What Yoon’s speech missed
Time to assess if nation learned from past
President Yoon Suk Yeol spoke about how and why South Korea and Japan need to work together at this critical juncture, but his speech didn’t reveal much about the lessons the nation should learn from its traumatic past.
In a speech to mark the 105th anniversary of the March 1st Independence Movement, Yoon stopped short of criticizing Japan directly for the historic animosity that for decades has pitted the two nations against each other, even after Korea was liberated from Japan’s colonial rule in 1945.
“Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan. On this occasion, I hope that the two countries will be able to forge productive and constructive bilateral relations,” he said.
Yoon then switched gears to talk about North Korea, criticizing the regime for its human rights violations. He said unification of the two Koreas will represent the realization of freedom, stressing that the 1919 Declaration of Independence identified it as a universal value at the time. The statement calling for Korea’s independence, drafted by Choe Nam-seon and co-signed by 33 representatives of the independence movement, was unveiled prior to the nationwide independence movement in 1919.
Yoon was cautious about mentioning Japan directly as the state responsible for South Korea’s tragic past, seeking to divert attention to North Korea’s abysmal human rights situation.
What he did is understandable. Yoon would not want to rock the boat. If he tried to hold Japan accountable for Koreans’ suffering over three decades of the colonial period, he would have poured cold water on Seoul-Tokyo relations, which have been showing signs of improving lately due to their mutual efforts to defend against growing threats from North Korea and China.
South Korea would have nothing to gain, should its ties with Japan turn sour again at this critical juncture. It could pay a price on the security front because of the grave geopolitical circumstances. Tensions are escalating in East Asia, which some pundits have likened to a new Cold Warlike standoff between two blocs, each consisting of three nations — one is a coalition of democratic countries, namely the United States, South Korea and Japan, and the other is the autocratic partnership forged among China, Russia and North Korea.
If Seoul-Tokyo ties are held back again due to disputes over historical issues, that will do a disservice to their trilateral partnership with the U.S. This kind of thinking seems to have played out when Yoon was determined to tone down on Japan and sharpen his criticism on North Korea instead. His approach makes sense.
However, there are still things that South Korea and its people need to keep in mind when they commemorate the 105th anniversary of the peaceful, non-violent independence movement that inspired several other non-violent independence protests in other countries.
Instead of blaming others, South Korea needs to learn from its past through introspection. It needs to figure out what went wrong with the nation when its fate was in peril and annexed by Japan. Based on this, the nation should confront itself by asking why that happened and what lessons it should learn from its tragic past.
History repeats itself. If not fully prepared, the nation can face a situation similar to what it had experienced in the early 1900s again. History is a dialogue between the past and the present, as British historian E.H. Carr asserted in his 1961 book “What Is History?”
Regarding Korea’s colonial experiences, the question the country needs to ask now is obvious. Are we capable enough to protect ourselves from a possible invasion by North Korea or foreign forces? If we hesitate to answer this question without confidence, it’s obvious that we are not yet there. If that is the case, it means that we didn’t learn properly from the past.