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Politics, price of Seoul's
collaboration probe
By Jaewoo
Choo
SEOUL - Since the presidential
campaign of 2002, South Korea has not had a
moment's respite from ideological clashes between
progressives and conservatives. The former emerged
the winner when Roh Moo-hyun was elected
president. He still has not triumphed, however, in
his ideological and political battles. A potent
and potentially dangerous strategy, fueled by
anti-Japanese sentiment, is a probe into those -
many of them powerful conservatives who oppose him
today - who collaborated with the Japanese during
the colonial era. Some committed atrocities, some
shuffled papers in the Japanese bureaucracy, some
swept the floors, some looked the other way, and
some amassed fortunes thanks to close ties with
the occupiers. Some walk tall today because their
relatives and ancestors bowed to the Japanese
occupiers.
The probe has not yet begun and
all details of how it will function are not known.
The legal framework was approved by the Judiciary
Committee of the National Assembly last December,
and the Assembly itself, convening in April, is
expected to adopt a "Truth and Reconciliation
Law", setting up an investigation and some sort of
truth and reconciliation commission. The
government already has established a "Truth,
Reconciliation and Future Committee". The idea is
to expose collaboration with the Japanese and also
collaboration with past repressive Korean military
governments. The timing is propitious, say Roh and
his Uri Party; after all, August 15 marks the 60th
anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan's
occupation from 1910-45.
Not a few big
names will be exposed and major figures and their
descendants - mostly descendants - humiliated.
Questions of compensation and return of property
have not yet been settled. Several North Korean
organizations have compiled lists, a dictionary of
collaborators - 3,000-4,000 - but the key number
is 786. The names have not been made public though
the prominent figures are well known. The
"dictionary" will be like a Who's Who of
infamous, as well as heretofore unknown,
collaborators, to be published later.
The
opposition hasn't said much, given the current
climate of anti-Japanese sentiment, but it has
said that it will not oppose the bill.
In
Japan, analysts naturally are carefully watching
developments in the collaboration campaign. Many
South Korea experts in Japan see Roh's
investigation as being primarily politically
motivated to strengthen the shaky political ground
for Roh's progressives in advance of the 2007
presidential election - and to harm Park
Guen-hye's opposition Grand National Party (GNP).
They also point out that South Korean governments,
except for that of former president Kim Dae-jung,
have used anti-Japanese elements to strengthen the
sitting administration's political standing and
divert the people's attention away from such
domestic difficulties as a sluggish economy. Using
anti-Japanese sentiments makes it easier to unite
the nation and boost nationalist feelings. Roh's
political ratings are also said to have improved
with his tough talk about Japan and his stand over
the disputed Tokdo Islands.
Roh
passionately is pushing his efforts to unearth
Korea's still shrouded and shameful history,
tainted by coverups and and distortions by former
military governments once headed by the patriarchs
and matriarchs of current political party leaders
and members, especially of the major opposition,
the GNP. The repercussions of Roh's efforts at
political and sociological archeology, however, go
far beyond South Korea's domestic politics,
affecting the whole Korean Peninsula and, of
course, Japan. It may also have implications for
East Asia and for other countries whose nationals
collaborated with the Japanese.
Before
launching his anti-collaborators campaign, Roh was
establishing his own credentials and independence.
He has said it was time for South Korea to become
autonomous in its foreign policy and international
relations - more independent of the United States
- and to restructure the current US-Korean
alliance. He has a powerful conviction that this
relationship is a snare that prevents South Korea
from independently pursuing its national interests
in general and its relationship with North Korea
in particular. Unfair treatment by the United
States when its military inflicted physical and
economic losses upon Koreans was the motivating
factor behind his independence initiative, though
South Korea can ill afford to dispense with US
military and other assistance. Many Koreans are
offended at the presence of US bases, their costs
to South Korea, the immunity of US military
personnel, and so on. In recent years, South Korea
has witnessed and experienced anti-Americanism not
seen since the 1880s. Although that hostility
seems to have subsided in recent times, the damage
to the bilateral relationship has not been healed.
Some powerful and conservative Koreans,
however, emphatically do not share Roh's view of
South Korea going its own way in terms of foreign
policy and no longer being at Washington's beck
and call. These are some of the figures who
conceivably also might be targeted by the
anti-collaborationist probe.
Beginning
last autumn, Roh started making every possible
effort to unearth the truth about Japanese
collaborators. He has justified his initiative in
the name of resurrecting the truth about modern
Korea, with all its strengths and weaknesses. In
addition, the president justified his
anti-collaboration efforts by observing that
Korea's 60th anniversary of liberation from
Japanese colonial rule is approaching - certainly,
he argues, this is an appropriate time to take
stock and seek the truth.
In the meantime,
some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have
finished collecting and categorizing the names of
those who allegedly collaborated with the Japanese
during the the colonial period in the first half
of the 20th century. These names are part of a
dictionary of collaborators. The probe, whatever
form it takes, or a truth and reconciliation
commission would have major negative implications
for those who oppose Roh and who may - or whose
family may - have collaborated with the Japanese.
The least important on the list are the vast
majority, believed to have held Japanese
government positions in the colonial
administration.
Most of those on the list
have died, and through the publication of names,
their descendants are the ones who are likely to
suffer.
Since many Korean NGOs are
nationalistic organizations, they don't use
English names, only Korean names, and their
official homepages are in Korean without English
translation. Some, translated by this
correspondent, are the Institute for Research in
Collaborationist Activities, the History
Foundation for Unified Korea, and at the National
Assembly level, the National Assembly Members'
Study Group for Correcting the Falsified National
History.
The goals of the truth and
reconciliation commission will apparently be
threefold:
To identify collaborators and to resurrect the
truth about Japanese collaborators who once were
charged with anti-ethnic crimes in 1948 but who
were acquitted of all charges in 1949 when the
committee overseeing the cases was dismantled by
the Rhree Seung-man (Singman Ree) government.
To find out the truth about the victims of
forced/coerced Korean labor during the Japanese
war effort, to establish legal grounds to file for
compensation from the Japanese government, because
such cases brought before the Japanese courts have
always been dismissed.
To find out about collaborators with past
repressive military governments.
The
Korean people are incensed about Japanese history
books' description of their colonization, the
dispute over the Tokdo Islands (Takashima in
Japanese) and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine
honoring Japan's war dead, including war
criminals. They do want to know who and whose
relatives and ancestors brutalized their fellow
Koreans for their own profit or livelihood.
This desire to know more about
collaborators with the Japanese is further fueled
by a recent Japanese prefectural government's
irresponsible and immature - in the view of many
Koreans - decision to declare Takashima Day, as a
confirmation of Japan's alleged sovereignty over
the rocky Tokdo isles and cluster of rocks in a
rich fisheries area. That is stirring up strong
anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea to an
unprecedented degree. This in turn has
strengthened Roh's determination to identify
collaborators and their atrocities.
Most,
if not all, did commit atrocities of one kind or
another. They may not have committed actual murder
but they may have committed other atrocities, such
as those by the Korean businessmen who exploited
their own people to further the Japanese war
effort. Or the atrocities by policemen who used
any and all means, including violence, to arrest
dissident Koreans and eradicate their independent
spirit. And in Manchuria, Korean policemen pursued
and captured those who fought for Korean
independence and turned them over to Japanese
authorities.
Ironically - because it needs
its alliances with both the United States and
Japan - South Korea now has become a boiling hot
pot of anti-Americanism and anti-Japanese
sentiment. These are the two nations that South
Korea cannot afford to lose for security reasons
because of their roles in today's power
configuration around the Korean Peninsula, not to
mention Northeast Asia and East Asia in general.
However, if the animosity escalates, it can only
eventually backfire against South Korea, which has
already lost a substantial amount of trust as an
ally in the view of Washington.
Roh's
government and his Uri Party deny that their
efforts to exhume - metaphorically speaking - the
political graveyards of the pro-Japanese
collaborators have any foreign-policy
implications; they claim strictly domestic
motivations. To a certain extent, this may be
true. What we cannot overlook, however, is the
fact that Roh is not purely motivated by history.
His efforts also are politically motivated. He
wants non-collaborators to go down in history as
the disgraced relatives of disgraced
collaborators. The political opposition, while not
opposing the bill, would not like to see the sins
of the fathers visited upon their powerful
conservative sons.
Last August, Roh
already set the process in motion with a
high-profile example: the chairman of his Uri
Party, Shin Ki-nam, was revealed to be the son of
a collaborator, a police official, and was forced
to resign from the party.
In other words,
Roh's intention is to put the descendants of the
pro-Japanese collaborators before the Korean court
of public opinion because of their ancestors'
wrongdoings. And the "court" is very
anti-Japanese. The potential, probably the
certain, verdict would be humiliation and loss of
face; and while the individuals probably would not
be barred from public office or pubic life, they
might find the public exposure too painful. Most
of the descendants happened to fall in the
category of conservatives - who have opposed Roh -
in today's Korean ideological dichotomy and
political tug-of-war. These are the people who
have long cherished the prestige and power
established by their ancestors though their
collaboration with the Japanese occupiers.
To condemn them for retaining their
inherited wealth and status is somewhat like
charging the descendants of the Rockefellers,
Carnegies, and others in the United States (who
plundered its wealth as the nation industrialized)
and denouncing their economic and social
well-being today by blowing out of proportion
their ancestors' illegal and unjust way of gaining
their wealth. But even the American robber barons
were not like the Japanese occupiers.
Like
Shin, the party chairman who lost his job, Roh and
his government want the descendants of
pro-Japanese collaborators to vanish from the
political landscape. They want to confiscate their
wealth - this has not been decided - and crush
their prestige. It is far from certain, however,
that wealth, however ill-gotten and then legally
amplified, would be confiscated.
At one
time, the property of collaborators' families was
confiscated by the government, but the children of
the collaborators filed suit, appealing to regain
their property, and the courts ruled in their
favor. The case is ongoing.
In February,
Assemblyman Choi Young-gyu of the Uri Party sent a
bill to the National Assembly, legislation that
now is known as the "Special Law to Redeem
Pro-Japanese Collaborators' Assets". The assets
were held by the children of the most notorious
and infamous officials in Korean history, who sold
the nation to Japan in 1910. The most notorious
figures were prime minister Lee Wan-yong and
cabinet minister Son Byung-jun, who signed the
annexation treaty with Japan in 1910. It is
reported that an extraordinary amount of land is
still under their names, and the special law is
aimed to deny their right of possession and to
return it to the people.
In addition, by
setting up a committee known as the "Truth,
Reconciliation and Future Committee", a
ruling-party organ, Roh's government has made it
explicit that it and the Uri Party are committed
to finding out the truth about those who were
wrongfully accused of activities in violation of
the National Security Law, which outlawed support
of North Korea. In addition, it wants to restore
their honor for their patriotic endeavor against
Korean military regimes. In other words, they want
to resurrect the honor and rehabilitate those who
resisted Japanese occupation. They also want those
who supported Korean military regimes, those who
are now considered to be very pro-Japanese and
anti-communist, to pay the price. The former
public figures and leaders during South Korea's
era of military rulers ironically are those who
are perceived as conservatives in the battle of
ideology in today's Korean society. Roh is
carrying on with a "Sunshine Policy" to mend
fences with North Korea and work toward eventual
reunification.
Indeed, there could be some
distorted cases of judgment with respect to
anti-military government activities. For a long
time, South Korea was under the rule of
authoritarian dictatorships headed by former
generals such as Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan and
Roh Tae-woo. Their rule lasted more than three
decades, from the 1960s to the early 1990s. During
their leadership, South Korea achieved great
economic development, sustaining double-digit
growth and transforming a war-devastated economy
into a world-class economic power. By contrast,
proportionate political development and democratic
evolution became unthinkable and unrealistic
because they simply hindered the authoritarian
governments' desire for perpetual rule.
Such desire by South Korea's own dictators
was, however, sugar-coated by a strong leadership
that could guarantee social stability and
security, prerequisites for economic development,
especially against North Korea's continuous
efforts to infiltrate every sector of the South's
society to cause disruption. Under the
circumstances, military governments relied on any
and all viable means to control the society and
people's daily lives. The government applied
strict censorship to the mass media so that it
could publish only those articles approved by
Ministry of Justice and other law-enforcement
agencies.
It also had a firm control over
intelligence, police and courts so as to
facilitate its monopoly of information, thereby
artificially limiting the people's right to know.
It was a strong advocate of anti-communism, an
ideology that justified prevailing rule by the
military.
These measures, in turn,
naturally elevated the government's status far
above the law and constitution, granting it
immunity from any sort of public challenge. This
immunity would eventually create a ruling circle
that was able to build its wealth and prestige by
illegal and unjust methods, relying on nepotism
and cronyism based on one's birthplace, education
background and other personal ties.
Immune
under dictatorial rules, military governments were
able to crush and cover up many, if not all,
political incidents by the opposition in the name
of social stability and anti-communism. However,
to resurrect the honor of the past opposition by
condemning previous military regimes, their
families and descendents would have the effect of
justifying the social unrest staged by those once
known as leftists. While restoring the honor of
the leftists, the current government is determined
to find the conservatives guilty of their and
their ancestors' past wrongdoings. In other words,
the act to seek truth, reconciliation and a
positive future is a reflection of the current
government's intolerance against other values and
ideologies, an act of disdaining core values of
democracy such as pluralism.
In the course
of carrying out the investigation of the past, it
is safe to assume at this stage that ideological
struggles will continue well into the future,
intensifying the tension and division between
conservatives and progressives. If and when the
conservatives who oppose Roh are deprived of their
status, privileges and wealth upon the completion
of the investigation, it will have a devastating
effect on South Korea's future foreign relations,
because these conservatives traditionally hold a
strong view on the positive value of the US
alliance and the importance of friendly ties with
Washington.
Jaewoo Choo, PhD, is
assistant professor, School of International Relations and Asian
Studies, Kyung Hee University.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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