뉴스레터

The Northeast Asian History Foundation (NAHF) has reached its tenth anniversary as of the year 2016. To commemorate the occasion, the NAHF newsletter is featuring a series of interviews to review the progress NAHF activities have made over the past decade and to receive candid advice for the Foundation to move forward. In this month's issue, Professor Han Suk-jung, who also serves as the president of Dong-A University and a member of NAHF's advisory committee, discusses research on Manchuria as well as the political and diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan, and offers advice on the direction NAHF should be heading toward in the future.

Han Suk-jung (President, Dong-A University)

Professor Han Suk-jung acquired his bachelor's degree in Korean literature at Seoul National University and his doctoral degree in social sciences from the University of Chicago in the United States. With support from the Fulbright Program, he lectured at California State University, Fullerton and was a visiting scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto and the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. Since beginning to work at Dong-A University's sociology department, Professor Han Suk-jung went on to serve as the dean of academic affairs, vice president, and now serves as the university's fifteenth president. He is the author of "Reinterpretation of Manchukuo's Foundation" and "Manchuria Modern," and has translated into Korean "Splendid Monarchy" by Takashi Fujitani and "Sovereignty and Authenticity" by Prasenjit Duara.

Q. You must be busier than ever since assuming presidency at Dong-A University, so how have you been doing? We heard you picked up boxing as a hobby late in life. Are you still enjoying it nowadays?

Han Suk-jung I wasn't particularly fond of working out when I was young, in fact, I was more of a weakling preoccupied with studying. But I've always harbored a desire to possess a sturdier physique. Then I started boxing past the age of forty and kept it up until today. There must have been more than a hundred reasons to quit along the way, but I kept heading to the gym thinking that if I skip going even once, there would be no turning back and I'd quit for good. And I didn't just train, but entered three matches, even lying about my age to enter two of them. I guess I'm rather proud of myself for fighting without being knocked out until the end of a match I entered as a welterweight, although I eventually lost by decision. I remember once fighting a hiking instructor in the first round of competition for seniors and mentally willing myself to hang in there after failing to properly watch my weight. I didn't tell my family because I didn't want them to worry and I went to lectures wearing sunglasses to cover up a bruised eye. Now, I only manage to go to the gym once a week, and even that's been a challenge since assuming presidency. After becoming president this past August of a private university I've been part of for nearly three decades, I've learned that a position like that nowadays requires you to think like a businessman, so I'm putting a lot of effort into attracting investment and donations.

Q. You first studied Korean literature, then switched to sociology, and later became interested in Manchuria. What caused you to make each of those choices?

Han Suk-jung I was a bit lost in my early twenties. At first, I enrolled in the pre-dentistry program at Seoul National University, but flunked out because I didn't study. Then after taking the college scholastic ability test twice, I managed to enroll as a student at Seoul National University's college of social sciences, but ended up transferring to the department of Korean literature because I failed to pay attention to my studies. That may sound depressing, but come to think of it, my accidental brush with reading and writing about literature in undergrad has become the foundation of the academic research I'm now doing. After graduating, I briefly worked as a local news reporter for Hanguk Ilbo. That was when I witnessed the "Seoul Spring" of 1980. After experiencing that, I felt I could no longer be a reporter, so I decided to study sociology, which was something I'd been thinking about doing. A few years later, I went to study at the University of Chicago, but became distressed from the thought that American sociological studies were too immersed in metricizing. Then I happened to attend a lecture in historical sociology and felt it was an area that would suit me because it involves a lot of cultural factors. When the time came to pick a topic for my doctoral thesis, I thought about covering modern China, which led to an interest in Manchukuo.

Q. There mustn't have been many scholars researching Manchuria back then, so what attracted you? And did you happen to run into any difficulties?

Han Suk-jung I think there are two reasons Manchuria remained as an obscure research topic. One of them is because most studies revolve around topics based on a "nation." As you may well know, Manchukuo was a country that was around for only about a decade until 1945 after Japan founded it in China's Dongbei area in 1932. So many didn't think it necessary to study a country that lasted for such a short while and no longer exists. It was something on the scholarly periphery for those studying the histories of Japan or China. The other reason has to do with the identity of Manchukuo. Hardly any research had been done on it because Manchukuo was primarily viewed in a negative light as a puppet state or colony created by Japanese imperialism. The few studies that had been done did not incorporate diverse views or perspectives. But from my sociological standpoint, Manchukuo was a very interesting country. If you begin with the question of how the country was formed, Manchukuo was formed out of the know-how Japanese imperialism cumulated from the Meiji Restoration and from turning Taiwan and Joseon into its colonies. It's also a topic that offers an opportunity to cover the entire process of a country's establishment, development, and demise. Procuring source material to study was particularly challenging, but the same can be said for any other study. I personally found it a shame that those who study Manchukuo are presumed to have nationalistic tendencies.

Q. In your recent book "Manchuria Modern," you argue that Korea's economic development in the 1960s originates from Manchukuo's system of the 1930s. What aspects made you think that way?

Han Suk-jung "Manchuria Modern" is a book I planned and prepared for ten years, and I was able to finish it after staying in Singapore and Japan last year during my sabbatical. Manchukuo is like a "black box of post-war East Asian order," which is something I already mentioned in my previous publications. Manchuria was where the Communist Party of China as a minority began to decisively win battles in the Chinese Civil War and was also where Japan built a massive industrial complex that became the basis of modern China's heavy chemical industry. To Japan, Kishi Nobusuke, the maternal grandfather of Japan's current prime minister Abe Shinzō, was a key figure in the so-called "Manchukuo faction" involved in governing Manchukuo and it was this faction that played a central role in the rise of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party in post-war Japan. Manchuria's relation to Korea also has to do with the fact that the careers of Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee were inspired by what they each experienced in Manchuria. Kim Il-sung was involved in anti-Japanese movements there, while Park Chung-hee once served as a lieutenant in the Manchukuo Imperial Army. When the two later became the respective leaders of North Korea and South Korea, they realized through a variety of channels what they had learned and envisioned from spending their youth in Manchuria. To instill people's loyalty for their country, the Manchukuo government held forty to fifty mass rallies each year to promote Confucian ideas that had nearly dissipated from Asia at the time, a means that was later adopted by the Kim Il-sung regime in North Korea. As for South Korea, the process through which the Park Chung-hee government rose to power is similar to how a young officer of the Kwantung Army caused the Mukden Incident in 1931 by committing a coup d'état that led to Japan taking control over Manchuria. But the greatest impact Manchuria has had on South Korea would have to do with the economic development South Korea achieved in the 1960s by running a government-controlled economy. Although a bit altered in terms of format, motifs for executing five-year economic development plans, building massive industrial complexes in Ulsan, and utilizing social mobilization can all be considered to have come from Park Chung-hee's experience in Manchukuo.

Q. As an area adjacent to the Korean peninsula, Manchuria indeed shares a deep historical connection with Korea. If the two Koreas become unified, what kind of influence do you think China's northeastern region would have on the Korean peninsula?

Han Suk-jung Manchuria in the 1930s and 1940s used to be a "land of opportunity" for people from Joseon. About two million Joseon people were living in Manchuria in 1945, which was a number that amounted to one tenth of Joseon's entire population. Among those who relocated from Joseon to Manchuria were not only poor peasants, but also highly-educated elites who failed to advance their careers in Joseon, including writers such as Yu Jin-oh, Baek Seok, and Yu Chi-hwan as well as musicians like Kim Seong-tae. Manchuria is commonly known to have been a mecca for anti-Japanese movements, but that was true only up until the 1910s and it became difficult to conduct such movements by the 1930s. What also caused Manchuria to become historically relevant to Korea was a couple of huge floods that occurred in the southern parts of the Korean peninsula, which forced thousands of people to migrate to Manchuria in the 1930s.

I have no idea when the two Koreas will be unified, but I think deep down China and Japan do not want that to happen. Japan currently has a population of 120 million and if the population on the Korean peninsula becomes 70 million due to unification, such a population's contribution to Korea's economic development is likely to come off as threatening to the Japanese. Nevertheless, help from China and Japan is necessary for the two Koreas to become unified, which is why South Korea must mitigate the concerns of its neighbors. As we can witness from the current debate over the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, unification would raise concerns for China because it could immediately lead to a military confrontation with the United States. There's also a possibility for the Chinese government to question the national identity of ethnic Koreans living in China. Whatever the case, co-existence and peace rather than tension is bound to be more helpful, which is why I think South Korea may be able to create a buffer between itself and China by increasing economic investment in the Yanbian area like Samsung Electronics did by building a semiconductor factory in Xi'an.

Q. Based on your experience as a visiting scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto, how do you think modern Japan's nationalism has impacted the Japanese society of today? And what kind of efforts do you think will be necessary to resolve the historical conflicts that have been aggravating the relations between Korea and Japan?

Han Suk-jung Japan's nationalism was rooted in the modernization, prosperity, and military power Japan was able to attain as a nation. This however plummeted from losing the war and then resurfaced in the form of "techno-nationalism" aimed to dominate the world through technological development. And with the Abe administration's attempt to return Japan into a country capable of war, the original form of nationalism now seems to be reemerging above surface in Japan. Yet, based on my two years of experience in Japan, I have some faith that the education based on democracy and liberalism the Japanese received for the past seven decades since the war ended along with the broadly established middle class within their society will be able to prevent Japan from veering toward extremities. That is because a well-established middle class means that people are not easily stirred up by political instigations. I think that is something that needs to be better recognized when it comes to Korea-Japan relations, which is why South Koreans should constantly exchange and cooperate with the Japanese rather than considering them all as enemies. We need to expand scholarly exchange between research institutes of South Korea and Japan and encourage them to keep cumulating relevant research findings in the long run.

Q. The Northeast Asian History Foundation has arrived at its tenth anniversary. You've been serving as an advisory board member since 2013, so could you share the strongest impression you received about the Foundation so far? A few words of advice for the Foundation's future development would also be much appreciated.

Han Suk-jung I've always thought how great it would be for South Korea to have an institute like Academia Sinica in Taiwan. The International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto also has many research experts with doctoral degrees in different fields. It will certainly and enormously benefit Korea, China, and Japan to nurture experts on East Asian research in the long run and build up the outcomes from the studies they conduct. The Northeast Asian History Foundation (NAHF) was initially established for the purpose of responding to China's Northeast Project, but regardless of that purpose, it has now evolved into an institute consisting of a diversity of experts on East Asia, which I believe carries a significance of its own. That's because the more we create research institutes like NAHF, the more studies we will be able to perform, which is bound to empower Korea as a nation. I personally think NAHF is behind China in terms of the volume of research and behind Japan in terms of the quality of research, and I think this is mainly because an autonomous research culture has not yet been established at NAHF. In the global age we're now living in, it would be problematic to emphasize nationalism or have the state take a hand in historical research. So, I believe more efforts should be put into facilitating ways for scholars and researchers to view and express their perspectives of history from a diversity of angles.