Peace Tour 2015: The 70th Anniversary of

the Liberation/Division of Korea

Date l 8th August 11– th August 2015

Places to Visit l Seoul, Ansan, Cheolwon, Hwacheon, Dongducheon, Yangjoo

Host The Institute for Korean Historical Studies, Human Rights Foundation ㅣ

“Saram”, People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), The

Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK)

Organizer The Korean People Artist Federation, The April 9 Unification & ㅣ

Peace Foundation, Geumjunggul Humanrights & Peace Foundation, Civil

Peace Forum, Asia Peace & History Education Network,Catholic Human

Right Committee

The 2015 Peace Tour is sponsored

by the 2015 Scenario for Change of

Table of Contents

Welcoming Remarks p.2

Program p.7

Host / Organizer p.9

List of Participants p.17

Symposium Program p.20

2

2015 Peace Tour - Welcoming Remarks

Kim Seong Bo

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies

The liberation that the Korean society faced 70 years ago gave way to

the many possibilities of what kind of society to construct. The moment

it was acknowledged that the war and violence was finally over, the

desire to create a new society became stronger than ever. And because

that desire was strong, various actions for its realization also outpoured in

diverse ways. Amid delirious joy, the hopeful notion that anything could

be possible stemmed from “peace”.

However, the division and occupation of the U.S. and Russian military

as well as the Korean War solidified the division of the peninsula and

subsequent violence invaded the peace. As the violence became

structuralized political and social conflicts were created, which are

continuing explicitly to this day. The numerous types of military action

that encircles the Korean peninsula, the hatred of “pro-North Korea” that

has a stranglehold on our everyday lives, the complete indifference toward

the universal nature of human rights It can be said that feeling

sensitive to these phenomenon and fervently contemplating over how to

put that sensitivity into real life action is a one way to contribute to the

“Peace Movement”. Peace movements have always been difficult chapters

in history but we know well that it had never once been stopped.

It is meaningful that we are simultaneously welcoming the 70th

anniversary of two historical watersheds: liberation and division. This tells

us how important it is to candidly face the origin of the violence that is

3

plaguing the Korean society today. It also lets us know that the

seemingly failed liberation has always existed around us. It is through

detailed diagnosis of violence and pondering over the many kinds of

action to overcome the violence that we can continue on the course of

liberation.

More than ever before, the present times call for the rethinking of the

value of peace.

It is at this time that civic groups and research institutions from home

and abroad have come together to jointly arrange the <Peace Tour 2015:

70th Year since Liberation/Partition>. We have already experimented in

this new form of solidarity through the 2013 <Peace Tour: Marking the

60th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice>. Through the title “Peace

Tour”, we are striving to realize the notion of putting peace into action

by encompassing both theory and reality.

The variety of programs scheduled from August 8 to 11 tells us that

we are all key actors of the peace movement and we also have collective

resolve that this movement will never cease. It is without a doubt in our

minds that mere participation itself is being part of the peace movement.

I sincerely welcome you for participating in the undertaking to solidify

peace.

4

2015 Peace Tour Welcome Address on behalf of the ASCK

Owen Miller,

Lecturer in Korean Studies, SOAS, University of London

여러분 반갑습니다 저는 런던 대학교 에서 코리아 한국. SOAS (' ')

역사를 가르치는 입니다Owen Miller .

I'd like to welcome everyone to the 2015 Peace Study Tour on behalf

of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. Formed in 2003 in

New York, the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) is

dedicated to the promotion of mutual understanding between the people of

the United States and the people of Korea, both North and South. As

you might be able to tell I am not from North America so I think I

must be here representing the rather small European branch of the

organisation! One of the goals of ASCK is to help scholars, students, and

the general public learn about North and South through accurate,

historically informed an analyses, and thus we are happy to be a

co-organizer of this Peace in Korea Study Tour along with Human Rights

Foundation “Saram”, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy

(PSPD), and The Institute for Korean Historical Studies.

I'd like to say a few words to highlight the very international nature of

this important tour. This year, ASCK participants come from: Thailand,

Italy, the UK, Japan, the US, Switzerland and a few who are based in

the Republic of Korea. I wish we could also have participants from the

Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But that will have to be a

5

worthy goal for the future.

Our backgrounds and interests also vary: many of us are academics,

some of us are students and some are activists. Perhaps some of us are

all three. All of us have a deep general interest in Korean history, while

some of us have a very focused interest - e.g. in South Korea's Truth

and Reconciliation Commission, in North Korean social history or in the

history of Sino-Korean relations.

Some of us speak Korean, some of us do not. Some of us are of

Korean descent, some are not. What we have in common is a deep

interest in issues of justice and peace, not just in Korea but all around

the world. We know that international solidarity is important, and that

getting to know people on a personal level makes this more easy and

long-lasting.

I am a first timer on this tour and I'm personally very excited about

what I will learn and what I can take away to pass on to my students

back in the UK and enrich their encounter with Korean history. This tour

offers a unique type of direct learning experience that is difficult to

achieve in other ways. This is an opportunity to learn about events in the

places where they happened, to learn about movements from the people

who have built and participated in them and to see the physical remnants

of modern Korean history at close quarters. And of course it is also a

unique opportunity to meet a wide range of interesting and stimulating

people and hopefully make some new friends or meet some new

collaborators.

Finally I would like to wish everyone here a very safe, enjoyable and

fruitful tour.

6

7

2015 Peace Tour Program

Time Program VenueFacilitator /

Lodging

1stday:Saturday,August8

Conference PSPD2ndfloor

conferencehall

(Seoul)

Moderators: Lee Tae-Ho, Clara Hong

09:30 ~ 10:00 Welcome Welcome: Kim Seong Bo, Owen Miller

10:00 ~ 12:00 Session I: East Asia before and after World War II; Korea’s division system

12:00 ~ 13:00 Lunch

13:00 ~ 15:00 Session II: 70 Years since partition; Korean peninsula present and future

Lodging: Seowon Guest House 15:00 ~ 15:30 Break

15:30 ~ 17:30 Session III: Overcoming war and partition; Korea and beyond

18:00 ~ 20:00 Dinner

2ndday:Sunday,August9

07:30 ~ 09:00 Travel to Ansan, Gyeonggi Province from PSPD Facilitator: Lee Tae-Ho

9:00 ~ 10:50 Visit Danwon High School & Memorial

Gyeonggi Province

Interlocutor: Kim Ikhwan

11:00 ~ 13:20 meet families of Sewol Ferry victims / Lunch

13:00 ~ 14:30 Return to Seoul Seoul Guide: Institute for Korean Historical Studies (Yeoksa munje yeonguso)

14:30 ~ 15:40 former KCIA facilities in Imun-dong,Seodaemun Prison / Museum

16:10 ~ 17:40 Dinner Lodging: Seowon Guest House Walking Tour, Tongin-dong

3rdday,MondayAugust10

07:30 ~ 10:30 Travel to Hwachon from PSPD Breakfast will be provided on the bus

10:30 ~ 11:30 Vietnam War training camp & memorial GangwonProvince

Guide: Institute for Korean Historical Studies (IKHS)

11:30 ~ 12:20 Lunch

12:40 ~ 13:20 Kkeomeok Bridge (Korean War Site)

15:00 ~ 15:40 Cheorwon / 3rd Infantry Division

16:00 ~ 16:40 Seungil Bridge / railway to Geumgang Mts

Gangwon Province

Hakmaru pensyeon. Cheorwon, Gangwon Province 17:00 ~ 17:50 Civilian control line

18:00 ~ 20:00 Dinner with Yugongni villagers /meeting with landmine victims

4thday,TuesdayAugust11

8

08:00 ~ 08:40 Breakfast Hakmaru pensyeon

08:50 ~ 9:40 ruins of North Korean Workers’ Party Headquarters

Guide: Institute for Korean Historical Studies9:40 ~ 10:30 Leave for Dongducheon Gangwon

Province10:30 ~ 11:40 Camptown STD Inspection Office / Meet with Durumi-bang activists

12:00 ~ 13:00 Lunch GyeonggiProvince13:00 ~ 13:50 Yun Kuem Yi murder site

14:10 ~ 15:00 Sangpae-dong Cemetery for camptown women

15:30 ~ 16:20 Yangju Highway (Hyosun and Miseon Incident)

16:20 ~ 18:00 Return to Seoul

18:00 ~ Closing Ceremony @ PSPD Seoul Lodging not provided

9

HOST

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies

Human Rights Foundation “Saram”

People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD)

The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK)

10

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies was established on February

21, 1986, as a private research institute, with these aims: first,

facilitating collaborative researches on issues of Korean history, second,

sharing the fruits of our research with the public, third, suggesting a

desirable direction Korea should take in the future through reflections on

its history, and fourth, contributing to making Korea a more democratic

nation and bringing about peaceful reunification of the peninsula.

The institute has relied on the participation of citizens interested in

historical studies in its management, as well as historical researchers.

Critical Review of History, a quarterly journal established in 1987, has

made a great contribution to sharing modern studies of Korean history

with the public. Also, Critical Studies on Modern Korean History was

first published in 1996, as an academic journal on modern history of

Korea, and has spearheaded fresh and in-depth studies on this

controversial area of Korean history.

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies hosts an annual symposium,

where lively and fruitful discussions on recent issues of Korean history

are had by top researchers. Also, the institute hold places for debate and

conferences, leading critical historical research. Furthermore, with an aim

of sharing the recent historical studies with more citizens, it hosts lectures

and history trips, open to the public.

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies has regular academic

exchanges with various overseas research institutes in Japan, China,

Taiwan, Germany, etc., as well as cooperates with domestic institutes and

non-governmental organizations. The institute is an active member of an

international solidarity for promoting peace and human rights in East

11

Asia.

The Institute for Korean Historical Studies firmly believe a right

historical awareness is a key to solving many thorny issues in Korea.

Join us! Your participation will make a difference for human rights, peace

and justice for all.

Human Rights Foundation “Saram”Human Rights Foundation “Saram” was

founded in 2004 in order to support

organizations or individuals who defend

human rights. The foundation have been dedicating its work on various

aspects of human rights movement: Financial Support Center for

financially challenged human rights organizations; promotion of human

rights dialogue though the publication of human rights magazine <Saram>

and <Saram Saeng-gak>, the publication company specializing the

publication of human rights books; various events and activities including

human rights tour programs and etc.

In 2013, the foundation established Human Rights Center “Saram” with

the support from the people. The organization expects that people will

learn, think and try to fulfil human rights in “Saram”. We dream of a

society where everyone is treated equaly without any discrimination. We

also dream of a state that fulfills its duty rather than to act as an

oppressor. We will continue our work until our dreams come true; a

world where the dignity of human beings are protected in harmony with

nature.

12

People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD)

Until the 1980s, achievement of democracy was

driven by students’ movements resisting government

violence and oppression. Eventually the military

dictatorship, which lasted over three decades, was

terminated by the power of the people. Nevertheless, democratization of

the society was not fully realized immediately.

The true realization of democracy could only be achieved by the people

who ordinarily participate in politics and closely watch the abuse of

power of the state and the corporate. The PSPD was founded in 1994 by

activists, scholars and lawyers who had engaged in various democratic

movements during military dictatorship decades. Hoping to open a new

era of participatory democracy and human rights, the PSPD has been

working on institutionalization of civil participation in democracy, state

power and socioeconomic reform.

Missions of the PSPD

Alternatives We research and propose alternative policies, bills and

measures for enhancing livelihood and rights of ordinary people.

Watch We watch closely whether the power is abused.

Participation We operate with membership fee of more than 10,000

members, irregular donations, and involvement of members and

volunteers.

Solidarity We would like to hold up solidarity as forming a society

that honest, hard- working persons enjoy a decent life and anyone

participates in democracy.

Center for Peace and Disarmament of the PSPD

The PSPD noticed the visible transformational processes of dismantling

13

separation in the Korean Peninsula after the South-North Korea Summit in

2000. We began to discuss the expected influences of a nuclear issue of

North Korea, a new obstacle in the ice-melting environment in the

Korean Peninsula in half-century, and the war on terror led by the U.S.

Facing the changes of times, the PSPD reached the conclusion that we

should deal with overcoming the separated situation and preventing the

international military conflict with more clear visions and responsibilities:

the civil movements in Korea had aimed at the democracy and social

justice in South Korea.

Even before the establishment of the center, the PSPD had carried out

some campaigns to improve the transparency and accountability of the

area of defense such as the protection of informants in the military

industry.

The start of the Center for Peace and Disarmament meant the expansion

of the PSPD’s experience towards defense and security beyond authority

monitoring through civil power. Members of the center felt the need of

‘democratization of field of security’, which meant challenge to the

exclusive interpreting power about security by the state and security

experts. They also paid their attentions to the importance of solidarity

with the subjects of new visions and philosophy to prepare a new social

and world paradigm.

Missions of Center for Peace and Disarmament

- Peace Initiatives in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia

- Monitoring the military spending and Disarmament

- Promoting civil participation

14

The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK)

We are scholars working in the United States and other countries who

join together out of concern about current US policies toward the Korean

peninsula.

We believe that current problems on the Korean peninsula and between

the US and the two Koreas, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

and the Republic of Korea, can only be solved through dialogue,

cooperation, and the active pursuit of peace. We feel the responsibility to

speak out against policies that increase tensions in Northeast Asia and

may lead to another catastrophic war in Korea. We wish to add our

voices to a constructive discussion on how to achieve a peaceful, unified

Korea existing in harmony with its neighbors, including the United States.

The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) is dedicated

to the promotion of mutual understanding between the people of the

United States and the people of Korea, both North and South. The goals

and activities of ASCK include:

1. Helping scholars, students, policy-makers and the general public learn

about Korea, both North (DPRK) and South (ROK), through accurate,

historically informed analyses;

2. Contributing to the constructive and peaceful development of

US-ROK and US-DPRK relations;

3. Facilitating the exchange of scholars and students between the US and

the DPRK.

We realize that this is a critical moment in US-Korean relations. Our

organization is committed to promoting a US policy toward Korea that is

informed, humane, and in everyone's mutual interest.

15

ASCK History

The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) was founded

at a meeting at Columbia University on March 29, 2003.

16

Organizers

The Korean People Artist Federation

The April 9 Unification & Peace Foundation

Geumjunggul Humanrights & Peace Foundation

Civil Peace Forum

Asia Peace & History Education Network

Catholic Human Right Committee

17

List of Participants

18

강건한 Kang, Geon Han

강혜빈 Kang, Hye-bin

권영태 kwon Young tae

권유경

김국환 Kim, Kook-Hwan

김난 Kim, Nan

김대용 Kim, Dae Yong

김덕자 Kim Duk ja

김도민 Kim domin

김미원 Kim Mi won

김민화

김상균 Kim Sang gyoon

김선영 Kim Seon young

김손자 Kim, Sonja

김수지 Kim, Suzy

김승환 KIM Seung Hwan

김영미 Kim Young mi

김원식 Jason Wonsihick Kim

김은경

김정아 Kim, Jung Ah

김종백 Kim Jong back

김태경 Kim Tae kyung

김현숙 Kim hyun sook

난새 Nanse

데이비스 찰스 Davis, Charles

로빈슨 태미 고 Tammy Ko, Robinson

마츠사카 히로 Matsusaka, Hiro

매리김 Kim, Mary

문선영 Moon sun young

박강성주 Park-Kang, Sungju

박미경 Park Mi kyung

박수홍 Park Su hong

박주연 Park, Joo Yeun

박현숙 Park, Hyun Suk

배건욱 Bae, Kun Wook

배경식

배지우

벨로스 조슈아 Bellos, Joshua

사토 유코 Sato Yuko

서재정 Suh, Jae-Jung

세토 토모코 Tomoko, Seto

쉐논 츄 Chew, Shannon

스탁 제프리 Stark, Jeffery

신수정 Shin Su jeong

신지현 Shin, Jihyun

심기호 Sim, Ki-Ho,

애퍼제시 존 Eperjesi, John

양수빈 Yang Su bin

엘빈웡 Wong, Alvin

여재희 Yeo, Jae Hui

오웬 밀러 Miller, Owen

유다정 Yoo da jeong

유왕선 Yu , Wang-Seon

19

이진 Lee, Jean H

이경숙 Lee Kyeong suk

이경주 LEE Kyeong Ju

이경희 Lee, Kyunghee

이광희 Lee Kwang hee

이규정 Kyujeong LEE

이미현 LEE Mihyeon

이상희 Lee, Sang Hee

이숙현 Lee, Sookhyun

이영아 LEE Youngah

이용덕 Lee Yong-Duk

이지원 Lee Ji Won

이지혜 Lee Ji hye

이태호 LEE Taeho

이현옥 Lee, Hyeon-Ok

이혜정 LEE Hea Jeong

이효성 Lee Hyo sung

임광순 Lim gwang soon

임지현 Lim, Jeehyun

임헨리 Em, Henry

장완익 Chang Wan Ick

전영욱

정욜 Jeong, Yol

정근식 Jung, Keun-sik

정다혜

정민주 Chung Hye min

정병욱 Jung Byung Wook

정혜민 Chung Min ju

제인진 카이슨 Kaisen, Jane Jin

조진석 Cho jin seok

줄리아니 조르지아 Giuliani, Giorgia

찬로카나키트 판디트 Chanrochanakit, Pandit

최덕효 Choi, Deokhyo

최명운 Choi Myung Woon

최현모 Choi, Hyun Mo

케빈그레이 Gray, Kevin

킴벌리정 Chung, Kimberley

프리데릭 바르타사트 Barthassat, Frederic

한준구

홍승혜 Hong, Seunghei Clara

홍천희

황수영 Hwang Soo young

20

Symposium Program

21

Session 1: East Asia Before and After World War II, Korea’s Division System, and Continuing Conflicts Over History

Chair: Yang Mi-gang (Co-Chair, Asia Peace & Education Network)

Presentation 1. The Korean Peninsula and the Post-World War II Division System in

East Asia

Lee Sam-Sung (Professor, Hallym University, Department of Politics

and Administration)

Presentation 2. Controversy over South Korea’s History Text books and the New

Right’s Historical Perspective

Kim Jeong-in (Professor, Chuncheon National University of Education,

Department of Social Studies)

Presentation 3. The Onset of Cold War Divisions in North Korea and the Korean War

Suzy Kim (Professor, Rutgers University, Department of Asian

Languages & Cultures)

Session 2: Seventy Years since Liberation-Partition, The Korean Peninsula Present and Future

Chair: Clara Hong (Professor, Yonsei University, Underwood International College)

Presentation 1. Finding a New Path for the Korean Peninsula: Beyond THAAD to

Collective Security

JJ Suh (Professor, International Christian University, Politics and

International Studies)

Presentation 2. The Emergence of Mass Right-Wing Organizations and the Rightward

Shift in South Korean Politics

KimDong-Choon (Professor, SungKongHoe University, Sociology)

Presentation 3. The National Security Stateand the Peace Movement in South Korea

Park,Jung-eun (Co-Secretary General, PSPD)

Session 3: Overcoming War and Partition Korea and Beyond –

Chair: Lee Tae-Ho (Secretary General, PSPD)

Jane Jin Kaisen, “Some Artistic Reflections on War and Division”

Lee, Jung-ae, “The Division System and Zainichi Koreans”

Im Jae-seong, “Conscientious Objectors’ Movement for anti-militarism

22

[Session1: East Asia Before and After World War II, Korea’s Division System,

and Continuing Conflicts Over History]

Presentation 1

The East Asian System of Grand Division and the Korean Peninsula

Lee, Sam-Sung (Professor, Hallym University)

The postwar Europe was an era of “long peace,” borrowing J. L.

Gaddis’ words, despite the Cold War, while the same period in East Asia

witnessed a hodgepodge of cold and hot wars, including the civil conflict

in China as well as the destructive wars in Korea and Indochina.

The barbarism and violence associated with fascism and war were rather

more intense and grotesque in scale in Europe than in East Asia. The

legacy of the historical scars, however, has been deeper and more

enduring in Asia to this day. The postwar history of Europe is largely a

record of movement toward a more integrated community both in

economic life and security, while the ideal of “one community” remains a

mirage in East Asia even long after the end of the Cold War.

This tells something very significant about the nature of the historical

evolution of the East Asian international order for the last century. That

means a striking historical continuity more than discontinuity in this

regional system in double senses: continuities between prewar and postwar

eras, one the one hand, and between the Cold War and Post-Cold War

periods, on the other hand. It is a plain truth that the integration of

China into the capitalist world economy since the 1980s brought about

great changes in the terrain of international conflict and cooperation in

23

the region. East Asian international scene for the last twenty plus years,

however, increasingly testified that geopolitical and military tension can

intensify despite the development of economic interdependence among

nations.

These observations necessitate a (re)conceptualization of the unique

nature of the East Asian international system of the postwar era. The

discourse of Cold War/Post-Cold War, which has been the dominant

conceptual framework in international studies around the world, is not

properly qualified to capture the nature of East Asian regional system.

The concept of the East Asian System of Grand Division, which was

minted by myself in early 2000s, was intended to better understand the

uniqueness of the past and present East Asian international system.

The conceptual limitations of the Cold War/Post-Cold War dichotomy,

in explaining the East Asian international system, derives from its

reductionist tendencies. The Cold War concept places the U.S.-Soviet

bipolar relations at the center of all historical causations, in the first

place. Moreover, the concept tends to reduce the ultimate sources of the

postwar international conflicts to the dimension of politico-ideological

tension, thereby downplaying the other dimensions of geopolitical or

historico-psychological tensions. In addition, the Cold War/Post-Cold War

dichotomy, in its conceptual consequences, stresses qualitative discontinuity

between the eras of the Cold War and the Post-Cold War. It can nicely

explain what happened in Europe, while it hinders more than help a

proper understanding of the nature of what happened in East Asia.

As an alternative way to reconstruct the postwar East Asia, the concept

of the East Asian Grand Division focuses, first, on the historical

continuities between the empire system of the first half of the last

century and the postwar era, and between the Cold War and Post-Cold

War systems within the postwar East Asia. Second, the concept highlights

the element of geopolitics and the historical-psychological dimension as

well as the political-ideological tension as the determinants of the regional

24

international system. Based on these considerations, my theory attempts to

conceptualize the nature of the historical continuities (more than

discontinuities) between different eras in East Asia.

In this presentation, the following themes will be discussed:

1. The Uniqueness of the Postwar International Order in East Asia and

the Conceptual Limitation of the Cold War/Post-Cold War Dichotomy

2. Theoretical Premises of the Theory of the East Asian Grand Division

(1) The Role of Second-Tier Great Powers in Regional International

Order

(2) Historical Memories Matter

(3) The Duality and Limitation of the Historical Effects of Economic

Integration and Interdependence

3. The Duality of Division and the Multi-dimensionality of Tension, and

the Patterns of Interaction

4. The Historical Formation of the East Asian Grand Division

5. The Evolution of the Grand Division during the Cold War: the Two

Phases

6. Change and Continuity in the East Asian Grand Division after the

End of the Cold War

7. Exploring Exits from the Systemic Trap of the Grand Division

(1) Imagining a Peace Belt along the Grand Division Line

(2) Reflections on the Tension of Political Systemic and Ideological

Differences

(3) Designing Alternative Ways of Transnational Dialogues on History

25

Issues

8. Building a Peace Regime on the Korean Peninsula

(1) A Three-Step Concept of Peace Building on the Korean Peninsula

(2) Peace Treaty on the Korean Peninsula and the Idea of a Nuclear

Weapon-Free Zone in Northeast Asia

(3) Three Implications of a Korean Peace Treaty

26

[Session1: East Asia Before and After World War II, Korea’s Division System,

and Continuing Conflicts Over History]

Presentation 2

Controversy over South Korea’s History Textbooksand the New Right’s Historical Perspective

Kim, Jeong-In (Chuncheon National University of Education)

Brief Abstract / Summary (by the translators)

In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crises South Korean society

fully entered the era of neoliberalism. At the same time, the conservative

bloc in South Korea had to endure “10 lost years” under the

[progressive] governments of Kim Dae Jung (1998-2003) and Roh

Moo-hyun (2003-2008).

Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine Policy, the Inter-Korea summit between Kim

Dae Jung and Kim Jong-il in 2000, and the Roh Moo-hyun government’s

reform program in 2004 that included a proposal to dismantle South

Korea’s National Security Law provided the impetus for the formation of

New Right political organizations like Jayujuui yeondae (Association for

Liberalism).

The New Right differentiated itself from the Old Right by privileging

(neo)liberalism and rejecting statism. This novel formulation of a

conservative political agenda was able to rally the conservative forces

27

through Anti-North [Korea] / Anti-Communist projects, giving the New

Right a formidable political voice.

The New Right chose history specifically, history textbooks used in

junior and senior high schools as the terrain to engage in an

ideological war with progressives. They referred to progressives and

Leftists in contemporary South Korea as servants of North Korea

(Jong-Buk). Historians like Kwon Hee-Young (Academy of Korean

Studies), describe current history textbooks as having a socialist historical

interpretive structure. The conservative daily Chosun ilbo carried editorials

with headings like “South Korean Workers’ Party-like Historical

Perspective Still Drilled into Junior High Students’ Heads.”

In terms of both economy and politics, the historical perspective of the

New Right is grounded on the belief that the market will regulate itself,

and a fundamental and visceral anti-North Korea sentiment. It is a

perspective that emphasizes South Korea’s historical and political

legitimacy, advancement (seonjinhwa), and civilization (munmyeong), in

contrast to North Korea that is semi-civilized, ruled by a government that

is the world’s worst violator of human rights.

In explaining South Korea’s economic development, New Right history

textbooks (e.g. published by Gyohaksa) would point out that South

Korea’s economic planners left corporate management to the entrepreneurs

and (for the most part) did not tell them where to export their goods.

One of the reasons why other countries have not been able to emulate

South Korea’s success is that they do not have entrepreneurs like Lee

Byung-chul (founder of Samsung Group), Chung Ju-yong (founder of

Hyundai Group), et al.

With this kind of attack on current history textbooks and their authors,

28

the so-called history war between conservatives and progressives have

been growing sharper and harsher. It is time to pull the history debates

away from the arena of political media and back into the academic arena.

Continuation of the history war only aggravates conflict throughout South

Korean society.

29

[Session1: East Asia Before and After World War II, Korea’s

Division System, and Continuing Conflicts Over History]

Presentation 3

Onset of Cold War Divisions in North Korea and the Korean War

Suzy Kim (Rutgers University)

We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly

stable as the slave empires of antiquity that is, the kind of world-view, the

kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state

which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with

its neighbours . [I]t is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost

of prolonging indefinitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.

George Orwell, “You and the Atom Bomb,” Tribune (19 October 1945)

The division system in Korea is undeniably situated in the 20th century

history of the Cold War, but with the continued division of the Korean

peninsula marking its 70th year this year a quarter of a century

after the so-called end of the Cold War, there have been persistent efforts

to understand the precise relationship between the Cold War and the

evolution of the division system in Korea, as well as the significance of

the Korean War in the development of the Cold War. That is, how do

we explain the continued division of Korea long after the end of the

Cold War? Conventional historiography of the Cold War has focused on

the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that

30

created a bipolar world without outright fighting due to the possibility of

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in a nuclear holocaust. Such

simplistic rendering has already been challenged by scholarship that have

tried to overcome the Eurocentric perspective by examining the effects of

the Cold War in the Third World where there was much bloodshed, as

well as by expanding the historical timeline of the Cold War as far back

as the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that gave birth to the Soviet Union1).

While cognizant of the productive efforts to define the

particularities of the Korean division system within the East Asian Grand

Division, my paper attempts to situate the Korean division historically

within the global Cold War and its competing ideologies about what

would become of postcolonial societies2). Rather than a focus on

nation-states as actors that would necessarily highlight conflicts that

emanate from their interests to gain hegemony, I focus on the

transnational flows and linkages across national borders that clearly show

a world aligning into opposing camps over the substance and form of

modern life. In other words, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution unleashed a

radical alternative to capitalist modernity, and many living under the yoke

of colonial rule took this option seriously as an antidote to both

colonialism and capitalism. The clash over such competing visions already

erupted in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) in the 1930s, even before

World War II. The latter global conflict only managed to put on hold the

differences between the capitalist and socialist camps in order to counter

the common fascist threat. This is not to say that the Cold War was

inevitable; only that it was possible given the right conditions as

predicted by George Orwell in 1945.

One of those necessary conditions was the introduction of atomic

weapons. The timing of Orwell’s first known use of the term “cold war”

1) Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2006 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006); David C. Engerman, “Ideology and the origins of the Cold War, 1917-1962,” in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War: Origins, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

2) 이삼성 동아시아 대분단체제 전후 동아시아 질서의 개념적 재구성과 냉전 냉전과 동아시아 분단체제 , “ : ‘ ’,” 한국냉전학회 창립 기념 학술대회 자료집 (June 25, 2015)

31

in October 1945 cannot be ignored. As indicated in the epigraph, he uses

the term in a piece titled “You and the Atom Bomb,” published just over

two months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in

early August 1945. Ominously, he concludes that “in a state which was

at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its

neighbours it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of

prolonging indefinitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.” Orwell’s prediction

turned out to be all too accurate, and while “large-scale wars” that

involved the detonation of nuclear weapons were avoided, the lack of

such “deterrence” plunged the rest of the world into “proxy” wars. If the

history of capitalism (and socialism) explains the great ideological divide

across the 20th century over the course that modernity would take, then

the history of science explains why this division turned into a “cold” war.

While the geopolitics of international relations sheds light on the

macro-structural history of the Cold War and Korea’s place in it, this

birds-eye view relegates Korea to mere “proxy” status as a chess piece in

great power politics whether the great powers are constituted by the US

and USSR during the global Cold War or the US, Japan, and China in

the regional East Asian divide. Rather, a micro-social history of the Cold

War reveals the ways in which the onset of the Cold War was

experienced by those living through it in places like North Korea as one

significant (ongoing) site of Cold War’s unfolding between 1945 and

19503).

North-South Divide

Changes in North Korea between 1945 and 1950 were dramatically

depicted as a major point of difference between the North and South,

ideologically solidifying the rather arbitrary geographic division that had

3) While North Korea was not officially formed as a separate state until September 1948 with the formation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), I use the term North Korea as shorthand to refer to the area north of the 38th parallel, occupied by the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1948 in agreement with the US proposal for a temporary division of the Korean peninsula in August 1945. The following two sections of the paper are based on examples from Chapter 1 of Suzy Kim, Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).

32

been instituted by the two separate occupation powers, with the US in the

South and the USSR in the North after Japan’s defeat in August 1945.

For example, a North Korean poster exclaims: “Look! At the Brilliant

Democratic Construction in the North.” It is a deliberate attempt to

differentiate the North from the South in terms of its aspirations to create

a working class utopia as indicated by the tools that identify the two

men in the poster as a peasant and a worker, iconic subjects of socialist

revolution. The worker points dramatically to what their utopian vision

entails: in the distant background are tractors on vast stretches of land to

represent mechanized agricultural production for an abundant and

self-sufficient food supply; this would be complemented by the rapid

industrialization represented in the form of factories, belching out thick

black smoke. This particular image is undoubtedly masculine with two

male figures in the foreground, but there were plenty of representations of

heroic women as well.

A cover of Chosŏn Yŏsŏng (Korean Woman) the primary women’s

journal published in North Korea at the time celebrated the one year

anniversary of the passing of the Gender Equality Law in July 1946 that

gave women and men equal political, social, and economic rights.

Through the legislation, women gained the right to vote and hold public

offices, rights to free marriage and divorce, property and inheritance

rights, rights to education and an equal wage. Polygamy and prostitution

were also banned. The cover shows a heroic Korean woman, leading the

revolution toward gender equality wearing the traditional Korean dress.

She is a married woman, denoted by the way her hair is tied up in a

bun, and she holds a flag of the Democratic Women’s Union, the mass

organization of women responsible for the publication of the journal. She

is clearly leading the charge for the liberation of women, but not just in

North Korea. She is standing on top of the globe, on the northern side

of the Korean peninsula, with chains stretching into the southern zone,

symbolizing the fact that women continue to be shackled in the South in

33

need of liberation by northern women.

By the time division was formalized through the founding of separate

states in the South in August 1948 and in the North in September 1948,

once illiterate peasants had learned basic reading and writing, composing

short autobiographies that described exactly how their lives had changed

in the North. A poor peasant by the name of Sŏ Yŏng-jun from North

Pyŏng’an Province Sŏnch’ŏn County submitted the following

autobiography attached to his resume in order to join the Democratic

Youth League4). He wrote:

As a poor peasant by birth since before my grandparents, we lived as tenant

farmers to Mr. Kim Un-pu in Sŏkhwadong for 13 years and in 1925 lived as Mr.

Pak Pyŏng-ŭp’s [farmhand] in Sŏkhodong, not only oppressed and exploited but

also bitterly suffering a wretched life (pich’amhan saenghwal), not able to go to

school, caring for my younger siblings until I was 12, and then in order to support

my siblings, I started farming at 13 until liberation when we were allotted land,

and I was able to farm freely and live a life of freedom (chayusŭrŏn saenghwal).

Before liberation, I couldn’t even read, but after liberation in 1946, I started

attending Korean School until 1947, learning to read and participate in

organizational life (chojik saenghwal) and beginning a collective life (tanch’ae

saenghwal), joining the Youth League on May 26, 1946 and the Peasant League

on February 10, 1946, and then I took charge of physical education for the Youth

League in our village, training the league members every morning and having fun

with this work, and then I wanted to have an organizational life (chojik saenghwal)

and joined the Workers Party in January 1947, beginning my organizational life

(chojik saenghwal) and taking charge of the party cell on January 6, 1948 and

carrying on the cell life (saep’o saenghwal) to this day.

Born in 1926, Sŏ Yŏng-jun had not learned to read or write until he

was 20 years old, after liberation in 1946, which can be surmised in the

very pages of the handwritten autobiography. Difficult to fully appreciate

4) National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 242, Shipping Advice 2006, Box 16, Item 23 Youth League North Pyŏng’an Province Sŏnch’ŏn County Nam Township Committee (1948).

34

in the translation but visible in the original are the rough block letters,

spelling errors, and the lack of punctuation and structure to the sentences.

But, also visible are the differences in his work life and educational life

before and after liberation, which is marked throughout the short

paragraph with the use of the word saenghwal no less than nine times.

His “wretched life” of tenancy and suffering had turned into a “life of

freedom” supported by the 7000 p’yŏng (just over 2 hectares or almost 6

acres) of land he had received in the 1946 land reform. Moreover, his

decision to join one organization after another in quick succession

suggests that he was eager to embrace a collective lifestyle that changed

his daily routine as signaled by the morning exercises he notes in his

autobiography. Such changes made a stark contrast to the ways in which

the South was depicted as another colony of the US, where peasants and

workers continued to be exploited.

Socialist Modernity

Aligning with the socialism camp already during the colonial

period, Paek Nam-un (1894-1979), the North Korean Minister of

Education, viewed the socialist experiment in the Soviet Union as

providing a “profound lesson” and “roadmap” for North Korea. He left an

illuminating travelogue after his visit to the Soviet Union between

February 22 and April 7, 1949 as part of the North Korean delegation to

sign the Treaty on Economic and Cultural Cooperation with the Soviet

Union5). During a visit to a chocolate factory, Paek noted the packaging

of consumer products in Soviet society that focused on preserving the use

value of the product that is the function and form of the product

rather than as a ploy to increase the exchange price. In other words, the

materiality of the product determined the way the product was designed

and made rather than its exchange value as something to be bought and

5) RG 242, SA 2008 Box 9 Item 89, Paek Nam-un, Ssoryŏn Insang [Impressions of the Soviet Union] (Pyongyang, 1950) reproduced in Paek Nam-un, Ssoryŏn Insang [Impressions of the Soviet Union], ed. Pang Ki-jung (Seoul: Sŏnin, 2005), 80, 10. For a succinct biography of Paek, see Pang’s introduction.

35

sold for profit. Moreover, Paek saw the mechanization of the production

line in the Soviet Union, not as enslaving the worker as in capitalist

societies, but as freeing workers from tedious work to be placed in

control as masters over the machines, monitoring and directing the

production process, with time left in the day to live a cultural life.

Touring various sites from factories and educational facilities to museums

and art galleries, Paek was struck by the collective forms of entertainment

in the various “circles” (ssŏk’ŭl) and the extent to which everyday life

was connected to the arts through music, dance, sculpture, and

architecture. He wrote:

All the recreation and pastime is directed toward collective circles, developing the

cultural standard of socialist life to a new level everyday life is connected to the

arts, and it is the highest civilizational life and the happiest in the world in terms

of making life artistic6).

His travelogue was filled with precise and meticulous descriptions,

including lists of memorable museum pieces and detailed features of

building interiors and public spaces. He explained his reasons for doing

so in the “timeliness that must be grasped historically for a scientific

worldview, which is a necessary condition to recognize Soviet society that

has created a new history of humanity.”7)

Appropriate to his position as the Minister of Commerce, another

delegation member Chang Si-u (1891-1953) also noted the details in the

various stores from the uniforms that the sales clerks wore to the manner

in which the merchandise was displayed. He particularly noticed the

practical construction of the sales counter8). In contrast to the glass cases

back home that were deemed to be more expensive and fragile, Chang

praised the wooden counters that were sturdy and easy to make while

6) Ibid, 223, 264.

7) Ibid, 20.

8) RG 242, SA 2008 Box 9 Item 52, Chang Si-u, Ssoryŏn ch’amkwangi [Visit to the Soviet Union] (Pyongyang: Sangŏpsŏng minju sangŏpsa, 1950), 50

36

also providing more room to attend to customers. He concluded that the

Soviet counter was practical as opposed to showy, serving its purpose in

assisting customers rather than focusing on displaying commodities.

Moreover, he observed how the development of machines had transformed

the artistic form in the Soviet Union to make art more accessible to

people through mass production, pointing to the way architecture,

craftwork and other works of art were no longer produced by hand but

mechanized, reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s point in “The Work of Art

in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)9). He concluded that art

had not only become part of everyday life, but life itself had become

artistic, noting how “The Soviets have absolutely made art part of one’s

everyday life. As a smoker who cannot withstand not being able to

smoke, they become restless when they go to a dance hall. Even in the

making of a door lock or frame, they must have some kind of

engraving.”10) Finishing his travelogue, Chang lamented the fact that

Korea could not be like the Soviet Union fast enough, urging the workers

in his department to learn from the Soviet Union as a model. Eventually,

many of the sites that the delegation visited, including the subway, the

kolhotz, the Kremlin, the National Pediatrics Hospital, Lenin’s mausoleum,

and the Leningrad Palace of Young Pioneers became prototypes for

similar sites in North Korea. However, such modeling of the Soviet

Union as the vanguard of socialism was not viewed to contradict the

principle of autonomy and independence that the North Korean leadership

advanced as the primary condition for a modern Korean state. In fact,

Paek saw mutual aid and cooperation with the Soviet Union as the basis

for a strong independent Korea with chuch’esŏng (subjectivity), referencing

a derivative of the term Juche already in 1950 before Kim Il Sung’s

famous 1955 speech to which the birth of the ideology is traced.11)

9) Ibid, 85-86.

10) Ibid, 84, 87.

11) Paek, 205.

37

Imminent War12)

Revolutions must end as the radical changes are institutionalized, but for

North Korea, the end came early with the Cold War. Militarization and

centralization of power went hand in hand as the peninsula headed for

civil war. By October 1948 the founding of separate states in the North

and South heightened tensions along the 38th parallel as North Korea

moved to build up its “38 guard units” (38 kyŏngbidae) and the

“self-defense forces” (chawidae) in order to thwart southern attacks13).

Beginning in June 1949, the organization of border security and

self-defense units became an agenda item at almost every party meeting

in Inje County in Kangwŏn Province located right at the 38th parallel14).

Supplementing the military and the police, these units were responsible

for protecting factories, government offices, granaries, and the

transportation and communication facilities, and for taking villagers to

safety should there be a southern attack. They were also given the right

to inspect people’s identification cards, take suspicious persons to the

closest police station, and carry simple self-defense tools such as sickles,

knives, and batons. Local commanders included leaders from the youth,

women’s, and peasant unions.

Military training, particularly of youth league members and students,

began in August 1949 with instructions in military strategy, weapons

training, and aeronautics15). Such preparations were hardly an

overreaction as the border threats were real. In July 1949, there was a

large-scale attack by the so-called Tiger Unit (horim pudae) from the

South that caused extensive damage to local villages, and on August 6,

1949, there was yet another skirmish in Nam Township16). As a result

12) This section is an excerpt from the concluding chapter of Suzy Kim, Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).

13) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje County Executive Committee Meeting Minutes No. 25 (1948.10.21), NHCC, vol. 2, 632. Also in RG 242, SA 2007, box 6, item 1.55.

14) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje County Executive Committee Meeting Minutes No. 48 (1949.6.8), NHCC, vol. 3, 348. Also in RG 242, SA 2007, box 6, item 1.65.

15) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje County Executive Committee Meeting Minutes No. 54 (1949.7.21), NHCC, vol. 3, 527, 845 50. Also in RG 242, SA 2007, box 6, item 1.19.

16) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje Executive Committee Minutes No. 58 (1949.8.25), NHCC, vol. 3, 528; North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje County Executive Committee Minutes No. 71 (1949.12.10), NHCC, vol. 3, 879.

38

of these clashes in Inje County, 40 people were killed, 18 were

kidnapped, 22 were injured, 38 households with 156 people fled to the

South, 92 farm animals were lost, 136 houses were burnt down, and

1,127 sacks of grain were destroyed17). In a counterattack, the Inje

County self-defense forces occupied the southern half of Nam Township

south of the 38th parallel for 12 days between August 6 and 20, 1949,

mobilizing some 6,552 people until heavy rains disrupted the supply route

and they had to retreat18). As a result, 63 people were killed and 97

houses destroyed in the South while the North sustained 25 casualties

with 31 houses burned or destroyed.

Immediately after the fighting in Nam Township, the recruitment of

self-defense corps members in Inje County was expanded. Before the

fighting, it had been limited to the ages of 18 to 40; now, it was open

to those between the ages of 16 and 45, thereby organizing almost all

able-bodied residents into defense units19). The number of defense unit

members increased to 8,295 5,130 men and 3,165 women out of a

county population of 33,722, mobilizing almost a quarter of the residents

and over 70 percent of those eligible to join. Consequently, by 1950 an

extensive security and surveillance network had been established. Every

five households formed one surveillance unit, keeping an eye out for

illegal lodgers and strangers from out of town, protecting local facilities

and infrastructure, maintaining public health, and preventing fires20). The

units were organized and directed by the people’s committees, not by the

local police force, since their duties were broadly defined to include not

only security but also monitoring sanitary conditions and the spread of

infectious diseases. There were outbreaks of cholera in the first half of

1950, already a major problem in the South since 194621). Being so

17) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje County Executive Committee Meeting Minutes No. 73 (1949.12.27), NHCC, vol. 3, 936 40. Also in RG 242, SA 2007, box 6, item 1.62.

18) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje Executive Committee Minutes No. 58 (1949.8.25), NHCC, vol. 3, 528 36.

19) North Korean Workers’ Party Kangwŏn Province Inje County Executive Committee Meeting Minutes No. 54 (1949.7.21), NHCC, vol. 3, 421, 534 35. Also in RG 242, SA 2007, box 6, item 1.19.

20) “Inje County Internal Affairs Bureau Document No. 1 4: Summary of Police Station Work (Secret)” (1950.6), NHCC, vol. 18, 310.

39

close to the border, Inje County was exposed to the spread of epidemics

from the South while being repeatedly subjected to instances of sabotage;

the most serious cases involved looting and arson of important facilities

such as factories and granaries. Indeed, many villages along the 38th

parallel had to come up with strategies for defense even before directives

from the central government, organizing firefighters and security guards

for public facilities such as telephone lines, railways, and granaries. They

were especially vigilant against unauthorized travelers. People with

criminal records and those with family members who had fled to the

South were most suspect; they were specifically placed under watch “in

order to prevent beforehand any possible incidents.”22)

According to public opinion gathered by North Korean secret

surveillance in 1950 before the start of the Korean War, peasants reacted

to rising tensions with worries about daily survival. They were concerned

about the bad harvest the previous year and wondered who would be left

to till the land if people continued to leave for the factories and mines.

Others in charge of defense wondered how long they had to continue

guarding the area, with one complaining that he was “sick of it” (kol i

ap’ŭda). After cattle were stolen and a guard kidnapped by infiltrators

from the South on February 6, 1950, residents were disillusioned by the

lack of response from the defense units, expressing skepticism about their

competence and effectiveness. One peasant woman in her late forties

complained that the guard units had no countermeasure despite the

kidnapping, claiming she would join them “if they would be willing to

go kill ’em.”23)

Physical confrontations were augmented by strategies to win the hearts

and minds of the people. In 1949, there were repeated reports of South

Korean planes dropping propaganda leaflets, trying to convince North

21) “On the Implementation of the Summer Cleaning,” Puk Township Police Chief (1950.6.9), NHCC, vol. 18, 32728.

22) RG 242, SA 2012, box 8, item 28, Kangwŏn Province Ch’ŏrwŏn County Department of Interior (1950).

23) RG 242, SA 2012, box 8, item 28, Kangwŏn Province Ch’ŏrwŏn County Department of Interior (1950).랍취되여도 대책도 없이 그 놈들을 하로에다 잡아죽겨쓰면 같이 나가서 해보겟다.

40

Korean soldiers and defense units to join the South24). The leaflets

offered free medical care for injured soldiers, arguing that they were not

the enemy but that Kim Il Sung and his “cronies” were. “Why fight to

the end just to have the Soviet Union as your homeland?” implored a

leaflet as it promised safe passage to anyone who “returns to the bosom

of the homeland” with the leaflet in hand. Many were not easily swayed,

expressing disdain for and hostility toward the planes, wondering why the

People’s Army did not shoot them down. Others, however, were

impressed with the planes and the kinds of resources that the South was

able to mobilize, with one woman expressing concern that subsequent

planes might drop bombs rather than leaflets and that it was “time to

prepare to move into the mountains.”

The woman’s statement was ominous to say the least, but no one could

have predicted the catastrophic war that was to take over three million

lives, or 10 percent of the Korean population, over the course of just

three years, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in modern history

outside of the two world wars. By 1952, there were “no more targets”

left standing in the North, where, by war’s end, American planes had

dropped 635,000 tons of bombs and 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to

503,000 tons of bombs used in all of Asia and the Pacific during World

War II25). While South Korea sustained 1,312,836 casualties, including

415,004 dead, North Korean casualties are estimated at two million,

including a million civilians, which meant that the war had claimed, on

average, at least one member from every family in the North26).

The war left long-term physical and psychological damage that

continues to shape North Korea’s domestic and foreign policy down to

the present day. Not only is it exceptionally guarded against the

24) RG 242, SA 2010, box 2, item 76, North Korean Workers’ Party Hwanghae Province (Top Secret) (1949).다시 생각해보라 쏘련을 조국으로 하기위하여 결사적으로 싸울필요가 있을까? 쏘련 스탈린 김일성 공산당 인민군패전 중엄 멸망 넘어올때는 반듯이 이종이를 갖이고 오면 = = = = = = ! (친절히 안내하겠다 빨리 뉘우치고 조국의 품안으로 어서 돌아오라 국군은 따뜻이 맞이 해주마) . !25) Head of Bomber Command in the Far East, General O’Donnell, quoted in Foster-Carter, “North Korea:

Development and Self-Reliance,” 47; Charles Armstrong, “The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 1960,” Asia-Pacific Journal 8, Issue 51.2 (December 20, 2010).

26) Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2010), 35, 63.

41

infiltration of foreign influence, whether in the form of tourists or the

Internet, but it has one of the longest conscription stints in the world at

ten years of mandatory military service for almost all males who meet

physical and background requirements27). This may explain why men

have increasingly come to dominate all levels of the social and political

hierarchy in the postwar period despite the importance accorded to women

before the war. With the war ending in an armistice rather than a peace

treaty, North Koreans have been mobilized to continue preparing for a

war that might resume at a moment’s notice against a far superior power,

the United States. The Korean War has become the single most defining

national experience, leaving North Koreans with a fiercely autarkic

mentality as a form of internal cohesion against outside threats.

It should be apparent by this point that I am questioning the declared

end of the Cold War, situating the unended Korean War within the

history of ongoing Cold War and the divisions it has spawned. The

stockpiling and proliferation of nuclear weapons continue to be problems

today, and while state socialism proved inadequate as an alternative

modernity in the 20th century, problems associated with capitalist

modernity continue unabated. What the history of division in Korea shows

is that the Cold War divide was as much about alternatives to liberalism

in the social and cultural realm as it was to capitalism in the economic

realm. Confronted with the realpolitik of the Cold War, the utopian vision

of overcoming class and gender inequality and ethnic and national

divisions in the name of proletarian internationalism was forsaken. Across

the political spectrum, the primary method by which to overcome

divisions today resorts to forms of ethnic nationalism and/or cultural

relativism that champion essentialist arguments against the threat of

Western universalism. The same could be said of North (and South)

Korean appeals for minjok t’ongil (national reunification). It is yet another

27) Although conscription terms were codified at three to four years in 1958, actual service terms reportedly extended up to eight years. The ten-year service requirement became law in 1993. See 2009 Pukhan kaeyo [2009 overview of North Korea] (Seoul: T’ongil yŏn’guwŏn, 2009), 97.

42

fallout of the Cold War itself.

43

[Session2: 70 Years since partition; Korean peninsula present

and future]

Presentation 1

THAAD in Northeast Asia

J.J. Suh (International Christian University)

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

[Session 2: 70 Years since partition; Korean peninsula present

and future]

Presentation 2

The Conservative Swing of South Korean Politics and the Emergence of Popular Far-Right Organizations

Kim Dong-choon (SungKongHoe University)

(Summary Translation)

1. Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye’s Pro-North Korean Branding

The continued seizure of power by the conservatives, with the Park

Geun-hye administration following Lee Myung-bak, is the result of the

post-Korean War rightwing and the breakaway middle class disappointed

with the economic policies of the previous ten years of democratic

government under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. After the 1997

financial crisis, the two democratic administrations took the lead in

adopting a neo-liberalist economy, which aggravated economic polarization.

The seizure of power by Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye cannot

simply be attributed to nostalgia for regionalism or authoritarianism. The

masses desired strong leadership that could address their anxieties about

the economy.

Since the inauguration of the Park Geun-hye administration, the

ruling party, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), and the Ministry of

National Defense that illegally intervened in the presidential election have

defined those who have criticized such intervention as national enemies

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who are “pro-North” and “leftist.” Elections have become wars, the

opposition party an enemy, and the supporting masses an object of

“pacification.” As Schmitt says, “politics is what distinguishes me from

the enemies” (Schmitt, 2007: 19-79).

How can we explain this condition in which elections, party

politics, and the independence of the judiciary are guaranteed by law, and

yet the president and the intelligence agencies are intervening in politics

in the name of national security? Is this indeed anything new? Are we to

doubt the common knowledge that South Korea has been “democratized”

since 1987? Or did certain conditions such as the division of the Korean

peninsula or US hegemony in Korea work as factors that thwarted

“democratic consolidation” in South Korea? Theories such as “democratic

consolidation theory” or “post-democracy theory” that attempt to explain

the political transition from authoritarianism to democracy can offer only

limited insight into current Korean politics. Despite attempts to achieve

“high quality democracy” for a while now, such procedural democracy

can always be reversed, and accordingly so-called democratic institutions

and apparatuses can be rendered powerless.

This did not just happen over the past year, but rather needs to be

explained within the timeframe since the 1987 democratization, especially

during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations when

neo-liberal political and economic changes were instituted. As the far-right

political forces seized power, aspects of authoritarianism, totalitarianism,

and fascism that remained in South Korean state and civil society have

appeared in new forms today.

2. Emergence of Far-Right Activism in South Korea

Far-right activism emerged in South Korea when the Kim Dae-jung

administration came into power. In the case of Europe, when leftist or

63

liberal forces such as the Labor Party and the Social Democratic Party

took power, rightists were motivated to come out into the streets,

advocating racist nationalism. In South Korea, the seizure of power by

liberalist progressive forces left conservative rightists with a sense of

crisis, which led them to conclude they no longer held exclusive support

of the state, triggering their activism.

As Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun held power throughout much

of the 2000s, those who had participated in the student movement or

social activism began to gather and organize rightwing organizations. Even

before the emergence of such rightwing organizations, there were frequent

rallies and protests led by mega-churches or veterans’ associations.

Although such activism by veterans’ associations and elderly groups

(reminiscent of white terror immediately after liberation and during the

Korean War) may not be entirely equivalent to the blatant terrorism of

the past, their violence tactics indeed reject law and order, and any

possibility for reasonable conversation and discussion.

Since 2000, mass rallies by Protestants have become quite severe in

their distinctly pro-American and anti-North Korean stance. The main

participants who have rallied against the abolishment of the National

Security Law or for democratization through regime collapse in North

Korea have been Protestants mobilized by conservative mega-churches

such as the Full Gospel Church. Some churches even held prayer

meetings for North Korean “collapse” publicly.

Meanwhile, as the media took on a pro-government stance under the

Lee Myung-bak administration, anti-government and progressive political

satire became radically popular on the Internet. Concurrently, far-rightist

political satire, jokes, and cyber games started to attract the younger

generation; especially noteworthy is the emergence of far-rightist

organizations online. Ilbe (short for Ilgan Best) is the most representative

example. Ilbe emerged through a combination of the political stance in

the “Politics and Society Gallery” and anti-honam (southwest) regionalism

64

of the “Baseball Gallery” on the DC Inside website. Ilbe has thus become

an exclusive rightwing humor community by Internet users saving certain

kinds of posts from DC Inside. The far-rightist characteristics of Ilbe can

be summarized as anti-democratic and anti-progressive (anti-Communist

and anti-North Korean rightist), anti-women (sexist), anti-foreign (racist,

xenophobic), anti-honam (regional discrimination).

Subsequently, rightist organizations in South Korea since 2000 have

become politicized and some have even resorted to violence. Although the

autonomous emergence of the younger generation of rightists is most

noteworthy, they have not come out on the streets or used violence,

opposed to rightist middle-aged former military personnel or the elderly.

3. Support for Rightist Organizations under Lee Myung-bak and

Park Geun-hye

When Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun came to power, so-called

interest groups that had previously received support from the state and

local governments lost their status. Support for non-governmental

organizations by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security and

other government organizations was institutionalized, as newly formed

interest groups since the 1990s have become the new beneficiaries of

state support. Accordingly, the conservative Grand National Party and

conservative media such as the Chosun Ilbo attacked the state, claiming

that the state was colluding with civil society to strengthen state power.

Aware of such popular opinion, the state gradually decreased its support

of interest groups.

However, even during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun

administrations, various local governments and institutions were still

illegally controlled by conservative interest groups, and the government

budget for interest groups was still distributed in favor of those

65

conservative groups.

As Lee Myung-bak came into power, those interest groups which

had felt disadvantaged during the previous ten years of democratic

administrations started to raise their voice and publicly approach the

government. Furthermore, as the candle light protests occurred at the

beginning of the Lee administration, the ruling party and the conservative

media blamed certain interest groups for participating in the protests. The

state cut support to those interest groups which had received support after

the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations came into power.

Thus, conservative organizations again came to monopolize support from

the state as they had in the past.

4. Are the Old Right and the New Right Different in South

Korea?

Far-right organizations and radicalism have often emerged in times of

crisis under modern capitalism. Radical rightists tend to emerge violently

when institutionalized parties or labor unions do not represent the

economic needs and interests of the unemployed or under-employed

workers, and when the institutions and laws of liberal democracy do not

represent their demands. Similar to socialist movements in the early to

mid-20th century, rightist radicalism has its roots in mass discontent and

feelings of isolation and deprivation, resorting to physical violence under

the leadership of far-rightist organizations.

The period when rightist terrorism and activism reached its peak in

South Korea was between liberation in 1945 and the 1950s. The period

of military dictatorship between the 1960s and 1980s was when the

ideology and position of rightists were absorbed and represented by state

power, the military, and the police; while the period since is when

rightists became active because they felt a sense of crisis from being

66

alienated by “progressive or leftist” activists in the political arena.

Rightists started to come out on the streets since 2000 because

democratization threatened their political standing.

Old rightist organizations were mainly composed of North Korean

refugees from the 1940s-50s such as members of the Northwest Youth

Association, the unemployed, families who had suffered damage from

leftists, and some Christians. Active rightists since 2000 are mainly

former military personnel such as members of the Veterans’ Association,

Korean Disabled Veteran’s Association by Agent-Orange in the Vietnam

War, and Special Duty Veterans’ Association, along with newly emerged

Christians from mega-churches. The biggest difference between “old”

rightist activism and the “new” one is the emergence of Christians. South

Korea, where Christians of conservative church organizations such as the

Christian Council of Korea are mobilized by their ministers for rightist

activism, is most similar to the United States in the 1970s. Meanwhile,

except the fact that members of Ilbe are only active online, they are

similar to neo-Nazi rightists of Europe in the 1990s. In other words,

young people who are not socially recognized, unemployed, or steeped in

patriarchal culture or male chauvinism tend to become the main forces of

new rightist activism. However, these young rightists are not using

physical violence or being mobilized for political purposes as is the case

of young far-rightists in Europe or terrorist forces in the Arab world

today. Although feelings of deprivation, failure, or anger prompted these

young men to gravitate toward discourses of radical regionalism,

anti-North Koreanism, and female hatred, they lack the ideology that can

firmly motivate them to act.

Indeed, the motivation for former military personnel to

participate in rightist organizations such as the Veterans’ Association or

the Korean Disabled Veteran’s Association by Agent-Orange in the

Vietnam War is closely related to “benefits” like financial support from

the state rather than desire for social recognition. North Korean refugees

67

who had joined the Northwest Youth Association, taking the lead in the

anticommunist fight, had also been related to such “benefits.”

Anti-communism masked the past of the rich pro-Japanese, who were able

to use it to secure their property against confiscation of collaborator

properties, which matched the interests of North Korean refugees needing

money. The rich used the refugees who secured their means of livelihood

through their support. That rightists whether old or new unite and

dissolve according to interests instead of ideology means that they have

almost entirely depended on the financial support of the state in South

Korea.

With the active support and collusion of the government,

various rightist organizations composed of former military personnel

commit acts of violence, such as use of abusive language, interference in

other interest groups’ events and counter-rallies, threatening progressive

leaders, breaking into the Unified Progressive Party building and

assaulting related personnel, and breaking into a newspaper company and

damaging its property. Members of these organizations think that no one

can disturb them because they are patriots who have sacrificed themselves

for the nation and have made clear their anti-North Korean and

anti-Communist stance. They believe that they are justified in their use

violence in order to eliminate pro-North Korean and leftist politicians who

in their view are national enemies. They consider procedural democracy

or discussion meaningless. However, it is doubtful whether they could

continue their activism without the financial support and collusion of the

state.

5. Concluding Remarks

The emergence of far-right activism can be interpreted as a sign or

tendency for fascism. Fascism in the past, particularly after World War II,

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can be seen as a failure of democracy. They were mostly a reflection of

a sense of crisis felt by the rich upon the emergence of leftists or

progressive social movements. Fascism tends to emerge when institutional

politics cannot represent the grievances and needs of the masses.

Far-rightist activism in South Korea since 2000 emerged out of a sense

of crisis from, and a resistance to the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun

administrations that had rejected anti-Communist or anti-North ideologies,

as well as against the progressive parties seeking to engage with North

Korea and socialist thoughts.

Various civil society movements since the 1990s, the emergence of

progressive discourse on the Internet, and resistance to criticism of

liberalism on Social Network Services also gave motivation for far-right

activism. Moral superiority and self-justification claimed by civil society

movements and progressive intellectuals faced stiff negative reactions from

the rightists. And rightist activism was further fueled by the Kim and

Roh administrations themselves that had staked a progressive stance but in

reality made the lives of workers and the poor more difficult. For these

reasons, the old equation that fascism reflects the emergence and failure

of the left can be applied to the case of South Korea.

Although the discourse claimed by these rightists do champion the

supremacy of the state as in other countries, it does not espouse the kind

of racism or social conservatism as in advanced capitalist countries.

Instead, an extreme anti-Communist, anti-North Korean, and pro-American

stance comprise the major proportion of its discourse. It may be a

distorted vision of Korean rightists who cannot realize imperialism.

Meanwhile, core members of the Park Geun-hye administration also

possess the same stance or ideology as the far-rightists. Thus, they are

tempted to use the far-rightists to secure their own hold on power,

willing to defend and support their activism. Far-rightist activism is a

poisoned apple. If one swallows it, one is destined to become like the

US where 9/11 became the retaliation for having used Osama bin Laden.

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[Session 2: 70 Years since partition; Korean peninsula present

and future]

Presentation 3

The Security State and Korea’s Peace Movement

Jeong Eun Park(People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy)

The South Korean government, which continues to equate national

security with peace, has aimed to become a security state by latching

onto the dominant power and expanding military spending. It has

monopolized information and expanded its domain of making exceptions

and maintaining secret information. At the foundation of the national

security state are consumptive spending on peninsular division, which

sacrifices the safety of citizens, and an apparatus of repression. However,

due to extreme economic inequality, the majority of citizens are already

in a state of anti-peace. Thus it is necessary to keep asking the question,

what kind of peace do we wish to achieve? Furthermore, we must

include the question of why peace is necessary for the reunification of

the Korean Peninsula. Peace calls for the respect of human life and

dignity and a world without discrimination. Achieving peace is possible in

a society in which anyone can live a safe and sustainable life, conflict is

prevented, and democracy mediates. Ultimately it is a question of what

kind of nation and community we are striving to become.

70

The division systems of both North and South Korea, which are

structured through abnormal systems, are strong and firm. The

overwhelming superiority of security authorities the military, National

Intelligence Service, Defense Security Command, prosecution, etc. and

conservative media under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun

Administrations and the administrations that followed still reign. Each time

an administration faces crisis, furthermore, the tactic of positioning North

Korea a scapegoat is still being used. With the harsh reality of the

international community as a pretext, the ROK-US Alliance was not a

means but rather an ideology that was propagated, and neither the

intellectual community and its discourse nor the political party landscape

of the dominant conservative power has changed. After the financial crisis

in 1997, South Korean society has experienced extreme polarization and a

shift to materialism, severely damaging the democratic values that had

once been achieved. It became even more difficult to expect a fair market

and to have confidence in the rule of law. In this enormous system of

peninsular division the priority for the peace and security of citizens gets

pushed out, and the individuals that get tossed into the market must

survive on their own. Such economic inequality does not help to improve

inter-Korean relations or to overcome the system of division.

In such a reality, the pressure of having to choose between autonomy

and alliance now carries over to having to choose between China and the

U.S. For South Korea the necessity to align with the strongest country

permeates naturally. Such choices, however, do not present a way for us,

those who live on the Korean Peninsula, to acquire universal and

sustainable peace. The fact that both North and South Korea reinforce

military spending and continue the discourse on security makes clear that

military conflict cannot be resolved. North Korea’s abandoning its nuclear

weapons program is also unlikely.

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It is necessary to go beyond the established security state and its

discourse. Reconciliation will otherwise be impossible, and consequently

we would have to continue to submit to having a symbiotic relationship

with the “enemy” and the system of division would become permanent.

Achieving genuine peace while living with unsustainable economic

inequality and under the neoliberal system of accumulation would be

difficult, and resolving the issue of division would be unlikely. The peace

movement, therefore, cannot simply work to dismantle the maintained

structure of division and the mechanisms of war. Simultaneously, the

movement must resist the mechanisms of violence which destroy human

dignity and are spread across society.

There must be a discussion on whether the peace movement is effective

by changing through access or promoting access through change. For

example, concerning the prospects of creating a peace state and achieving

reunification, discussions are needed at great lengths regarding the shift

from the current security state to a peace security state (or a security

state that aims for peace), as well as the national vision and the

foundation of social construction that the peace movement must pursue.

The discussions must also include the possibility of actually carrying out

a peace movement in spite of a severely regressive democracy and

intensified economic inequality; whether solidarity and growth can be

possible among diverse progressive groups, such as peace and human

rights groups; whether Korea can demonstrate leadership and gain trust in

North East Asia; and whether South Korea, in its current state, can

actually shape the state of North Korea in the future.

South Korea’s peace movement, like many civil society movements, is

losing its vitality. There are external factors that hinder the movement,

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such as the increased degree of fatigue regarding issues of the peninsula

and North Korea and the dominance of ideological camp logic; the

deterioration in financial capability and the quality of living; the absence

of a political power that embraces or represents the values of peace; etc.

There is also difficulty in recruiting and training activists and forming

long-lasting connections with policy experts. Extraordinary effort is needed

to strengthen the infrastructure of the peace movement. The peace

movement must be expanded beyond issues of everyday life. Activism

that reveals the direct ties between decreased spending on division and

the peace and safety of citizens needs to be strengthened.

Japan’s Abe Administration’s recent push for a security bill exercising

the nation’s right to collective self-defense goes beyond a mere change in

security policies. Rather, creates a shift in Japan’s national identity to that

of a dangerous nation. Throughout this process Japan is facing extreme

danger to its own constitutionality and democracy. The US-ROK-Japan

security triangle is taking concrete form. Korea signed the ROK-US-Japan

military intelligence pact, and discussions on the deployment of THAAD

are in full swing. The legislation that will allow the overseas deployment

of Korean soldiers is its last stage before being enacted by the National

Assembly. It is the job of the civil society to resist the actions of South

Korea and Japan. Powerful solidarity for peace is urgently needed in East

Asian civil society.

73

In response to the topic of this panel, Overcoming War and Partition

Korea and Beyond, I will share somepersonal reflections on whatprompted

me as an artist and filmmaker to work with issues that emanate from the

Korean War and division of Korea by talking around a few art projects.

I was adopted to Denmark in 1980 during the peak of overseas

adoptions from South Korea. As an adoptee growing up in a white

suburban working class family in Northern Europe, I was not

taughtKorean history at all. Rather, I grew up within humanitarian savior

narratives of transnational adoption in which adoptees are constructed as

objects without a history, or as persons without a past.However, in 2001,

just before entering art school, I went to Korea for the first time since I

was adopted and on this journey I managed to find and reunite with my

Korean birth family in Jeju Island. This was a formative event for me

not only on a personal level in that I saw the discrepancies between

official narratives of adoption and my own story, but also artistically in

that it prompted an interest in histories that have been marginalized.

Themes I have dealt extensivelywith in my artworks and filmsinclude

[Session 3: Overcoming War and Partition Korea and Beyond] –

Some artistic reflections on war and division

Kaisen, Jane Jin (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Copenhagen / The

Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark)

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transnational adoption, gendered effects of war and militarism, legacies of

colonialism, and the political history of Jeju Island. These are all topics

that I see intrinsicallyconnected to the division of Korea. At the same

time, they cannot be isolated to Korea but must be seen within broader

transnational geopolitical and historical contexts.

The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger

The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tigeris a narrative experimental film

from 2010 that I made in collaboration with visual artist and filmmaker

Guston Sondin-Kung. The film traces ways in which trauma is passed on

from previous generations to the present through a sense of being

haunted. It follows a number of Korean diasporic women in their 20s and

30s who return to Korea and explores how the physical return of the

diaspora confronts and destabilizes narratives that have been constructed to

silence histories ofbiopolitical mobilization andviolence committed onto

certain parts of the population.

The film creates a strategic genealogy by relating the stories of three

generations of women: the former ‘comfort’ women who were conscripted

into military sexual slavery by the Japanese military between World War

I and II women working assex workers around US military bases in

South Korea since the division of Korea and children who were

adopted from South Korea to the West since the Korean War.

Since my first journey back to Korea, I have been part of a growing

contingency of transnational adoptee artists, activists and academicswho

have generated critical discourse around transnational adoption in South

Korea and in the west. 2004was a significant year in terms of

transnational adoptee organizing as the first Gathering of Overseas Korean

Adoptees took place in South Korea that year. The event was attended

by more than 400 adoptees from 15 countries and provided a forum for

adoptees to meet and share experiences. Around the same time, groups

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such as ASK: Adoptee Solidarity Korea and Track: Truth and

Reconciliation for the Adoptee Community of Korea were formed as

alternatives to largely apolitical adoptee associations. These groups have

been committed to put attention to social issues related to transnational

adoption, among others by aligning with single mothers and birth families.

Women artists played a significant role in forming these organizations and

artists also organized among themselves, examples of which arethe artist

collective UFOlab (Unidentified Foreign Object LABoratory) andthe

Korean diaspora artist group and networkOrientity Exhibition .

An incentive for making The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger was

to inscribe transnational adoption within the history of Korea and to

record aspects of adoptees’ collective process of political becoming,

focusing especially on how women adoptee artists have played a

significant role in shaping the growing critical discourse on adoption

within the Korean transnational adoptee community and beyond.Several of

the artists who have played an important role in this endeavor function

asmain protagonists in The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger. Among

those are visual artist Nathalie MiheeLemoine,writer Maja Lee Langvad,

poet Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, writer Jane JeongTrenka, filmmaker Tammy

Chu.

The film speaks from a collective set of voices in an endeavor to

create an alternative to dominant representations of adoptee search and

return that tend to focus on individual adoptees’ search for biological

rootsrather than the broader social, historical and political frameworks in

which transnational adoptions from South Korea emerged and which is

intimately linked to the Korean War and its aftermath.

Another motivation for the film was to trace connections between the

history of transnational adoption and other histories of migration from

Koreastemming fromgendered effects of war and militarism. The Woman,

76

The Orphan, and The Tiger was conceptualized while I was studying in

New York and Los Angeles and interfaced with Korean diaspora

communities in the United States.I became interested in the U.S.’ role in

the Korean War and how militarism, particularly in the form ofsexual

intimacies between Korean women and US servicemen,has played a role

in shapingKorean migration patterns to the U.S. Grace M. Cho, one of

the protagonists in the Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger, eloquently

details in her book Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and

The Forgotten War, how this tabooed and often times painful history

enveloped in family secrets, appears only in fragments and is passed on

through a sense of haunting from one generation to the next. In addition,

the film, through the voice of visual artist SoniKum, traces legacies

Japan´s colonization of Korea and experiences of the Korean diaspora in

Japan. The voices of these young diasporic women are accompanied in

the film by testimonies from Korean and Philippina women involved in

the U.S. military prostitution industry in South Korea and women who

were forced into military sexual slavery by the Japanese army to contour

the transgenerational effects of militarism on the lives of women.

With my artworks I attempt to point to relationships between power,

representation, and productions of meaning by on the one hand exposing

and destabilizing dominant narratives and representational logics that serve

to suppress, exclude, or demonize certain subjects or perspectives

while pointing to sites of emergence by proposing alternative readings or

translations that can also give aesthetic shape to the traumas and fractures

that accompanies modes of erasure and silencing.

The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tigershows how the Korean War is

officially represented among others through panoramas of the Korean War

Memorial in Seoul and in archive footage fromU.S. newsreels from the

1950s. However in the film,these official images are contested by the

voiceovers of the women protagonists who give alternative accounts and

77

testimonies. The official Korean War representations are also contrasted

byfilmed footage fromthespaces of the military camptowns that remain

largely invisible and isolated.

Thestrategic genealogy established between the ‘former comfort’ women,

women working around US military bases, and transnational adoptees, is

not meant to insinuate that these issues can be conflated or that they are

directly related, but rather to point tohow these histories emerged out of a

similar nexus of colonialism, militarism and war, as well as how they

were tabooedand silenced for decadesbecause of patriarchy, nationalism,

and class-inflicted marginalization.

Reiterations of Dissent

Following The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger, I began an

ongoing art project titledDissident Translationsconsisting of threevideos

installations and a multi-media archive installationabouthow thesuppressed

history and fragmented memories of the Jeju April Third Uprising

continue to reverberate in the present moment.

Working on The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger, I was compelled

to understand some of the details of what occurred in the short interim

period between the decolonization of Korea from Japanin 1945 and the

outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Working on the Jeju project also

provided me a deeper context for understandinghow my birth family has

been impacted by the ideological tensions of Korea´s division that was

felt intensely on Jeju Island up until the late 1990s when truth and

reconciliation efforts around the Jeju April Third Incident finally began to

take shape in public.

A main workin the Dissident Translations project is a multi-channel

video installation and film titled Reiterations of Dissent. Told mainly

through the voices of individuals (Hyun Ki Young, Huh YeongSeon,Kim

Kyung Hoon, Kim SeongNae, Jong Gong Chul, Kim Dong Man, Song

78

Seung Moon, Koh Nan Hyang, Kim Jong Min, and Kim Dong Chun)

who have been active in efforts to investigate and narrate the events

surrounding the Jeju April Third, Reiterations of Dissent conveys

perspectives that have been largely suppressed and remain disputed to the

present daybecause of ideological arguments over the history.

Rather than providing a linear chronological account of the Jeju April

Third Uprising and Massacre,Reiterations of Dissent presents a

multi-layered archive of experiences, events, and perspectives.The work is

composed of six different video narratives that uncovers various

underlying political motivations and portrays how the un-reconciled trauma

of Jeju April Third continues to resonate through multiple forms: the

island's present landscape, evocative literary representations, recurring

memories of survivors and relatives, shamanic rituals that mediate between

the living and the dead, and in protests against re-militarization of Jeju

Island with the construction of the Jeju Naval Base.

Similar for The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger and Reiterations of

Dissent is an attempt to give aesthetic form to the ramifications of

division through a diasporic lens. The division of Korea represents to me

a political primal scene and trauma that continues to permeate the present

because of the un-ended status of the Korean Warwith the effect that

certain histories remain unresolved and a real process of healing and

recognition is suspended.Because of this suspension, past and present

cannot be separated but is constantly conflated and there is no neat

resolution. This manifests in my works in the form of multiple and

layered montage sequences and fragmented narrativeswhere temporal and

spatial dimensions overlap.

For me as an artist it has been a gradual process of going back in time

to the sources of the Korean War. Going back in time has also been a

process of approaching the present and the root cause of what, as a

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transnational adoptee of Korean descent, Iregard as the traumatic stalemate

that conditions my subjectivity - and this might be shared with many

diaspora subjects - a sense of separation and disjuncture - that cannot be

undone but that I can try nuance and approximate.

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[Session 3: Overcoming War and Partition Korea and

Beyond]

The Division System and Zainichi Koreans

Lee, Jung-ae (Zainichi Koreans)

Hello! My name is Lee, Jung-ae. I am a third-generation Jaeil

Joseonin[1]. I am sure the last name Lee must be unfamiliar to you

already, but the term, ‘Jaeil Joseonin,’ would be even more unfamiliar.

When I visited Korea in 2005, I didn’t see so many Koreans who knew

what Jaeil Joseonin was. Also, when Koreans heard me introducing

myself as ‘Lee’ and that I am a Jaeil Joseonin, the South Koreans looked

at me with wary eyes.[2] I later heard that some Koreans thought the

Jaeil Joseonin in Japan betrayed Korea and chose Japan out of their

administration for richer country. Buy both my dad’s and mom’s parents

who used to live in Jeju Island went to Japan after being deprived of

everything, like pretty much everyone was at the time, to survive. The

Koreans who moved to Japan during the colonization period were the 1st

generation Jaeil Koreans[3]. My parents who were born in Osaka were

the 2nd generation, thus it makes me the 3rd generation. Now, the

Korean expatriate community has 4th and 5th generation Jaeil Joseonins.

Because of the frightening Japanese colonial period and such a painful

history of division into North and South, we, the Korean expatriates in

Japan, have been suffering for more than a century. From the historical

81

perspective, it would be proper to refer Korea as Chosun, thus it would

be also appropriate to refer the Korean expatriates in Japan as Jaeil

Joseonin, but the word, ‘Chosun,’ is a very uncomfortable one to use

here in Korea, but especially far too onerous in Japan[4]. I do not

enjoy speaking Japanese (in Korea), but if I dare to say it, ‘Chosen’ or

‘Chosenjin’[5] are objects of all sorts of discrimination and contempt in

Japan. So, the Korean expatriates with dual citizenship in Korea call

themselves ‘Jaeil Hankukin’ or some from both sides of Korean expatriate

communities just call themselves as ‘Jainich[6]’ leaving ‘Korean’ out.

This is only one of many examples that show how deeply the Korean

expatriate communities are divided and how deep-rooted the discrimination

is in Japan. There is one more thing with the titles. In Korea, we are

often referred to as ‘Gyopo,’ but I think we should be referred to as

‘Dongpo’. Frankly, I don’t feel comfortable being called as a Gyopo,

because the term feels alienating. How Gyopo is different from Dongpo?

Gyopo refers to a compatriot who lives permanently in other countries as

the citizens thereof, and Dongpo is a term for a person from same

country or race with a positive connotation. I wish the South Koreans

would call us, the Jaeil Chosunin, and be kind to their Dongpo.

If I were just any Jaeil Dongpo or Jaeil Chosunin, I wouldn’t have

come here today. I am here because I wanted to talk about my

nationality. One may assume that I am a Japanese, because I was born

and raised in Japan, or that I am a Korean, because I am living in

Korea. Unfortunately, none of the above. I am a national of Chosun.

People often ask if it means that I am a North Korean, but no. Again,

I am a national of Chosun. Then, South Koreans ask if I am a

Chosunjok[7].

Here goes a very complicated story about my nationality. To be exact,

I am a ‘Chosenseki[8]’ holder. Under the international law, I am a

stateless person. I have never met anyone who understood my situation

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at once. I had to explain my status over and over to make others

understand - to Ms. Lim, the cartoonist who draw the story of my life in

‘Story of Lee Jung-ae, the Jaeil Dongpo, in Seoul’ and even to my

husband, Mr. Kim, Ick. Even the Japanese people who came up with

this idea don’t know what it is - considering how ‘flexible’ they are

about their history, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. So, when I

have a business at the Immigration Bureau of Japan, I have to spend

hours to explain and persuade the ignorant officials. The Japanese

government has been saying that ‘a person can choose to hold the

Chosenseki,’ but I have lived all my life believing that it was my

nationality. Chosun has been my nationality since my grandfather was

born and I was born. Chosun is my identity. And I do not want to

recognize my homeland having been separated into two. If I acquired

the Korean citizenship, I would be accepting that my homeland is

divided. Over my dead body! No! On the very day when the two

Koreas are unified, I will apply for the citizenship of ‘United Korea.’

Lee, Jung-ae, the 3rd generation Jaeil Chosunin, the dreamer of

unification of homeland, the ardent lover of land, language and race of

Korea, the only Chosenseki holder living in Korea, the writer of Story of

Lee Jung-ae, the Jaeil Dongpo, in Seoul (Lee, Jung-ae, Lim, So-hee

(cartoonist), Bori Publisher, 2015) and a member of Prisoner of

Conscience Supporters.

[1] Translator’s note: As North and South Koreas prefer

‘Chosun’and‘Hankuk,’respectively,astheirnationaltitle,‘JaeilJoseonin’

meansKoreanexpatriatesinJapanwhoarepro-NorthKorea. Those who

are pro-South Korea are called‘JaeilHankukin.’

[2] Translator’s note: the Korean last name, ‘Lee,’ is pronounced

‘Yi’in South Korea and‘Lee’in North Korea

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[3] Translator’s note: as the Korean expatriate community was

divided into pro-South and pro-North later, the references to

Korean expatriates were also divided.

[4] Translator’s note: it is so, because: Koreans have inferiority

complex from Chosun Dynasty being lethargically colonized by

Japan; North Koreans chose to refer their nation as

‘Buk(North)Chosun’;andJapanesesentimentofbelittlingKoreansasthese

condclasscitizens.

[5] Translator’s note: ‘Chosun’ and ‘Chosun person’ pronounced in

Japanese.

[6] Translator’s note: ‘Jaeil (in Japan)’ pronounced in Japanses.

[7] Translator’s note: ‘Chosunjok’ is a general term for

Chinese-Koreans.

[8] Translator’s note: A nationality granted by Japanese

government, for immigration administration convenience’s sake, to

the Koreans who lived in Japan as of 1945 and thereafter and

held no citizenship of Republic of Korea, Democratic People’s

Republic of Korea or Japan.

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[Session 3: Overcoming War and Partition Korea and

Beyond]

Conscientious Objectors’ Movement for anti-militarism

Im Jae-seong (Conscientious Objector)

The conscientious objection movement in Korea began to surface to

public attention when Oh Tae-yang, a Buddhist and a peace activist,

publicly raised his conscientious objection to military duty in December in

2001. Oh’s public statement prompted three dozens or so nongovernmental

organizations in Korea to gather together and form solidarity in support

of conscientious objectors. The main demand of these activists was that

the Korean government provide alternative channels, other than military

service, for fulfilling one’s duty to the nation and stop putting

conscientious objectors away in prison. Thanks to their campaigns, the

Korean Ministry of National Defense (MND) finally announced its

decision in September 2007 to allow conscientious objectors to serve in

alternative social services. The decision finally put an end to the

five-decade history of punishing and condemning conscientious objectors.

The MND’s decision, however, was soon overturned by the Lee

Myung-bak administration that came to power afterward, which cited the

“inadequacy of the public consensus on the issue” as the reason for

cancelling the decision. As a result, numerous young people who could

have served their duty in social and non-military positions since March

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2009 are now forced to risk going to prison. There are over 700 such

young persons in Korea today who are incarcerated solely for their

conviction that they ought not to aim their weapons at others for murder.

This essay examines the history of conscientious objection in Korea

with a focus on social movements. The participants in those movements

may have failed to stop conscientious objectors from going to prison, but

that does not mean that all their efforts have ended in vain. The social

movements in support of conscientious objection not only raised the

public awareness of the importance of alternatives to military service, but

also created and spread practices and language of resistance against the

military authoritarianism that has long characterized the Korean society.

The majority of studies on conscientious objection focus on the

institutional history and implications of alternatives to military service, and

have thus failed to capture the significant progresses made on the social

front. This essay, by contrast, approaches conscientious objection as a

series of anti-military movements and voices.

I have a personal stake in this research. It was in 2002, while I was

still an undergraduate student, that I first began to participate in a

movement for conscientious objection. Fighting for the human rights of

others, I have come to discover the new meaning of picking up a gun

and aiming it at others as a soldier. This discovery led me to

increasingly question whether I, myself, was ready to become a soldier.

While campaigning against Korea’s participation in the Iraq War in 2003,

I finally decided to become a conscientious objector, and joined A World

without Wars, a nonprofit organization for conscientious objection. I was

scheduled to enter the army on December 13, 2004, but decided not to

go, and was sentenced to one year and a half in prison as a result. After

I finished my term in prison, I entered a graduate school to do in-depth

research on conscientious objection and pacifist movements, and have

been writing on these and related topics since then.

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Given this personal background, I cannot help but include my own

experiences and thoughts as a conscientious objector, activist and

researcher in this essay. The main focus of this essay is on the history

and trend of the conscientious objection movements in Korea, but I will

not shy away from expressing the emotions and ideas I have had as a

conscientious objector myself. For I believe that speaking honestly of my

personal experiences is itself a method for assessing both the past and the

future of the movements for conscientious objection in Korea.

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