뉴스레터

The Jeju Forum, holding its 14^th session this year, adopted the grand theme of “Asia Towards Resilient Peace: Cooperation and Integration”. As a joint executive organ of the Jeju Forum, the Foundation has formed a session every year related to historical reconciliation. The Foundation configured this year’s session under the headline “Modern Inheritance of the March 1^st Movement and International Order” in consideration of the forum’s grand theme and the centennial of the March 1^st Movement. Of the agendas of the Paris Peace Conference that became a background for the March 1^st Movement, imperialism, the principle of self-determination, and post-colonialism were taken as topics of common interest. During the 90-minute conference chaired by Foundation president Kim Do-hyung, four members made presentations and one led the debate. The following summarizes the presentations and the answers to questions to introduce the views of the four speakers.

Koselleck’s ‘past future’ and what the March 1^st movement ‘fights for’

The first speaker, Professor Park Myung-kyu of Seoul National University, looked at the March 1^st Movement with the concept of “past future” suggested by German historian Reinhart Koselleck, saying that awareness regarding the March 1^st Movement has also changed over the past 100 years. The past event is past in time, but it is future-oriented among events, offering a vision for the future. This means that one can look for the directional point corresponding to the “past future” through the future sought by the March 1^st Movement 100 years ago. Professor Park saw the March 1^st Movement as having pursued the directional point (fight for), apart from the meaning of resistance (fight against) to foreign rule. In the aspect of “fight for”, what was more central was the right to self-determination and self-reliance, and what it fought for was peace. The Independence Declaration states the conversion of the dynastic system to popular sovereignty, aware of people as those who hold that sovereignty. The constitutional principles of the Provisional Government are modern ones integrated into our current constitution, and the movement aims for peace in East Asia as well as independence. Thus, shedding new light on the March 1^st Movement must be the expression of our will to inherit human liberation, national foundation, and the creation of a peaceful international order contained in the vision of then even for today.

International societies having different dreams in the same place and the principle of national self-determination

Researcher Shin Hyo-seung of the Foundation delved into the Paris Peace Conference and the international circumstances of the time. In the Paris Peace Conference, every nation set its sights on returning to a certain point of time in the past thought to be Europe’s heyday, unlike its name suggests. France determined the Versailles Palace as the venue of the conference to symbolize its will to return to what it was before the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. But the reality showed that international order could not be established by the power of a single nation. The March 1^st Movement and the May Fourth Movement verify these changes in world order. Powers’ weakened influence across the world led to armed resistance and independence movement, and some founded independent states. The problem was ethnic groups as communities and the proliferation of conflicts as a consequence. Furthermore, as the United States, which had claimed national self-determination as the principle of peace, lost its leadership after World War I, the conflict became more intense. Wilson’s policy resulted in the loss of a support base and impetus in the U.S., and the principle of national self-determination, which was suggested as the principle of peace by Wilson, showed its limited influence as well. After all, Wilson’s principle of peace was confined to the scope in which the powers’ interests did not mutually conflict.

Limit of Taisho Democracy: assimilation policy ‘until then’

Professor Toyomi Asano of Waseda University, in describing the March 1^st Movement, urged the need to look for the connecting link that would form “emotional order” enabling peoples to understand each other from the perspective of world history, not the history of one country, in order to resolve the problem today of historical awareness in Northeast Asia, especially between Korea and Japan.

According to Professor Asano, World War I revealed the contradiction of the previous logic that sovereignty should be limited to some powers, and instead served as an occasion to spread the “principle of national self-determination”. Right after the March 1^st Movement under “Taisho Democracy”, Japanese newspapers attributed it to Koreans’ own problems, missionaries’ incitement, and the propagation of the principle of national self-determination, an external factor. However, their overall tone gradually shifted to an argument that Japan’s form of governance was also problematic. This self-reflection at the time was expressed by Takaaki Kato of Kenseikai and Sakujo Yoshino, a professor of political history at the Imperial University of Tokyo, who contended that Joseon be given self-rule. After April 1919, such ideas as reform of military rule and installation of a colonial parliament began to appear in newspapers. Yet that was the limit of Japan’s then so-called “Taisho Democracy”. The cultural rule led to the partial permission of the freedom of speech, but was replaced by a wartime posture before political participation was allowed institutionally. That is why the chances for social amalgamation between Japanese and Koreans would have been slim even if the war had ended as Japan had designed.

The March 1^st Movement, Hong Kong, and the May Fourth Movement

Professor Eou Chikin of Hong Kong’s Shue Yan University evaluates that the March 1^st Movement could not affect Hong Kong directly because of constraints on media reports. As a result of the Paris Peace Conference, Japan replaced Germany as the ruler of China’s Qingdao and Shandong, the reason being the fact that Britain, America, and other major powers were friendly with Japan. The Hong Kong people’s lower interest in the March 1^st Movement was also due to the fact that Hong Kong had been relatively conservative after China’s Xinhai Revolution in 1911 and that Hong Kong had been focused on the May Fourth Movement.

Sun Wen of China’s then Constitutional Protection Junta argued that China remain neutral in World War I rather than participate in the war. In order for China to develop, he thought, China would need an “open-door” policy not weighted toward specific countries. His nationalism aimed to repeal unequal treaties. Intellectuals like Hu Shi, a liberalist, and Kang Youwei, a conservative, believed that the Paris Peace Conference would help the weak and poor people. On May 3, 1919, Chinese in Beijing, Shandong, and Shanghai planned mass protests. Their slogans were to fight for sovereignty externally and to remove national traitors internally. At 2 pm on May 4, 1919, around 3,000 students gathered in front of Tiananmen Square and expressed their outrage.

Mao Zedong claimed that research must be conducted to find out what was happening in Korea and India. The limited application of the principle of national self-determination, coupled with dissatisfactions with the Treaty of Versailles, helped to stimulate the spread of revolutionary ideas in China. Meanwhile, the patriotic nationalist movement prompted the self-reflection that the situation in China had been caused by the authoritarian power system and traditional culture, resulting in the eventual boycott of Confucianism and changing of the stream into the May Fourth Movement.

After presentations, debates, and answers about them, Foundation president Kim Do-hyung summarized the session as follows: “What can be obtained through today’s presentations and debates is that it would lay the foundation for peace in Northeast Asia, to try to understand and share each country’s different historical experiences rather than to underscore its distinctions.”