Can Koreans Change Emotion Into Sustained Passion?

By Jon Huer

Korea Times Columnist

To say that Koreans are an emotional people is almost a truism. Still, most foreigners are astonished to discover what Korea's heart is capable of. Emotion in Korea is as cutting as a sword's edge, and as cruel as a sword's blow.

In matters of the heart, few cultures can match the infinite sweetness and affection of Korean hospitality. But this undeniable charm of the Korean heart has its flip side: That is, Korea is also an extraordinarily emotional and, for the same reason, irrational society. The greatest weapon in Korea's Charm Offensive is also its Worst Downfall.

To most observers of world cultures, Korea is easily the most emotional and irrational nation on Earth. (Serbs and Greeks come close).

Koreans' emotional affection is so authentic on the personal level, but it is so impossibly unpredictable on the business level. When this emotionality is combined with tribalism, and elevated into emotional nationalism, the effect is often pernicious and uncontrollable.

Koreans want to be global in outlook and wish to be thought of as world players. They desire to reach a level of international maturity and standards, dealing with other advanced nations rationally and reasonably. But, more often than not, their primeval emotion and irrationality get in the way of this aspiration.

Driven by the forces of emotion and irrationality, Koreans get hot-headed when a cool calculus should prevail. They give in to short-term emotional satisfaction and irrational impulses when a rational benefit-loss calculus should be the guide.

A civilization, especially one that is considered advanced, must be predictable, not arbitrary. Often, Koreans themselves recognize that their emotionality and irrationality are their own worst enemy in advancing to the ranks of more rational cultures.

Their aspiration for rationality, and for replacing emotionality with reason, is frustrated time and again simply because the roots of Korea's emotionalism are in every nook and cranny of Korean life and psyche, so deep and unfathomable by an outsider.

It is a lasting shame that Korea cannot separate passion from emotion, and this inability is at the core of Korea's own self-doubt and regret. Passion and emotion are difficult to separate because they are close cousins in real life.

Being passionate requires being emotional about something. But they are two different workings of our human mind, and the difference is what makes some emotions positive and some others negative in their outcome.

What Is the Difference?

Passion is emotion harnessed to accomplish specific goals. Emotion, as soon as it gives rise to passion, must take the backseat. Being passionate about a goal while controlling emotion is one of the characteristics of a mature society and people.

Korea's passage to advanced civilization appears incomplete without learning to be passionate about things without being emotional. This distinction is made clearer if we digress for a moment to American blacks.

Black people in America in their quest for civil rights is one good example of being passionate without being emotional.

Their emotion was harnessed into a passion that became the sustained struggle for their place in American society.

Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, who epitomized the virtue of passion harnessed from deep emotion, they relied on disciplined quest for freedom and won the battle.

As black people in America have won their inner battle, the Irish in Northern Ireland are still struggling to turn their emotion into passion, and the Palestinians have so far failed to do that.

Passion is normally aroused as a public philosophy and, as such, it emerges through historically articulated and debated issues of the times.

Emotion, on the other hand, is a private, personal response to a situation that has meaning only to those that are directly involved in the experience.

It is an immediate reaction to a situation that has no meaning to another person who is not directly or personally related. Emotion requires no argument, nor does it tolerate reasoned developments of logic and consequence in the process.

Emotion is a conspiracy among those who share the innermost secrets of the human mind. The emotional experience, and its reaction, of a person cannot be transferred effectively to another person unless the two are already in some sort of assumed understanding.

A drug addict understands another drug addict; an abused child forms a bond with another abused child; a Korean is an emotion-bonded brother or sister to another Korean. No reason, no explanation, no evidence is ever needed for one Korean to feel connected to another Korean, any more than among drug addicts or abused children.

``Being Korean'' is perhaps the most emotionally intense and absolute concept that exists in the human mind today. There are no ifs, ands or buts in being Korean. There is no escape from being Korean as recognized by other Koreans as such.

Malcolm X once asked a rhetorical question: ``What is a black man who has five Ph.Ds from Harvard?'' His own ironic answer was: ``A nigger.'' We can raise a similar question: ``What is a Korean descendant in America who was born and lived in America for 99 years and never set foot on Korean soil?'' The typical Korean answer would be: ``A Korean.'' This explains much about Korea's emotional existence.

Emotion arises and fades spontaneously. It is immensely satisfying to pursue emotional ends, but the satisfaction is short-lived and likely to be detrimental to the larger goals.

When individual Palestinians kill their enemies, the personal satisfaction is paramount and intense. But this individual satisfaction of emotion is a deadly enemy of the larger goal only a sustained and organized passion can achieve.

Of all the events that satisfy one's soul, nothing works as intensely as emotional satisfaction. Personal or tribal revenge is almost always more satisfying than historical vindication or universal justice achieved.

By being so emotionally and personally and immediately blinded by its heart's demand, Korea cannot decide whether it is the U.S. or North Korea or Japan that is its enemy. Where cool calculations for national interest should reign, tears and wailing dominate. Where issues of next generations ought to be considered, immediate tugs of heart rule. Where passions must be harnessed and organized and sustained on a long-term march for national self-respect, Korea is threatened by its own lust for emotional satisfaction.

There is a universal consensus among those who know and love Korea: Korea must learn to control its emotion and transform its emotion into sustained passion. Without this transformation, the consensus goes, Korea will remain in a state of permanent adolescence as a nation and people, lurching hot and cold according to its emotional dictates of the moment.

The writer can be reached at jonhuer@hotmail.com.

``The opinions expressed and the observations described in these articles are strictly the writer's own and do not represent any official position of the University of Maryland University College or the USFK.''

[출처 : 코리아타임스]