On Korean memory

This special edition of Memory Studies is dedicated to the examination of Korean political memory. Many have called for studies to expand beyond memories in core global regions (Kim and Schwartz, 2010). Heeding that call, the researchers of the seven articles compiled for this edition address the dynamics of political and cultural memory within the context of contentious politics and ideological divides. The memories of regret, pride, and shame matter for the Korean people and the Korean states at least as much as, and perhaps more than, any other global region because of their particular circumstances regarding contemporary memory politics.

Experiences of victimhood are central to Korean historical consciousness and Korean identity. These include the Japanese occupation (1910–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), subsequent political corruption, and the distillation of historical experiences involving the superpowers’ undermining Korean interests and dignity (Schwartz and Kim, 2002). These memories are shaped by Korea’s peripheral position vis-à-vis the powerful core nations in domestic and international affairs.

The lingering Cold War structure increases the precariousness of Korean memories. The peninsula remains the last Cold War frontier, the rest of the world having transcended the ideological rivalry two decades ago. The Communist North and the Capitalist South are still at war, with the 1953 armistice in effect. Upon Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945, the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States in East Asia led to a tense division on the Korean peninsula. The war ended only after the involvement of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China as well as the intervention of United Nations. An unsettled peace continues, with occasional provocations by the North Korean regime; the United States, China, and Japan still loom large in their hegemonic competition in the region.

With the socialist North Korean regime in power, South Korea is internally split in its perception of North Korea and the United States. In the so-called South–South divide, support for North Korea is translated into an anti-US attitude, and vice versa. Progressives argue that helping the Kim Jong-il regime escape from international isolation is a way to build peace in the region, whereas conservatives prioritize domestic welfare and the US—Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance over inter-Korea reconciliation. They believe that the Pyongyang leadership will never abandon its nuclear ambitions and desire for unification under the Communist banner. As long as this Cold War–like division continues, historical perceptions are likely to swing with shifting political structures. The dynamics of political contention and ideological division make Koreans’ historical memory notably presentist.

Korean memory is also adamantly traditionalist. Thomas Cottle (1976) devised an experiment to test temporal perceptions by asking subjects to diagram the past, present, and future atomistically by means of separate circles, continuously by touching circles, or integratively by overlapping circles. When this test was administered to a Korean sample population (N = 99), only 9% separated past, present, and future, and only 11% conceived of time as continuous. The majority, 80%, integrated the three time spheres. To Koreans, the past and present are equally poignant temporal realms. Moreover, this not only suggests that their temporal boundaries are blurry but also that their memory spans a longer period than that of other cultures (Schwartz and Kim, 2002: 218). ¹

Koreans often identify themselves as the people of han. Although there is no equivalent term in English, words that come closest to capturing the meaning of “han” include “mourning,” “frustration,” “anger,” and “resentment,” with the latter the most common translation. Han reflects the complexity of the Korean ethos because it not only aggregates the sentiments of anger against injustice, helplessness in the face of inequality, and bitterness over exploitation (Hyun, 1986: 39) but also incorporates self-blame. As the concept was used in Japanese academic circles during the colonial era (Kim, 1993, 1998), it has overt political implications. Han portrayed Koreans as sentimental, passive, fateful, and inward-looking. It became a tool to explain away the harsh reality of the subjugated people: colonized Korea resulted from its own weakness, and Koreans had nobody but themselves to blame. Han was a powerful framework in justifying the colonial reality: Koreans lamented their own shortcomings.

The colonialists did not predict a mass revolt (the March 1st Movement in 1919). Despite the claim that han instilled passivity and submissiveness in the weak, something else was at work in the Korean mind: resistance. Han and resistance complement each other; whereas the former describes the mind map, the latter is an action schema (Giddens, 1982). This is not to negate the universal attributes of memory nor to exaggerate the peculiarities of Korean memories. As Daniel Bell (1996) observes in his Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, every culture is organized around an axial principle; han-resistance constitutes the core of Korean memory. These issues of the politics of memory, regret and resistance, are central to this edition of the journal.

Jeong-Chul Kim and Gary Alan Fine demonstrate the social impact of individual memory activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on the 2009 publication of the controversial Encyclopedia of Pro-Japanese Collaborators. The nation-building process in the post-independence period skipped the proper and satisfying steps of punishing the collaborators and recognizing the freedom fighters. Most of the same people who benefited under and cooperated with the colonial rule continued to bear the torch of nation-building agendas under the US protectorate. The resentment toward injustice inflicted and inequality suffered has lingered for the past 60 years, and the publication of the Encyclopedia was another trigger of divisive memory politics.

Jerome De Wit takes us to the contentious and violent period immediately following Korea’s liberation from Japan: the fratricidal Korean War (1950–1953). The ideological confrontation and rivalry between South and North Korea were depicted in the war literature, and he finds differences between the North and South in their respective portrayals of the enemy. With large-scale popular uprisings taking place, South Korean literature focused almost exclusively on the ideological corruption of the North. As the Pyongyang regime had a relatively stable grip on society, the primary focus in the North was on the external threat: US imperial ambitions in Korea. Each side claimed that the general population in the enemy state longed for liberation from their oppressors and tried to keep a human face on the enemy by making a distinction between those in power and the ordinary citizens.

Heonik Kwon examines the changing content of ancestral worship rituals in the southern island of Jeju, which suffered mass killings during 1948 and 1954, resulting in the loss of more than 20,000 lives. The villagers protested against the unresolved colonial legacy in which the collaborators became the leaders under the US (1945–1948) and Rhee regimes (1948–1960). The challengers were framed as pro-Communist sympathizers and persecuted by both governments, and the dead were denied fair hearings and judgments amid the anti-Red sociopolitical milieu. The thaw in the international environment with the demise of the Soviet Union opened a new space for bereaved families to commemorate the deceased in more conciliatory ways.

Seungsook Moon examines the commemorative politics of the late President Roh Moo Hyun (February 2003–February 2008), who committed suicide in the middle of corruption investigations in May 2009. Moon’s analysis demonstrates the politicized nature of “living memory” and emphasizes group cohesion as an important variable in commemoration. Analyzing print and Internet sources, Moon delineates the ways in which mourners characterized Roh: as a defiant dreamer who aspired to build a good society; as a nonmainstream politician who challenged the status quo, and therefore was destroyed; and as a democratic president of the common people. Roh, a victorious underdog who fought against the powerful factions in domestic politics and challenged US influence, was an epitome of resistance who transformed his sense of han into a drive for personal growth and social service.

Youngshik Bong takes up memory politics from power elites’ strategic calculations in his analysis of the current territorial disputes between Korea and Japan over two islets, Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese. Dokdo’s physical attributes are so negligible and its strategic and economic value so little that it may well be difficult for observers outside Japan and South Korea to comprehend why these countries are so obsessed with this dispute. Bong argues that it is the desire to redeem their respective pasts in the collective memory of their people that has made the Dokdo issue so critical. For Japan, winning the international recognition that the islands unquestionably belong to Japan will be one of the key tasks in rectifying the misdeeds and injustices inflicted on Japan when it relinquished its territories upon the 1945 unconditional surrender. For South Korea, Dokdo is the reminder of its 36 years of suffering under the Japanese occupation. Koreans consider any contest over its sovereign control over the islands to be tantamount to denying their historical memory as victims of imperialism. For Koreans, Japan’s persistent claims to Dokdo are unmistakable evidence that the former colonizers do not repent their past sins and have every intention of reviving their aggression. Bong concludes that the current gridlock will not be resolved because the power elites in Seoul and Tokyo have nothing to gain by working toward a breakthrough and nothing to lose by maintaining the status quo. Some memories cannot be divorced from the political strategizing of power elites.

Suk-Young Kim turns our attention to North Korea, a secretive country that provides little opportunity to study its collective memory in a holistic sense. The available data are absolutely skewed toward the glorification of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung and the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. By examining a documentary film produced by the Pyongyang regime, Flower of Unification, Kim delineates points of contention among the North Korean public, its totalitarian leadership, and the South Korean nation-state. The film is about 20-year-old South Korean college student Lim Su-gyeong, who crossed the Military Demarcation Line in 1989. In the South, she was framed as a criminal who breached the National Security Law, whereas the North Korean public received her as a national hero. The film also unintentionally served as a catalyst in North Korea’s political memory, catapulting a young female student to a fame that almost eclipsed the patriarchal leader Kim Il-sung.

Mikyoung Kim analyzes the many and changing faces of heroines in Korean folklore by interweaving the Korean cultural ethos of han and the action paradigm of resistance. Kim argues that feminist discourse often relegates alternative modes of resistance to the margins because of Western ethnocentricism and ideological politicization. She analyzes four types of Korean heroine: the archetypical heroine, the virtuous-but-not-virtuous heroine, the pioneering heroine, and the han-imbued resister. In doing so, Kim draws on Giddens’ knowledge and action theorem, which advances the simple equation between consciousness and resistance. Kim introduces five memory units (storage/remembering, deletion/forgetting, retrieval, commemorative media, and commemorative agency) and argues that the genre bridges literature and collective memory scholarship. Since memory studies validate lesser known historical pasts, Kim believes that folklore deserves more careful attention as a legitimate commemorative medium. Korean folklore, a communal mnemonic product of production, retrieval, and transmission shows diverse acts of resistance as women interweave sect presentism and traditionalism. This edition on Korean memories reminds us of the importance of examining collective memory as a non-Western phenomenon and the particular aspects of the Korean case as a site for contention and regret.