Too often Koreans have blamed foreigners for their woes of the twentieth century. Critical as Ham may have been about the cynicism of foreign powers, he does not let Koreans portray themselves as innocent victims. When the two got together to draw a line across our unscarred middle, the one thrust on us communism, the other capitalism, we should have said, 'We are neither communist nor capitalist. We are one nation. We know only of being one, not two.
Fatalism is a philosophy for the oppressed.
It is imprisonment of life, a faith embraced by the slave. The winner over suffering gains a fighter's view of life, like Prometheus. The one who gives in to suffering, on the other hand, turns to fatalism. The people of Korea became enslaved to fatalism when they began to retreat from the frontlines of life, overwhelmed by the repeated onsets of suffering. They lost faith.