A Date That Will Live in Irony
August 15, 2005, a date on which more bullshit flowed than one snarky blogger could possibly step around, so I’ll let the stories pretty much speak for themselves.
In case you’re new here, this is the anniversary of the date on which American soldiers–supported by Russian invaders further north–entered Seoul before passing the reigns of government to the Koreans themselves. Yes, things could have been faster and smoother, and Korea’s first rulers were certainly not Jeffersonian democrats, but what’s most notably absent about Liberation Day seems to be liberators, or liberation, or liberty as a generalized concept. That’s probably because such such matters might offend a large North Korean delegation that visited Seoul over the great patriotic holiday.
Start with South Korea’s self-effacing, masochistic restraining order around everything political or patriotic within ten furlongs of the North Koreans:
The symbolism continued later Sunday with a North-South soccer game, where the stands were filled with a friendly crowd of 65,000 people, largely labor union members and student activists. To play down the national division, the South Korean authorities banned the national flag, encouraging fans instead to wave a Unification Flag, white with the shape of a unified Korean Peninsula shaded blue.
Instead of the standard “Republic of Korea” chant, South Korean fans chanted “Unified Korea” as their team beat the North, 3-0.
. . . .
“As long as Japan whitewashes its past and refuses to repent, it will stay a war criminal country forever,” read a joint statement. Referring to Japan’s work with the United States to build a missile defense shield, the statement demanded: “The Japanese government will stop militaristic expansion policies bandwagoning with the U.S. and retract the missile defense system and aggressive militaristic alignment plans heightening tension in Northeast Asia.”
. . .
During the events, the police have isolated small groups of South Korean protesters calling for democratic change and the start of human rights protections in the North. In Seoul, opponents of Kim’s rule see the visit as an effort by Pyongyang to shore up southern support for Roh’s policy of aid and friendship to the North.
Rather than the South insisting on the smallest easing of repression in the North, it is actually the South that is yielding up its citizens’ freedom of expression for the sake of northern sensitivites:
The main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) Thursday criticized Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan for pledging to punish those who damage or burn North Korean flags during joint celebrations on Aug. 15, Liberation Day, in Seoul.
Lee made the remarks in response to a report that conservative civic groups in the South might incite confrontations by staging rallies during the celebrations, where North Korean delegations will also be present.
“We cannot allow these unidentified groups to damage or burn things including North Korean flags,” Lee said during a meeting of senior officials on Monday. “It cannot be tolerated anymore, politically and legally.”
And lest we lose context of the absurdity here, recall for a moment whose sacrifices made this day possible:
If you’re going to burn a flag, make sure it’s a safe flag to burn.
So was Korea’s apolitical, authoritarian Day of Liberation the sterile success that all had hoped? Not exactly. The North Koreans, true to form, didn’t reciprocate:
The North Koreans were given the sashes at a meeting of North and South Korean labor representatives at the Seoul Olympic Parktel on Tuesday by two members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, who shouted, “We must throw out the USFK and unite by combining our strength!”
North Korean delegate Choi Chang-man replied “The thing that stands in the way of our unification is the U.S. military, and our workers must stop this. This sash reading ‘Withdraw USFK’, handed to me by the vanguard of unification, gives great strength to the laborers of North and South who wish for the withdrawal of the U.S. military.”
At a meeting of agricultural representatives around the same time in the central hall of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, North Korean delegate Kim Sun-bok also said the biggest obstacle to unification “is the war schemes of foreign powers, and we must immediately block all invasion exercises that create strife between Koreans.” It was an apparent reference to U.S. military war games which Pyongyang says constitute aggression.
A meeting of youth representatives from the two Koreas and abroad at Kyung Hee University’s Peace Hall, meanwhile, provided an opportunity for North Korean delegate Cho Yong-min to exhort participants, “Now, with our home threatening to become a war zone, let us hold high the flag of peace and use our strength to protect peace. He said the young people of North Korea, “giving their youth to turn Korea into a wealthy and powerful country and unify the nation, have never forgotten South Korean and overseas Korean students.”
At demonstrations on Monday, protesters also called for the toppling of a statue of U.S. general Douglas McArthur, to some a hero of the Korean War, an end to the Korea-U.S. alliance and closer ties between the two Koreas. KCTU secretary-general Lee Soo-ho told protesters the U.S. was “the principal offender behind civilian massacres, the usurpation of power and the liquidation of democracy” around the globe.
The homepage of the Pan-Korean Young Students Alliance to Unify the Fatherland (http://bchy.jinbo.net/), meanwhile, features paeans to the dear leader and other hail and praise of Pyongyang.
More here, including some content that had no place appearing in a “joint” statement:
On Monday morning, the North and South Korean official and civilian delegations attended a rally at the Jangchung Gymnasium where some 4,000 people shouted slogans of “We are one. They issued an appeal that called on “70 million Koreans” to unite independently.
North Korean civilian delegation head Ahn Kyong-ho said, “Even today, the foreign forces that are responsible for the nation’s division, instead of washing away their crimes, hope only that we remain divided.”
Actual liberators need not apply, of course.
Anti-Americanism wasn’t the only form of xenophobia on display. Clearly, the day was about the liberation from Japanese rule, and Japan was appropriately contrite and appeared sincerely apologetic:
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said in a statement the country’s “colonization and invasions in the past brought enormous damage and pain, especially to the people of several Asian nations… We humbly accept this historical fact and once again express keen reflection and heartfelt apologies.” The wording is similar to a message on the 50th anniversary in 1995 by then-prime minister Tomiichi Murayama.
Koizumi “affirmed anew that Japan would not walk down the path of war twice.” He said in 60 years of peace Japan had “shown in action our reflection about war.” He prime minister singled out China and Korea, nations “from which Japan is separated only by a narrow strip of water,” saying, “We must join hands and maintain and develop peace in the region.”
Healing was only flowing in a single direction:
The delegations representing North and South Korea at the celebrations announced a joint statement calling on Tokyo to “stop distorting the past and pay as a nation compensation for its past invasions and crimes.”
. . . .
The two sides urged Tokyo to end attempts to whitewash war crimes, withdraw amendments to Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution which commits the country to pacifism, suspend Tokyo’s military expansionist policies and its deployment of forces overseas, and end sanctions against North Korea.
All of which is a transparent effort to leverage legitimate historical grievances into cold geopolitical advantages. But not all grievances were pressed too hard. There was a strikingly easygoing visit to the cemetery for South Korean soldiers killed in a war the North started (but still denies starting). The North’s delegation concealed its contrition well:
“It was a difficult decision, and it was an obstacle that we eventually had to overcome,” Lim Tong Ok, the Workers’ Party senior policy maker on South Korea, said before entering the cemetery. In their brief visit, the northerners did not follow the local custom of burning incense or laying a wreath. But for South Korean television viewers, the symbolism was enormous: northern officials for the first time publicly paid their respects to southern war dead.
“It was very import that North Korean officials paid homage at the war cemetery, very important for inter-Korean relations,” Hong Yunsik, a southern official who organized the visit, said in an interview here. “The visit to the cemetery might smooth over many Koreans who are antagonistic to the North Korean regime.”
There will be a price for this visit, and it won’t be paid by the North Koreans, who are believed to be still holding a good number of comrades of the honored dead. No, the price will be an official South Korean visit to North Korea’s largest stockpile of preserved meat, formerly known as Kim Il Sung. Maybe they can call it an agricultural inspection, because the politicians are certainly doing their best to obscure the agreed terms of the arrangement.
The Uri Party welcomed the North Korean visit and guardedly brought up the issue of the Kim Il-sung tomb, saying future South Korean visitors could pay their respects at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. The first opportunity would come when a South Korean delegation attend inter-Korean ministerial-level talks at Mt. Baekdu on Sept. 13. Uri Party standing committee member Chang Young-dal said, “We don’t necessarily have to mourn Kim Il-sung, but it’s natural to pay respects at a symbolic place in North Korea. But the party’s spokesman Chun Byung-hun said, “It’s not yet the time to discuss the “¦ question, and it’s an issue that needs to be carefully judged.”
But the worst obscenity of the entire exercise was inviting the world’s worst human rights violators, the keepers of the world’s largest system of concentration camps on earth since at least the Khmer Rouge days, to track shit all over the place where genuine Korean patriots suffered hideous torture and death for their country’s independence:
In a ceremony this morning, officials from both Koreas are expected to read a joint letter to the Korean people. North Koreans will visit Seodaemun prison, where many independence activists were tortured and killed under colonial rule, and issue a statement condemning Japan’s past military aggression.
A typical view of Japanese atrocities is on display at Seoul’s Seodaemun Prison History Hall, where graphic exhibits depict Japanese torturing Korean independence activists. A North Korean delegation visited the museum yesterday. One member said, “I think Japan is truly a cruel enemy of our people, and we cannot live together under one sky.”
I’ll leave you with what the schoolkids will be reading from plaques in twenty years, when the school buses stop for tours at the gates of Camp 22:
‘I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,’ he said. ‘The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.’
Hyuk has drawn detailed diagrams of the gas chamber he saw. He said: ‘The glass chamber is sealed airtight. It is 3.5 metres wide, 3m long and 2.2m high_ [There] is the injection tube going through the unit. Normally, a family sticks together and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass.’
He explains how he had believed this treatment was justified. ‘At the time I felt that they thoroughly deserved such a death. Because all of us were led to believe that all the bad things that were happening to North Korea were their fault; that we were poor, divided and not making progress as a country.
‘It would be a total lie for me to say I feel sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.’
It’s hard to imagine anything less consistent with the contrived spirit of this day than the liberation of the people of North Korea.