Transitional justice in Korea
As I write this column, Korea is celebrating the beginning of its Liberation Day, which, once again, has become all about Japan.
In a sense this is inevitable, since Korea is celebrating its independence from Imperial Japan. From another perspective, however, it also shows that Korea still has not grown out of the identity framework originally defined by the trauma it suffered under Japanese colonial rule.
Without pointing fingers at who is to blame for the latest relationship crisis, it appears that Japan will never be just another country to Koreans as long as this national identity framework is in place.
To add fuel to this fire, the day before — August 14 — the Korean government commemorated the first international memorial day for comfort women. This was officially designated by the government in 2017 as a “means to restore dignity and honor to the victims of colonial and wartime sex slavery and to remember the range of ‘comfort women’ issues.” This was the day in 1991 when Kim Hak-soon became the first victim publicly to share the experiences of the comfort women under Imperial Japan during World War II.
In a way, however, the comfort women issue shows South Korea a way to grow out of this self-limiting paradigm and resolve the relationship crisis with Japan at a more fundamental level.
To do this, the Korean government can actually take lessons learned from the passage of the comfort women resolution - H.R. 121 — in July 2007 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The comfort women issue was not always so widely known or supported around the world. Since the first Korean comfort woman publicly came out with her story in 1991, a social movement to hold the Japanese government accountable was born.
Before 2007, however, the H.R. 121 proponents had pushed for the passage of the resolution on the argument that Japan must deal with its past abuses against the people of the Asian nations it subjugated during World War II. However, such an argument was vulnerable to a counter-argument that this issue was all about Japan-bashing by other Asian nations intent on taking some measure of revenge by shaming Japan.
In short, this was a regional issue among myriad Asian nations, and the U.S. should not take sides in a historical dispute endemic to a different part of the world.
In response, the H.R. 121 proponents re-couched the comfort women issue firmly in the language of human trafficking and wartime rape. This allowed it to be directly connected to the issue of sexual violence against women in regions of conflict, recalling the still-vivid images of the systemic rapes of Bosnian women by Serbian forces in the mid-1990s and the targeting of girls for brutal rapes and murder by the Janjaweed in Darfur.
Strategically reframing the narrative ultimately proved successful. The real lesson here is about the power of the right story to tell the truth, move people’s hearts, and define the understanding of an issue by linking a local issue to the global narrative based on universally shared values of human rights. Today, the comfort women issue is not an indictment against Japan per se. It is a human rights movement against sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Similarly, South Korea’s issue with Japan is not really about what the Japanese did several decades ago. It is a larger story about transitional justice for people who have endured massive human rights abuses. More specifically, it is about how South Korea itself failed its citizens by not engaging in proper transitional justice mechanisms as it emerged from World War II as an independent nation.
According to the International Center for Transitional Justice, “Transitional justice is rooted in accountability and redress for victims. It recognizes their dignity as citizens and as human beings … By putting victims and their dignity first, it signals the way forward for a renewed commitment to make sure ordinary citizens are safe in their own countries — safe from the abuses of their own authorities and effectively protected from violations by others.”
This never happened in South Korea. In fact, the fratricidal war that followed after independence and a head-long dive into modernization afterward exacerbated the human rights of ordinary citizens, sacrificing their dignity for the sake of national prosperity. Even the comfort women movement began as essentially a transitional justice issue. Since the government wasn’t doing it, it took the extraordinary courage of an individual to assert her dignity against past injustice.
The trauma of historical injustice won’t go away with time. It will only amplify and form the dangerous foundation of destructive emotional fuel that will inevitably lead to future abuses against the “other,” whoever that happens to be.
Real transitional justice is not about denouncing past wrongs. It’s about re-establishing the current society on a “foundation of justice and rule of law” by creating a transitional justice framework that goes beyond “who did what to whom” to establishing a culture of accountability across institutions of power and promoting reconciliation based on equal dignity for all. This would take true leadership that goes beyond just exhortations.