An opinion piece from a daily paper in Seoul.
Truth, reconciliation and a possible return to the past in ROK
In a land with a modern history as complex and turbulent as South Korea, it is fascinating to consider how history is made. And rewritten. As investigators continue to unearth past atrocities, the government has been changing the nation's high-school textbooks in a bid to remedy damaged national pride. The truth may be painful, but the past will not go away once the graves are unearthed and the bodies have been collected and counted. Too many stories have already been lost from a history that continues to be surrounded in an almost impenetrable but customary silence.A case in point is the story of the "comfort women." These women were victims of a typically cruel colonial period which saw Koreans stripped of freedom, identity, and, in many ways, culture. Systematically subjected to physical and sexual abuse by their colonial Japanese masters in what constituted slavery in its basest form, many of these women were left to bury their memories within themselves rather than allow society to confront its own past. It was not until 1991 that the first courageous woman stood up and revealed the horror of her own sexual slavery to the world. In doing so she opened a door to the past and allowed others to come forward.The Gwangju Massacre, now officially referred to by this title, was kept out of the history books for many years, but is now the subject of a popular dramatic film. In many ways this single event provides a sound lesson on modern Korean history; the ultimate expression of the resolve of the people in the face of extreme state repression. The events played a pivotal role in the movement for democratization and the city of Gwangju now prides itself on this popular movement and this history. But the monuments there are also testament to the old adage that history should not be allowed to repeat itself.It is also worth remembering the brutal suppression of the popular uprising on Jeju Island in 1948. The island's population had managed to avoid the reach of the US Military Occupation forces on the mainland and this isolation had allowed a local democratic movement to evolve on the island. The authorities' response was military and decisive and has been described as "one of the most brutal, sustained, and intensive counterinsurgency campaigns in postwar Asia,"(i) resulting in between 14,000 and upward of 30,000 people being killed.(ii) This is one of the many chapters of Korea's recent past currently facing relegation to the footnotes of official history.iiiNow let's turn to contemporary history, the history of the present. South Korea is at a time when political space has opened up enough to allow the nation to reflect on past atrocities committed by the state against its own people. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up by President Roh Moo-Hyun on Dec. 1, 2005. Its mandate is to investigate "the anti-Japanese movement during the colonial period and the history of the Korean diaspora; the massacre of civilians after 1945; human rights abuses by the state; incidents of dubious conviction and suspicious death."(iv) This is an honorable undertaking that has earned the commission the description of "a beacon of light in Asia,"(v) one that should set an example for the rest of the region. The findings of the commission speak for themselves, as well as countless dead or silent victims. There is no room to go into depth regarding the findings here, the surface of which has only been touched on by investigators, but it is worth understanding the crimes and the human face of their victims.So far the investigations carried out by the commission have retrieved 965 victims from only ten mass graves, a small fraction of the estimated 168 sites across the country.vi At least 10,907 petitions from individuals and organizations have been submitted to the commission, including "1,200 incidents of mass civilian sacrifice committed by ROK forces and US forces (215 cases)."(vii) Clearly the commission has its work cut out for it.But, alongside 13 other history truth commissions(viii), the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is facing budget cuts and mergers proposed by the current administration in the name of efficiency. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has resolved less than a third of its cases(ix) it seems unlikely that it will be able to function effectively to fulfill its mandate by 2010, when it is scheduled to publish its final report, with the proposed budget and inevitable staff cuts. The other thirteen commissions face a similar if not worse fate.In an honest society, a society where a large enough number of people cherish freedom of expression over censorship and believe in learning lessons from the past in order to escape the cycle of mistakes and violence, the truth has a way of exposing a nation's wounds. At first the pain will seem overwhelming, but in time the wounds will heal. And the scars will serve as a reminder to future generations.People in Korea have recently shown that they will not sit quietly when they are unhappy with the decisions of those wielding power over them. The candlelight protests against US beef imports and the KORUS Free Trade Agreement were a demonstration of popular power in the modern democratic era. It took the old tactics of state repression to quiet them,(x) but the tenuous silence is unlikely to last.There are two currents in Korea at the moment: one is surging up from below, trying to raise the ghosts of history to the surface, and the other is doing its best to keep them submerged. If the latter current is able to employ the methods of the past to suppress the former, albeit in modernized and less deadly forms, the burden of silence will be passed down to a new generation. Reflection needs to be coupled with introspection. It is important to examine the past in order to understand the present, but it is also important to examine the present in order to understand the past.The official argument for the high-school textbook revisions is that the previous textbooks contained a "left-leaning bias" which is potentially damaging to national pride and overshadows such positive developments as economic progress. Opponents of the revisions, on the other hand, point out that textbooks should contain a range of perspectives and be politically neutral.(xi) In the words of the ministry responsible for the changes, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, "Rigorous review procedures will be imposed when revising history textbooks, with the introduction of stricter standards for textbook writing and approval."(xii) In other words, relative academic freedom is being replaced by government censorship, and from the evidence at hand one can make an informed guess as to whose "standards" they refer to.During the Joseon Dynasty, history was recorded by a chronicler who presided at official events alongside the king who was not supposed to see what would be added to official record. This mechanism was supposed to serve as a safeguard against the rewriting of history by rulers.(xiii) Although this precaution was violated by the more despotic rulers of that time, the Lee administration could learn a lot from looking to the more enlightened of its ancestors. It took the courage of millions to throw off the shackles of dictatorship in South Korea and move the hand of the state away from the history pen. In a state that controls both the pen and the sword, does it matter which one is mightier?
