Comment by sanxiyn
5 years ago
I am from South Korea. This is the same "culture" bullshit argued about South Korea 30 years ago. Kim Dae Jung who dedicated his life to democracy in South Korea and who went on to be the first president elected from the opposition wrote a through rebuttal in 1994. Go read it.
Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's Anti-Democratic Values (Kim Dae Jung, 1994)
He went on to "write" an even better rebuttal by being elected in 1998 and building the foundation of South Korea as a fully functioning democracy in his term. Now the result speaks for itself.
I'll dig it up and read it, thanks for the pointer.
I heard this from several Khmer acquaintances - they're fed up of Westerners coming to Cambodia and trying to enforce Western ideas of democracy and "freedom" on them. There are a shit-tonne of White Saviours running around Phnom Penh trying to "save" Cambodia, so I totally get this.
A home-grown idea of Cambodian democracy, from Khmer people who are actually interested in what Khmer democracy would look like, is a totally different thing. If that's what happened in South Korea, then that's fantastic.