Two summits, one Korean peninsular
[ by Charles Cameron — colloquially speakin’, there’s a whole lot of prayin’, partyin’ & paradoxin’ goin’ on]
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War on the Rocks brings us a fascinating article by Ramon Pacheco Pardo of the Institute for European Studies of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Senior Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London, titled The Korean Summit that Really Matters, and you guessed it, it’s not the one between Trump and Kim, its the one between North and South — and the WOTR piece has more (perhaps not unexpectedly) about the South than the North.
For my purposes, the WOTR piece opened eye-catchingly with a Buddhist and Christian doublet:
On Monday, South Korea’s Catholic Church held an unusual prayer: It prayed for the success of the upcoming inter-Korean summit. The following day, South Korean President Moon Jae-in attended a Buddhist service, also praying for the summit’s success.
That much religion in two short sentences put me on the alert —
— and only from there did the writer move to a comparison between the Moon and Trump summits:
Clearly, the Moon administration is leaving nothing to chance to ensure that next week’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un redefines Korean geopolitics. Both Moon and, to a lesser extent, Kim have been preparing for this moment for years. This is why the upcoming inter-Korean summit, not the much-discussed summit between Kim and U.S President Donald Trump, is the one that really matters for the future of the peninsula.
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For a detailed look at the entire Korean situation, look at or critique the whole WOTR piece:
WOTR, The Korean Summit that Really Matters
The two articles Pacheco Pardo links to regarding President Moon attending Catholic and Buddhist prayers are:
NK News, S. Korea’s Catholic Church prays for inter-Korean summit’s success NK News, Moon vows efforts to establish peace between the two Koreas
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Digging around a bit farther afield from there brought rewards.
We already knew that Junche — “usually left untranslated, or translated as ‘self-reliance'” is ideology of North Korea, and that it is effectively a cult of personality of the revolutionary (dynastic) leader — nothing much new to glean there — but the South Korean leader’s speech led me onwards:
President Moon Jae-in has called on Buddhists to show their support for peace on the Korean Peninsula. “The Hwajaeng theory espoused by Wonhyo (617-686), one of the greatest masters in the history of Korean Buddhism, means a ‘cooperative resolution of conflict,’ and it will hopefully be fulfilled on the peninsula, as we resolve conflicts and division between the two Koreas,” he said.
His remarks came during a Buddhist ceremony on April 17 to pray for security and peace on the peninsula, with chief monks and representatives from major temples across the country, and also some non-Korean Buddhists, in attendance.
Aha!
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Wonhyo seems to have been something of a blithe spirit, as well as a scholar, the author of voluminous works:
[Wonhyo] tried to embody in his own life the ideal of a bodhisattva who works for the well-being of all sentient beings. Transcending the distinction of the sacred and the secular, he married a widower princess, visited villages and towns, and taught people with songs and dances.
— as one of his commentators puts it. You can almost hear Wikipedia laugh or snort (your choice) as it says:
While the Buddha discouraged such behaviors, his [Wonhyo’s] songs and dances were seen as upaya, or skillful means, meant to help save all sentient beings.
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Get serious, please!
The required reading would appear to be in:
Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, Wonhyo: Selected Works, A Charles Miller, ed & tr
Defeating language at its own game by all available means, no wonder Wonhyo taught by dancing and singing!
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That’s all very well, and may please the poet-theologian in me, but what about Hwajaeng and conflict resolution?
As a methodological approach, hwajaeng refers to Wonhyo’s relentless pursuit of ostensibly variant or conflicting Buddhist doctrinal positions, investigating them exhaustively until identifying the precise point at which their variance occurs and then showing how differences in fundamental background, motivation, or sectarian bias on the part of the proponent of that particular doctrinal position led to the production of such apparent contradictions. He never judges any proposition to be ultimately correct: it is only determined to be valid or invalid from a given standpoint. Wonhyo then lays out his own argument in contradistinction to the attached views he has previously elaborated.
It will be instructive to see how President Moon develops this approach vis-a-vis South-North dialog, and how the somewhat inscrutable Kim Jong Un receives and adapts to it..
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The image in the top panel, above, shows President Park Geun-hye and Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung. President Moon succeeded President Park after her impeachment in the 2017 elections. He is shown praying, second left, in the lower panel, above,
Image sources:
Korea.net, President meets Catholic leaders Korea.net, President Moon asks Buddhists to join peacemaking on peninsula
Okay, my head is spinning.
