relying on better educational resources, but at least, they abided by the rules of the game.
They can accept the rules of the game that may not be so fair, because that is the reality of helplessness. But they cannot accept that this rule can legitimately be used by the minority to isolate the majority.
Like Liu Kuanshun, an alumnus a hundred years ago, the female students of Pear University once again stood up defiant of power. They gathered in the school square, lit candles, and demanded that the principal resign.
Soon, they found the details of the privileged student and found all the way to Park Geun-hye's head: Choi Soon-sil could change the president's speech at will, and the day of the shipwreck of the Sewol three years ago was the day of the resurrection predicted in front of Choi Soon-sil's father, Choi Tae-min.
Cui Shun's practical work was pulled out, and the reporter obtained this information from the female students of Pear University and made it public. A grand demonstration immediately erupted across the country, with people carrying coffins and shouting for Park Geun-hye to step down.
On December 10, tens of thousands of Seoul citizens gathered at Gwanghwamun and lit candles to demand that Ms. Park step down. In the crowd, an old man attracted special attention, he was Moon Jae-in.
Many people said that revenge was seen in his face. Many people can also tell the story of his friendship with Roh Moo-hyun about Jiangshui. But many people have given the main object of revenge to the chaebols.
As everyone knows, the Korean political arena since the new century has been a drama of conflict between the old and the new within Christianity.
Since the Catholic Church promulgated the Pastoral Charter at the Vatican in 1965, South Korea's Catholic leaders have become politically more left-wing, forming a political faction that is diametrically opposed to Protestantism.
Like Moon Jae-in, the Catholic Roh Moo-hyun is politically leftist. After he took office, he was determined to solve the problem of chaebols that could not be solved. Roh Moo-hyun's answer to this is to support small and medium-sized enterprises and rely on market forces to weaken the influence of chaebols.
If this policy is implemented successfully, then students who graduate from ordinary colleges and universities can also find jobs through small enterprises newly supported by the government, and more and more ordinary people can also rely on the college entrance examination to open the door to class circulation. Because the job market has more options to choose from, entry notices will no longer be issued only to Sky's graduates.
But Roh moo-hyun spent his life telling his best friend Moon jae-in that the road would not work. The government single-handedly supported these chaebols in the original intention of developing national industries. In today's globalized world, these companies have long become a source of international competitiveness for South Korea. Roh Moo-hyun can weaken chaebols with small and medium-sized enterprises, but it also weakens South Korea's competitiveness.
Even if it is not successfully implemented, these things still offend the chaebols. They saw the opportunity and delivered a fatal blow to Roh Moo-hyun.
Roh Moo-hyun's spiritual position
Roh Moo-hyun was a pure idealist, even idealistic enough to start with himself and promote true democracy. He proposed the "separation of the party and the youth (Blue House)" in order to change the phenomenon that the president has always held absolute power in South Korea like an emperor. This idea is also unacceptable to Roh Moo-hyun's party. He was impeached and asked to resign. After its power was weakened by itself, the Samsung Group took the opportunity to set up a think tank to dictate national policies and began to directly intervene in politics.
After Roh Moo-hyun's term ended, Lee Myung-bak, a protestant funded by the chaebols, came to power. Politics and businessmen are once again in close contact. Everything Roh Moo-hyun did became useless. And Lee Myung-bak, who opposed the political stance of Catholic Roh Moo-hyun, once again staged the left-right confrontation in The Korean political arena that can be summarized by old and new Christianity, and liquidated the political enemy Roh Moo-hyun.
What happened to Roh Moo-hyun became his last experience for Moon. After coming to power, Moon did not decentralize powers, and politically handed over Park Geun-hye, a girlfriend of the Eastern cult who wanted to return to the military junta, and Lee Myung-bak, a Protestant, to the powerful procuratorate.
After political matters were handled almost completely, Moon had to face the old question: Did the chaebols move or not?
Roh Moo-hyun's experience has already told him that at this stage, South Korea is still inseparable from the chaebol. Their presence at least makes most people feel good.
But Moon is also an idealist. He walked through the bustle, but saw another side behind the glamour: even if most people can survive in this country, the pressure to survive has made South Korea an OECD organization country, the intensity of work is second only to the social animal concentration camps in Costa Rica and Mexico; retired elderly people are looking for jobs, and young people who have not yet entered the workplace can only sleep for four hours to qualify for the college entrance examination...
When South Korea became the first country in the new century to have a low fertility rate of 1, everything reminded Moon jae-in that the people were only superficial.
Slum life in a wealthy district in Gangnam, South Korea
The enormous pressure to survive has made the South Korean people, whose average income is nearly 200,000 yuan, despair again. Desperate enough not to have another child. Unlike in the past, even if the annual income is 200,000, the people still feel very tired. This is completely unimaginable in the era of the miracle of the Han River. Some eat, some wear, even if there is not so much money to go to a good cram school, but in the context of nearly two-thirds of the country's middle class, how can you live this life well-off.
But the meaning of the sky city is not the middle class, and the chaebol companies are not the jobs of the breadwinners, which is a stepping stone to the upper class of 0.1%.
The middle class is not the same as social animals, eating kimchi, working overtime until late at night every day, the elderly rely on generations to bully new people, and women are always wary of sexual harassment in the workplace... Only by becoming the top of the pyramid can it be possible to touch life, otherwise it is a walking dead to live a life. They are not even as good as the workers of the last century, and they can pin their hopes on the next generation. But a gradually recognized truth is that the next generation is only repeating an equally meaningless life. Unless the miracle of heavenly descent, the birth of a very intelligent child, relying on talent can be admitted to the SKY that only 2% of the candidates have the opportunity to enter; or join the army of trainees, looking forward to the great luck of the heavens, debut to become a star.
Looking at The South Korea in front of him, the Catholic Moon Jae-in may have thought of the Bible. There is a small gate in the city of Jerusalem, also known as the "Eye of needles." The camel must unload its cargo and kneel down to pass through the gate, meaning that man must lay down everything and humbly submit to God before the Lord in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. This is the meaning of "narrow gate" in Christianity.
There is also a narrow door in the real world. A narrow door to class mobility. To get through this door, it is obviously useless to let go and obey, and the only way is to fight and struggle.
But in South Korea, where the chaebol controls the lifeblood of the economy, the people have obviously been working hard and struggling, but nothing has changed.
Moon jae-in wants to change.
How can we grow our economy without relying on chaebols?
Innate conditions determine that South Korea cannot rely on a huge population base to drive domestic demand to find new variables like China. The expansion of overseas markets depends on these chaebols. Can we only use the state to slowly take over the chaebol like Park Geun-hye did? Unfortunately, even this approach is doomed to failure.
During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the South Korean people donated money to these chaebol groups. But in the end, the chaebols survived by the financial giants of Wall Street. This completely broke Park Chung-hee's abacus of supporting national enterprises through the integration of government and enterprises in order to get rid of the Us stranglehold by relying on economic independence. 56% of Samsung's shares are in the hands of Wall Street, and most of the profits are going to the United States.
Poster for the movie The Wolf of Wall Street
Even if the state takes over the chaebol, it is still working for the United States. There is a fixed ceiling on the income of migrant workers. Moon's only upside down possibility is to make South Korea a truly independent country. Then use the state to control the chaebols and solve various problems in Korean society.
The revolution has not yet succeeded. After all, South Korea is still hardly an independent country that does not depend on people. It's all back a hundred years. At that time, the peninsula was broken and ruined, and the ceremony collapsed. Desperate people at the bottom are paralyzed by religion, and the upper class is wearing the cloak of religion.
In 1947, after returning to China, Jin Jiu said to the people:
Everything that is to build a nation and to attain the conditions of existence and living of this nation must have a philosophy as its foundation. Without the philosophy of the country, it is impossible to unify the minds of the people. The philosophy that is poured into one country today and revels in the philosophy of another nation tomorrow can never maintain the independence of one's own thought and spirit, and can only rely on others forever.
To this day, we still don't see a unified philosophy that belongs to Korea. Moon Jae-in sees people finish their days in the world, and still walk into churches throughout Seoul in the moonlight, looking for the last harbor of the soul.
Cross-strewn Seoul
As a Catholic, Moon has his own faith. But what is the belief of the Korean nation?
At the beginning of the year, in Room N, you can see the figure of the patriarchal society of male superiority and female inferiority; parents run to the mountains to find shamans to give the children who are about to take the college entrance examination, which is the shadow of the native shamanism; after the title of the gold list, the parents' first words are "thank the Lord" instead of patting the child's shoulder and saying that it is hard, which is the influence of Western Christianity; and the president holds absolute power and is very much in line with the leadership standards of the East Asian Confucian cultural circle.
On the surface, South Korea is internally powered by a variety of religions.
Even more difficult than economic independence is independence of thought. This was a mission that Jin Jiu had spent his whole life on a hundred years ago. Now, that mission has fallen on Moon's head.
How do you accomplish this mission? A hundred years ago, Jin Jiu thought about this problem. In this life, he first participated in the Confucian imperial examination, then studied feudal superstitions for a while, and finally found a Western book with the same meaning as Confucianism: "The rise and fall of the world, the responsibility of the husband."
So the students who took to the streets woke him up. At the age of 37, Jin Jiu changed his name to "Bai Fan" in prison. In his own words, "Bai Fan expresses the lowest butcher and ignorant mortals in our country, and hopes that they will at least have the same patriotic meaning as me."
Let alone religion or political school, as long as everyone has a patriotic heart.
So Moon Jae-in still opened the knife to the chaebol. He wants to break the status quo of taking a dead wage. No one knows where he will go, or how he will respond to an economic situation that is likely to decline. Maybe he didn't know it himself.
He took the risk of taking the chaebol directly before, and decided to face the disorder that would inevitably arise after the balance was broken.
For he knew that a group of people would once again stand up and fight for the establishment of a reasonable order in the Republic of Korea.
This group of people today has their own beliefs, and they can even see the imprint of different religions in the same person.
They demanded the disclosure of criminal status in the "Room N" incident and fought for the rights of women;
They pushed for legislation in the Suyuan case to protect children;
They chased away the principal after Pear University produced a special student, calling for educational fairness;
They took to the streets again in the midst of their girlfriends' political work, bucking the trend under the general trend of rightization in the world, holding candlelight in their hands, rebelling against dictatorship, and pulling the president out of office. The night's Guanghua Gate is illuminated by this candlelight, and the little glimmers of light converge into the ocean, and the waves roll on the face of every Korean patriot.
They are South Korea's last hope.
The story finally comes to an end. Seventy-nine years ago, the Provisional Government headed by Kim Joo chose two universities on the peninsula as the background, painting a colorful picture for South Korea a hundred years later. One is the Ewha Academy established by Western missionaries, and the other is Hongyi University, which is based on the highest ideas of Eastern Confucianism. The name of the latter is taken from the Korean Confucian "Hongyi Human World", which means to devote oneself to all things that are beneficial to the world. These two college students of all different faiths stepped forward in the patriotic movement on the peninsula.
In 1941, when China officially declared war on Japan, the Provisional Government of South Korea traveled all the way to the mountain city of Chongqing. During the war, they sent 8 big characters to the people of the peninsula:
Hongyi human world, pear blossom world.
END
Author: Mediterranean Crab, Blood Diamond Story Researcher. Key research directions: East Asia, Europe.
Some references:
1. Comparison of the Spread of Modern Christianity in China and Korea. Sun Xueyan
2. Korean culture observed from the reality of Korean religion and its perspective lens. Choi Joon-sik
3. Moving towards the world's highest level of women's university - Ewha Women's University, South Korea. Admiralty beauty
4. Kim 9, the "Father of the Nation of Korea" who has struggled in China for 26 years. Zou Weiwei
5. Bai Fan Yizhi. Golden Nine
6. Research on the Development Process of Popularization of Higher Education in Korea and Its Enlightenment. Park Jeong-yong
7. Contemporary Korean Education Policy and Reform Trends. Ai Hongge
All that sees here is true love
Follow me to see more stories of international hardcore history