뉴스레터

People may each have their own legitimate reason to harbor expectations for the year of the monkey, but to a historian, there seems to be no great cause to distinguish the new year from the past year. Controversies in South Korea surrounding the issuance of state-authored national history textbooks has moved beyond the stage of brutally clawing at one another with arguments, but seems poised to resurface at any time when the right opportunity surfaces. Other major tasks awaiting historians include the matter of Seoul having been excluded from the designation of "Baekje Historic Areas" named as a UNESCO World Heritage last year, despite the fact that Seoul had been a former capital of Baekje before it was relocated to Ungjin. The sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, which also became inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list last year, remains part of an equally weighty task as Japan neglects to reflect upon the horrendous conditions Korean forced laborers suffered from working in the munitions industry for Japan's wars of aggression at those sites.

Above all else, however, lingers the premonition that, contrary to the government officials' declarations and hopes, the "comfort women" negotiations or agreement made at the end of last year will go down in history as one of the most fiercely debated topics. History is about memories or records of past experiences, and some facts or aspects about them are widely shared and long marked as representations of history between members of society. "What", then, should be recorded or commemorated and "how"? A common and easily overlooked premise related to this question is that historical truths and academic proof of them cannot become subjects of political strife or negotiation, and that there is a close connection of some sort between "what is happening now" and "what has (or seems to have) passed."

The aim of the Northeast Asian History Foundation would be no different upon the arrival of the tenth anniversary since its establishment. This is because the foundation's nature and base lies mostly in the historical event that took place in 2005 and perceptions of it, right around the time when the legislation to found and operate the foundation was motioned.

Discrepant Memories and Commemorations between Koreans and the Japanese

Looking back on 2005, it was a year that had been jointly designated by the governments of South Korea and Japan as the "Korea-Japan Friendship Year," a time to deepen the mutual understanding and friendship between South Koreans and the Japanese in celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two nations. Yet, one-sided, distorted descriptions appeared in newly issued Japanese textbooks at the beginning of that year, for example, that the island Dokdo has "inherently been Japanese territory" and is being "illegally occupied by South Korea." Then, the Shimane prefectural government designated the 22nd of February as "Takeshima Day." That day exactly marks the passing of a century since Japan incorporated the island Dokdo as part of its own territory through Shimane prefecture's public notice no. 40 in 1905. The notice came two months after the Russian garrison's surrender to the Japanese at Port Arthur, and three months after the Russian Baltic Fleet's defeat at the Battle of Tsushima. In November of the same year, imperial Japan pushed ahead with the Ulsa Protectorate Treaty with Korea. Taking over Dokdo therefore signaled the deprivation of Korea's national sovereignty.

The Northeast Asian History Foundation's beginning thus took place at a time when the Korean society was being painfully reminded of the Ulsa Protectorate Treaty from a century ago against empty slogans such as "From Discord to Concord" or "From Discordance to Reconciliation" upon the arrival of the sixtieth anniversary of Korea's liberation. Rippling all over Japan, on the other hand, were banners commemorating the so-called "Centennial of Japan's Victory in the Russo-Japanese War." The year 2005 was also when events from 1885 were mislabeled as instances of international conflict over territory. Such events included the unsuccessful talks that took place between Joseon and the Qing dynasty over a "border demarcation monument on Baekdu mountain" (Baekdusan jeonggyebi 白頭山定界碑) and the British Royal Navy's illegal occupation of the Korean island Geomundo near the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. All these were nothing but a series of shocking experiences that demonstrated how much the context of memories and commemoration could be distorted between Korea and Japan even as they agreed to celebrate together the fortieth anniversary of their diplomatic relations' normalization.

Perhaps Korean citizens and students deeming the Korea-Japan Treaty of 1965 as the "Second Ulsa Protectorate Treaty" and operating "resistance movements against disgraceful diplomacy" at the time the treaty was made had been more than a mere matter of right or wrong. For example, their discernment back then was visualized in a four-panel editorial cartoon from 1965. The first panel shows Korean and Japanese officials shaking hands with one another. The next panel displays a Japanese tourist in a kimono setting foot in the Korean city Busan. One may be able to anticipate that the panel after that would feature a Japanese businessman arriving at Busan. Surprisingly, in the final panel, a Japanese tank lands in Busan. This appalling prediction from five decades ago already became true thirty years later when two warships of Japan's maritime self-defense forces entered the port of Busan in 1996 for the first time since Japan was defeated in the Second World War. Since then, Japanese self-defense force warships have continued to come and go through ports in Korea up until last year when the Republic of Korea conducted a navy fleet review to mark the seventieth anniversary of South Korea's liberation and the South Korean navy's foundation. However, the island Dokdo still remains wedged in between the waters of Korea and Japan for more than a century, wearily attesting to the fact that Korea's liberation is yet to be completed.

The Solution to the Problem

The Japanese military "comfort women" seems to be a more sensitive issue that is closer to the daily lives of people compared to the Dokdo issue, and a sad one since the group of victims rather than the aggressors are left to bear the insults and pain. Statements by government officials of both countries declaring that the Japanese military comfort women issue has been "finally and irrevocably" resolved reminds us of the phrase in the 1965 Korea-Japan Treaty on Basic Relations stating that the matter of Korea's rights to claim for compensation has "completely and finally" been resolved upon entering the treaty. That phrase was used by Japan as a basis to consistently dismiss any demands for compensation for the next fifty years since 1965. And now, fifty years later, Japan has used the same rationale to deal with the Japanese military comfort women issue.

Just as back in 2005 when the people of each nation differently remembered events from a century or two ago, Koreans in 2015 remember 1895 as the year Empress Myeongseong of the Joseon dynasty was brutally assassinated through the incident called Eulmi sabyeon (乙未事變), whereas the Japanese remember the same year as when they won the First Sino-Japanese War. Furthermore, the year 2015, which was the seventieth anniversary of liberation for Korea, has become not only the year that marks seven decades since the end of the Great East Asia War for the Japanese, but also the first year Japan became a nation capable of war in seventy years by changing its self-defense laws. Despite engaging in wars of aggression for seventy years since invading the Joseon dynasty on the Korean peninsula in 1875, Japan is now, seven decades after its defeat in the Second World War, widely celebrating the Japanese Spirit (Yamato-damashii 大和魂) and the infrastructure it used to mobilize for war during the Meiji era. That being the Japanese way suggests that the heart of the matter depends on us Koreans.

Around the time innocent women were being exploited and violated under the name of "Female Voluntary Service Corps" run by imperial Japan, Hans and Sophie Scholl were executed during the flower of their youth for organizing a secret student group named the White Rose (Weiße Rose) in Munich to resist against the Nazi regime. The only thing that memorializes this brother and sister who helped shape the Germany of today is the pattern of a white rose engraved on the ground in front of the Ludwig Maximilians University's main building where they were arrested. The memorial is always decorated with flowers brought by someone and the students at that university breathe with the spirit of the White Rose in their daily lives. So, for whoever finds it uncomfortable to squarely face the statue symbolizing a comfort woman that sits outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, regardless of whether they are Japanese or Korean, the new year in terms of history will remain far from their reach.