Robert Kim and Orestes Brownson
Robert Kim is all over the Korean news these days. For those not in the know, he's the US citizen of Korean extraction who spied for South Korea in the 1990s, just finished a seven-year prison term in the US, and will be returning to Korea next month, to a hero's welcome no doubt.

Here's what he said of his US citizenship in an interview entitled Robert Kim, where does your patriotism lie?:

Is a citizenship so important? I acquired a citizenship in order to work here [in the United States]. In some regards, it is a citizenship of convenience. Acquiring citizenship does not mean that one forgets their home country.

The Nomad is hosting a lively discussion of this matter in his post entitled I'm feeling ill, which is exactly how I feel. There, a commenter reminds Mr. Kim of the oath he swore:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God. In acknowledgement whereof I have hereunto affixed my signature.

The Marmot also hosts a level-headed discussion of the Robert Kim interview in the Korea Herald.

Robert Kim's actions do not really surprise me, although they sicken me. Korea is yet a people. America has always been a state. I am thinking of the distinctions made by Orestes Brownson, in 1865, in his magnum opus The American Republic, available online or by clicking on this link below:

Dr. Brownson writes at length of "civilization," which he defines not by material standards but as the "territorial democracy" of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and of the modern (19th Century) French, Spanish, Italians, Dutch, Belgians, Danes, British, and Americans. All else is barbarism, he notes, no matter what level of material and cultural wealth has been achieved. Here is a taste:

The word civilization stands opposed to barbarism, and is derived from civitas--city or state. The Greeks and Romans call all tribes and nations in which authority is vested in the chief, as distinguished from the state, barbarians. The origin of the word barbarian, barbarus, or barbaros, is unknown, and its primary sense can be only conjectured. Webster regards its primary sense as foreign, wild, fierce; but this could not have been its original sense; for the Greeks and Romans never termed all foreigners barbarians, and they applied the term to nations that had no inconsiderable culture and refinement of manners, and that had made respectable progress in art and sciences--the Indians, Persians, Medians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. They applied the term evidently in a political, not an ethical or an aesthetical sense, and as it would seem to designate a social order in which the state was not developed, and in which the nation was personal, not territorial, and authority was held as a private right, not as a public trust, or in which the domain vests in the chief or tribe, and not in the state; for they never term any others barbarians.

Republic is opposed not to monarchy, in the modern European sense, but to monarchy in the ancient or absolute sense. Lacedaemon had kings; yet it was no less republican than Athens; and Rome was called and was a republic under the emperors no less than under the consuls. Republic, respublica, by the very force of the term, means the public wealth, or, in good English, the commonwealth; that is, government founded not on personal or private wealth, but on the public wealth, public territory, or domain, or a Government that vests authority in the nation, and attaches the nation to a certain definite territory. France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, even Great Britain in substance though not in form, are all, in the strictest sense of the word, republican states; for the king or emperor does not govern in his own private right, but solely as representative of the power and majesty of the state. The distinctive mark of republicanism is the substitution of the state for the personal chief, and public authority for personal or private right. Republicanism is really civilization as opposed to barbarism, and all civility, in the old Sense of the word, or civiltà in Italian, is republican, and is applied in modern times to breeding or refinement of manners, simply because these are characteristics of a republican, or polished [from poliz, city] people. Every people that has a real civil order, or a fully developed state or polity, is a republican people; and hence the church and her great doctors when they speak of the state as distinguished from the church, call it the republic, as may be seen by consulting even a late Encyclical of Pius IX., which some have interpreted wrongly in an anti-republican sense.

All tribes and nations in which the patriarchal system remains, or is developed without transformation, are barbaric, and really so regarded by all Christendom. In civilized nations the patriarchal authority is transformed into that of the city or state, that is, of the republic; but in all barbarous nations it retains its Private and personal character. The nation is only the family or tribe, and is called by the name of its ancestor, founder, or chief, not by a geographical denomination. Race has not been supplanted by country; they are a people, not a state. They are not fixed to the soil, and though we may find in them ardent love of family, the tribe, or the chief, we never find among them that pure love of country or patriotism which so distinguished the Greeks and Romans, and is no less marked among modern Christian nations. They have a family, a race, a chief or king, but no patria, or country. The barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire, whether of the West or the East, were nations, or confederacies of nations, but not states. The nation with them was personal, not territorial. Their country was wherever they fed their flocks and herds, pitched their tents, and encamped for the night. There were Germans, but no German state, and even to-day the German finds his "father-land" wherever the German speech is spoken. The Polish, Sclavonian, Hungarian, Illyrian, Italian, and other provinces held by German states, in which the German language is not the mother-tongue, are excluded from the Germanic Confederation. The Turks, or Osmanlis, are a race, not a state, and are encamped, not settled, on the site of the Eastern Roman or Greek Empire.

[from Chapter III]

I have noticed in Korea that there is plenty of nationalism, but very little patriotism*. Robert Kim even alludes to this in his interview, in which he suggests "a different definition of patriotism, from the Korean translation of 'eh-gook-shim' to 'eh-jok-shim', 'gook' meaning 'nation' and 'jok' meaning 'people'." [Here "eh" means "love" and "shim" "feeling," from the Chinese.]

South Korea is a republic and following Dr. Brownson's thinking a civilized state. This republic was founded only in 1948, after millenia of governance under a "patriarchal system" of belief that still holds sway. The "eh-jok-shim" of Robert Kim, North Korea, and many Korean youths shows that Korea still has a way to go before the republic is securely established. I am afraid with the current nationalistic revisionism in vogue here, the country is dangerously backsliding.

*I have found patriotism mainly among two groups: Korean War veterans and RoK Marines.