guilt culture vs. shame culture

I've written on the topic of shame/guilt before (see here, for example), but I just left the following comment on Instapundit as a response to this linked article about shaming:

Not sure how much I agree with Wendy Richardson's definitions of "guilt" and "shame." The notion of "guilt cultures" and "shame cultures" comes to us from anthropology. Guilt is a private emotion or inward state; it has to do with one's own conscience or—for certain religious folks—how one personally relates to God. Shame, by contrast (and different from what Richardson argues), is a public matter: it has more to do with what others think of you. The pressure a shamed person feels is social pressure, not the pressure of conscience. 

Here in South Korea, a few years back, there was a scandal involving a respected scientist named Hwang Woo-seok, a stem-cell researcher who, it was discovered, had faked a series of experimental results involving human cloning. Hwang became an outcast for a time, and as happens in Korea with celebrities, politicians, and other prominent figures, he went through a ritual apology phase, bowing humbly for the cameras and allowing himself to be photographed in a hospital bed to show the world how depressed he had become. All of this was theater, of course, designed to generate public sympathy, because Korea is a shame culture that is generally unconcerned with one's internal state. Hwang did what he had to do to get back into the public's good graces, and although he no longer holds his prestigious post at Seoul National University (the ROK's Harvard), he is still involved in stem-cell research. South Korea's high suicide rate has much to do with its shame culture. Ostracism is tantamount to death: when shame culture is combined with a group-first, hive-mind mentality, then rejection from the group constitutes a ripping-away from the hive, and the drone cannot survive separate from the hive. Beautiful young TV and movie stars with promising futures have quietly hanged themselves in their walk-in closets because Korean "netizens" viciously attacked them online for this or that sexual indiscretion. 

In a shame culture, as long as one looks the part, one can get away with anything. Just don't get caught, and your social status is fine. This notion isn't exactly foreign to Americans; we see it in politics—and in certain big-money religious circles—all the time (I'm thinking of Jimmy Swaggart's tearful "I have sinned" moment, which was also theater; like Hwang, Swaggart continues to practice). While I'd say America is more of a guilt culture, overall, than a shame culture, I do sense, as some other commenters have said or implied in this thread, that the country is sliding more toward the "shame" end of the spectrum. That's a trend that needs to be corrected.

If you read Wendy Richardson's blockquote, you'll see that Richardson makes shame out to be a private emotion or condition; I disagree with that.  Richardson also writes that "There is something I can do about guilt," implying that nothing can be done about shame.  In my above comment, though, I gave two examples of people who coped with shame via ritual public apologies.  This isn't to say that I disagree with the general thrust of Mark Judge's article, but I think Richardson misses the mark in the way she distinguishes guilt from shame.

ADDENDUM:  my comment on the Instapundit thread has been disappeared.  Some stupid, vindictive twat decided to mark it as spam, so poof.  Good thing I've preserved the comment here.  I think I know who marked it as spam, but whatever.  I rarely comment on Instapundit because my comments normally get slapped down for some stupid reason or other.  Maybe this is a sign from the heavens that I should just stop commenting over there.