A VIEW OF US. PART 2: KOREAN STORIES

While I had the best of intentions to blog on a more regular basis while in Korea, the combination of jetlag, humidity and the sheer pace of meetings and events conspired against me. I have now made it safely to Taipei and am finally getting some time to rest and reflect upon my encounters in Korea. At the start, I should say my encounters were nothing short of mind-blowing and heart-rending. The stories I return with from Korea have a broad range, all of them sad. There’s the former North Korean soldier who’s been a political prisoner trapped in the South since 1962 with no word or contact from his family for nearly four decades. There’s the mother who worries that her children will carry traumatic memories with them for the rest of their lives from the day the South Korean military forcibly evicted them from their homes in order to make way for the expansion of a US military base. There’s the artist and activist on Jeju Island fighting the building of a US naval base in his village who can’t understand how US citizens continue to support militaristic policies that place the lives of his whole community in jeopardy. Due to the immense amount of information I have collected, I will only relate two of the interviews from my first day in Korea in this entry. They were by far the most extensive and exhaustive. Before I begin though, I’d like to take a moment to discuss process and method.

Specifically, it is important to acknowledge and understand the act of translation from the outset. Other than Professor Kang, none of my subjects spoke English just as I do not speak Korean. Each of my interviews were arranged and translated by a Korean activist and blogger named Choi Sung-Hee. Without her tireless dedication to this project, this endeavor would never have been possible. The testimony I present below has been gathered through an arduous translation process. I would ask questions, Sung-Hee would then translate the questions for our interviewee and then translate their responses back to me. Obviously, no act of translation will ever completely and accurately capture the exact meaning and tenor of the message the subject wished to convey. Therefore the words below are the combined effort of Sung-Hee, the interviewees, and me to bring you stories and descriptions we all felt must be heard and understood by American high school students specifically and Americans citizens in general. Every person interviewed was informed of the nature of my fellowship, and that our goal was to get these stories into the hands of high school students debating whether or not to decrease US military presence in Asia. Without further ado, I’ll begin with the first story.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE LOVELY COUPLE.

August 5^th began with Sung-Hee and me meeting and interviewing Professor Kang Jung-Koo of Dong-Guk University. Professor Kang will soon retire from the Department of Sociology where his research interests include Korean reunification and contemporary Korean history. Professor Kang is also the director of the Research Institute for Peace and Reunification of Korea, and is affiliated with an activist organization called SPARK (“Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea”). The interview was conducted at the SPARK offices in Seoul and lasted just under two hours. Professor Kang is a very controversial figure in South Korea whose statements regarding the Korean War and reunification of Korea have landed him in court for violating South Korea’s National Security Law. Our interview begins with him explaining why the South Korean Government has prosecuted him.

Professor Kang: In the year 2005 which marked both the 60^th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan and the 60^th anniversary of a foreign military presence by the United States and thus our forced division, I began arguing that we should celebrate this 60^th anniversary with a withdrawal of foreign military forces from South Korea. Also, during this time I wrote an article on the Internet about the General MacArthur statue in Incheon where I argued it was time to get rid of that statue because he was at the forefront of our country’s division. In fact, he advocated dropping as many as 26 Atomic bombs on North Korea; therefore we should not continue to honor his memory with this statue. I have also been very publicly critical of the US military’s actions during the Korean War. For all of these reasons I am now being prosecuted for violating our National Security Law.

My main argument is that if there had been no intervention by the US into the internal affairs of liberated Korea at the end of World War II, Korea would never have been divided and we would not have had to suffer the tragedy of the Korean War. IF the US did not intervene in the Korean War, the war would have ended in a month without the killing of as many as 3 million Koreans and 1 million Chinese. IF there had been no intervention in 1950 during the first period of the Korean War, we would not have suffered such a tragedy. The Korean War was a war of reunification and would have ended quickly and resulted in a unified Korea.

The professor explains to me that his case has gone all the way to the South Korean Supreme Court and he has received a suspended sentence of two years in jail for advancing this argument in his academic writings and public advocacies. He is currently awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court to discover whether or not he will serve prison time for arguing that the US military should never have intervened in the internal affairs of Korea. At this point I ask him to elaborate and explain the historical hypothetical he has advanced.

Professor Kang: The US is 90% responsible for the division of Korea. If there had been no forced division there would never have been a civil war. By 1950 both the US and Russian militaries had left Korea (the US military left in June 1949, and Russia’s military left in December 1948). On July 1^st, 1950 the US military returned to Korea in order to intervene in our civil war. Therefore the civil war is a product of interference by foreign powers.

Even though Korea has been divided for over 65 years, I think most Koreans (both North and South) want a re-unified Nation. We have the same identity. Even though there are many differences between South and North in the way of culture, ways of living and thinking we still have a shared identity and desire to be reunited. Prior to our forced division, we had been a united country since the 7^th century, that’s over 1400 years as a single country and people.

The story of the “lovely couple” can be used here to understand Korea’s current struggle. When a husband and wife are married, they are “ONE,” but in this story the neighborhood gangster intervened and forced them to be divorced (the US is of course this neighborhood gangster). The majority of Koreans want to be reunited as a “lovely couple” again through peaceful means.

My question: “Can you elaborate on your writings about the US military government in Korea collaborating with pro-Japanese Koreans after World War II? Specifically, how do you think the US military occupation of Korea resembles the Japanese occupation of Korea prior to World War II?”

Professor Kang: If there had been no intervention, the liberated Korea would have cleaned up the pro-Japanese national traitors. In 1946 North Korea acted to root out the pro-Japanese influence in their government and society in order to counteract the legacy of Japanese Imperialism. Therefore, the ruling party of North Korea has no legacy of Japanese imperialism and they are able to maintain self-reliance. This rejection of US imperialism for the last 65 years must be understood as a continuation of the struggle against Japanese imperialism.

On the contrary, in the South there is an opposite history. When the US entered Korea, they had no friends on the Peninsula that would help them administer their military occupation. When the US wanted South Korea to take a Capitalist route rather than a Socialist route, most of South Korea wanted to have a Socialist system rather than a Capitalist system. In July 1946 the US Military Government in Korea conducted a survey of South Koreans and discovered that 71% of respondents wanted a Socialist system, 7% wanted a Communist system, and only 14% wanted a Capitalist system. If the survey had been conducted in 1945, before the US Military Government in Korea made it clear they were opposed to any form of Communist of Socialist system, I would say that almost 90% of Korean people (both North and South) wanted a Socialist system rather than a capitalist system. That is why the US could not find friends in either the North or the South.

The US Military Government needed pro-Japanese national traitors to cooperate with them to help institute a pro-Capitalist regime. For the pro-Japanese, to be friends with the US was the only way to keep their power and status in Korean society. Therefore there emerged a very close alliance between the US military occupation and the pro-Japanese national traitors. This is the reason we had so many small on-going wars (referred to as people’s uprisings) starting in October 1946 and leading up to the Korean War in 1950. In 1946 alone more than 10,000 Koreans were killed by the US occupying forces. These small wars lasted from 1946 to 1950, and because of these wars almost 100,000 Koreans lost their lives.

Also important to understand is that the Korean War was not a “war of aggression.” A “war of aggression” is between two separate sovereign countries, but the North and the South are not separate sovereign countries—we are one country, one nation with two different governments. Therefore, this is a civil war. It is true that North Korea mobilized their military and invaded South Korea. They believed the war would end in one or two months without such tragedy. This was an internal conflict; there was no reason for neighbors to intervene in the internal affairs of the “lovely couple.” As I explained we are like a married couple that was forced by the neighborhood gangster to divorce, so it is natural for us to get reunited after the neighborhood gangster has left.

My question: “So Professor Kang, what can American high school students do in order to facilitate the process of allowing this ‘lovely couple’ to be reunited?”

Professor Kang: Most Americans do not know the real story of our country’s division and the ensuing Korean War. For example, in 2002 I met Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and we talked for about 90 minutes. He later wrote some articles about South Korea and the North Korean nuclear crisis and I was very disappointed to notice that he didn’t appear to know anything about the real story of what is actually going on between North Korea and South Korea. Therefore, we must start by getting to the Real Story of our country’s division, the tragedy of the Korean War, and of the inevitability of North Korea’s development of nuclear powers in order to protect itself against attacks from the United States. In the history of crises on the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War, out of 11 crises all but 2 were initiated by United States actions and belligerence towards North Korea. In the face of the US military aggression what can North Korea do? They do not have the money to cope with South Korean and United States military spending; therefore the most economic way to defend themselves is to develop nuclear bombs. Only a nuclear bomb can guarantee North Korea’s security in such a situation. When North Korea first announced the test of their nuclear weapons, the official announcement of North Korea stated that when the hostile policies of the United States towards North Korea cease they would be willing to give up their nuclear weapons.

The first step is to get American citizens to know all these true details of US involvement in Korea. If they know they will realize there is no reason for the US military to be here in the Korean peninsula. The Korean peninsula is not safe because of US military presence; instead it is “the most dangerous place in the world” because of the US military presence. So the conclusion is clear, the first step is to get the US military out of Korea. Then, we (North and South) can refuse the offensive military orientation towards each other and transition towards defensive oriented military systems and we can begin to work towards peaceful reunification and cooperation between North and South.

THREE PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE

At the conclusion of my interview with Professor Kang, Sung-Hee and I quickly rush off in order to make our lunchtime meeting with Mr. Kwon Oh-Hun. Mr. Kwon is a former political prisoner (prisoner of conscience) and has been a reunification activist since 1964. He is the chairperson of the Supporting Committee for Prisoners of Conscience and the Co-Chairperson of MINKAHYUP Human Rights Group. Our goal is to have lunch with Mr. Kwon before joining him at the weekly MINKAHYUP protest in Tapgol (Pagoda) Park. I must admit at this point my mind is spinning in a million different directions after meeting with Professor Kang, but one question above all is burning in my mind when I meet him. Ultimately this interview spans seven hours and three different locations. Below I have reproduced a small fraction of the transcript of our meeting.

My question: “How has the South Korean government utilized the National Security Law to suppress dissent?”

Mr. Kwon: The official National Security Law was enacted in 1948, but it was preceded by the Japanese enactment of the “Security Maintenance Law” in 1929. Both laws had the same basic goal—to suppress dissent. On September 8, 1945 the United States came here to disarm the Japanese military, but ultimately turned out to be an occupying army as well. Koreans were told that resistance to the US military order would be met with death. The National Security Law of 1948 was passed in order to help preserve US military control.

One of the first acts of the South Korean government after its creation on August 15, 1948 was to pass the National Security Law on October 1^st, 1948. At the time the separate South Korean government was established there was substantial public opposition to the creation of separate governments; this partition was only possible with the help of the US military. On April 3, 1948 the first organized and mass resistance to the separate South Korean government occurred with the Cheju Uprising [readers should take note that Cheju Island has been re-named Jeju Island]. The South Korean military was sent to the island to suppress the movement but the military resisted the order (this refusal is known as the Yeo-soon uprising). Only by the US military stepping in was the Cheju uprising suppressed [watch for my upcoming blog regarding the US military’s shocking involvement in suppressing this uprising].

In order to make the creation of the separate South Korean government successful the National Security Law was needed to prevent resistance and ensure the permanent division of Korea. Under the US dominated South Korean government the Japanese imperialists had retained their positions in the new government and suggested the use of the same law they had previously used to control dissent. The Japanese “Security Maintenance Law” of 1929 had three main goals: 1. Control over ideas 2. Suppress the local independence movement 3. Suppress freedom of expression. The first goal was the most important because it was via this law that the Japanese and later the United States and South Korea were able to suppress the growing socialist movement in Korea. One of the main differences between South Korea and North Korea at this point in time is that in North Korea the pro-Japanese collaborators were purged, but in South Korea the US military protected and promoted the pro-Japanese collaborators and their institutions of control.

My question: “Could you give me some specific examples of how the National Security Law has been used since its enactment in 1948?”

Mr. Kwon: The first victims of the law where the legislators in the South Korean government who voted against the law. When the South Korean National Assembly was first created the progressives had refused to participate, yet even without such participation about 37 members who were center-right nationalists still opposed the law even though they supported the partition of Korea. There were four reasons for their refusal to support the law: 1. It could be used to control the freedom of ideas 2. It would make the division of Korea permanent 3. It could be used to oppress political opponents 4. The law could be interpreted arbitrarily and used to violate human rights. Because of their opposition to the law charges were brought against these 37 members of the National Assembly accusing them of being spies. This event in our history is now referred to as the “Incident of the National Assembly Spies.”

The second victims of the National Security Law were the progressive political parties and the socialist organizations. Within the first year of enactment of the National Security Law 118,00 people were arrested and 132 political parties and civil organizations (including media organizations such as newspapers etc…) were dispersed utilizing the law. Due to this repression many of South Korea’s progressives, activists and artists fled to the North during this time. Many were convicted and sentenced to death during this purge, but since we are running out of time I can only relate one specific example. Cho Bong-Am, chairperson of the Progressive Party, called for peaceful reunification with the North. Syngman Rhee preferred absorption of North Korea into his regime and therefore had Cho arrested and executed on July 30, 1959.

At this point in the interview we are forced to pause for a couple hours so Mr. Kwon can participate in a weekly political protest wherein activists from a group known as MINKAHYUP rally in support of the release of all remaining political prisoners and the repeal of the National Security Law.

After the rally, we reconvene our interview about an hour away from downtown Seoul in a quiet neighborhood in Incheon. We continue our discussion in a house used over the years by recently released political prisoners until they are able to make their way back to North Korea. Over the next hour and a half Mr. Kwon meticulously outlines the history of the South Korean government’s active oppression of dissent and opposition by use of the National Security Law. The litany is exhausting and eye opening.

Mr. Kwon: There is the “April 19^th Uprising” in 1960 which started with students protesting a fraudulent election designed to ensure Syngman Rhee the lifetime presidency of South Korea. Syngman Rhee was unable to maintain support due to this uprising but the South Korean military intervened via a coup to reign in the movement. Right before the coup the aspirations of the progressive movement was very high and many thought peaceful reunification would be the likely outcome of the uprising. After the coup, the National Security Law was again invoked resulting in 500 people being arrested, 200 being tried and convicted and 7 or 8 people being executed. One of the executed was Joo Yong-Soo, chairperson of the Korean Social Party Organizing Committee and publisher of the “People’s Daily Newspaper.” It has recently come to light that the outcome of his trial was actually a “not-guilty” verdict but he was executed regardless. Additionally, the chairperson for the Socialist Party and a number of teachers advocating democratic social change were also executed.

For the sake of time and space, I’m not able to relate the full litany of incidents and abuses Mr. Kwon detailed that afternoon. Hopefully, I will be able in the coming weeks to continue transcribing the list of incidents and publish the full interview here. Instead, at this time I’d like to skip ahead to some slightly more recent history.

My question: “Mr. Kwon, up to this point we have talked exclusively about the time of South Korea’s history that is fairly universally regarded as a dictatorship. How does the current government since the end of the dictatorship utilize the National Security Law to prevent dissent?”

Mr. Kwon: I’d like to point out two things in response to your question: 1. The military dictatorship continues to this day. The president elected in 1987 was a former military general and even when we have had civilians elected as President they still collaborated with military leaders. 2. The National Security Law was revised in 1991 but is still used to suppress activists. For example, recent progressive movements that advocate for peaceful reunification have been prosecuted as organizations lending support to the enemy.

During the course of our discussion two men have joined our interview. My host explains both are former political prisoners (a term he uses interchangeably with “prisoners of conscience”) who would like to have a chance to speak to me about their experiences.

First is Mr. Park Hee-Sung. Born in 1935 in Pyongyang province, Mr. Park has not seen his wife or children who still reside in North Korea since 1962 and in fact does not even know if they are still alive. He came to South Korea in 1959 to assist South Korean activists to escape to the North in order to avoid persecution by the Rhee government. After a two hour naval battle in which he suffered numerous injuries he was captured and placed in a South Korean prison. He recounts to me some of his horrifying experiences in prison that range from being able to hear fellow inmates being executed to being told he too could easily be killed if his guards so decided. He was released in 1989 under a general amnesty and has been waiting for the South Korean government to allow him to go home ever since. His only wish at this late stage in his life is to go home to be hugged by his homeland and see his family one last time before he dies.

The other former prisoner is Mr. Kim Young-Sik. At this point we have run out of time for our interview so Mr. Kim takes a brief moment to angrily curse the policies of the United States government towards Korea as a policy wherein the most powerful country on Earth suffocates the weak and helpless. He reasserts an argument I end up hearing over and over while in Korea: If the US had never intervened in the internal affairs of Korea by collaborating with Japanese imperialists there would have been no division, no war and no tragedy. He states that it’s particularly terrible that the US gave power in South Korea to the people most hated by the Korean population.

Sung-Hee and I wish our hosts good-bye as rush hour sets in. We board the subway back to Seoul where one final meeting with Choi Eun-A, Lee Kyung-Won and Kang In-Ogg of the Pan Korean Alliance for Reunification. Ms. Choi and Mr. Lee have both recently been released from prison after being brought up on charges for violating the National Security Law. They have not yet been vindicated though, they were only released because their attorneys where able to prove that their human rights were violated because the prosecution has been taping their phones and reading their emails.

As I promised at the beginning, this entry only covers my first two meetings on August 5^th. The day has ended here in Taipei and I want to get to the night market for a late night snack before I begin to pack for my trip to Beijing tomorrow. Check back in the next day or two for the continuation of my interviews in Korea.