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Korea: Naming names of Japan's
collaborators
By David Scofield
SEOUL -
The planned departure of the United States Forces in
Korea from Seoul and the Yongsan area is prompting more
than 
just the expected rush of eager
real-estate speculators eyeing this US$3 billion,
255-hectare island of relative green embedded in a sea
of concrete within one of the world's most congested
cities.
The effective repatriation, in two or
three years, of Yongsan - real estate formerly held by
the Chinese and for the first half of the 20th century
by the Japanese - is prompting soul-searching about the
past and a possible, belated re-evaluation of Korea's
recent history, especially under Japanese occupation.
Alleged collaborators with the Japanese are expected to
be named this summer by an umbrella group of civil
organizations.
Complicity and collaboration are
among the issues surfacing in what is sure to be a
complicated, painful and, some say, politically
motivated reassessment - general elections approach in
less than three months. The umbrella group, the Korean
Issues Research Center, has already published the names
of hundreds of groups and businesses it says
collaborated with the Japanese. And this summer it
promises to go even further and name individuals who, it
alleges, sided with the Japanese to the detriment of the
Korean people. Some big names may well come to the fore,
but probably few surprises.
The return in a few
years of the property occupied by the US military
forces, and before that the Japanese and the Chinese,
has reminded the nation of its colonial history. But the
return of this property to South Korea and the linked
revisitation of Korea's colonial past has the potential
either to help the nation come to terms with its recent
history, or to undermine a better understanding of
history, fueling political vendettas and exacerbating
strains in an already divided nation.
The
Japanese officially colonized the Korean Peninsula from
1910 to the end of World War II in 1945, though their
presence was felt at least a decade before that. The
Yongsan (Dragon Mountain) area at the foot of Namsan in
the center of Seoul was the headquarters of the Imperial
Army - the subsequent occupation of the area by the US
military has encouraged obvious comparison parallels to
that time. Indeed, the headquarters of the US Forces in
Korea (USFK) and the US 8th Army are currently housed in
Japanese occupation-era buildings on Yongsan Main Post,
which served similar functions for the Japanese army.
The forthcoming so-called "liberation" of the
Yongsan area has encouraged at least one civil
organization to question Korean complicity with the
Japanese colonizers, and it plans to name the names of
collaborators and those it considers to have been
complicit in the occupation. Some of those are believed
to be members of families now highly placed in Korean
government, business and culture.
New facts
emerge about the rape of Korea
Korea's official
history is careful to define the time of Japanese
colonization as a brutal rape of Korea and its people,
which is largely true. However, other facts recently
unearthed and largely unreconciled to the textbook
history suggest there is more to the story.
At
the end of the 19th century, Korea was languishing under
the ineffectual rule of the later Joseon (Yi) Dynasty.
Long a Chinese vassal state, by the end of the 19th
century Korea's leadership had made few attempts to
develop the country, preferring instead to turtle up and
hope the world would pass on by. The monarch remained in
Seoul, and had little interaction with any forces
outside the capital. The remainder of the peninsula was
ruled by the landed class called Yangban who maintained
many Koreans as indentured servants, landless peasants.
Japan's colonization of Korea came on the heels
of its own Meiji restoration. Korea's first Japanese
governor, Ito Hirobumi, himself one of the original
architects of the Meiji restoration and an acolyte of
Prussian-style bureaucracy, installed a strong system of
centralized bureaucracy on the peninsula, while quietly
buying off and removing the Yangban overlords.
The Japanese mobilized the country's resources
in order to develop the infrastructure of Korea - not
out of altruism, but in the knowledge that a
well-functioning Korea could better serve the needs of
Japan, initially through agriculture and then through
industry. The "industrialist mindset" and a belief in
the efficacy of large business groups maintained by
strong government-business relationships got its start
during this period and propelled Korea forward in the
second half of the century.
Japan's quest to
exploit both the nation's human and material resource
capital included a comprehensive mapping campaign that
cost about 20 percent of the country's total revenue for
eight years from 1910-18. This was followed by land
redistribution and the eviction of landowners who lacked
written deeds, appropriation of lands for Japanese
farmers, incorporation of property rights, abolition of
slavery, introduction of a Western-style legal code, the
development of Korea's logistical infrastructure and the
formation of a strong, integrated bureaucracy.
The Japanese style of colonialism was very
hands-on - Japan truly wanted to integrate Korea into
Japan, in terms of infrastructure and bureaucracy.
According to Korean scholar Michael Robinson of Indiana
University, Korea's bureaucracy grew from 10,000 members
in 1910 to 87,552 in 1937, about 40 percent of them
ethnic Koreans.
Many Koreans worked in
police, army, government
The Japanese ruled with
an iron fist. Dissension was quelled swiftly, and often
brutally. But the large numbers of Koreans serving in
the police, the military and the central government have
yet to be fully accepted or incorporated into Korea's
official history. Indeed, studies by people such as Atul
Kohli of Princeton University indicate that the
application rate for the police force was 20 Koreans for
each vacancy, since such positions with the new
authority were much sought after and prized in the
colonized country.
World War II ended and the
Japanese left, but the Japanese infrastructure, ideas
and bureaucratic "software" remained. Indeed, the United
States occupied the same ground the Japanese had just
vacated, made use of the law-enforcement and government
bureaucracy created by Tokyo, and left many Koreans in
the same positions they had held during the Japanese
colonial period.
After the withdrawal of
Japanese forces, there were calls for committees to
identify and expose those who were Japanese sympathizers
and collaborators, thus beginning the process of
reconciliation. This idea - Korean truth commissions, in
effect - was dropped by Korea's first president Rhee
Syngman (better known in the West as Syngman Rhee) as
being too divisive.
The idea of examining
complicity and collaboration was scrapped and the
country marched forward, never fully confronting or
reconciling itself to its colonial past, and to those
who benefited from it - some understandably out of need,
others out of greed. Among the questions never asked:
Were the economically hard-pressed Koreans who joined
the Japanese-run police force wicked collaborators who
harmed their Korean compatriots, or were they ordinary
people who needed jobs and helped to maintain law and
order in the colonial period?
Fast-forward 50
years and the forthcoming removal of the US forces from
the geo-historical nexus of Yongsan, Dragon Mountain,
headquarters of both the Japanese Imperial Army and the
US forces in Korea.
The timetable calls for the
USFK in Seoul and the bases to the north of Seoul along
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to close, and thousands of
US soldiers and others to be relocated to two hubs -
Osan-Pyongtaek and Daegu-Busan - to be completed by the
end of 2006. The United States has stationed about
37,000 soldiers in South Korea and an equal number of
dependants, contractors and others. The exact number to
be moved is not definite at this time and it is not
known how many will be removed from the country
altogether. South Korea, however, is now saying that it
might take until late 2007 for the government to comply
with its contractual obligations - paying the cost of
removal and relocation of USFK - an estimated $3 billion
to $4 billion.
Exposing 'collaborators' a
possible vendetta
A civic group called the Korean
Issues Research Center is ready to name names this
summer and expose those it says were complicit with the
Japanese. It claims it has wide popular support, saying
it has independently raised $500,000 for the project.
The group's tone and mission suggest a vendetta, but it
is possible that making public more information about
the past may promote the thoughtful re-evaluation of
history and help shape a more positive future. This
could mean better relations with Japan and other
countries in the region, and better chances of conflict
resolution.
The implication of many families,
including some very powerful and prominent figures in
contemporary Korean society, seems likely. Punishment
appears out of the question, but public humiliation
could be severe.
The scope and the sheer numbers
of those involved might prompt South Korea to take
another, more balanced and objective look at its recent
history and its place in the region. This would be a
vitally important step forward for a nation that has
declared its intention to pursue an independent path of
foreign policy and diplomacy.
A more
comprehensive and realistic public recognition of
Korea's history with Japan, for example, would allow
Seoul to formulate policy and strategies based on less
nationalistically charged interpretations of history. It
would be a crucial first step in South Korea's
maturation into a developed democratic nation and a
positive lesson for its regional neighbors, especially
Japan, that have yet to come to terms with their own
recent histories. Incomplete and distorted
understandings of history by all parties fuel
contemporary conflicts, such as the Korea-Japan disputes
over Tokdo Island and the naming of the East Sea/Sea of
Japan - among others.
But given the timing of
the complicity-exposure project and the politically
charged atmosphere of the nation - less than three
months to go before general elections - it is very
possible that the long-overdue historical reassessment
may become nothing more than a political weapon. This
could be wielded to undermine and discredit political
foes, as the names of families sympathetic to the
Japanese are leaked to the press prior to official
publication of The Dictionary of Pro-Japanese
Koreans, slated for 2006.
Given that
President Roh Moo-hyun's progressives largely support
the exposure initiative, while members of the
conservative Grand National Party do not, the
destructive politicization of what could be a
constructive national historical exercise appears a
distinct possibility.
Seoul feared exposure
project too divisive
The complicity-exposure
initiative is spearheaded by the Korean Issues Research
Center, an overarching organization of civic groups,
many of them Internet-based. It has been functioning
since 1991 and it studies Korea-Japan issues. The
exposure campaign was first envisaged as a five-year
project, from 2002-06. The government initially agreed
to fund it, but conservative politicians got nervous
when they realized the politically divisive nature of
the campaign and the embarrassment to key conservative
and other public figures.
In order to compensate
for the loss of promised government funding, the Korean
Issues Research Center then launched a funding appeal on
January 8. It received considerable support from
like-minded progressive online newspapers such as
Hankyoreh, Oh My News, Voice of the People, The Whanin
Period and many more. The umbrella organization and its
cause - naming names - also received exposure through a
television news special on MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Co).
The research center had predicted that it would
take until this summer to raise the $500,000 for its
complicity-exposure project, but says it secured the
money in only 11 days. Most donors, it says, were
average citizens or "netizens", though it is possible
that large donors contributed.
In late 2002, the
organization first began publishing the names of alleged
collaborators, and the first installments identified
what it called 500 pro-Japanese groups and places of
business in Korea. This was not too damaging, since it
only identified organizations, not individuals. Names
will come later.
In 2003 the group published the
names of 400 pro-Japanese Korea groups in China. This
coming summer it plans to publish the names of
pro-Japanese groups in the provinces outside of Seoul,
in more detail than contained in its previous efforts.
The publication of individual names - The Dictionary
of Pro-Japanese Koreans - will be completed in 2006,
the same year the US forces are to withdraw from Seoul
and the DMZ to large base hubs in the south.
David Scofield is a lecturer at the
Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee
University, Seoul.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
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