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Professor Park Hong-sik
By Chung Min-uck
East Asian countries rooted in the Confucian tradition are likely to form a single cultural community in the near future, said Park Hong-sik, professor at Daegu Haany University and chairman of the Korean Society of Confucianism, a private academic organization.
“The Western civilization of Christianity and science has reached breaking point after leading the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries,” said Park in an interview with The Korea Times, Sunday. “In the 21st century, the central axis of the world’s civilizations is shifting toward East Asia, in other words, a pan-Confucian culture.”
“I expect a single Confucian community in East Asia in the future within this century,” said the professor.
Following the June 27 Seoul-Beijing summit, the two countries agreed to launch a joint committee dedicated to strengthening cooperation on bilateral people-to-people exchanges and developing their common cultural heritage. The decision drew fresh attention to Confucianism which has been the philosophy for countries in the region including China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam for over 2,000 years.
“The world is craving new values, and the increasing political and economic power of the East Asian region is not a coincidence,” Park said. “Confucian scriptures are the repository of highest level of humanistic work that mankind has ever achieved.”
To this end, the chairman said, new light should be shed on the “Neo-Confucian” tradition, a philosophical system codified by the Chinese Southern Song Dynasty scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200), who wrote the basis that formed much of the state ideologies of later dynasties in East Asia.
“Neo-Confucianism which effectively combined humanities and science gives contemporary man an important message,” Park said.
Neo-Confucianism, unlike Western science which gained a competitive edge by separating humanity from nature, synthesizes the two by combining early Confucian morals and ethical teachings with metaphysical and cosmological terms developed respectively in Buddhism and Daoism. Simply put, personal morality is inseparable from material development under Confucian thinking.
“With Confucianism, one must care about other human-beings while embracing nature as well,” said Park. “That’s the core of Confucian teachings, entailing universal values that people are currently searching for.”
Meanwhile, among the four criteria suggested for Seoul-Beijing humanities initiative _ regional, youth, scholarly, and traditional and artistic exchanges _ the professor pointed out youth exchange as the most critical.
“There must be long-term investment in the field of humanities to develop,” he said. “So, more investment should be made for youth exchange programs.”
During the annual board of directors’ meeting of International Confucianism Association (ICA), a Beijing-based private international body on Confucian studies, held in Beijing in April, Park appealed to form a subcommittee on youth exchange. In turn, ICA members have decided to hold a separate meeting on launching the subcommittee as early as October.
“I hope things go well in the ICA just like the Seoul-Beijing committee,” said Park.
Prompted by the economic prosperity of Confucian-rooted countries, the ICA is also attempting to expand its scope of activities from previous academic exchanges to discussing and networking with the members in forming a single Confucian community.
Headquartered in Beijing, the association receives financial and administrative support largely from the Chinese government. The idea of launching a global Confucian organization was, however, originally proposed by South Korea in the early 1990s.
The ICA was established by scholars around the world who study Confucianism, largely from China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam, in 1994 in Beijing. Its general assembly meeting is held once every four years.
