Based on Professor Hiroshi Furuta’s essay, this article examines seven principles for rebuilding Korea as a modern state and warns that direct democracy, rooted in ancient Greek thought, has a strong affinity with dictatorship and mass manipulation.

The Dangerous Illusion of Direct Democracy — Seven Principles for the Rebirth of the Korean Modern State
2017-02-14

The following is from an essay published in the March issue of the monthly magazine Seiron by Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.
His fields of specialization include political thought, the history of East Asian political thought, North Korean politics, Korean social studies, medieval Korean history, and ideological indoctrination studies (according to Wikipedia).
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A Proposal for the Rebirth of the Korean Modern State

Having previously described how devastating Korea’s current condition is, I would like, out of goodwill, to propose better guidelines for Korea’s rebirth as a modern state.
To make them easy to understand and practical, I have summarized them into seven points.

Seven Principles for the Rebirth of the Korean Modern State

1. Recognize that the Korean Peninsula is a nation founded on a fatal geographical condition — a “dead-end corridor.”
2. Be grateful that this “dead-end corridor” has been sustained by the U.S.–Korea military alliance and the Japan–Korea Basic Treaty, allowing the peninsula to become an “island” at the 38th parallel.
3. Completely dissolve clan-based structures and sever the roots of Oriental despotism.
4. Eliminate miracle-seeking beliefs, deepen existing Christian faith, and learn to trust one’s neighbors.
5. Relearn the modern principles of division of labor and cooperation from one’s neighbors, and acquire the sense of “shame” as a “premonition of self-restraint.”
6. Abandon the fiction that the Yi Dynasty was good and the Japanese period was evil, and until the day modernization is achieved, deliberately conduct historical education by treating the Yi Dynasty as the root of all evils.
7. Reform a judicial system designed for self-preservation and the practice of making examples of neighbors, and implement a rule of law that suppresses narcissism.

There is also one warning.
Direct democracy, in which the masses go directly into public squares, is an ancient Greek idea and should be avoided; however, if it has practical usefulness in present-day Korea, it may be unavoidable.
If the horse you are trying to run prefers moldy carrots, then give them to it.
As for the poison of that mold, see Carl Schmitt’s The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Misuzu Shobo, 2000).
Direct democracy has a high affinity with dictatorial politics.
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