Korean management culture in the Unification Church of America

So your problem is Korean management culture? Hmmmm. If you'll forgive the generalizations and allow for the fact that Koreans are as varied as any other people, I'll throw out a few ideas. I hope these will help you deal with whatever's driving you nuts.

I find Koreans are wonderful as friends. But, much as I like them, they are generally difficult to work under when you're in the junior position. If it's any consolation, they tend to be nicer to foreigners than to their own.

The Confucianism that underpins the society means they start from a very different place than westerners. Bottom line existential reality is not God, but relationships with people. Thus their feet are more on the ground than ours. They're more materialistic and people-oriented than we are. We are more internal and vertical because we relate to God and our conscience more than to other people. Westerners do better on desert islands than easterners.

Korean relationships are structured so that everyone except same-age classmates and friends are either above or below in status. The learned ethical obligations tend to stress duties of the inferiors, rather than responsiblities of superiors.

They've been royally shafted by their leaders. In this century the country was handed over to Japan by the leadership without a fight. Given the lack of confidence in leadership (maybe there are other reasons, too), Koreans are very fractious. There's a joke that while 2 Japanese on a desert island would create one political party, 2 Koreans would create 3 parties - one each and a coalition.

They have historically lived in a fearful world. In a horrible century, Korea is up there with the Poles, the Cambodians and others for sheer enormity of suffering caused by political factors. It's touched every family.

Their authoritarian social system is also a source of suffering. They've all been bullied by dictators, teachers, police, army officers, bosses, fathers and big brothers, and anyone else with more authority. Women have had a bad time, and the first words they may hear is the "Oh no," of their father and grandparents when they're born. It's not illegal for a husband to beat his wife. I've lived in two places where next door the drunken dad regularly beat up his wife. The mothers' recourse has been to love their children with a passion. Most Koreans would crawl a million miles over broken glass for their mothers (but not for dad). God was no comfort because historically, their shamanistic spiritual world, until the recent arrival of Christianity, was peopled by spirits and ancestors that got angry and wrecked your life if not appeased. The Christian idea that all people are basically good didn't figure. All people are potentially bastards, so you can only trust your family. So they kind of approach the world with a personal confidence from mother's love, but with clenched fists.

They're very earthy and physical and get slapped around a lot. All the men have done military service and they're used to being thumped. When Cleophas, the Zimbabwean [medium for Sun Myung Moon's deceased son] Heungjin-nim, came here in 1987, most of the participants didn't really know what was going on but getting thrashed didn't really faze them. In our "conference" which happened overnight, the brothers were sprawled in the stairwells and offices of the headquarters while the sisters got done [over]. We were supposed to be praying for our wives, but the further down the basement you got, the more people were just crashed out. Every so often, a church leader would come round kicking everyone awake. "Wake up, you sons-of-b****s, you're supposed to be praying" he yelled. When he came to a westerner, he'd bow and smile and say "How are you?" and go on down the corridor kicking. The kicked member would open one eye, grunt, and go to sleep again. It's their way of conveying that they're not impressed. I love people like that, the kicker because he lets rip and the kickee because he's giving the bird back, as the Americans say.

But I've wandered from my point, which is what? Oh yes, management culture. I'm trying to outline where I think our Koreans come from. Modern Korea is rapidly changing, but our [Unification] church leaders come from the older generation which upturned the social system and brought Korea out of the paddy fields and into Silicon Valley. Father [Sun Myung Moon], and many of the leaders, are from peasant backgrounds and were raised at a time of terrible violence and grinding poverty. When Father says he was hungry every day until his 30s, he's not making it up.

Scratch a Korean and you will often find unspeakable stories in his family's experience. One of our people who posts on GVI, for example, has a relative who was tied by North Korean soldiers to the floor of his house and they stoked up the underfloor heating until he slowly burned to death. (If I've got that one slightly wrong, let me know). Both sides committed horrible atrocities of this kind during the war.

Has government protected them in peacetime? Er, no, government has always been the biggest bully. Last year I met a man who had been released from prison after 44 years. Most of it was in solitary confinement. His crime? He was a communist and refused to recant. Back in 1951, his family arrived after the trial was over and were told that if they'd got there earlier and bribed the judge, they could have got him off. Few people in Korea care about his story.

There are a million tales of power abuse. One of our members was once held on suspicion of murder. He was kept in a hotel room for 12 days by police, naked, and beaten senseless, but wouldn't confess. They let him go without a word and picked up another suspect, who got the same treatment. "Didn't you sue?" I asked him. "How long have you been in Korea?" he asked me. The law, I soon learned, and the tax authorities, are weapons in the bully's armory. When the Segye Ilbo ["World Times" newspaper] ran stories criticising the government, authorities threatened UC [Unification Church] companies with tax probes. The business leaders pressured the newspaper to kill the stories. Thus one arm of the UC [Unification Church] did the government's dirty work against another. In this kind of environment, violating law and cheating on taxes is understandable.

So Koreans fear fate and mistrust people something wicked, and with good reason. One of their survival strategies is to harness spirit world - using fortune-tellers, making offerings etc. They also rely on intuition about people. Westerners tend to be impressed with words, but Koreans tend to "feel" people's vibes. You may have had the sense that while you're explaining something to a Korean (especially one in a superior position), he's not really listening. His ears might be, but he's often trying to sense what you are, whether you're a decent person or a threat etc. It's this kind of thing that people are referring to, I think, when they say Koreans are "internal."

Another strategy is to roll over when you're weak. Don't be fooled by the bowing. Koreans tend to dislike bosses and leaders, but they know when to acknowledge superior power.

Going overseas, Koreans get into all kinds of trouble that other people don't because of all this baggage I'm talking about. There are cases of businessmen beating up workers in China and Indonesia. In the West, the problem tends to be corruption. You need to bribe your way in business in Korea and there's often a naive assumption that this will work in developed countries. Korean managers do much better with blue-collar workers than with white-collar workers in the West. One strong point for the Koreans is their earthy emotionalism which many blue collar workers (in Britain, for example) love.

The culture-clash problems we are familiar with in the UC come about when people from this low-trust, formation-stage culture, find themselves in charge of people from high-trust, Christian cultures. The Christian societies are what we might call growth stage, except for Britain, of course, which is perfected (or will be once we dump the royal family and the House of Lords - but that's another post).

The UC [Unification Church] is a complicated issue because it's a spiritual group, not a business. One problem is that Korea is being idealized and made, unreasonably and I think unprovidentially [in contradiction to God's "providence," or plan for the historical process of restoration to God's ideal], an object of worship. Another is that, as children of TP ["True Parents," the title within the Unification Church for Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hakja Han Moon], we are in a sense brothers and sisters to our bosses and we get ratty and resentful when they treat us like employees. (Perhaps if they paid, we wouldn't mind).

Also, Father [Sun Myung Moon] is more than a Korean. His views are informed by Korean experience and values, but he goes beyond it. One of my few personal experiences with Father was very liberating in this regard. His gave me something once and as I sat down a Korean leader in a loud aside said, "In Korea, when we receive things from True Parents, we do so like this with two hands." I thought I might have inadvertenly offended Father and half rose out of my chair to apologize, but he waved me down with a smile and said in English, "Korean culture. Not important."

Still, in general, the UC [Unification Church] is very Korean (aside from the Japanese part) because of certain features that Father is unwilling or unable to step in and change. For example, it's:

1. Authoritarian. Central power is very much in the hands of one man and one man only. Why? If it weren't, other Korean leaders would have by now hijacked the movement (especially the money) and Father would be a figurehead.

2. Individualistic. Koreans are low-trust. They do not harmonize like the Japanese. Each pursues his own mission and makes sure his lifeline to the power source is intact. So Korean leaders appear to be "doing their own thing." The higher they are, the less likely to cooperate with their peers. The way to get on in the UC [Unification Church] is create your own career within it. (I'd suggest that the way to get on in God's providence is to intuit your career and get on with it within or without the UC).

3. Status-oriented. Your status determines how you are treated. Thus the symbols that denote status become very important. For example, being "Mr" is pretty low so you try to go for "Dr" or "Prof" or "Rev".

4. Personality-oriented. Loyalty is not to ideas but to people in power.

5. Supply-side (is this the right term?). The needs of the top (producer) are considered to be more important than bottom (the consumer). The homechurch [originally the idea of a church member but adopted by Rev. Moon, members work independently to serve and to "restore" a local neighborhood of 360 homes], tribal messiah [moving to ones hometown to "restore" ones extended family] drives [campaigns] marked a democratization, but many people ignored these opportunities to set themselves free. In Korea, there is great democratizing change as politicians are having to consider voters to stay in power, and businesses are having to consider consumers and shareholders to stay viable.

6. Emotional. A great thing about many Koreans is that they are not afraid of emotion. You can get angry and disagree with them and they won't hold it against you as long as you don't embarass them in public. When they pray and their heart is bursting, the snot and tears fly. Tears are the measure of spirituality in the UC. And rightly so, given the central theme of God's heart.

7. Poor communication. The inspiring parts of the Unification message: God has a broken heart, you have a messianic role to heal it, let's harmonize, let's marry foreigners, etc etc are poorly communicated. Even members get all kinds of funny ideas about what our goals are. Outsiders are either not interested or convinced we're up to no good. Some simple communication might help clear this up, but we shouldn't expect it. Korean companies are horrible at PR, which is a very new industry here.

8. Hierarchical. You're limited by where you're from. Father is not likely to make the UC a meritocracy, rendering an individual's race, nationality and "restoration significance" irrelevant, at least not until Korean re-unification. (He has said that when Korea becomes "Adam", national barriers will cease to have meaning).

9. Politics over service. In Christian societies, the UC [Unification Church] could win hearts and minds through genuine and honestly-conducted charitable activities. But instead, we spend millions on things like getting people like George Bush to appear at our functions, then we pretend he accepts and approves of TP [True Parents] and the DP [Divine Principle, the Unification Church's primary book of scripture]. The Koreanologist in me sees this as based on a false assumption that Bush is at the top, being an elder statesman, and that acceptance from him will then flow down into the mass of society. But, actually I think there may be another strategy at work here which is the creation of Father's biography for future generations, who may read of his encounters with Nixon, Bush, Gorbachev, Kim Il-sung et al as evidence that he was a major player.

10. There's others, but I'm beginnng to flag here... Any suggestions, Tim? Daniel? [A professional translator and a professor, respectively, both men were members of the Unification Church and long-time residents of Korea] Anyone?

You asked about the UC [Unification Church] being DP-based [Divine Principle]. I'm not sure what it would be like if the UC were truly DP-based. American Christian? No, perhaps we would see each other not as a family under TP ["True Parents": Sun Myung Moon and Hakja Han Moon] - I'm very doubtful about the viability of characterizing organizations as "families" - but as Christ. That would be nice.

When I said I thought that loyalty is the only virtue, I meant that for leadership it tends to be the prime virtue. You'll note that at the highest levels of our movement, a person can tumble into obscurity if he is disloyal, but can be given enormous responsibility despite demonstrable and repeated incompetence if he is loyal.

To demand loyalty requires beating down people's quirks and individuality. What for? To help me, the leader, fulfil my goals and bask in the sunshine of Father's approval. GVI postings are indication enough of the wealth of individuality, originality, intelligence, creativy and heart of people. But if Teri were demanding only expressions of loyalty to her so that she could say, Father, I received 70 mesages today saying that you should live to be 500 years old, all this would get beaten down to the lowest common denominator. That's what I meant.

This is a bit of a ramble, Robert. Is it OK? If it doesn't help, I'm sorry. Please keep taking the tablets and I'm sure you'll be alright.

Mike