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.iii
Now 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.
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?
i Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 1, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 349.
ii Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, W.W. Norton, 2005, p. 221; Bae Ji-sook "Conservatives Downgrade Jeju Uprising in 1948," Korea Times, January 25, 2008.
iii Controversy has surrounded the rewriting of high-school textbooks ordered by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which came about as a result of pressure from conservative lobbyists. A total of 206 "corrections" have been made. See Bae Ji-sook, "History Textbook Revision Completed," Korea Times, December 17, 2008, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/12/117_36286.html. According to an earlier article published in the Korea Times, " The Ministry of National Defense has asked for the “Jeju Uprising” to be renamed the “Jeju Riot” and a sentence describing the Syngman Rhee administration as having “abused the separation of Koreas to maintain his dictatorship,” will be changed to “has done its best to resist communism intruding into the southern part of Korean Peninsula.” Bae Ji-sook, "’Left-Leaning’ Textbooks to Be Revised," Korea Times, September 22, 2008. For international coverage see Donald Kirk, "Korea’s history: What text should high-schoolers read?" Christian Science Monitor, December 1, 2008, and Choe Sang-Hun, "Textbooks on Past Offend South Korea’s Conservatives," New York Times, November 17, 2008.
iv Do Khiem and Kim Sung-Soo, "Crimes, Concealment and South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission", The Asia Pacific Journal, August 1, 2008,
v Gavan McCormack, "Facing the Past: War and Historical Memory in Japan and Korea," The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol. 50-4-08, December 9, 2008.
vi Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang, "Children ‘Executed’ in 1950 South Korean Killings: ROK and US responsibility," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 49-5-08, December 7, 2008 (originally released by Associated Press on December 6).
vii See note iv (above).
viii These include the following: Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under Japanese Imperialism, Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaborations under Japanese Imperialism, Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property, National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident, Presidential Commission on Suspicious Deaths in the Military.
ix "Fate of S. Korea’s truth commissions hangs in the balance," The Hankyoreh, December 12, 2008.
x See Amnesty International’s report for a detailed description of the police brutality protestors faced during these protests:
xi The response from the Organization of Korean Historians (Han’guk yoksa yon’guhoe), an organization of international and domestic scholars, was presented in a statement on November 10, 2008, in which the signatories argue that "the Ministry’s attempt to revise history textbooks will inevitably lead to the erosion of academic freedom and political neutrality in education."
xii Press Release, "Major Policies and Plans for 2009," Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Policy Planning Division, December 27, 2008.
xiii Editorial, "Will the administration change its distortions of history?" The Hankyoreh, December 18, 2008.
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