I think I'm probably the one to blame for the current Confucian
controversy, since I mentioned in passing that the status of women in South
Korea has improved since Christianity became the dominant religion.
 
I should add that my observation is strictly anecdotal and unscientific.
South Korea is religiously complex, with a native animism overlain by both
Confucianism and Buddhism, and I haven't done the required reading and I
don't even speak Korean. But my wife is from Korea, and in the twenty or so
years I've been visiting the country the visible changes have been just
amazing. For one thing, every tiny village now lies in the shadow of an
enormous church, and a number of the country's thousand-year-old Buddhist
temples have been burned to the ground. Architecturally, that change is
considerably for the worse. But on the other hand, women -- at least the
newly Christian women I know -- are no longer deferential the way they used
to be. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying something complex, but it certainly
appears to me that the change in religious culture has brought about
something like a liberation. Bear in mind, too, that this is the country
where an early-twentieth-century Christian educator, Helen Kim, caused a
major scandal by trimming her hair to shoulder length in defiance of
tradition.
 
But of course Pound's Confucianism is an ideal construction that doesn't
have much to do with any of this.
 
Jonathan Morse