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Nationalism and the Politics of Anti-Americanism in South Korea

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Nationalism and the Politics of Anti-Americanism in South Korea Volume 3 | Issue 7 | Article ID 1772 | Jul 06, 2005 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Re-writing the Past/ Re-Claiming the Future: Nationalism and the Politics of Anti-Americanism in South Korea Sheila Miyoshi Jager Re-writing the Past/ Re-Claiming the thousands of suspected leftists and political Future: Nationalism and the Politics of prisoners just before fleeing southward in July Anti-Americanism in South Korea ahead of the advancing NKPA troops. The earlier July massacre appears simply to have By Sheila Miyoshi Jager been erased from the annals of official U.S. and South Korean histories of the war. Today’s new South Korean intellectual elite, The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 coming of age during the nation’s transition to led to one of history’s worst atrocities. Known democracy in the 1990s, are actively re-writing as the Taejon massacre, an estimated 5000 to Korea’s wartime history. The Taejon massacre, 7500 civilian deaths have been attributed to a once a symbol of communist barbarity, has single incident committed by the North Korean come to mean something very different from People’s Army (NKPA) in late September 1950. past interpretations of the event. Since not one- The incident, described as “worthy of being -but two-- mass killings were committed, the recorded in the annals of history along with the September massacre is now being reconsidered Rape of Nanking, the Warsaw Ghetto, and in light of the preceding July massacre. As one other similar mass exterminations” in the journalist of the liberal Han’gyore shinmun put official United States Army report issued at the it, “the September massacre by the NKPA was end of the war, received extensive coverage in an act of retaliation for the previous killings of the international press which touted it as leftist prisoners by the Republic of Korea evidence of North Korean barbarity. (1) (ROK).” (2) Moreover, the July massacre, according to the same source, “was impossible It was not until 1992, nearly 40 years after the without the agreement or at least, event, that a South Korean journalist began to acquiescence, of the American authorities who uncover new evidence which suggested that held commanding authority during the war.” rather than a single massacre occurring in late Professor Kang Man-gil of Koryo University September 1950 by the NKPA, there had voiced these views even more forcefully: “Since actually been two massacres—the NKPA pictures were taken and official reports made killings in September that occurred just before to the U.S. government by the U.S. military, we the city was re-taken by United Nations forces cannot but examine the question of American and an earlier massacre that had beenresponsibility for the (July) massacre.”(3) What committed in July by South Korean forces just was once reviled as a despicable act of wanton before the NKPA attacked the city in its initial violence committed by the North Korean bid to unify the peninsula. In other words, what People’s Army is now being touted as a rational had been described as a single atrocityact of vengeance, while the earlier July killings- committed by the North Koreans was actually -the new focus of concern-- are being blamed part of an unfolding pair of massacres that on the invisible hand of American forces for began when South Koreans forces executed allowing the ROK soldiers to pull the trigger. 1 3 | 7 | 0 APJ | JF These revisionist accounts of the Taejon Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons massacres were among the first of a new body primarily as a defensive strategy, and of historical works that began to emerge in advocates a policy of engagement with the South Korea during the early 1990s. In this North to ease tensions between the two genre, formerly off-limit topics are now being countries. These post-Cold War political written about extensively, including new reevaluations of North Korea, predicated on the research on U.S. responsibility for alleged mass recognition of the enormous human costs in the killings of civilians during and before the war. event of a North Korean collapse or resumption The topic of alleged U.S. wartimeof the Korean War, and viewing North Korea as atrocities—the recent uproar over the No Gun a blighted but basically benign enemy in need Ri incident is a good example-- has created a of prodding and support, is shared by many literal industry of new historical works in younger South Koreans who were born after contemporary South Korea devoted to re- the war. Their views have had enormous examining the relationship between the U.S. repercussions not only on the way South and ROK governments and their complicity in Koreans now perceive their wartime past, but alleged war crimes. In his massive 800-page their future as well. Whereas North Korean study of the war entitled Korea 1950: War and brutality was central to the official story of the Peace, for example, Park Myong-nim, a Yonsei war until the 1990s, the focus has now shifted University historian who also serves as an to reexamining American culpability and advisor to president Roh Mu-hyon on North- misdeeds during the conflict. This trend has South Korean Affairs, devotes an entire section also contributed to the rise of popular anti- to documenting these heretofore “forgotten” American sentiments in South Korea that in atrocities (including the July Taejon massacre), turn has fueled tensions between the Roh and something that could never have beenBush administrations as they seek to find a discussed publicly just 15 years ago. resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. The need to revise Korea’s wartime history has While anti-Americanism is not new to South many causes, not the least of which was the Korea, what is new is that anti-American collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and with sentiments appear to have spread into almost it, the loss of North Korea’s most powerful ally all strata of South Korean society, ranging from (and source of sustenance). After 1991, the elite government policymakers and communist threat vanished and in its wake, intellectuals, the middle class and the younger stood shell of a nation, abandoned by history, generation. While the sources of tensions are and seeking some way to survive. Suddenly, many, it is the changing perception of North North Korea no longer appeared soKorea that has had the most profound impact threatening, and with the military junta now on U.S.-ROK relations in recent years. out of power, South Koreans found themselves able to say things about their northernAt the core of the U.S.-ROK alliance is the neighbor that they could not say before. The presupposition of a common North Korean result of all this is that South Koreans, freed threat. It was the Korean War that led to the from the imperatives of the anti-communist signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty between line, began to think very differently about their the U.S. and ROK in October 1953 and for former Cold War enemy as well as about the nearly half a century, the Cold War and the United States. President Roh Mu-hyon’s “policy common memory of the war bound the United of peace and prosperity” toward North Korea, States and South Korea in a common mission to building on the approach of the earlier Kim defend the nation against another North Dae-jung administration, interpretsKorean invasion. 2 3 | 7 | 0 APJ | JF But while this threat no longer appearsprinciples of “no war, peaceful co-existence, credible to the younger generations of South and common prosperity.” As the conservative Koreans who grew up after the war, the Bush journalist, author and well-known critic Cho administration and many Americans, regard the Gap-che remarked of these changes, “our North Korean regime as a rogue state, intent soldiers will now be confused where they on pursuing nuclear weapons in defiance of should aim their rifles.” (5) international agreements and posing a threat to its neighbors and even the United States. Perhaps the most interesting thing about South Whereas the Cold War in the United States Korea’s new relationship with Pyongyang is quickly morphed after 9/11 into the new War that it has encouraged the expression of a pan- on Terrorism, it has irrevocably “ended” in Korean nationalism rooted in Korea’s self- South Korea. George W. Bush’s denunciation of image as victim. Park Geun-byung, a teacher at North Korea as an “axis of evil” in his State of Song Chun elementary school in Seoul, uses a the Union Address on January 29, 2002, storybook that instructs his fourth grade class publicly brought to the fore the fundamental about the tale of an evil dragon that prevents disjuncture between the new American hard- two lovers on either side of a wide river from line and South Korean engagement policy marrying. The evil dragon is clearly the United approaches toward North Korea. States and the river is meant to represent the DMZ. Park is a believer in what he calls This policy conflict over North Korea in turn “unification education.” Such depictions, while has fed into popular anti-American sentiments unsettling to Americans, resonate with the vast in South Korea, generating a powerful current majority of Koreans who, from an early age, are that president Roh Mu-hyun rode into the Blue schooled in their country’s long-suffering House in 2002. Indeed, in February 2003, Yoon history of foreign invasions, occupation and Young-kwan—then a member of Roh’snational victimization.
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