Holocaust Education in a Country without Holocaust Experience: Facing Burdensome Past with Rescuer Stories in South Korea

Introduction

On April 16, 2014, a ferry named Sewol sank in the south-eastern Korean waters with 304 passengers aboard. The accident made the entire Korean society fell into a bottomless pit of conflict on two grounds: on one hand, it disclosed the side effects of the deep-rooted growth-first ideology that neglects safety rules and on the other hand, it caused a national disbelief over the government because of its unprepared response in the early stages of the accident and its careless post-management efforts after the bitter failure of its rescue mission. Meanwhile, the fundamental skepticism of the nation against the state brought up the memory of the past incidents where the government did not keep the promise with the nation to safeguard the lives of its citizens. The sinking of the ferry has revealed that the Korean society did not succeed in dealing with the unpleasant pasts especially when the Koreans are still standing on the volcano of unsettled past affairs.

This article reviews the education of the burdensome past in South Korea and shows the implication of Holocaust education in the Western countries. It begins with presenting the structural and situational conditions in which South Korea dealt with its past and examines how and to what extent the Holocaust education was developed in the country. Lastly, it proposes a strategy toward facilitating the education of its own burdensome past as well as the Holocaust in the country.

Coming to Terms with the Burdensome Past in a Transitional Society

Return of the suppressed memories in South Korea began in the late 1990s with the change of the political power. After taking power, the government under President Kim Youngsam (1993–1998) pushed through reforms for securing the transition to democracy under the motto “setting the history right.” The campaign had two targets, namely, with demolition of the former Japanese governor-general building in the center of Seoul, the government announced to make a clean break with the legacies of the colonial rule that existed from 1910 to 1945; and with jailing of his two predecessors, namely, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo on treason and corruption charges, it sought to do away with the past of dictatorship. Both of them were signs of the forthcoming measures for facing three troublesome national pasts, namely, coming to terms with the rule of Japanese imperialism (1910–1945), civilian massacres during the Korean War (1950–1953), and violations of human rights during the successive dictatorships that prevailed in South Korea from 1960 to 1987.

Social discourse on the colonial era includes independent movement, collaboration, sexual slavery for the Japanese army, and enforced labor. The most acute matter has been the question of collaboration, because in this case the enemy was within the nation. As in most post-colonial countries, the collaborator issue in South Korea has been a major discord ever since the liberation in 1945. The disagreement could not be resolved in a proper and timely way, because claiming to be anti-communists, during the Cold War some of the former collaborators had participated in the US military rule, the nation-state building process, and in the development of successive dictatorships. Confronting the collaborative past resumed after over a half century, when the Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaborations for Japanese Imperialism was set up in 2005. ¹

The civil massacres before, during, and after the Korean War were the most neglected past of all. The Korean War was not only a civil war, an international war between the United States and China, and a global war under the system of Cold War, it was also a war against the civilian population (Kwon, 2010; Lee, 2001). The April 3, 1948 incident in Jeju ² was a signal for forthcoming massacres against the unarmed citizens during the war. All the memories of them were suppressed by the state and people were forced to forget them. Therefore, it was not a national amnesia, but rather a “structured absence,” as Bruce Cumings rightly pointed out (Cumings, 2007). It was only after the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) headed by Song Ki-in in 2005 that the verification process could start. ³

Compared to other two issues, the violations of human rights under the dictatorship had good results in investigation, prosecution, reparation, commemoration, and education. The main reason for success is that former victims had succeeded in the regime change. The establishment of the Commission for Democratization Movement Activists’ Honor-Restoration and Compensation in 2008 was one of the most noticeable achievements of the transition from the dictatorship to democracy. ⁴

At a glance, South Korea shows an astounding progress in democratization and rectification of the unpleasant pasts. One of the most notable aspects of the Korean experience in realizing transitional justice is the long-lasting importance of the truth commissions to the Korean political discourse. Unlike most countries, which have established one or at most two short-lived truth commissions to look at relatively recent and painful events, South Korea has established 15 public truth commissions (Wolman, 2013).

Within South Korea, however, quite a few criticisms have been raised regarding the limits of such national commissions. The main criticism is that the activities of commissions were essentially victim-centered and they focused mainly on the truth surrounding the individuals’ victimization, rehabilitating their reputations, and paying compensation to the victims or the bereaved families. For this reason, many critics argue that although the TRCs advocated the cause of truth and reconciliation, they only partially succeeded in establishing the truth; and the justice was missed, and, even worse, indulgence was issued for the past perpetrators (Hanley, 2014).

Moreover, the institutional achievements were recently recessed with the successive inauguration of the conservative governments. It has been closely linked to the slowdown of the economic growth, expanding of the national anxiety and above all, growth of the political indifference of the nation. The conservative media talks about the fatigue of rectifying the past affairs, and even about its uselessness (ibid., p. 156). The Korean society currently confronts a thirst of memory in the moment of institutionalized commemoration and the deficit in the education is in the center of the dilemma. The current education system fails to convincingly explain to the younger generation the reason to learn about the past. For the youth of this generation, the democratization movement is only a matter of their parent’s generation, civil massacres that of their grandparents’, and the collaboration that of great-grandparents’. Therefore, the biggest challenge facing the teachers is the change of generations accompanied by the decrease of the immediacy of the past affairs.

For a fairly long time, Holocaust has been regarded in South Korea solely as the German–Jewish matter and its adaption was limited to state-nationalism to scold the Japanese memory of the colonial rule. However, lately, the Korean view on the Holocaust is found to be increasingly less biased and the Koreans have become to take the lessons from it within more general perspectives (Choi, 2009).

In Search of Koreanization of the Holocaust

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) 2015 announced a surprising finding that the South Koreans are more than twice as likely to be anti-Semitic as the global average. According to its survey, conducted in the same year, 53 percent of the population in South Korea was found to be anti-Semitic, a level that has even surpassed the Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Bangladesh. ⁵ The Western media also increasingly report that the anti-Semitism in South Korea is growing very rapidly, with such inflammatory titles: “Samsung and ‘the Jews of Wall Street’: Korean Takeover Fight Gets Uglier” (Einhorn, 2015); or “Pictured: The ‘Offensive’ Samsung Cartoons of Jewish U.S. Hedge Fund Boss which Sparked Anti-Semitism Row in South Korea” (Power, July 16, 2015).

However, neither the ADL nor the Western media pointed out the reality. Most of all, the image of Jews for average Koreans is only vague, and even ambivalent at times; on one hand, they usually associate Jews with the Bible, the wisdoms of Talmud, and their renowned special education for the gifted but on the other hand, they feel a negative sentiment, when they receive the news like the artillery attacks on the Gaza Strip. This negative view seemed to have grown apparently, in association with the image of Jews as speculative capitalists (Park, 2015). However, it should also be taken into account that the Koreans’ stance on the biggest conglomerations including Samsung is highly ambivalent. Their distorted ruling structures became a target of the common wrath ever since. Simultaneously, the Koreans are afraid of the Western investment capitals, not because they belong to the Jews, but due to their speculative characters that appear to be too strong to resist. After the financial crisis in 1997, the panic experience became a national trauma. In the writer’s opinion, the matter of the assumed anti-Semitism among the Koreans may soon be settled, provided with more factual information. The “astounding anti-Semitism” in South Korea is only a combination of a superficial understanding of the Jews and the amorphous fear against the Western investment groups (Arbes, 2015).

The Holocaust education in Korea has to begin from the fact that the country has no direct association with the historical event itself, and the Koreans seldom have the opportunity to meet Jews in their everyday life. Therefore, the teachers should be ready to answer the foremost question, why the Korean should learn about the Holocaust in the first place? And “How to” would be the next challenge.

Current situation of the Holocaust education in South Korea is poor and there is no institution in the country devoted to the Holocaust research or education, no course work for degree at undergraduate and graduate level, and Holocaust education is not mandatory within the school system (UNESCO, 2015, p. 75). Admitting these situations, the current fever of Holocaust studies seems to be odd in some sense. According to my research, more than 500 academic writings are published regarding the Holocaust or anti-Semitism. ⁶ This boom of Holocaust studies is caused by the needs of the Korean academic circles who regard Holocaust as the incident to which they can always refer back, when comparing their own national history, in terms of its factual process as well as its meaning.

Some scholars and social activists pay special attention to genocidal massacres in contemporary history and compare them with the Holocaust in order to make sense of the similarities and differences between them. They interpret their own experiences of collaboration, perpetration, and complice in comparison to the Holocaust history. For example, they try to zoom into the uniqueness of the sexual slavery question with reference to the Holocaust, and to focus on the trauma of the victims of the inhuman system organized by the Japanese government. ⁷ The theoretical and methodical achievements of the Holocaust studies were often applied to dealing with the civil massacres during the Korean War and in May 1980 in Gwangju (Choi, 2012).

One of the remarkable results was the establishment of a trauma center for the victims of the May 1980. ⁸ Sometimes a few civil groups have dealt with the lack of tolerance toward other ethnic groups prior to the Holocaust, in the context of the current transformation into a multicultural society. The aim is to arouse the national interests and to suggest proper policies. A serious situation of human rights violations in North Korea also arouses interest in Holocaust (Choi, 2012). ⁹ Some educators and activists want to learn how to mark living memories among the younger generations, from the Holocaust remembrance and education in the Western countries. Thus, the methods of the Holocaust education are applied to the publication of teaching materials and teacher training programs.

With rapid institutionalization of commemoration initiated or supported by the government after 2000s, the main issue of the society is shifting onto the question of how to teach. Although numerous memorial institutions were set up ¹⁰ and are still in process, the nation is not convinced of their raison d’être (Jung, 2007). Therefore, it is urgently needed to persuade the publicity of teaching the past affairs by showing an apprehensible vision and its expected effects. Holocaust education in the Western countries is used as the most persuasive reference model.

With all the factors considered above, Holocaust education in South Korea has two meanings; one for better understanding of its own shameful history by widening the perspective in terms of visions, principles, strategies, and methods of teaching; and, the other for understanding of the Holocaust itself, which may allow the students to make sense of the human beings and their environment in a historical perspective. The tension between the two different demands, Holocaust as a reference on one hand, and as an object of study and education by itself on the other seems to be unavoidable. For this reason, it is highly necessary to find the Holocaust’s relevancy to the current needs, and to develop proper educational strategies.

Focusing on the rescuers may be an efficient way for this. This strategic approach seems to be effective on three reasons; first, it may persuade the conservative media and political groups who are anxious about its negative impact on national integration; second, it may convince the majority of the nation who are indifferent to the past affairs of its relevancy to their life; and lastly, it may help the policy makers of education realize the availability of the past affairs education. Admitting the unique climate of the Korean society where the parents devote themselves to the education of their children, it will be an urgent matter to motivate the older, as well as younger generations, to have more interest in the national past. The emphasis is really on the rescuers during the genocidal massacres of their history as well as during the Holocaust. It will open the way for revitalization of past affairs education and Holocaust education.

A Methodological Breakthrough for Holocaust Education: Focusing on Rescuers

To make the unpleasant past a public issue in Korea, it is strategically necessary to focus on its humanitarian aspect which would arouse sympathy among the people and relatively free them from the investigation of perpetrator’s responsibility. Without presenting a positive vision for shaping an integrative national memory, developing education of an unpleasant history including Holocaust remains a distant prospect. For educational purposes, building a national community of memory through shedding light on the rescuers is very significant.

The most effective way of introducing Holocaust history to Koreans is through film and literature. Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List is extremely well known among the people and is very often used as the first step for learning about the infamous historical event beyond the limits of human understanding. It is an excellent educational device, mainly due to the highly intentional reference to the human side of the story. Schindler’s rescue activity remarkably overlaps with many “moving stories” during the terrible events in the Korean contemporary history. The numerous “moving stories”—the well-known cases of rescue actions—have not been discussed in the public sphere for a long time. They were not a part of the official history but exist only as scattered individual stories. Therefore, as shown in teacher training programs, organized by 3 April Peace Foundation in Jeju, some scholars and teachers consciously began some trial experiments to examine the potentials of the “moving stories” in comparison with the rescuer stories of the Holocaust and then to transform it into a theme of education in Korea.

What came into the spotlight was the Righteous among the Nations, initiated by the Yad Vashem, in Israel in 1963 (Yad Vashem, 2016). This project of honoring the actions of those individuals who rescued Jews during the Holocaust provided the Koreans with the opportunity to look back into different aspects of their national past carefully (Choi, 2009). The more they looked into their past closely, the more human stories similar to Schindler’s story were discovered.

Many cases were found by Jongmin Kim, a journalist of a regional press, who devoted himself to investigative report of the April 3 incident on Jeju island for a long time (Jemin Daily News, 1994–1998). The rescuers during the massacre included some officers, policemen, officials, and other ordinary people. The case of a lieutenant colonel was particularly remarkable because he tried to negotiate with the head-chief of the communist revolt at the beginning, in order to dissolute the guerrilla organization and thereby prevent any possible massacre. After the negotiation was frustrated by the intervention of the US military rule, he made unsuccessful efforts to persuade its commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General William Dean to prevent the forthcoming tragedy (The National Committee, 2013). His case is especially significant because he was a man of uniform and was in charge of defending the whole island. His circumstantial judgment and behavior was directly against the orders of the US military rule at the time when the first national government was not yet established. His action offers a frontal rebuttal of two conventional arguments in support of the massacre; one, stressing the particularity of a uniformed organization, within which any kind of disobedience should not be allowed and two, stressing the situational inevitability that no one could imagine any appropriate way of action in response other than shooting (Yang, 2001).

An even more attention worthy case is that of the ordinary people in a small village named Sinrye 2-ri, who arranged hiding places and foods to the refugees (Jemin Daily News, 1994–1998). Without their help, the refugees would have been shot by the troops just like the victims in neighboring villages. When the reporter asked some of the villagers over a half century later, how they could take such risks, pointing to the great mountain, they answered: “What would you do, if you had unexpectedly encountered a roe deer fled from the snow-capped great mountain in cold winter? Take care of it and let it go back to the mountain, when the spring comes. Therefore, with the mankind, it is needless to say that they deserve our help” (Interview with Jongmin Kim, 2005).

It is highly touching to hear those uneducated people speak of the humanism most unfeignedly and this is a reminder of the famous phrases on Immanuel Kant’s tombstone cited from his Critique of Practical Reason: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me” (Kant, 1999, p. 1). Facinated by this example, I decided to try and combine the common truth claimed by the witnesses of the massacre with the legacy of traditional Confucianism, which still has an influence on the education in South Korea. One of Confucius’ pupils, Mencius highlights the four innate ethical dispositions, namely benevolence (rén), righteousness (yì), wisdom (zhì), and propriety (lĭ), and the cultivation of them as a whole has a direct relevance to the issue of the Righteous among the Nations. Among these four traits, Mencius devoted most of his discussion to benevolence and righteousness. He maintained that each of the four virtues is associated with a characteristic emotion: “The feeling of compassion is benevolence. The feeling of disdain is righteousness” (Mencius, 2008, p. 149). According to Mencius, a fully benevolent person will be disposed to recognize the suffering of others and to act appropriately, and a righteous person would object to being addressed disrespectfully. Thus, these two innate dispositions are to be cultivated together to improve the individual human potentials and the society as a whole, in an ideal way.

The rescuers during the Holocaust and the massacre in Jeju could provide the Koreans with the opportunity to reflect on the genocidal past and eventually to find some hope even in the darkest moments of the history to change the present and the future. Teaching the stories of the rescuers has a special meaning in the sense that the youth of this generation could imagine the structural and temporal situation in which the rescuers found themselves at the time, and identify themselves with the courageous good neighbors. For educational purposes, it is extremely significant to give people such opportunities of facing the difficult situation with their whole personality.

The author has been arguing that the education in general, more specifically the history education has to change one’s innate disposition and contribute to the improvement of the whole society (Choi, 2006). Unfortunately, some studies show how easily ordinary people became perpetrators given the proper social conditions and context (Browning, 1992; Goldhagen, 1996). A psychological experiment provided us with a rather pessimistic prospect, with the gloomy term “Lucifer effect” (Zimbardo, 2008). Moreover, it is often stressed that sometimes the entire transformation from a bystander to a rescuer takes only seconds, and, in certain cases, it was not even one’s conscious decision. Some studies recently addressed that there are certainly a high level of correlation between personality and rescue activity during the Holocaust (Midlarsky, 2005). If then, is there a possibility of changing the personality itself through teaching the rescuers’ story?

In her well-known study Conscience and Courage, Eva Fogelman writes: “In this mad world, most people lost their bearings. Fear disoriented them, and self-protection blinded them. A few, however, did not lose their way. A few took their direction from their own moral compass” (Fogelmann, 1994, p. 38). Certainly, people rescued others for various reasons. In terms of educational purpose, the most important seems to be the case in which the action was motivated by a sense of morality. In respect to this, the study by Stephanie Fagin-Jones and Elizabeth Midlarsky is worth a special notice. By using personality as the measures of moral judgment, empathy, social responsibility, and risk-taking, they compared the rescuers to non-rescuers and concluded that internal traits and orientations were far more distinguishing factors than any demographic variable (Fagin-Jones & Midlarsky, 2007, p. 143). Earlier, based on her interviews with the Holocaust rescuers, Fogelman suggested: “It was not a whim that led these people to risk their lives and those of their families, but a response, almost a reflexive reaction in some cases, that came from core values developed and instilled in them in childhood” (Fogelmann, 1994, p. 253). The correspondence between these two researches and Mencius’ idea of cultivating the four innate ethical dispositions is highly striking. Rescuers have greater empathy for others’ suffering, more loyalty to core principles of justice and caring, and a stronger commitment to social responsibility.

Here the main question is, whether the capacity to empathize with others’ pain, to internalize morals of justice and equality, and to develop a sense of personal efficacy and commitment to bringing positive change is natural or induced through some external factors. Fagin-Jones and Midlarsky (2007) came to a conclusion that the differences in the childhood experiences are the primary cause for most rescuers developing these capacities. Although their primary interest was laid in distinguishing the discipline in the rescuer’s family from the non-rescuer’s, the result of their research suggests the need for education of past affairs. If the Holocaust education with stories of the rescuers may give anyone an opportunity to learn about the circumstances under which the rescuers were, and to ask oneself whether he/she would be willing to risk his/her own life and his/her family’s lives to save someone else’s, it may create a good Samaritan effect among the people. Thus, an education of the unpleasant past could facilitate cultivation of good inner traits.

Such a positive aspect began to be seriously considered in the public sphere in South Korea. One of the results was arranging a room for the good neighbors during the massacre in the exhibition hall of the 3rd April Peace Memorial Park in Jeju Province. The section opened in the museum of the park allows visitors to experience the massacre in comparison to other genocides including Holocaust, and the rescuers from the higher officers to ordinary people. The vacant spaces will be reserved for the unknown rescuers who may be found in the near future.

The initiating institutionalization of rescuers in an official memorial museum in Jeju, established by the government in 2008 near the killing sites, was followed by the education programs for students, teachers, and citizens. They were neither solely dedicated to the rescuers during the massacre, nor included enough units of Holocaust. The Holocaust history was in context incorporated into the “genocide and the 3 April massacre,” “human rights and peace,” and “human rights and peace education for youth.” As the education on the April 3 massacre was institutionalized by the regional authority of education in Jeju and a special committee for it was set up, it has gained unity and sustainability. With cooperation of some leading teachers and staffs of the regional authority of education who acknowledge the relevancy of the Holocaust to the Jeju massacre, a unit of the program was assigned to Holocaust education. It will be used for introducing some of the most significant rescuers such as Oscar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg (Marton, 2011), and Chiune Sugihara to the participants.

Presenting the courageous decision of the Japanese diplomat Sugihara (1900–1986) has a very special meaning for the Korean public. In 1939, he became a vice-consul of the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. As the Jewish refugees were in danger shortly before the German invasion of Lithuania in July–August 1940, Sugihara began to grant visas on his own initiative against the order of Japanese Foreign Ministry. The Refugees used their 10-day visas issued by him to cross the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok and then by boat to Kobe, Japan. Some refugees took the route through Korea directly to Shanghai without passing through Japan. Most of them survived the Holocaust in the Shanghai ghetto (Levine, 1996). The Koreans had no idea as to the identity of the refugees who were crossing at the time. The Sugihara’s people are the only string which may bind the Korean history and the Holocaust. Sugihara represents the Japanese who listened to the small voice of conscience, took their direction individually within their own moral compass, and in the process disobeyed the unjust order of the state.

Sugihara referred to one crucial point for the Koreans and when he was asked his reasons for issuing visas to the Jews, in 1985, the 40th year of the liberation of Korea from the Japanese colonial rule:

Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent. People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives. (Levine, 1996, p. 259)

Teaching the courageous rescuer Sugihara to the Koreans means two things; to let them know of one of the important aspects of Holocaust in connection with the darkest period of their contemporary history; and to let them acknowledge that there were and still are “other Japanese” distinguished from the stereotypical kind of Japanese.

Conclusion

In many respects, Holocaust education in South Korea still remains at a tottering stage but there are enough reasons and potentiality to develop it. First of all, Holocaust education is needed for coming to terms with its recent burdensome pasts. For preserving and transmitting memories of collaboration, perpetration, and violation of human rights, it is urgent and necessary to establish the principles of education, to develop the realistic strategies and methods of education, and to design teaching materials deliberately adapted for each of the target groups. A project for founding principles of the past affairs education referring to those of Holocaust education in Western countries has recently been completed (Choi, 2015). A teachers guide book for Holocaust education regarding the needs of Korean society is currently in its preparatory stage. Various teaching materials and programs for youth are envisaged with support of some individual institutions of commemoration. Additionally, the Holocaust and genocide studies in history, literature, and sociology have reached a higher level. The problem at hand is how to process the research achievements to be used in education properly.

To pursue the Holocaust education in South Korea more actively, we are in need of a long-term strategy; a transition from regional to national level on one hand, from outside to inside of the school system on the other hand. If a few educational experiments bear fruits, as in Jeju with cooperation with the authority of education, Holocaust education within the school will be anticipated in the near future. The most important task currently seems to be gaining an approval from all the stakeholders of the official education, namely, policy makers, teachers, parents, students, and media.

The implementing strategy for it would be seeking the righteous among the nations in the Korean history as well as during the Holocaust. At the same time, the high wall of national (istic) history should be gotten over by introducing some figures who have realized the universal values themselves and in the process unbound to the norms of the state and nation. Teaching the case of the Japanese diplomat Sugihara may have a double effect. Finding the officials and officers who have violated the state’s instruction in order not to violate the human rights is extremely crucial for the students who are in search of their role-models. Moreover, learning Sugihara’s decision and effects in the context of Holocaust history would give the Koreans the opportunity to view the Japanese contemporary history in a wider perspective and to build a bridge of mutual understanding between Korea and Japan. If that were to happen, it shall be called “Sugihara effect.” The main cause of the aggravated Korea–Japan dispute over the recent history is excess of nationalism and obsession with traumatic past among the Koreans, pursuit of justification of perpetrators’ past and indifference to it among the Japanese. Teaching Sugihara would be a cardinal part of the future-oriented history education, which tries to transform the national memory of the traumatic past into a peacemaking transnational memory.

In some cases, to save one’s life from danger, the decision had to be taken literally within a few seconds. Fifteen years ago, a young Korean student Lee Soo-hyeon in a subway station in Tokyo sacrificed himself to rescue a Japanese fallen on the railway, in vein. He did posthumously contribute to the reconciliation between Korea and Japan much more than what the diplomats of both nations had done for the past half a century. The outcome was grand enough to be called the “Lee effect” (Reitman, 2001). His story is being taught and remembered until now. Education of the rescuers’ story during the Holocaust also will facilitate coming to terms with the traumatic past in the Korean society, by pointing out such human decision made in a few seconds, and by questioning the students what they would do, if they were put in a likewise situation.