Koreans have developed a sense of nation based on shared blood and ancestry. The Korean nation was "racialized" through a belief in a common prehistoric origin, producing an intense sense of collective oneness. Ethnicity is generally regarded as a cultural phenomenon based on a common language and history, and race understood as a collectivity defined by innate and immutable phenotypic and genotypic characteristics.

But historically, Koreans have not differentiated between the two. Instead, race served as a marker that strengthened ethnic identity, which in turn was instrumental in defining the nation. Koreans thus believe that they all belong to a "unitary nation" (danil minjok), one that is ethnically homogeneous and racially distinctive.

Despite 1,000 years of political, linguistic, and geographic continuity - and contrary to popular belief - this sense of ethnic homogeneity took root only in the early 20th century.

Faced with imperialist encroachments, Koreans developed the notion of a unitary nation to show its autonomy and uniqueness. They stressed the ethnic base, rather than civic elements, in defining the Korean nation.

Shin Chae-ho, a leading nationalist, for instance, presented Korean history as one of the "ethnic nation" (minjoksa) and traced it to the mythical figure Dangun. According to him, the Korean people were descendants of Dangun Joseon, who merged with Buyo of Manchuria to form the Goguryeo people. This original blend, Shin contended, remained the ethnic or racial core of the Korean nation, a nation preserved through defense and warfare against outside forces. The nation was defined as "an organic body formed out of the spirit of a people ... descended through a single pure bloodline" that would last even after losing political sovereignty.

The need to assert the distinctiveness and purity of the Korean nation grew even more important under colonial rule, especially as Japan attempted to assimilate Koreans into their empire as "imperial subjects." The Japanese assimilation policy was based on colonial racism, which claimed that Koreans and Japanese were of common origin but the former always subordinate.

The theory was used to justify colonialist policies to replace Korean cultural traditions with Japanese ones in order to supposedly get rid of all distinctions and achieve equality between Koreans and inlanders. Colonial assimilation policy included changing Korean names into Japanese, exclusive use of Japanese language, school instruction in the Japanese ethical system, and Shinto worship.

Koreans resisted by asserting their unique and great national heritage. Yi Kwang-su, a key figure during colonial rule, claimed that "hyeoltong" (bloodline), "seonggyeok" (personality), and "munhwa" (culture) are three fundamental elements of a nation and that "Koreans are without a doubt a unitary nation (danil han minjok) in blood and culture." Such a view was widely accepted among Koreans: To impugn the natural and unique character of the Korean ethnic nation during colonial rule would have been tantamount to betraying Koreanness in the face of the imperial challenge of an alien ethnic nation. Japanese rule did not erase Koreans' national consciousness but rather reinforced their claim to a truly distinct and homogeneous ethnic identity.

After independence in 1945, and despite peninsular division into North and South, the unity of the Korean ethnic nation or race was largely taken for granted. Neither side disputed the ethnic homogeneity of the Korean nation, spanning thousands of years, based on a single bloodline of the great Han race. Instead, both sides contested for the sole representation of the ethnically homogeneous Korean nation. Even today, Koreans maintain a strong sense of ethnic homogeneity based on shared blood and ancestry, and nationalism continues to function as a key resource in Korean politics and foreign relations.

Ethnic national identity has been a crucial source of pride and inspiration for people during the turbulent years of Korea's transition to modernity that involved colonialism, territorial division, war, and authoritarian politics. It has also enhanced collective consciousness and internal solidarity against external threats and has served Korea's modernization project as an effective resource.

At the same time, such a blood-based ethnic national identity became a totalitarian force in politics, culture, and society. It came to override other competing identities and led to the poverty of modern thought, including liberalism, conservatism, and radicalism. It has hindered cultural and social diversity and tolerance in Korean society.

Ethnic nationalism will remain an important organizing principle of Korean society. We cannot ignore ethnic national identity or treat it as a mere myth or fantasy. But neither can we remain simply content with its current role.

Instead, it should be recognized that ethnic nationalism has become a considerable force in Korean society and politics and that it can be dangerous and oppressive when fused with racism and other essentialist ideologies. Koreans must thus strive to find ways to use ethnic nationalism constructively and mitigate its potential harmful effects.

In particular, Koreans must seriously consider the establishment of a democratic

institution that can contain the repressive, essentialist elements of nationalism.

The principle of bloodline or "jus sanguinis" still defines the notion of Korean nationhood and citizenship, which are often inseparable in the mind of Koreans. In its formative years Koreans developed the ethnic base of nation without a corresponding

attention to the political notion of citizenship.

After colonial rule, neither state paid adequate attention or made any serious effort to develop a more inclusive notion of citizenship. Social institutions that can address issues of discrimination against ethnic non-Koreans (for example, ethnic Chinese known as "hwagyo" in Korea) have been largely overlooked. The Korean nationality law is still based on jus sanguinis and legitimizes, consciously or unconsciously, ethnic discrimination against foreign migrant workers.

In this context, most Koreans have stronger attachment to "ethnic Koreans living in foreign countries" than to "ethnic non-Koreans living in Korea." It is also much easier for a Korean-American who supposedly has "Korean blood" to "recover" Korean citizenship than for an Indonesian migrant worker living in Korea to obtain Korean citizenship. This is true even if the Indonesian worker might be more culturally and linguistically Korean than a Korean-American.

Korea needs to institutionalize a legal system that mitigates unfair practices and discrimination against those who do not supposedly share the Korean blood. Koreans need an institutional framework to promote a democratic national identity that would allow for more diversity and tolerance among the populace, rather than simply appeal to an ethnic consciousness that tends to encourage false uniformity and enforce conformity to it.

They should envision a society in which they can live together, not simply as fellow ethnic Koreans but as equal citizens of a democratic polity. It should be an integral part of democratic consolidation processes that Korea is currently undergoing. Otherwise, it would be hard to expect Korea to become "Asia's hub," which will require the accommodation of cultural and ethnic diversity and flexibility.

Discussion of unification is premature and can even be considered dangerous if unification occurs without such change. As the German unification experience shows, a

shared ethnic identity alone will not be able to prevent North Koreans from becoming "second-class citizens" in a unified Korea. Even worse, because of higher expectations resulting from a shared sense of ethnic unity, a gap between identity (ethnic homogeneity) and practice (second-class citizens) will add more confusion and tension to the unification process.

Thus, it will be a major challenge for Koreans to develop democratic institutions that can treat people living in Korea as equal citizens of a democratic polity. This task will be all the more important and urgent as Korea becomes more democratic, globalizes, and also prepares for national unification.

TERNATE, North Maluku, Indonesia: Indonesia's first direct presidential election was held peacefully last Monday. That fact alone spelled success in a troubled country with an authoritarian past. As vote totals mounted at election headquarters in Jakarta, observers could project not only the outcome--they could also look forward with some confidence to a democratic future for the fourth most populous country and largest Muslim society on earth.

Seen from below, however, the world's biggest and most complex democratic experiment amounts to a set of promises still waiting to be fulfilled.

Half an hour by speedboat from Ternate and two more hours by jeep on damaged roads across the remote island of Halmera lie two adjacent villages, Sosol and Tahane. A clash between them on the night of August 18, 1999 had triggered near-anarchy here in the northern Maluku archipelago. Muslims fought Christians, then Muslims fought Muslims. More than a thousand died.

An Indonesian colleague and I went there on election day. We wanted to know whether the balloting would help heal or reopen North Maluku's wounds.

Sosol is a Christian village. In a near-whisper that reflected the sensitivity of the topic, the village secretary blamed the 1999 outbreak squarely on Muslim militants in Tahane. They had attacked Sosol en masse, he said. They had thrown rocks and torched homes while screaming "Allahu Akbar"--"God is great." Christian villages had counterattacked.

Interviewed in his home just down the road, the village chief of all-Muslim Tahane remembered differently: "They acted first," he said. People in Sosol had been drinking alcohol, forbidden to Muslims. From his side of the border he could hear the shouts of drunken Sosolans abusing Tahane; the Sosolans began seizing Tahanean houses, slashing the furniture, he said. He admitted that the first to die was killed by a Tahanean, "but they started it," he insisted. "They had weapons - arrows, bombs. What was I to do? Let them roll over us?"

Ever since the chief and his fellow villagers had arrived in Tahane in the 1970s, evacuees from a feared volcanic eruption on their home island in the south, the Sosolans had hated them and tried to get them to leave. Or so he said.

The roots of this conflict embrace many issues. They include religion, migration, ethnicity, customs, and access to land. But it was an action taken by the central government in far-off Jakarta that lit this volatile mix in 1999--a decree that transferred Sosol and several other largely Christian villages to the jurisdication of a new and mostly Muslim subdistrict, including Tahane. What looked in Jakarta like a purely administrative arrangement appeared to Sosolans to threaten their identity.

It has never been realistic here to expect the national government to understand what goes on in and between particular villages--not in a country this vast, diverse, and underdeveloped.

But democracy raises expectations. What happened on July 5 linked the electorate directly, almost personally, to individual candidates running for president and vice-president of the entire country.

Throughout our election-date tour of polling stations in northern Maluku we came across evidence of disappointment and hope in roughly equal measure.

Every villager we met either was or had been a refugee from the violence of the 1990s, and nearly every one had suffered. Yet when we asked who had supplied them with emergency food and housing materials to survive the crisis and rebuild, our informants rarely mentioned the Indonesian government.

We also found good news. Although Sosol and Tahane voted for opposing slates, old wounds stayed closed. The villagers were not about to let political rivalries between presidential candidates rekindle calamity. There was no violence on voting day, and turnouts were high in all the villages. If democracy requires civility and participation, the people of northern Maluku are ready and willing to do their part.

But will Indonesia's new president, when finally elected in a run-off this September, be willing and able to his or her part? Will campaign promises be kept?

Perhaps the most poignant hint of this country's fragility occurred when I asked the Sosol village secretary, "What is Indonesia?" For the first time in our conversation, he fell silent. Try as he might, he could not answer.

At the risk of wishful thinking, one can hope the election itself was a kind of answer.