Reason Reenters the MacArthur Debate

Kudos to the Chosun Ilbo for an outstanding response to the blood libel that General MacArthur gave his troops a green light to spend three days raping the women of Seoul. First up is an interview with James Zobel, the chief archivist at the MacArthur Memorial and Museum in Norfolk, Virginia. The view of someone so connected with MacArthur’s legacy will have to be buttressed by more neutral experts to take hold, but here, at least, is a newspaper trying to correct public misinformation by directly asking a historian if it’s true. You need to read all of this, but here are two grafs:

Is there any basis for claims that MacArthur ordered the massacre of civilians, rapes and looting?

After the intervention of the Chinese, it’s possible that civilians were killed during the bombing of logistic bases. But claims that MacArthur directly ordered the massacre of civilians are surprising. By that logic, how would you explain the rescue of countless Korean civilians during the evacuation of Hamhung?

“Lying sacks of shit” would have been better than “surprising,” but that’s why words like “curator,” “representative,” or (God forbid) “ambassador” will never enter my job title. This is not the end of our troubles, of course:

Have you tried to correct their view of the Korean War?

Even if I say this to Koreans who come here, they don’t listen. They’re not interested. I was disappointed by their approach to history.

The Chosun Ilbo then does this one better with a very balanced, nuanced, and generally accurate guest editorial on the MacArthur legacy by Professor Kang Kyu-hyung of Myongji University. He begins with an excellent synopsis of MacArthur’s role in Korea, and then adds genuinely insightful reasoning to those facts:

The French writer Frederic Beigbeder says in his novel “Windows on the World” that contained in anti-Americanism is some jealousy and disillusioned love. Doesn’t our anti-Americanism, too, contain the anger that arises from unrequited love? It cannot be denied that in our attitude toward the U.S., either for or against, we only spout sentiments, without a cool-headed analysis of America.

When we fail to understand MacArthur, who was a complex man, and the U.S., a country of many facets, we experience the symptoms of extreme jealousy or hatred. One such symptom is a violent attempt to erase the group experience and collective memory of MacArthur and the U.S. presence, without leaving a space where reasonable thoughts can be exchanged.

One hopes that Professor Kang will find a way to teach his students the same capacity for critical thinking. Thanks to the Chosun Ilbo, we have taken a step back toward reason.