The Semi-Public Bus System and Private Equity Funds

A long time ago, after working in a factory, I started driving buses in Gyeonggi Province. At that time, it felt as if I had come to a starry sky. Not a starry land where a princess with eyes like a shooting star lives, but a Mars-like starry land in a hot, dry wasteland where only the wind blows. Once, while driving a bus in Uijeongbu, a scruffy colleague who had come from working in a nearby city said that at his previous company, the owner was gambling and his salary was delayed by several months. Although it was difficult, I was working for a company that was being run in a novel way, so I couldn’t believe what that colleague said. By then, Korea’s per capita national income was already talking about $30,000.

 

Later I learned that the owners who had gathered to gamble were in a state of despair, resigned to the fact that there was no tomorrow for us because the bus company, which could not make a profit, was struggling, and the bus drivers, like our Jesus who bore their sins, were carrying all their hardships on their shoulders. At that moment, I deeply felt that the bus should become a semi-public system. In the end, Gyeonggi Province became a quasi-public system. And while Seoul’s city buses have become a quasi-public system, the village buses still operate under a system more backward than a country with a $5,000 per capita income, faithfully serving only as a training ground for recruiting more staff for Seoul’s city buses.In the end, the damage fell on the citizens and the bus drivers. However, the bus company executives felt just as frustrated.

 

There was a great deal of ideological conflict over the fact that buses, which clearly have the characteristics of a public good, had so much trouble transitioning to a semi-public system. Conservative politicians tried to privatize the railways and block the semi-public operation of buses, while progressive politicians moved in the opposite direction. I have said for decades that all of Korea’s problems must move beyond ideological logic, and the bus problem was a prime example.

 

But now, private equity funds are trying to acquire bus companies that have already become quasi-public and make a profit from it. I said that the profit private equity funds seek to obtain is wrong without question because it is directly linked to taxes, but AI presented the problem of executives’ lax management as the logic that justifies private equity fund intervention. I understood that because AI is neither a politician nor a bus driver like me, and we debated for quite a while. In the end, we settled on the idea of fiscal avoidance by local governments and the public ownership of bus companies, and concluded the discussion.

Why Does Public Tax Money Become Private Equity's Dividend?

The Bill for a Half-Finished Reform of Korea's City Bus System Lands on the Driver

Lee Hyeong-chun · Independent Columnist

1. The Problem

Of Seoul's 7,384 city buses, 1,027 — about 14 percent — belong to companies now owned by private equity funds. In Incheon, PE firms own roughly 30 percent of the city's 34 bus companies, with further holdings in Suwon and Hwaseong. This wave of acquisitions, which began in earnest around 2020, has already produced cases where dividends were paid out even as the company posted a net loss. Payouts continued at the very moment the firm was losing money. That single fact compresses everything this column is about.

Korea's city bus system operates under a quasi-public model: local governments set routes and fares, and cover the gap between revenue and cost out of public funds. Under this arrangement, what private equity sees is not a business but an asset whose principal and return are effectively guaranteed by tax money. This is not investment bearing risk; it is extraction from a subsidy stream.

2. A Historical Continuity — From Owners to Private Equity, the Burden Always Lands on the Driver

The quasi-public system introduced in Seoul in 2004 exists because the previous owner-operated model had failed — some companies were run so recklessly that drivers went unpaid, and low-revenue routes were routinely neglected. Twenty years later, what we are watching is the same structure recurring with a different owner in the driver's seat.

Stage one: before the reform, owner mismanagement was passed on to drivers as unpaid wages and poor working conditions. Stage two: after 2004, local governments took over route planning and revenue management and began covering losses, but ownership of the companies stayed private. Stage three: in the 2020s, private equity found that gap and moved in, maximizing dividends while the pressure again lands on drivers — in shift schedules, rest breaks, restroom access. Whoever holds title, the driver has always been the shock absorber of last resort.

The continuity is telling. The quasi-public reform publicized management and oversight but never touched ownership or profit — a half-finished reform.

3. What "Public Management, Private Profit" Actually Means

This phrase should not be accepted as neutral policy language. Spelled out, it means: the local government covers losses with tax money based on a standard operating cost formula, and the profit generated on top of that guaranteed stability is collected by private owners as dividends. This is not policy — it is a decision to redistribute tax revenue to private shareholders.

That is precisely why Seoul and Incheon have moved, belatedly, to cap dividend payout ratios, limit ownership stakes, and penalize quick resale. Private equity firms have pushed back, arguing such restrictions infringe on investor rights and could even constitute breach of fiduciary duty under criminal law. That confrontation is itself evidence of how badly the underlying structure was designed from the start.

4. Rail Versus Bus — A Misapplied Ideological Frame

The worry that a call for full public ownership will run straight into ideological gridlock is realistic. But the case most often invoked to justify that worry — the fight over rail privatization — actually runs in the opposite direction from the bus problem. Rail was originally state-owned, and progressives have fought attempts to privatize it. Buses were originally privately owned, and it is attempts to bring them under full public ownership that meet resistance.

Missing this asymmetry produces a half-true explanation: "ideology blocks bus nationalization." The more fundamental obstacle is not ideology but where the fiscal burden would land. Full public ownership means the local government would have to absorb the debt, the workforce, and the political accountability outright. Local governments' longstanding failure to claim authority over ownership changes has served, in practice, to avoid exactly that liability. Ideology is being deployed as an alibi for that avoidance — not as the real cause.

5. An Alternative — A Public Corporation, Not a Bureaucratic One

The framing usually offered here is a false binary: private ownership chasing profit (whether under an owner or a fund) versus civil-servant management. That binary erases a third option — the public-corporation model already used for Seoul Metro or Incheon International Airport. Ownership rests entirely with the public, while management is run by professional executives rather than by a civil-service bureaucracy tied to annual budget cycles.

This model largely avoids the standard critique of nationalization — personnel decisions untethered from performance, fleet renewal delayed by budget rigidity — while cutting off, at the root, the channel through which tax-subsidized profit leaks out as private dividends. A body along the lines of a proposed "Seoul City Bus Corporation" could give this concrete shape: ownership held by citizens, operations run by professionals, and profit reinvested into route expansion and drivers' working conditions.

6. Conclusion

Private equity's acquisition of city bus companies is not an aberration. It is simply what happens when a design flaw, left unaddressed for over twenty years, is finally located and exploited. Under owner-operators, under the quasi-public system, and now under private equity, one thing has not changed: risk and burden have always settled on the least powerful position in the whole system — the seat behind the wheel. What is needed now is not another round of ideological argument, but a redesign of ownership that returns the stability tax money creates to the citizens who pay for it.

References

Public Transport Network. "[Interview] Kim Sang-cheol: 'Seoul Should Buy Back Its Private-Equity-Owned Buses.'" (accessed September 23, 2025).

Daejeon Ilbo. "Private Equity Sells Off Daejeon Bus Companies Amid Concerns Over Public Interest." October 24, 2024.

Kyeonggi Ilbo. "[Editorial] 10 Companies, 700 Buses — Why Is Private Equity Flocking to Incheon?" February 12, 2024.

Daehan Kyungjae. "[Reporter's Notebook] Was Private Equity's Management of Bus Companies Really a Farce?" October 31, 2024.

Seoul Economic Daily. "Is Private Equity Investment in Bus Companies Drying Up? Tighter Rules Make Sales Difficult." May 16, 2025.

"Is Seoul's Bus System a Profit Vehicle for Private Equity? Seoul Should Run Its Own Buses." (accessed November 13, 2025).

버스 준공영제와 사모펀드

오래전 공장 노동을 하다가 경기도에서 버스 운전을 시작했다. 그때는 별나라에 온 것 같았다. 샛별같은 눈을 한 공주님이 사는 별나라가 아니라 고온 건조한 황무지에 바람만 부는 화성같은 별나라 말이다. 한 번은 의정부에서 버스운전을 하는데, 근처 도시에서 일하다가 온 파리한 동료가 이전 회사에서 오너가 도박을 하는 바람에 월급이 몇 달 밀렸다고 했다. 나는 어렵기는 하나 참신하게 운영되는 회사에 다니고 있었으므로 그 동료의 말이 믿기지가 않았다. 그때 벌써 한국의 일인당 국민소득은 삼만불을 이야기하고 있었다.

 

나중에 알고 보니 모여서 도박을 한 오너들의 마음은 이윤을 남기지 못하는 버스회사의 어려움 때문에 우리에게 내일은 없다고 자포자기 한 상태고, 버스기사들은 죄짐맡은 우리 예수처럼 모든 어려움을 떠 안고 있었다. 그때 나는 버스가 준공영제가 되어야 함을 간절히 느꼈다. 결국 경기도는 준공영제가 되어갔다. 그리고 서울은 시내버스는 준공영제가 되고 있지만 마을버스는 국민소득 오천불인 나라보다 더 후진적인 시스템을 가지고 서울 시내버스에 인력을 충원시키는 훈련장소로서의 역할만 충실히 하고 있다.결국 피해는 시민들과 버스기사님들의 몫이었다. 그러나 버스회사의 운영진의 마음도 답답한건 마찬가지였다.

 

분명히 공공재의 성질을 가진 버스가 많은 진통을 겪으면서 준공영제로 이전하기에는 많은 이념적인 갈등이 있었다. 보수적인 정치인들은 철도를 민영화시키고 버스의 준공영제를 막을려고 했고, 진보적인 정치인들은 그 반대로 움직였다. 나는 한국의 모든 문제는 이념논리를 벗어나야 한다고 수십년을 말해왔는데,버스문제가 대표적인 문제였다.

 

그런데 이제와서는 사모펀드가 이미 준공영제가 되어있는 버스회사를 인수하여 이익을 얻을려고 하고 있다. 나는 사모펀드가 얻을려는 이익은 곧 세금과 직결되는 것이기 때문에 논의의 여지가 없이 잘못된 것이라고 말했지만 인공지능은 경영진의 운영의 방만화라는 문제를 사모펀드의 개입을 정당화시키는 논리로 내놓았다. 인공지능은 정치가가 아니고 나처럼 버스기사도 아니기 때문에 그렇다고 이해하고 한참 토론했다. 결국 지방자치단체의 재정회피와 버스회사의 공기업화로 가닥을 잡고 토론을 끝냈다. 

세금은 왜 사모펀드의 배당이 되는가

— 시내버스 준공영제, 반쪽짜리 개혁의 청구서는 기사에게 간다

이형춘 · Independent Columnist

1. 문제의 소재

서울 시내버스 7384대 가운데 1027대, 약 14퍼센트는 사모펀드가 인수한 회사 소속이다. 인천은 34개 시내버스 회사 중 30퍼센트가, 수원과 화성에도 여러 곳이 사모펀드 소유로 넘어가 있다. 2020년 무렵부터 본격화된 이 흐름 속에서, 당기순이익이 적자인데도 배당을 실시한 사례가 나왔다. 회사가 손실을 내는 그 순간에도 배당은 지급됐다. 이 한 문장이 이 글이 다루려는 문제의 전부를 압축한다.

시내버스는 노선과 요금을 지방자치단체가 정하고, 수입 대비 비용의 적자분을 세금으로 보전해주는 준공영제 아래 있다. 이 구조에서 사모펀드가 보는 것은 '사업'이 아니라 '세금이 원금과 수익을 사실상 보장하는 자산'이다. 위험을 감수하는 대신 재정지원금을 배당 재원으로 삼는 구조이니, 이건 투자가 아니라 추출에 가깝다.

2. 역사적 연속성 — 오너에서 사모펀드로, 부담은 늘 기사에게

2004년 서울에 준공영제가 도입된 배경 자체가 민간 오너 체제의 실패였다. 임금 체불이 발생할 정도로 방만하게 운영되던 회사들, 수익성 낮은 노선을 기피하던 관행이 그 도입의 이유였다. 그런데 20년이 지난 지금 벌어지는 일은, 소유 주체가 오너 개인에서 사모펀드로 바뀌었을 뿐 구조는 그대로 반복되고 있다는 사실이다.

1단계, 준공영제 이전에는 오너의 방만 경영이 기사에게 임금 체불과 열악한 노동조건으로 전가됐다. 2단계, 준공영제 도입 이후 지자체가 노선과 수입금을 관리하고 적자를 보전했지만, 소유권은 여전히 민간에 남겨두었다. 3단계, 2020년대 들어 사모펀드가 그 틈을 발견하고 들어와 배당을 극대화하면서, 부담은 다시 기사의 배차 간격과 휴게 여건으로 전가되고 있다. 소유자가 누구든, 완충장치 없는 최종 부담자는 언제나 현장의 기사였다.

이 연속성이 말해주는 것은 분명하다. 준공영제라는 개혁은 관리·감독만 공공화했을 뿐 소유와 이윤의 구조는 건드리지 못한, 반쪽짜리 개혁이었다.

3. "관리는 공공, 이윤은 민간"이라는 말의 실체

이 문장을 순화된 정책 용어로 받아들여서는 안 된다. 풀어 쓰면 이렇다 — 지자체가 표준운송원가를 기준으로 적자를 세금으로 메워주고, 그렇게 만들어진 안정성 위에서 발생하는 이윤과 배당은 민간이 가져간다. 이것은 정책이 아니라 세금을 민간에게 나누어주기로 한 결정이다.

서울시와 인천시가 뒤늦게 배당 성향 제한, 지분 상한, 재매각 시 감점 같은 규제를 도입하려는 이유가 바로 여기 있다. 그러나 사모펀드 측은 이런 규제가 투자자의 이익을 침해하며 형법상 배임에 해당할 수 있다는 논리로 맞서고 있다. 이 대립 자체가, 애초에 이 구조가 얼마나 기형적으로 설계되었는지를 보여주는 증거다.

4. 철도 대 버스, 잘못 겹쳐진 이념 구도

완전공영제를 요구하면 곧바로 이념 대립에 부딪힌다는 우려는 현실적이다. 그러나 이 우려의 근거로 흔히 소환되는 철도 민영화 논쟁은, 사실 버스 문제와 방향이 정반대다. 철도는 원래 국영인 것을 민영화하려는 시도에 진보 진영이 반대해온 싸움이고, 버스는 원래 민간 소유인 것을 공공화하려는 시도에 반대가 부딪히는 싸움이다.

이 비대칭을 놓치면 "이념 때문에 버스 공영화가 막힌다"는 설명은 반쪽짜리가 된다. 실제로 완전공영화를 가로막는 더 근본적인 이유는 이념이 아니라 재정 부담의 소재다. 소유권까지 공영화하면 그 부채와 인력, 정치적 책임을 지자체가 고스란히 떠안아야 한다. 지자체가 지금까지 소유 구조에 개입할 권한을 스스로 만들지 않고 방치해온 것은, 바로 이 책임을 피하기 위해서였다. 이념은 이 재정 회피를 정당화하는 알리바이로 동원되고 있을 뿐, 진짜 원인이 아니다.

5. 대안 — 공무원 조직이 아니라 공기업 전환

여기서 흔히 놓이는 이분법을 경계해야 한다. 민간 소유와 이윤 추구(오너든 사모펀드든) 대 공무원 경영진이라는 이분법은 세 번째 선택지를 지운다. 서울교통공사, 인천공항공사와 같은 공기업 모델이 그것이다. 소유는 완전히 공공으로 귀속시키되, 경영은 예산 편성 주기에 매인 공무원 조직이 아니라 전문경영인 체제로 운영하는 방식이다.

이 모델은 공영화에 흔히 따라붙는 비판, 즉 성과와 무관한 인사나 차량 교체의 경직성이라는 함정을 상당 부분 피하면서도, 세금으로 보전된 이윤이 민간의 배당으로 새어나가는 구조 자체를 근본적으로 차단한다. 가칭 '서울시내버스공사'와 같은 형태가 그 구체적 상이 될 수 있다. 소유는 시민에게, 운영은 전문성에게 맡기고, 이윤은 다시 노선 확충과 기사의 노동조건 개선에 재투자하는 구조다.

6. 결론

사모펀드의 시내버스 인수는 일탈이 아니라, 20년 넘게 방치되어 온 설계 결함이 마침내 발견되고 활용된 결과일 뿐이다. 오너 시대에도, 준공영제 시대에도, 사모펀드 시대에도 변하지 않은 것은 위험과 부담이 항상 가장 힘없는 자리, 즉 운전석의 기사에게 가 있었다는 사실이다. 이제 필요한 것은 이념 논쟁이 아니라, 세금이 만드는 안정성을 시민의 자산으로 되돌려놓는 소유 구조의 재설계다.

참고문헌

공공교통네트워크. "[인터뷰] 김상철 \"사모펀드 시내버스, 서울시가 인수해야\"." (기사 게재, 2025년 9월 23일 기준 확인).

대전일보. "대전 시내버스 회사 매각하는 사모펀드…공공성 우려 목소리." 2024년 10월 24일.

경기일보. "[사설] 10개 회사 700대 시내버스... 사모펀드 왜 인천에 몰리나." 2024년 2월 12일.

대한경제. "[취재수첩] 사모펀드의 버스회사 경영, 과연 장난이었나?" 2024년 10월 31일.

서울경제. "사모펀드의 버스회사 투자 끊기나…규제 강화에 '매각 쉽지 않네'[시그널]." 2025년 5월 16일.

"서울 버스가 사모펀드 수익 창출 수단? 서울 버스는 서울시가 운영해야 한다." (기사 게재, 2025년 11월 13일 기준 확인).

A throughful assimilation(conformity)

Humans are easily influenced by the atmosphere. So they are influenced by popular or crowd psychology. Assimilation is something that humans originally have, but ideology or religion makes it strong. So war, civil war, or riots gain strength. Assimilation can only be controlled by the constant thought efforts of an individual or society.

 

In my early days of society, it was surprising that most of my elderly seniors were imitating the presidents of the authoritarian government. Of course, they were only imitating the desire for authority and position. Imitation is an expression of assimilation. I went to a church in my youth, and when I logically opposed the sermon, the movement of the priest grew and the voice grew. I knew it was a method used to draw out my faith with confidence, but I had a hard time because it was not assimilated at all. Later, I felt that religion and ideology were easily combined because of their tendency to use sympathy, and in fact, such events often occurred. It was expressed as an 'event' because something bad happened.

 

Countries with strong religious tendencies in the Middle East or countries with strong ideological tendencies such as China, North Korea, and pre-democracy Korea sometimes use assimulation as a governance technique. Social ethics does not develop in such countries. Ideology or religion replaces social ethics. The lack of development of social ethics means that the development of society itself is stagnated. In order for society to develop, it is necessary to be constantly aware of individuals and society. Of course, proper education is necessary for such awareness.

 

I said that China's social ethics development stopped due to Mao Zedong's ideological nation-building and cultural revolution, which is why Chinese people are still criticized around the world. However, AI refutes to me that we need to provide evidence. If anyone sees such phenomenon, please report it to AI. Where is it only China? This is the case in the Middle East countries, where religious conflicts are rampant every day, and in many other countries where extreme rightists come forward.

마찰 없는 확신: 동조, 교육, 그리고 이념의 사회윤리 대체에 관하여

Convictions Without Friction: Conformity, Education, and the Displacement of Social Ethics by Ideology

이형춘 · 독립 칼럼니스트  /  Lee Hyeong-chun · Independent Columnist

Abstract

This paper begins from the premise that human conformity is not a pathology but an inherited neurological hardware, and that education and ideology function merely as the software that determines what this hardware conforms to. It then distinguishes verification-exempt conviction — the mistaken belief that something unverified has already been verified — from Kierkegaard's leap of faith. The latter is a choice made in full awareness of uncertainty; the former erases uncertainty altogether. Building on this distinction, the paper argues that the real variable separating moderate conviction from extremism is not the presence or absence of practical execution, but the presence or absence of friction and feedback. This framework is applied to the Cultural Revolution as a concrete case, in which a generation without friction-experience purged the generation that possessed it, replacing an accumulated traditional social-ethical order with ideology. The paper further compares South Korea, China, and North Korea along two axes: the duration for which ideology displaced social ethics, and the degree to which alternative friction-generating institutions were destroyed. Finally, the paper juxtaposes Carl Schmitt's decisionism with Rudolf Smend's integration theory, adding a condition of contestability to Smend's concept of integration in order to distinguish genuine integration from totalitarian ritual, and situates democracy as the regime type capable of open, contestable integration.

Keywords

Conformity, Verification-Exempt Conviction, Friction and Feedback, Leap of Faith, Cultural Revolution, Integration Theory, Decisionism, Contestability

1. Introduction: Statement of the Problem

The phenomenon in which ideology displaces social ethics is not a pathology confined to any particular state or regime. It is a structural outcome that recurs whenever a universal vulnerability in human cognition combines with particular institutional conditions. This paper locates the origin of that vulnerability in conformity, treating it not as a moral defect but as part of human hardware. The problem is not conformity itself, but what that conformity is left to be directed toward.

2. Conformity as Hardware, Education as Software

Research on neonatal imitation offers the starting point. Meltzoff and Moore (1977) demonstrated that infants between twelve and twenty-one days old imitate adult facial and manual gestures. This imitation cannot be explained by conditioning or innate reflex, and points to a cross-modal matching capacity that operates before any learning takes place. Conformity, in other words, is not an attitude acquired through experience but a neurological mechanism present from birth. The comparable conformity rates found across educational and intellectual levels in Asch's group-conformity experiments and Milgram's obedience experiments support the claim that this hardware is not moderated by education.

The conclusion that follows is straightforward. Education and ideology do not create the hardware of conformity. They are merely the software that determines what an already-existing hardware conforms to. The failure of Korea's competition-centered education is not that it manufactured a conformist tendency that did not previously exist, but that it fixed the target of that tendency onto test answers and hierarchical evaluation, while removing at the design stage the friction mechanisms that would otherwise correct it.

3. Verification-Exempt Conviction and the Leap of Faith

A precise distinction is required here. Kierkegaard's leap of faith and what this paper calls 'verification-exempt conviction' appear similar on the surface but differ fundamentally. For Kierkegaard, faith was an act chosen in full awareness that it could not be proven by reason. He directly attacked the habituated, institutionalized faith represented by the Danish State Church — the conformist assumption that one is already a Christian simply by being born in a Christian country. His claim that 'the crowd is untruth,' articulated in the essay 'That Individual,' part of his account of his work as an author, targets precisely this point. For him, the crowd was a state in which the individual evades the responsibility of standing alone before God and hides behind an anonymous majority.

Verification-exempt conviction, by contrast, erases uncertainty rather than carrying it. It does not proceed from 'this cannot be proven, yet I choose it,' but from the illusion that 'this has already been proven.' The distinguishing line is not the subjective feeling of agency — those gripped by verification-exempt conviction often feel, and feel more strongly than genuine believers, that they arrived at their position through independent realization. The real dividing line is whether the conviction looks its own uncertainty in the face, or disguises that uncertainty as already resolved.

Introducing a time axis reveals that the two types can convert into one another. A conviction passively formed through conformity or agitation, over time, fuses with identity and, under pressure to reduce cognitive dissonance, is reconstructed as though it had been chosen independently. Conformity is passive at the point of entry, but once the exit is closed, it disguises itself as active conviction. Korea's exam-centered education trains students not to endure uncertainty, but to locate, quickly, an answer presumed already fixed. This is the exact inversion of Kierkegaard's leap, and is structurally identical to verification-exempt conviction.

4. Friction and Feedback: Extending the Path-Dependent Overcorrection Thesis

What, then, determines whether a given conviction remains moderate or spirals into extremism? The variable is neither the presence of reading nor the presence of practical execution. Among thinkers who spent a lifetime in pure contemplation without practical action, some arrived at skepticism and tolerance; among practitioners with extensive field experience, some spiraled into extremism nonetheless. The true variable is friction and feedback — the experience of one's conviction colliding with reality and being informed of its own errors.

This mirrors, structurally, the path-dependent overcorrection thesis applied to capitalism's business cycles. Markets self-correct distortion through the feedback of price; when that feedback is artificially suppressed, distortion becomes permanent or locks into a fixed trough. The same holds for ideas and ideology. Friction with reality is a corrective device that continuously signals 'this is wrong'; pure ideological immersion is the absence of that device. Human beings are innately disposed to avoid this friction — a kind of cognitive laziness — but this is better understood as hardware than as moral failing. The task of good social institutions, then, is not to eliminate this innate laziness but to build into their design a friction mechanism that compels people to overcome it. The decisive flaw of Korean education is not that it produced laziness, but that it removed, at the design stage, the mechanism that would compel laziness to be overcome.

5. Case Study: The Cultural Revolution and the Destruction of Friction Mechanisms

The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) is the historical enactment of this friction-destruction mechanism. The intellectual purges intensified after the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the closure of traditional educational institutions, and the mobilization of Red Guards to publicly denounce elders, teachers, and experts together constituted a case in which the state systematically destroyed society's feedback mechanisms — experienced elders, accumulated expertise, and the Confucian traditional ethical order. It is an irony worth naming that Mao Zedong himself was hardware operating on a biased software of narrow reading, and that he mobilized precisely the generation with the least friction-experience (young Red Guards) to purge the generation in which friction-experience had accumulated most (elders and intellectuals). A generation that had never encountered friction was mobilized by foolish agitation to dismantle the very friction mechanisms a society had built up over a long period of time.

A point of caution must be made explicit here. A statement that characterizes an entire people's character — for instance, attributing a present-day national trait directly and causally to a decades-old political event — is unverifiable, and commits, in form, the same error this paper identifies as verification-exempt conviction. What this paper addresses, therefore, is not a judgment of national character, but the institutional mechanism by which a state artificially destroyed a society's friction mechanisms.

6. Comparative Structural Analysis: South Korea, China, North Korea

Applying this framework to the three societies reveals a shared axis and differing positions upon it. All three underwent a process, through ideological warfare, in which ideology displaced social ethics and simultaneously assumed an educational function. The degree and duration of this displacement, however, differ. The independent variable producing this difference is not the retrospectively narrated 'speed of democratization,' but the product of two factors: the duration for which ideological monopoly persisted, and the degree to which alternative friction mechanisms — family, religion, traditional ethics, civil society — were destroyed.

South Korea, having passed through Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War, had insufficient time to develop social ethics and individual self-awareness, and experienced ideological monopoly under authoritarian rule; yet that duration was comparatively short (roughly 1961–1987), and alternative friction mechanisms survived — a rapidly growing Christian community offering an ethical system distinct from state ideology, Confucian family and clan structures that were not destroyed to the degree seen under the Cultural Revolution, and labor and student movements that, though suppressed, were never entirely eliminated. China, through the Cultural Revolution and communist ideology, saw the very foundation for forming social ethics and individual self-awareness destroyed, and its ideological monopoly has persisted, uninterrupted, for over seventy years since 1949. North Korea, within a closed system, layers both deficits — the absence of time for social ethics to develop and the wholesale replacement of traditional ethics by ideology — to their most extreme degree, with an ideological monopoly that has never once been interrupted since 1948.

This comparison does not aim to adjudicate which people is morally superior; such adjudication would conflict with the principle this paper sets for itself — to analyze without favoring any camp, by a single standard. What the comparison shows is only this: the longer ideological monopoly persists and the more thoroughly alternative friction mechanisms are destroyed, the more a society's own resources for self-correction against verification-exempt conviction are depleted.

7. Toward an Alternative: Beyond Decisionism, Toward an Integration Theory Conditioned on Contestability

What prescription follows from this diagnosis? Two opposing theories from German constitutional scholarship serve as a useful reference point. In his 1928 work Verfassungslehre, Carl Schmitt presented decisionism, which grasps the state and constitution as the sovereign's singular, one-time decision. In the same year, Rudolf Smend, in Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht, offered a directly opposing integration theory. For Smend, the state was not an entity fixed by a single decision, but an integrative process continually remade through the ceaseless interaction between members and leadership.

Yet this concept of integration carries a risk if adopted as a prescription without qualification. As the fact that Smend retained his professorship during the Nazi period illustrates, the proposition that 'the state is not decision but a process of integration' is itself neutral as to what that integration is directed toward. North Korea, too, formally possesses the outward form of functional integration — elections, mass gymnastics, repetitive ritual. Smend's concept of integration therefore cannot, on its own, filter out totalitarian ritual unless one condition is added: contestability — whether the feedback between leader and members remains genuinely open to the possibility of changing the leadership's own decisions. Participation that repeats while its outcome is already fixed is not integration; it is merely the collective ritual of verification-exempt conviction.

With this condition in place, the position of a democratic system such as South Korea's becomes clear. The possibility of changing government through regular elections, the relative independence of the press and judiciary, and institutional channels through which civil society's objections can actually alter policy and leadership make South Korea a system in which contestable, open integration is structurally possible. This is a third path — neither decisionism, nor integration-as-ritual stripped of contestability.

8. Conclusion

A healthy state is not a fixed entity but a process ceaselessly remade through friction between leader and people over an outcome that remains open. Conformity is not a defect to be eliminated from this process, but a constant to be managed within it. The fundamental error of Korean education lies in distorting the process of integration itself — cultivating a safe conformity to the illusion that the answer is already fixed, instead of cultivating the capacity to endure and generate friction. What the Cultural Revolution demonstrated is how far a society can go once its friction mechanisms are destroyed; what South Korea can demonstrate is what a society can recover when those mechanisms survive, however incompletely. That recovery is not a completed state but an effort that must always begin again, and an awareness that must always remain awake.

References

Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, Leadership and Men. Carnegie Press.

Kierkegaard, S. (1859/1998). "That Individual": Two "Notes" Concerning My Work as an Author. In The Point of View, trans. H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong. Princeton University Press.

Kierkegaard, S. (1846/1978). Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. H. V. Hong & E. H. Hong. Princeton University Press.

Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198(4312), 75–78.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378.

MacFarquhar, R., & Schoenhals, M. (2006). Mao's Last Revolution. Harvard University Press.

Schmitt, C. (1928). Verfassungslehre. Duncker & Humblot.

Smend, R. (1928). Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht. Duncker & Humblot.

Korioth, S. (1990). Integration und Bundesstaat: Ein Beitrag zur Staats- und Verfassungslehre Rudolf Smends. Duncker & Humblot.

Lee, Hyeong-chun (2026). Verification-Exempt Conviction and Korean Education: The Structural Production of Epistemic Vulnerability. (Unpublished manuscript).