Family Metaphors in Religion: Cases from the Korean Peninsula
by Hyang Jin Jung (정향진)
Family metaphors have been prominently used in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, since their early days. By naming or assuming the monotheistic god as Father, they attempt to not just establish a covenant community but also imbue it with familial affective relationality and concomitant practices among followers. It may be that the metaphors centering on blood relations have an intuitive appeal for religious (and political) inspiration. Yet their very visceral qualities can be limiting. An ethnic or “racial” boundary often demarcates a comfort zone of family metaphors, beyond which they falter and fumble. By definition, “family” distinguishes itself from “non-family,” outsiders. Family metaphors then have particularizing tendencies, even while universalizing within the boundary they mark.
The case of Christianity is uniquely interesting in this regard, as was shown in Hillary Kaell’s book. Of the major Abrahamic religions, it is most explicit in the use of family metaphors. Furthermore, it has achieved an unrivaled globalization, aided by the politico-military and economic expansion of European and later American power. The challenge is that the Christian “family” now traverses a vastly varied landscape, racially or otherwise. The American Christians in Kaell’s study envision a global (Christian) family in which they practice their Christian love for those of different “races.” They “adopt” (sponsor) children and extend their familial circle, at a distance. Notwithstanding the power relations and human strains involved, a certain kind of universalism, or “globalism,” seems to be achieved through affective practices enhanced by family metaphors, whether actively used or simply assumed.
For a comparative perspective, I take two examples from the Korean peninsula, Jucheism and the Unification Church. Jucheism is North Korea’s state ideology. Many observers consider it a politico-religion, which worships Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea (Armstrong 2005; B. Kim 2000; Jung 2013; Shin 2007). The Unification Church is a new religion whose founder, Moon Sun Myung, claims to be a true heir of Jesus. It has a sizable international fellowship and is noted for its mass wedding ceremonies. Each of the two Korean examples heavily relies on family metaphors and manifests particularism and universalism, respectively, in fascinating ways. The very intensity with which they appropriate family metaphors highlights the potentialities and contradictions inherent in the metaphors. These two cases also point to the cultural underpinnings of family metaphors, particularly in the way they are appropriated, a point no less relevant to the American “globalism.”
First, Jucheism worships Kim Il Sung as the Father and his successors are literally the Father’s son and grandson. The North Korean Trinity consists of the Father Leader, the Mother Party, and the Children People (Wada 2002: 148). Ideally, the Father and the Mother together raise and nurture the Children, thus making One Big Family (daegajeong) that is North Korea. The Father and the Mother would do anything and everything for the Children; in return, the Children shall remain filial to the Parents, and treat each other as blood relations, through thick and thin. Under the benevolent care of the Father and the Mother, the Children shall remain united: “one for all, all for one.” As is often depicted in the international mass media, North Koreans pay uttermost respect to their leaders, dead or alive. It appears that the living one evokes euphoria and awe, while the dead ones evoke more a feeling of longing. The leaders’ statues, monuments, museums, or portraits are a ubiquitous feature of North Korea. The whole country is a tribute to the Father (and his successors). Likewise, one’s whole life is expected to be a tribute to the Father. As the state religion, Jucheism is fully equipped with worship services and rituals, on daily, weekly, and yearly bases. The most notorious one is the weekly sacrament of penance (“conduct review session”) when self-criticism and mutual criticism are performed in a group setting regarding individuals’ moral and political conduct for the week (Jung 2020). Jucheism also marks passages of life among the people, beginning with the initiation into the Youth League at the age of 8. In my view, the North Korean way of life is comparable to what Huizinga (1996) described in The Autumn of the Middle Ages in permeating life with religiosity and religious discipline, all centering on the Father.
Juche’s mobilization of the people through an excessive use of family metaphors came to a point where North Koreans have officially become “Kim Il Sung nation.” It fabricates an “ethnos” that is separate from South Koreans. Jucheism showcases how much a family metaphor can go in the direction of particularism, even while it universalizes within its own boundaries (“all North Koreans yet only North Koreans are family members”). At least to some degree, Jucheism has been successful in its aim to manipulate and shape structures of feelings among North Koreans. In my interviews with North Korean refugees living in South Korea, even while they proclaimed profound feelings of betrayal from the leaders, many of them hinted, with a trembling voice, teary eyes, or sighs, at even more profound feelings of attachment and longing for the Father. They professed that they could not speak of the leaders, Kim Il Sung in particular, without the proper honorifics. One of them openly acknowledged that her now Christian belief fell short of her faith in Kim Il Sung (Jung 2013: 94).
The North Korean state has attempted to export Jucheism to make it a global success. In Africa, where it succeeded most, one can see huge statues of African leaders in countries like Botswana, DR Congo, Mozambique, Senegal, to name just a few, in a similar fashion to the ones of leaders in North Korea (see Kirkwood 2011; van der Hoog 2018). In fact, the Juche-style African statues were made, as either gifts or commissioned works, by the North Korean state studio, Mansudae. Instead of achieving a universalism, however, Jucheism seems to have helped establish, or resonated with, a nationalist particularism surrounding the anti-imperialist hero who in some cases became the dictator, just like Kim Il Sung himself. I briefly note that Jucheism’s international outreach, especially through the Non-Aligned Movement, is an overlooked yet integral part of Cold War history that merits further study.
The second example is the Unification Church (UC). Commentators most often discuss its cultic aspect, particularly its mass weddings. Less attention is paid as to the logic behind these weddings. As the UC’s official name, Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, indicates, it aspires to make the whole human world a “federation of families” so that it will be peaceful and unified (Moon 1998). The founder of the UC, Moon Sun Myung, viewed romantic love was the antithesis of a good family; people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds should also be married to help bridge different or even hostile groups. Hence the organization’s match-making and mass wedding ceremonies often of couples with different nationalities. Note that among Koreans, match-making was traditionally the only legitimate way to form a marriage and is still popular. Customarily, in Korea, singlehood was not acknowledged in its own right and only marriage could give one the stamp of full adulthood. In the UC, match-made marriage is a necessary step to reach the kingdom of heaven.
Apart from the practice of match-making, the founder and his wife are called “True Father and True Mother,” with Moon’s immediate family considered the “True Family.” It would not be an overstatement to suggest that the manner in which the UC founder and his wife are worshiped by their followers is comparable to how North Koreans view their leaders. Among the religious rituals of the (ostensibly Christian) UC, one can find something very similar to Korean ancestor worship, which Jucheism also adopts at a grander scale. Yet a defining feature of the UC is perhaps its aspiration for universalism. It went so far as to practice “inter-blood” marriages, or to mix blood, in order to turn the globe into a kingdom of blood relations in the “real” sense of the term: a truly global family. The UC practice is a twist of the Korean familial culture, which sees marriage as essential but is generally very conservative concerning inter-racial marriage.
It is interesting to note that the founders of both Jucheism and the Unification Church are from present-day North Korea. Although Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) and Moon Sun Myung (1920-2012) had drastically different life paths (one a politician and founder of a communist state, the other a pastor and founder of a religious sect with a strong anti-communist stance), both were born and grew up in the northwest region of the Korean peninsula, where Christianity was booming even under the repression of Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945). Further, both men came from Christian families. (When North Korea was founded, Moon fled to South Korea and later moved to US.)
My view is that both Jucheism and the Unification Church are strongly based on cultural understandings of the family and accompanying affective practices among Koreans, liberally incorporating Christian and other ideological and religious influences. It is argued that North Korea’s Jucheism appropriated Christian theology and worship practices, while purging Christians (B. Kim 2000). The Unification Church itself claims to be Christian. Regardless of their respective affinities with Christianity, the two Korean examples share what scholars of Korea call “familism.”
Familism refers to two related phenomena: first, the family as a group functions as the most fundamental unit in social life; second, principles of family organization are applied to non-familial organization in the larger society (Choi 2011; for the latter case, see Jung 2014). It has a historical root in the moral-political arrangement of the dynastic society of Joseon (1392-1910). The Joseon dynasty was founded on neo-Confucian ideology, which reshaped the organization of family and lineage by making ancestor worship a ritual pillar of society (Deuchler 1995; Janelli and Janelli 1992). Confucianism in general, including neo-Confucianism, however, fell short of answering existential questions, for which premodern Koreans tended to look to Buddhism and Shamanism, both of these religions having had a longer and richer history with the people. When Christianity began to gain traction at the end of the dynasty and during subsequent Japanese colonial rule, it promised to fill the existential gap that Confucianism had left. My conjecture is that Christianity’s own propensity for family metaphors, as well as its allure of modernity, certainly helped its evangelizing efforts among Koreans. Generally, Christianity was more popular in the regions outside Confucianism’s strongholds. It was so successful in the northwest region that Pyongyang, presently the capital of North Korea, was even called “Jerusalem of the East” among missionaries from the West in the early decades of the twentieth century (R. Kim 2016).
In South Korea, Christianity has continued to grow and has adapted to or been influenced by Korean familism. In Jucheism and the Unification Church, however, familism itself has incorporated certain elements of Christianity, family metaphors in particular, and gave birth to new religions. It may be argued that Jucheism and the Unification Church are cases of familism made religious, where the this-worldliness of neo-Confucianism could finally find a path to the after-life and eternity. A crucial difference between Jucheism and the UC, however, may lie in the size of that heaven each respective Father claims to govern: one is a North Korean heaven and the other is a global heaven.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Why would family metaphors have an appeal in religion? What kinds of emotions and feelings may they arouse in believers? What would happen if we are forbidden to use familial metaphors but ought to use non-familial, even non-human, ones in religion
What could be potentialities and contradictions of family metaphors in the way they are used in US religions?
Can you identify cultural underpinnings of the family metaphors in the US religion under discussion?
CLASS RESOURCES
YouTube: The Guardian. Life inside North Korea: The Power of Juche Explained.
YouTube: Vision. Religion, North Korean Style.
YouTube: ABC News. Unification Church Mass Wedding: From Strangers to ‘I Do.’
Public Delivery: North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio & Their Overseas Projects
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Choi, Jae-sok. 2011. Social Structure of Korea. Seoul: Jimoondang.
Deuchler, Martina. 1995. The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
Huizinga, Johan. 1996. The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Kim, Robert S. 2016. “Jerusalem of the East: The American Christians of Pyongyang, 1895-1942.” Posted on July 13, 2016. Accessed on July 7, 2020.
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Moon, Sun Myung. 1998. Blessing and Ideal Family. Washington, D.C.: Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Shin, Eun Hee. 2007. “The Sociopolitical Organism: The Religious Dimensions of Juche Philosophy.” In Religions of Korea in Practice, edited by Robert E. Buswell Jr., 517–533. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Van der Hoog, Tycho A. 2018. “Uncovering North Korean Forced Labour in Africa: Towards a Research Framework.” In People for Profit: North Korean Forced Labor on a Global Scale, edited by Remco E. Breuker and Imke van Gardingen, 67-83. Leiden: Leiden Asia Centre.
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Hyang Jin Jung (정향진) is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Seoul National University, South Korea. She received her Ph.D. in 2001 in cultural anthropology from the University of Minnesota, U.S.A. Her research interests lie in the intersection among culture, self, and emotion, with U.S. and the two Koreas as her primary anthropological sites. Her ongoing research projects include the emotional culture of the postmodern American society, the psychocultural underpinnings of the North Korean statehood and society, and education and the socialization of affect in South Korea. She is author of Learning to Be an Individual: Emotion and Person in an American Junior High School (Peter Lang, 2007).