China, Korea, Japan and other South Eastern Asian countries are generally regarded as a Confucian country. Confucian culture of these nations have continuously gained interest and were the subject of concern for both Eastern and Western scholars. Marx...
China, Korea, Japan and other South Eastern Asian countries are generally regarded as a Confucian country. Confucian culture of these nations have continuously gained interest and were the subject of concern for both Eastern and Western scholars. Marx Weber, stated that Chinese Confucian culture prevented capitalistic economy from booming in China and a lot of scholars tried to find the reason for rapid economical development and growth in South East Asia in Confucian culture itself. In the 1990's, during the Asian Financial crisis, criticism concerning the Confucian culture started to rise again. However, a lot of Confucian countries including China, Korea and Japan started to adopt modern Western culture. Today, I wonder how dominantly Confucian cultures effect the countries in South East Asia, as indicated by the scholars. Especially, I wonder how many of the students in their 20's have these traditional Confucian values in them. When we talk about "Confucian countries" it seems that countries like China, Korea, Japan and other South Western countries are still influenced dominantly by these values. Especially, among the various "Confucian countries", China and Korea conduct most active interchange of Confucian culture and we often believe that Chinese and Korean Confucian culture is very similar to each other. But when we examine the failure cases of Korean business men who adopted Korean business culture to companies in China, we can clearly see that there are significant difference between the Confucian cultures of China and Korea. Also, we established a preconception stating that China and Korea are very similar to one other due to this, thus resulting in inefficient understanding of the differences between these two nations. I believe that this preconception of believing these two nations are similar, obstructed the co-understanding between these two nations. Then, what kind of similarities and differences exist between the two Confucian cultures in China and Korea? In this study, with these questions in mind, we established a survey questionnaire containing questions reflecting "South East Asian Confucian culture and values", commonly discussed by prominent scholars, and conducted the survey to university students in both China and Korea. The results are as follows:
First, recognition for Confucianism was very different among the students of China and Korea. Where as Korean students had a tendency of believing Confucianism as a behavioral criterion, Chinese students believed that Confucianism as a set of abstract values.
Considering the behavioral criterion, Korean students were more influenced by the Confucian values than Chinese students. And and oppositely, Chinese students were more influenced than Korean students concerning the abstract aspect of Confucianism. Considering the "personal Confucian values", students from both countries showed strong degree of individualism and in regards to the aspect of attitude towards life, Chinese students put more emphasis on work than Korean students. Considering the relationship in our daily life like "husband and wife", "parents and me", "the elderly and me", "friends and me", and etc. Korean students showed higher degree of Confucianism attitude than Chinese students. However, parents of both countries showed higher level of differences concerning this subject than the respondent students. Thus, Korean parents were more obedient to Confucian values then the Chinese parents and when examined compared to the parents generations, Korean students showed high level of negative and dubious attitude towards a lot of Confucian regulations. When we examined the criteria's like "Country and me", "minority group and country", "leader and democracy", "rationality and recognition" and other abstract values, Chinese students showed high degree of Confucian response then the Korean students. When we divided the survey questionnaire into two criteria's, behavior and attitude, Korean students showed higher level of Confucian response for behavioral aspect and Chinese students showed high level of Confucian response towards the attitude aspect. Especially, the differences in the behavioral aspect were more definite between the students of China and Korea.
Korean students showed more negative evaluation of Confucianism than the Chinese students. In the future, Confucian will experience more criticism in Korea, and I carefully conclude that effects and influences of Confucian behavioral regulation will significantly decrease in the future.