As someone who has read all the Confucian classics in the original, and in Korean schools: Yes, it does seem to have an effect. Namely that people expect a nat’l leader to justify his or her existence by doing everything possible to take care of the populace. This is not to say + https://twitter.com/oranckay/status/1245946430033805314

This is not to say that countries w/o a Confucian tradition can’t have that too. Scandinavian counties might be examples. But it’s very different from what in NE Asian languages you often see described as “pioneer spirit” and long tradition of looking at govt w suspicion in US.+

There’s a lot to like about Confucianism, but it gets a bad rap particularly from people who don’t know it with any depth, especially from both Koreans and Westerners and even Japanese who want to justify writing off Korea as backwards. +

And as noted 2 tweets ago, there’s a lot of good (& bad) from Confucianism in Korea that would’ve come from somewhere else. So it was sometimes used for good and sometimes used or played out as a tool of oppression. How is having something like that unique to any one country? +

Even into late 90s you’d hear Koreans be like, “We’re Confucian so conservative but Westeners are sexually lose and divorce” as if the West never had conservative teachings and Korea wouldn’t soon change. (And I heard that, uninvited, with tone of superiority, ALL THE TIME)+

Unlike many among the Twitterati, I’m totally open to discussion abt how culture & cultural tradition influence a country’s response to pandemics. But as the piece I quote notes, most the time when ppl bring up Confucianism it’s to justify their own shallow race based views+

Just once I want to see a major English publication cite Confucianism for why Korean heads of state live in fear of public anger if a nat’l crisis isn’t handled well,and why people wear masks out of COURTESY TO OTHERS instead of it being only abt protecting their selfish selves.